“Gray.” The touch of Emilio’s hand on my shoulder silenced me, and I closed my eyes, breathing in his scent, letting his presence steady me once again. He was right. Ranting against Norah wouldn’t do us any good. For all her lethal mistakes, shehadgiven us good intel. At least we had the big-picture view of their plans now, whatever that was worth. And what she’d said about the outpost could prove useful, even if itwasa trap. We’d find a way to get in there, just like we always did.
“Oh, Gray,” Norah whispered. “You can’t even begin to imagine the guilt I’m carrying.”
“You made your own bed, Norah. You—”
She held up her hand cutting me off. “Sophie… I need to tell you about Sophie.”
I gasped, the pain of hearing my best friend’s name passing through this woman’s lips almost unbearable. Not because I couldn’t handle hearing the sound of Sophie’s name, or because I felt like I had some claim on her memory.
But because in that moment I justknew. Right here, right now, handcuffed to a chair and facing down the very end of a life she’d squandered, Norah would only have one reason to bring up Sophie in that way.
Tell me about her? No. She wanted to confess.
A shiver rolled through me, starting between my shoulder blades and working its way down, making my knees weak, my stomach roil, my mouth go dry.
“What… what did you do?” My voice was no more than a whisper, no more than a breath. Again, I felt the calming touch of Emilio’s hand on my shoulder, but he knew, too. I could feel it, the change in his body, the tension tightening his muscles.
“I visited her in your home in South Bay that night,” she began. “Before our coven meeting. We had a pleasant enough conversation.”
“Did you…?” I let the question hang there between us.Kill her? Did you kill her? Did you fucking murder my best friend…
“Did I inject her with vampire blood? No, I did not,” she said firmly, and I blew out a breath. But then, “I merely unlocked her bedroom windows, setting the rest of the evening in motion.”
The room spun, the walls closing in on me even as bits of conversation flashed through my memory of the night of Sophie’s murder.
No sign of forced entry…
The front door was unlocked… her bedroom windows were wide open…
Maybe she knew him…
Maybe they came in through the windows…
The pieces clicked into place in a flash. Norah was already working with Phillip at that point. They’d known Jonathan was searching for me—that he’d been searching for me his whole life. Under Phillip’s orders, Norah aided and abetted Jonathan in murdering her. SheknewSophie was going to die that night. She made it happen.
I couldn’t breathe. I felt myself being dragged back into that hellfire of grief, the weight of Sophie’s death pressing on my lungs, squeezing out my air. Sophie was never far from my thoughts, from my heart, but hearing Norah’s confession now was like being set on fire all over again.
Something inside me snapped, and I lunged across the table, my hands wrapping around her throat. Magic sparked across my skin, electric currents that pulsed into Norah’s pathetic body, calling forth her broken soul. I felt its pull, its resistance, and I shattered it, willing it out of her body. The first gray-black wisps of it emanated from her mouth as she watched in resignation.
“Do it,” she choked out.
As if I needed her permission. Her pathetic encouragement.
You are going to die, bitch…
I tightened my grip. Her eyes bulged, her soul slithering out. All I had to do was reach out and grab it…
“Come back to me. Come back to me,querida.This isn’t a road you want to go down.” Emilio’s hand was on my back, warm and steady, his words reaching across the void of pain and anger, filling me with his love. His patience. His support.
“This isn’t going to bring her back, Gray,” he said softly. “Nor will it bring you even a moment’s peace.”
My hands were still locked around Norah’s neck, but my magic pulled back, releasing its thrall on her soul. The gray-black wisp sunk back into her mouth, then vanished completely.
“Come back to me,” Emilio whispered, and that was it.
I let her go, allowing Emilio to guide me to my feet again. He led me out of the interrogation room, through the back room where the others had been watching through the glass. He took me down the hall, out the back door of the precinct, out into the freezer-burned Raven’s Cape night, where the snow swirled before our eyes in feather-sized flakes and the cold air filled my lungs, washing away the fires once again.
Emilio held me close, his heart hammering against my ear, his hand on my back, the other caressing the back of my head, his breath warm in my hair.
