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“Fine,” she said, polishing off the booze. “I didn’t know at first. Chase didn’t tell me.” She turned around, looking less confident. “I found out about you two weeks ago when I went to his office. He had slipped out for lunch. To kill the time, I started talking to the elf—Sharah? Anyway, she told me you were his girlfriend. She didn’t know I’d been seeing him. When he came back, I had it out with him. He said that he thought you two were on the rocks. I told him to break it off with you, then. I didn’t realize until this week that he was exaggerating. I should have expected him to do something like that, damn it.”

Tears rose in her eyes, and even though I didn’t want to, I felt sorry for her. “What do you mean?”

“Because that’s why we broke up in the first place. Let me ask you a question now. Did he ever tell you about me?” She placed her glass on a coaster and dropped back into the armchair.

I shook my head. “No, he didn’t. He told me . . . he said he’d never had a serious relationship before.”

“I see,” she said. Even though she was trying to keep a straight face, I saw the devastation creeping in around the edges.

“We were engaged for three years. I suppose, in his book, that doesn’t qualify as serious. Or maybe it was just me. Anyway,” she said, shaking her head. “Two months before the wedding I found out that he had fucked my best friend. He insisted it had been a one-time slip. I loved him, so I took him back. The night before our wedding I caught him with a stripper. In our bed. I left him. Moved away.”

I felt like I’d just been hit with a brick. Chase had done this? My Chase? Sure, he was abrasive at times, but he always seemed to preach doing the right thing. And now I find out he had a history of being a slimeball?

She glanced up at me, her gaze flickering over my face. “Aren’t you going to gloat?”

Shaking my head, I said, “Not my style.” Which wasn’t entirely true, but this time, I meant it.

“Thanks, I guess. Anyway, I thought . . . when I came back a month ago, he seemed changed. He apologized. He brought me flowers and told me he was happy to see me. I’d never really gotten over him so I . . . we . . . I fell for him again. When I found out about you, I knew he hadn’t changed. So I decided to play him for as good of a fling as I could get. I’m not out to keep him, Delilah. I just wanted to build him up, then drop him like he dropped me. I wanted to hurt him.”

Cripes! I stared at her. Revenge ran deep among FBHs as well as the Fae. Chase would have his own side of the story, no doubt, and the truth probably fell somewhere between the two, but whatever the case, the whole mess left me with a lot to think about.

“So you were arguing about me?” I asked again.

“About you—about responsibility. About doing the right thing. I don’t give a flying fuck if you get your pussy bent over this. But I am angry that Chase still doesn’t have the balls to stand up and say, ‘Yeah, I did this,’ and accept the consequences. Yesterday, when he blamed me for all the problems, I decided that I’m done. I’m too old to play head games with a spoiled brat. And I’m not interested in getting involved in a love triangle. Or a three-way.”

She stood, arms folded, her exquisitely painted nails drumming a beat against the smooth silk robe. “My motto anymore is that when it stops being fun, I’m gone. And it stopped being fun. You wanted to know when the last time I saw him was? Yesterday, at Ruth’s Chris Steak House. We were having drinks and appetizers. He walked out and stuck me with the bill.”

With that, she turned to me. “I am going to get dressed. When I come out, I’d appreciate it if you weren’t here. I’m leaving town today. He’s all yours, honey. But I don’t recommend you plan on any long-term commitments, because Chase is carrying a shitload of baggage in that trunk of his.”

I watched as she disappeared into the bedroom, then slowly got up and left, making sure to lock the door on my way out.

So Chase had lied to me, several times over. If Erika was telling the truth, Chase had done to her what he’d done to me, only worse. The night before their wedding . . . even in Otherworld, that behavior wouldn’t be acceptable for anybody except nobility. And only the kind of nobles that congregated around Lethesanar.

I slowly returned to my Jeep, rehashing the conversation over and over. Chase was missing. Chase played the field. Chase had lied to me, had lied to her, had a history of lying about women.

In some ways, it made me feel better that I wasn’t the only victim. If only he could have accepted an open relationship from the start, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. But he couldn’t—at least not on his woman’s side. I was beginning to get the picture. Chase needed to play the field, but he couldn’t stand having the tables turned on him. So where did that leave us? Me? Him?

Erika said she was leaving, and I believed her. I now realized she wasn’t the enemy. In fact, there was no enemy . . . there was only the gaping void left by my new inability to trust a man who insisted he loved me. A man who had introduced me to passion, to love, to my human emotional roots.

Now what was I supposed to do? Turn my back on him? Walk away? But I couldn’t do that. We needed him because of his job, because of the demon problem. Could we pull back, be friends instead of lovers? The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. At least until we got our heads sorted out.

Wondering where the hell he was, I took off for home, deciding to put any major decisions about our relationship on hold until we’d had a chance to talk.

As I pulled into the driveway, I had the feeling something was wrong. I parked the Jeep a ways down the drive, just in case, and slipped up to the house by skirting through the woods. I hurried up the kitchen steps and stopped, staring at the door leading to the back porch. It had been ripped off the hinges. Shit!

Racing inside, I kicked aside the basket of laundry that had been overturned. The kitchen was a mess, with broken dishes and upended food everywhere. A glance showed that Menolly’s entrance to her lair was still closed; with any luck, whoever it was hadn’t found it.

But Iris—and Maggie? I whirled around to Maggie’s playpen. It was torn to shreds.

Fighting back a scream, I raced into the living room, which was also upended. An odd fragrance hit my nose, and I recoiled. Almost overpowering, it was like decaying fruit: oranges and sugar vanilla and jasmine . . . oh fuck. Oh hell. The scent of Rāksasa. Karvanak had been here.

I sank down to the floor, crouching as wave after wave of energy rolled through me. I wanted to transform, to run and hide under something where it was safe and dark and hidden. As I fought the urges that ate at me like a junkie craving a fix, I could only wonder if Karvanak was still here—and if Iris and Maggie were still alive.

CHAPTER 21

“No, no, no . . .” I whimpered. If only I could change into my tabby self and go find a safe corner in which to hide. I didn’t want to be the one to find the bodies. I didn’t want to see what Karvanak had done to our home. Where was Camille? She was better at this than I was. Why wasn’t she here? She was my big sister, and it was her job to take care of us.

I rocked back and forth on my heels, holding my head in my hands, trying to blank out the destruction around me. By now, I should be shifting. Why wasn’t my body taking over and forcing me to do what I wanted to do? For years, the involuntary shifting had been a refuge from fear and anger, a respite from arguments. Where was it now that I really needed it?

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