Page 105 of Blood and Trouble

“Does he know?” I tried to ask with my eyes. Keeping humans in the dark about our magic kept us safe, but Bastards were blood, no matter the chapter. We swore an oath of loyalty, and that included keeping secrets.

“He knows,” Orion said. “Smiler vouched for him.”

Mick shrugged. “Eleven years I’ve been riding with that man. You lot aren’t the strangest thing I’ve seen.”

A ginger-haired woman I didn’t know stepped up from the back corner. Her jeans and leather cut identified her as a member of the Royal Harlots: Asheville, NC chapter.

“Bridge,” she said when I grabbed her palm. “I take it you’re what all the fuss is about?”

“Lycan,” I answered. “You must be the witch.”

“This one is Leander, my warrior,” she said, nodding to the dark-haired guy at her left. I’d only met the Harlots a handful of times, but I’d heard how it worked. The witch wielded the magic; the warrior kept them alive.

“We’re your backup,” Leander said. “You’ll need us for whatever bullshit Evelyn has in store.”

“Alright,” Orion barked. “Now that we’re all one big happy family again, let’s figure out what the fuck is going on and what we’re going to do about it.”

We spent the next few hours going over what we knew and our encounters with Evelyn and her vampires. It was clear she’d been following us most of the trip and likely knew our itinerary. The Vanderbilt women sat on the couch together while the Bastards bounced ideas around.

Like that, it was easy to see how they’d all come from the same family. Sol and Guin had the same emerald eyes, the same strawberry-blond tint to their hair. Even if Maeve and Ava had inherited their dark coloring from their father, all four women shared the same eye shape and stubborn set to their jaw.

I would have liked to meet Priscilla Kennedy. Based on her daughters, I’d bet she was a hell of a force to reckon with.

“Fitz Global is in the Square Mile,” Mick said. “There’s one road in that doesn’t sit under a camera, and it’s the one I’d use if I wanted to hit you. Take the long way in and out. Let the cameras have us.”

“That’s a great idea,” I said, suggesting we use multiple vehicles to keep her guessing. Mick and I strategized our route and backup plan while the others debated what to make of Evelyn. I tuned back in to the conversation when I heard words like “curses” and “rituals.”

“It’s connected to Priscilla’s bloodline somehow,” Bridge said. “We’ve been digging into the ritual Marx was doing to Maeve when you rescued her. It was a suppression spell, a kind of siphoning magic, specifically tied to the Kennedy family. A curse.”

“Suppression spell?” Maeve asked. “What the fuck is that?”

“It would suppress a shifter’s ability to change,” Leander explained, “and the caster would be able to absorb that magic to make them more powerful.”

“I was already a fox when Marx took me,” Maeve added. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“But it could be why Evelyn is going after Ava,” Bridge continued. “Why she’s been reeking up the place and trying to hide it. Whatever Marx started, she could be trying to finish it.”

“She was in Paris before Marx died,” I said. “We tracked her coming through the airport days before.”

“Maybe she was a part of it from the beginning,” Serpent added with a shrug. “Maybe she was waiting for Ava to turn so she could snatch her, too, just in case.”

“Let’s take the curse out of the equation for a minute,” Moose said, rubbing his eyes in exhaustion. “We don’t know what it was, what it actually was intended to do, or who wanted it in the first place. That’s too many variables, and in the end, it doesn’t matter.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t matter?” Aquila asked. “It could be Evelyn’s entire motivation. Don’t you think we should figure that out?”

“We have four shifters from the Kennedy line right in front of us,” Moose explained. “It obviously didn’t work, or they wouldn’t be here.”

“I still say she wants revenge,” Maeve said. “It’s the most likely scenario. I killed her brother; now she wants to kill my sister.”

“The signature on the curse was dark,” Bridge said. “Marta’s my cousin, and she’s smart as a whip. She looked at the research your healer did on Maeve’s blood, and based on what I can tell, it would have been catastrophic. If Evelyn wants to continue it, she probably has a host of witches and vampires on standby.”

No one said anything, but my attention zeroed in on Ava, who pursed her lips and widened her eyes like something had just occurred to her. She stayed silent.

“I’m just saying,” Moose continued. “Take it out of the conversation for a second. Here are the facts. We’ve got a vampire horde coming after us. They have witches. They know where we’re heading next. They know what we’re doing. Most importantly, we know what they want. This is an advantage.”

“I’m not using my wife as bait,” I barked at the same time Poe said, “My mate’s not going out there.”

The room went quiet as a dozen sets of eyes danced between me, Poe, and Ava.