“A few hours. Ronan came to about an hour ago.”
“Care to explain the welcome gift?” I snapped, rubbing the fresh lump on my head. I had to stay mad at her. The moment I let that anger slip away, the moment I let the memories take hold of me, the guilt would rush in and eat me alive. “And give me back my weapon, while you’re at it. Unless you’d like me to get in touch with your supervisor.”
She pressed her lips together and sighed loudly through her nose, but she retrieved my gun from on top of the tall china cabinet behind her. A wave of her scent hit me as she approached, tightening the knot in my throat.
I held my breath until it passed. Nostalgia never helped anyone. It just confused the hell out of us, making us believe we could travel through time on a scent, on a song, on a smile. Making us believe we could go back and fix all the fucked-up shit we’d done to each other.
Even in this crazy world of witches and vampires and shifters and magic, life just didn’t work that way.
Handing over the weapon, she said, “It was for your own protection, Emilio. If you can’t see that—”
“You knocked me out. Left me with a hell of a headache, too. Maybe even a concussion.”
Ronan laughed. “Toughen up, wolf pup.”
I growled at him. Fucking traitor. What the hell had he and my sister been chatting about for the last hour, anyway? They should’ve woken me up.
“How did we even get here?” I snapped. “Did you wake up with a headache, too?”
Ronan rubbed the side of his head and winced. “Yeah. One of her wolf pups got me good. Then they threw us in the back of the van and brought us here.”
“Where are these wolf pups now?” I asked.
“Mymenare out working the Landes case.” Elena shook her head. “It’s not them you’re mad at. It’s me. They were just following orders.”
“Orders to assault an officer of the law and his companion?”
Elena lifted her shoulder in the most casual shrug I’d ever seen. “So you’d rather be dead than pop a few aspirin?”
“You should’ve warned me, not cold-cocked me.”
“There was no time to explain.” She headed to the windows that overlooked the backyard, peering out into the daylight. When she spoke again, her voice was heavy with worry. “This whole town is crawling with dark fae and human outsiders we’re pretty sure are witch hunters. If they’d found you snooping around the Landes place, they would’ve either killed you or taken you, and who knows what—.”
“Hunters and darkfae?” I followed her to the window and grabbed her elbow, forcing her to turn around and face me. “Christ, Elena. When we spoke on the phone about the Landes murder, you told me there hadn’t been any witch killings or other supernatural crimes in the area.”
“Therehaven’tbeen.” She jerked her arm out of my grasp. “Just the Landes case, which we still haven’t solved. For all we know, it was a spurned ex. We can’t prove the out-of-towners are hunters, and until they make a move on any of our witches, we can’t charge them with anything but the occasional speeding ticket or drunk and disorderly. And last time I checked, it’s not illegal to be dark fae.”
“Yet you felt they were dangerous enough to warrant knocking Ronan and me out without explanation for our own good?” I shook my head. Fucking Elena. Leave it to my sister to keep me in the dark about something so important. “You’re truly unbelievable, Elena.”
A familiar fire blazed in her eyes. “Forgive me, brother, for not keeping you abreast of the population demographics of Raven’s Cape. Would you like a tour through our case files, while we’re at it? How about the keys to the city?”
“Stop. Just… Listen to me.” I grabbed her chin and tipped her face up, refusing to back down from her steely gaze. Keeping my tone as measured as possible, I said, “Whatever your feelings for me, you need to put that aside. People’s lives are at stake. Our cases are overlapping here, and something tells me the violence and mayhem we’re experiencing in the Bay is just the tip of the iceberg.”
“What do you want from me, Emilio?”
“I want you to be straight with me. That’s it. Keeping secrets is liable to get a lot more people killed.”
Fire still lit her eyes, but her shoulders relaxed, and she blew out a soft breath. In a softer voice, she said, “You wouldn’t have listened to me, anyway. You never have.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but even after all our years apart, no one knew me like Elena.
I wouldn’t have listened. Not until it was too late.
I sat back down on the couch and blew out a breath. My sister may have spent the last twenty years dreaming about my death, but she’d made one thing clear: when it came down to it, she didn’t reallywantme to die. Despite her caginess, she was trying to help us.
The thought was more comforting than I wanted to admit.
“I want to know what’s going on,” I said, forcing my voice to remain calm. Escalating things would only waste time—time we needed to track down Gray and Asher. “You owe me that much.”
