“They’d started dating, and then Kallayna sensed things were getting more serious. He asked her to move in with him—he’d recently bought a home in the Bay. She was scared, of course, but she saw the opportunity for what it was and accepted his offer, pretending to be dissatisfied with our family.”
“And this Knight… he believed her?” I asked, finally sitting down again.
“As far as we know, yes. Though communicating with her has been difficult. We staged a very public, very brutal fight over her decision to move in with him, all to lend credence to her claims. She broke ties with me and turned her back on our legacy. Since then, she’s been sending me encrypted messages through a secure, non-glamoured channel magically routed through Fae, but the only way for her to access it is to leave the Bay, and she can’t do that without arousing suspicion.”
“If you knew what Darkwinter was planning,” I said, “why didn’t you come to us sooner?”
“Just like you, I needed to be certain before acting on the intel. We didn’t know exactly what they were planning—if anything. They could have just as easily been setting Kallayna up for a fall. I couldn’t risk that.”
“When was the last time you heard from her?” Elena asked.
“Two days ago—before the Knights secured the city.” He pressed a napkin to his lips and closed his eyes, his shoulders stiffening. It was the closest he’d come to losing his composure in my presence. “The thought of losing someone else I love…”
He trailed off, but I knew the “someone else” he’d been thinking of in that moment. I realized just how much restraint he’d shown tonight in not asking me for details, for updates on the case, not even when the subject of Sophie had come up earlier.
He had a right to know where things stood.
“Jael, we know who took Sophie’s life,” I said gently.
“Oh?” he asked calmly. He didn’t look up, didn’t show any outward reaction at all, but I sensed the need in his voice, that one-word reply heavy with equal parts pain and hope.
“Sophie and the other witches in Blackmoon Bay were murdered by Jonathan Reese,” I said. “He’s the man currently imprisoning Gray and the others. We don’t know whether he acted alone in the killings, but my gut says no. We already know he had accomplices in other attacks, including the one at Norah’s house, so it’s not a stretch to assume this is connected to the larger crime waves in the Bay as well as the Darkwinter takeover. I just wish I understood how all the pieces fit together.”
“Jonathan Reese?” Jael met my eyes across the table. I could practically see the wheels of his mind turning. “Possibly a relative of Phillip Reese?”
“Yes,” I said, recalling the name from what little I could find in Jonathan’s public records. “Phillip is his father—the hunter who killed Gray’s mother when she was a teenager. Do you know the man?”
“Kallayna has reported that her Darkwinter Knight has accompanied a human named Phillip Reese to at least three or four meetings with other Darkwinter soldiers. I don’t believe she knew he was a hunter. She hasn’t been privy to the meetings themselves—only to his comings and goings.”
“We already know from another source that Jonathan’s motive isn’t murder,” I said. “He’s developing the hybrid technologies, but his experiments often result in the death of his subjects. I just couldn’t figure out how he was getting his research to Darkwinter, or if they were running their own operation. But it’s his father. Phillip Reese is the connection.”
“I thought Jonathan was estranged from his father. That everything he does is in direct opposition to his father’s legacy.”
“That’s what we heard from one highly unreliable witness,” I said. “Fiona Brentwood is a vampire with an axe to grind.”
“Many people believe my sister and I are estranged,” Jael said with a casual shrug. “Perhaps it was all an act.”
We were all startled by my sister’s phone. She hopped up from the table and fished it from her pocket, disappearing into the living room. “Alvarez. What have you got for me?”
I turned my attention back to Jael, who’d just snuck in a thirdalfajor. When all this was over, we’d have to send him a whole box of them.
“You could be onto something with that estrangement act idea,” I said. “We hadn’t considered it from that angle.”
I popped analfajorinto my mouth, trying to process everything. It was entirely possible that there were multiple factions of hunter groups working together with Darkwinter, or that Jonathan and his father had set aside their differences to work against their common enemy. For all I knew, the prison was just one ofmanyhybrid research sites.
The Bay needed our help, but right now, we needed to find out what was going on in that prison. That was the key to toppling the coup in the Bay—and anywhere else they’d set their sights on. I was sure of it.
“We need to get into that prison,” I said. “We’ve got good intel that says it’s here on the coast. Problem is, we can’t actually locate it. It’s fae spelled.”
“I might be able to intercede,” Jael said. “It’s doubtful I can destroy the spell completely—Darkwinter have powers the rest of us can only dream about—but if I can weaken it long enough for you to get inside, that might be a start.”
“It’s worth a shot,” I said. “But Jael, if Darkwinter figures out you were the one who brought down the spell…”
I let the silence speak for itself. Jael knew what Darkwinter would do to him if he got caught. He didn’t need me to spell it out.
“They are, either directly or indirectly, responsible for the death of someone I love,” he said, his catlike golden eyes suddenly blazing. “Possibly the torment of others. There is nothing I won’t do, nothing I won’t risk, to hasten their end. Are we absolutely clear on that, detective?”
I nodded once, accepting his offer. There was no point trying to talk him out of it. I knew what it meant to lay your life down for someone you loved—for vengeance, for a shot at saving them, for all of it. There would always be consequences, but not taking the risk at all? That was a shame I could never live with.
