“Jonathan,” I said. “You heard her last night—she still loves him, even after everything.”
Darius shook his head. “I could buy that, but he didn’t know she was here. No one did. I kidnapped her from her mother’s home in New York, sedating her immediately. She’s been in my presence ever since—no calls, no nothing.”
“But no one else knew we were up here,” I said. “No one else but Liam even knows this place exists.”
“Someone else obviously did,” Darius said, letting loose another cough. “Or someone tracked us.”
Ronan’s cough started up again, too, the sound making my own throat tickle.
Again, that strange sensation crept across my skin.
What is that smell?
I closed my eyes, trying to place it. It was faint, barely detectable even to me, but it was there, lingering just below the familiar scents of Gray and the guys and the home we now shared, like some kind of chemical tinged with magic.
I took a few more whiffs, opening my eyes and following the scent to its source.
Bingo.
I was standing over the coffee table, looking down at three black rocks, partially coated in what looked like swirls of red and bluish-gray paint.
I picked one up and brought it to my nose. Before I even took another whiff, I felt the burn in my nostrils and coughed.
“I’ve smelled something like this before,” I said. “Pretty sure it’s fae. What are these?”
“Asher brought them back from Gray’s house last night,” Ronan said. “After the fire. They were Sophie’s. She used to paint rocks from the Bay.”
Once he’d said it, I remembered seeing them in a basket on Gray’s kitchen table the night I’d gone over there to investigate Sophie’s murder.
The memory clawed a gouge in my heart.
“Well, that answers the question of why Jonathan set that fire,” I said. “He knew she’d want something from the house. These were the only things that didn’t burn, so he had them spelled.”
“With what?” Darius asked.
“I’m guessing a tracking device and some kind of time-release poison gas.”
Despite everything Fiona had told us, everything Gray believed about him dropping breadcrumbs, we’d still underestimated him.
“And you’re certain it’s fae magic?” Darius asked.
“Has to be,” Ronan said. “That’s the only way someone could’ve detected a signal from in here. Nothing else would’ve gotten throughourfae magic.”
“Exactly. And once we were all unconscious,” I said, “it would’ve been easy for him to waltz right in here and take them.”
We all fell silent after that.
The bastard had come into our home. He’d put his hands on our friends. He’d taken them right out from under our noses.
“Fuck!” Ronan exploded in a ferocious roar, grabbing the rocks and whipping them at the window. They crashed through the glass, landing somewhere in the yard.
I crossed the room and put my hands on his shoulders, pulling him in for a hug. He was trembling with rage, his chest rattling from the last of the poison, all of it conspiring to wreak havoc on his system.
I met Darius’s eyes across the room, gesturing for him to get his vampire ass over here.
I pulled back from Ronan, holding his shoulders and looking him dead in the eye. “Listen to me, Ronan. We’ll get them back. I fucking promise you, we’ll get them back.”
“El Lobois right.” Darius put a hand on each of our shoulders—a rare show of affection from the normally cool vampire. “Failure is not an option. Not when it comes to Gray and Asher.”
