“Always,” he repeats.
And despite all the confusion and tension and hurt still lingering between us, I know he speaks the truth.
Chapter Twenty-Five
AUGUSTINE
After the revelation about West’s biological father, we’re all in agreement.
All threats against Westlyn are to be eliminated without hesitation. We no longer have the luxury of presuming innocence or waiting for that elusive thing called proof. Though we’ve yet to completely piece together the links between the shadow magic society, Zorakkov, and now the Wintermoon fae, we’re operating under the assumption that they’reallworking together toward a single end.
Westlyn.
Whether they mean to kill her, to bind her to a demon prince, to send her back to the fae realm, or to use her in some other yet-to-be-revealed scheme… Who gives a fuck? Rook’s working every angle he can to try to find those answers, but the rest of us? We don’t need to know the grand plans to know thatnoneof them will come to fruition.
As long as we’re here to protect her, no one will so much asbreatheon a single hair on her precious head.
“You ready to do this?” I ask Draegan.
It’s the night after we learned about West’s dark fae father, and now, high above Lexington Avenue, Drae and I are perched outside the fiftieth-floor conference room of the Bank of New Amsterdam’s main building.
The offices are mostly empty at this late hour, but across the hall from the conference room, a soft golden light spills out from beneath a closed door.
The office of Kevin Klaiburn.
The old man’s burning the midnight oil. Likely running his after-hours smut club enterprise away from the prying eyes of his underlings.
It’s too bad we have to ice him. I rather enjoyed collecting his dossier over the years. Lots of entertaining stuff in there.
Draegan gives me a curt nod.
“What’s the play?” I ask.
“Question him. Then end it clean. Make it look like a robbery—a gift for our friends at the station.”
“You sure you don’t want to bring Jude in on this?”
Drae shakes his head. “We don’t need to torture the old man. We just need him to cease to exist.”
“Deleting people from existence is Jude’s specialty.”
“Yes, but deleting them quickly is not. No games tonight, Augustine. No long and bloody goodbyes and artistic souvenirs. We’re getting whatever information he’s willing to offer under threat of death, then we’re executing that threat. I don’t have the stomach for anything else tonight.”
“Same page, brother. Same page.”
Jude’s antics are often necessary and occasionally amusing, but when it comes to eliminating the lingering threats against Westlyn? The quicker the better, as far as I’m concerned.
“You worried about fallout with Reedsy?” I ask. “And whoever else he’s got lined up to press us about that judge?”
“Always a risk, but it’s clear now he’s not investigating Westlyn as a missing person—never was. He knew she was in that wreck. He tracked her like a fucking animal and made the call that nearly got her captured, all at Lennon Forsythe’s behest. And it happened after our bank visit—a visit only Klaiburn was supposed to know about. They’reallin bed together.”
When we first learned that Drae and West had been followed after leaving the bank, we suspected Klaiburn’s involvement, but Drae wanted to wait for more proof. Wanted a chance to sniff around, see if we could unearth any of the other little moles on Forsythe’s payroll.
But with the new intel on West’s lineage, that’s not happening now.
Like I said, proof is a luxury we can no longer afford. Hell, maybe we never could.
Clear on the plan, Drae and I sail up to the roof and enter through the fire exit, then pull up our human glamours. Thanks to one of Rook’s handy devices, we’re able to temporarily disable the alarms and dodge the surprisingly few interior cameras, quickly making our way down to the fiftieth floor.
