Fear not, little one. You belong here. Everything is unfolding as it should be…
The words drift through my mind—not a voice, not a visual, just… a certainty.
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” Draegan says, and I realize I’ve been silent for too long.
I shake my head and straighten my spine. Despite my warring instincts, I refuse to show him even an ounce of trepidation. If he sensed me wavering, he’d hit the child locks and zoom us out of here before I could even sayhot waffles.
“I didn’t come all this way to back out now,” I say.
He opens his mouth to respond, but then just shakes his head and turns off the car.
With one hand protectively on my lower back, his eyes scanning every inch of the shadowy garage for trouble, Draegan walks me to the facility’s underground entrance—a set of massive metal doors that look more like something from a military installation than an abandoned factory in the Meat Packing District. Jude’s already waiting for us there, and the moment he sees me, he stamps out his cigarette, a smile stretching across his human-glamoured lips.
“Hello, darling.” He pulls me into a tight embrace and lifts me off my feet, burying his face against my neck. Cold water drips from his hair onto my skin. “What an unexpected surprise. Miss me already?”
“Jude.” I breathe in his candles-and-black-pepper scent, holding back another shiver. “Pleasetell me they’re still alive.”
The request tumbles out of my mouth unbidden, barely even a conscious thought on my part. If Jude finds it odd, he doesn’t show it.
“Ehh… Definealive.”
“Do they have pulses?”
“Yes.” He sets me back on my feet and shrugs. “Not for too much longer, though, so if you’ve got some parting words for the sodding fools, we best get moving.”
A sharp, red-hot thrill shoots through my chest. After ten years of running from those mage pricks in my nightmares, I’m finally getting the chance to say all the things Icouldn’tsay when I was a terrified little girl and they held all the power.
And it’s all thanks to my gargoyles.
The warnings I felt earlier fade away, that feeling of utter rightness taking center stage. I don’t know why Ievertried to talk Jude and Auggie out of hunting them down.
You belong here. Everything is unfolding as it should be…
“Let’s go,” I say firmly. “I’m ready.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Jude reaches for the door handle, but Draegan stops him with a firm grip on his shoulder.
“Donotlet her out of your sight,” Draegan says. “Any sign of distress, you get her thefuckout of there, no questions, no arguments.”
“She’ll be fine,” Jude says, at the same time I say, “I’ll be fine.”
Draegan glowers at both of us like he’s about to blow a dad-gasket, but then, glancing at his phone, he sighs and says, “I need to get back to midtown—Inspector Barrington is expecting me in half an hour. Text me when I can come retrieve her. And Jude?”
Jude holds up a finger. “You don’t have to say it.”
They glare at each other for an eternity, having an entire conversation without words.
Then Draegan closes his eyes, curses under his breath, and does the craziest, most unexpected thing of all.
He leans down and kisses my cheek.
He’s gone without another word.
* * *
Jude leads me through a series of institutional looking hallways illuminated by a single row of harsh, bare bulbs in the ceiling. “Thought for sure you’d be holed up in the library having a nerd-off with Rook and your birds tonight, scarecrow. What changed your mind?”
“My Tarot cards.”
