The wind picked up, rustling through the pines, and I pushed myself harder, my feet thudding against the ground, sweat running down my bare back. If I could run hard enough, fast enough, maybe I could leave all those fears and doubts behind.
I ran at a punishing pace, the trees no more than a blur as I raced past them, my chest heaving with the effort, heart pounding, blood pumping, air whistling through my hair, across my skin…
I leaped over a fallen tree limb, shifting in mid-air. My wolf form came easily, effortlessly. My limbs elongated, bones popping and snapping, muscles bunching, cells rearranging, fur covering my skin.
By the time I hit the ground on the other side, I was on four legs instead of two and running wild, welcoming the night as it slipped over the pines like smoke.
When I’d finally outrun a few of my ghosts, I paused at a narrow stream, lapping up the cool, crisp water. I was just about to lope away when movement in the shadowy underbrush across the stream caught my eye, a gentle force pulling me toward it.
I stilled, waiting.
There it was again—a shape in the shadows, followed by a pull, like a magnet in my chest.
It looked like a girl.
It looked like Reva, the young witch from Norah Hanson’s coven who’d gone missing. The one who’d reached out to Gray through the flames at the safe house.
I bounded across the stream to get a closer look, nosing around the underbrush, hoping I wasn’t imagining things.
And then she appeared again, fully formed.
“Detective Alvarez,” she said, flickering in and out. Then, slightly less clear, “Message… Asher.”
She had a message from Asher.
I nodded, hoping she’d wait while I shifted back. I needed to be able to speak to her, to ask questions. But the moment I took my human form, she vanished.
I waited a few minutes, poking around the shadows, but she didn’t reappear.
Something had caused us to lose the connection. On a hunch, I shifted back, and a minute later, I felt the magnetic pull of her again.
There she was.
As a wolf, I had access to intuition and other senses that made me much more open and receptive. But as a wolf, I couldn’t talk.
Damn it.I couldn’t shift back without breaking the connection. I could only hope she’d tell me what I needed to know without prompting.
I nosed the ground where I’d last seen her, where I felt the strongest pull, and she flickered back into existence, immediately launching into her message.
It was broken and garbled, fading in and out, but I caught words like Raven’s Cape, Jonathan, twenty-seven witches, cave, fae magic, Asher, dozens of shifters, poisoned, dead, fae coup, guards, hunters, fish, abandoned pier.
And then the last, just before she flickered out for good—the word that made my blood run cold.
Orendiel.
Darkwinter. Sonofabitch.
Orendiel hadn’t been on my radar in years, but from what I remembered, he’d been banished from the courts after killing one of the Darkwinter heirs he was supposed to be serving.
Elena had said Darkwinter were showing up in Raven’s Cape. And now Reva was mentioning Orendiel. Banished or not, there was still a connection there, I was certain of it.
And, as the universe so kindly liked to remind us, there were no fucking coincidences.
* * *
“I’m telling you, Elena. She spoke to me. It’s the same witch who contacted Gray through fire. It seems she’s got some kind of projection magic.”
Down at the Raven’s Cape precinct, Elena glared at me across her desk. “Even if that were true, you said it yourself—you could barely understand her.”
