Elena headed back into the kitchen with the coffee pot. When she returned, she leaned against the wall and folded her arms over her chest, lowering her eyes like she didn’t want to see my reaction.
For the first time since I’d woken up in her house, I sensed a hint of fear beneath her tough facade.
“The fae showing up in the RC?” she said, her voice a hell of a lot lower than it had been moments earlier. “They’re Darkwinter.”
Darkwinter?Now my stalled-out heart sank into my gut like a damn stone. I was no expert on Fae politics, but everyone knew the Darkwinter bloodline was the cruelest, most brutal, most frightening clan alive.
“How do you know it’s them?” I asked. “Are you absolutely sure?”
She and Hobb exchanged a glance.
Hobb cleared his throat. “A confidential source—”
“A confidentialfaesource,” Elena clarified. “She took a huge risk in coming forward, so don’t bother asking for her name.”
I let it go. I understood the importance of protecting sources, and the last thing I wanted was for anyone else to end up in the line of fire on this one—especially if Darkwinter were involved.
“Does your source have any idea what they’re after?” Ronan asked. “Why they’d team up with hunters?” His leg was jumping again, the twitchy energy pulsing like an electrical field around his body. It made me want to punch something.
“It’s clearly connected,” Elena said, “But teaming up? I’m not so sure. Fae don’t usually trouble themselves with rivalries between other supers, let alone human hunters and witches. Maybe the fae and the hunters are working different angles here.”
Ronan shook his head. “No coincidences, remember?”
“No, I suppose not.” She leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, the scent of her fear cresting.
Hobb rose from his chair and headed into the kitchen, casually brushing his fingers against her bare arm as he passed. It happened so quickly, I almost hadn’t seen it.
The scent of her fear instantly receded.
One date my ass.
“Ronan’s right,” I said, shifting my attention away from my sister and her alpha douchebag. Her relationships were none of my business—a lesson I should’ve learned a long fucking time ago.
“According tooursources,” I continued, “the hunter we’ve been tracking is a rogue who split off from his family years ago. We already know he was working with vampires in the Bay—mercenary types looking to make a fast buck. And the way Gray disappeared? Time-release poison gas and a tracking device that could only be fae magic. So if you’re telling us you’ve got a dark fae infestation in Raven’s Cape, yeah, my money’s on them. Looks like they’re pinch-hitting for the hunters.”
“If that’s true,” Lansky said, “there’s gotta be something major in it for them.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I admitted. The known quantities were terrifying enough, but the deeper we dug, the clearer it became that we’d only just scratched the surface of this case.
“Okay,” Elena said, looking at each of us in turn as she counted off on her fingers. “We’ve got missing and murdered witches, a missing rogue vampire with a personal connection to the prime suspect, a dead human, a likely hostage situation, hunters and fae skulking around Raven’s Cape… It’s a lot to process. Where does that leave us?”
Her eyes landed on me at that last question, and everyone else seemed to understand that it was mine to answer.
What could I say? Elena and I might be estranged. Hell, she might hate me for the rest of her life. But in another lifetime, on another continent, we’d made a good team once. If that’s what it took to keep our world safe, then we’d just have to make a good team again.
If not as pack, then as partners.
I stood up and thrust out my hand, hoping like hell she’d take it. “It leaves us partners.”
Reluctantly, she nodded and grasped my hand, the familiar touch warm despite her hesitation. Her soft brown eyes were so like my own it felt like looking in a mirror, and the longer I stared at her, the deeper it hurt. Flashes of our shared childhood seemed to flicker in her gaze, and I wondered whether all those once happy memories were tainted for her now.
They weren’t for me. They never would be, no matter what we’d done to each other.
Maybe, after all this shit was over, I’d find a way to tell her as much.
“Thank you, Elena.” I released her hand and turned away before she sensed the swell of emotion in my chest. My sister and I had been estranged for twenty years, and that kind of rift didn’t just vanish after one good meal and a handshake.
The past would have to wait. Right now I had to focus on—well—right now. And all that mattered right now was finding Gray and bringing her back home.
