Page 42
“I work as a double agent for the American project MorningStar. The rumors are rampant, and I can neither confirm nor deny them to keep my cover, but no one likes a spy, Charlotte, not even the ones who employ them.”
I bit my lip, hands picking absently at my cuticles as I considered this information. Julian had been a double agent. “You work for MorningStar?” I asked quietly. The very people that had tried to take me the day Julian had saved me and whisked me off to the Island. Had he lied and found me because he was supposed to help them take me in the first place? Did he kill the kidnappers to silence them?
Did it matter?
“I don’t have time to explain it now. Listen to me, Charlotte.” Julian took my hand in his, prying it from my lap. His touch was firm but gentle, and I remembered those hands on me at the beach. I held my breath. “When I said there’s a mole, I meant it. I need your help because I believe whoever it is knows I’m close and is trying to set me up.”
“Are you close?” I asked, barely able to trust my voice. “What do you know that I don’t?” Besides everything about MorningStar.
“I believe I scented the killer at your house last night.” Julian looked straight at me again.
That was the biggest shock yet. I bit my cheek and decided not to bother telling him to watch the road.
“It’s why I left and went to find you,” he continued. “I wasn’t spying on you, Charlotte, I swear. But I saw you lying there and not…reciprocating as the wolf put his mouth on you, and I couldn’t control myself. I am so sorry.”
He hadn’t been spying. He’d believed he found the killer and came to get me. Then I’d incapacitated him and prevented him from doing anything about it. He’d thought I was being raped. I shook my head, sick with the thought that someone else had tried as soon as he’d left my side.
“Who was it you smelled?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It was that burning scent—the one I picked up in the elevator after Lauren’s kidnapping. But it didn’t belong to any of the people at the book club. I’d run across everyone in that house at least once previously.”
My head hurt again.
“Carmichael is a killer,” I said, looking away and out the window.
“Charlotte?” Julian’s voice was low and careful. “Why do you say that? Was he responsible for the marks I saw on your neck?”
Pressing my eyelids closed, I told him everything as I twisted my fingers in my lap. Silence answered me, then a loud ripping noise, and I dared a peek. Half the wheel and part of the dashboard was destroyed.
“But he didn’t kill Michelle, and I don’t think he took Lauren, so I’m not convinced he killed her,” I said quickly. “And his scent you would have known. He obviously wasn’t in my house. He was following me.”
Julian’s chest vibrated with a low growl. “I will deal with him. You have no need to worry.”
“No. Don’t go fighting anyone else, please. We will figure out how to handle it, but not with violence.” I’d already instructed him to hurt himself after all.
Julian glided into his parking spot and sat still for a moment, visibly fighting for control as the veins in his neck rose and subsided like the tide.
“He needs to die.” He bit out the words, trembling with barely controlled rage.
“Not because you kill him,” I insisted, setting a hand on his arm.
The muscle in his jaw ticked then he relaxed beneath my touch. “If he so much as looks at you again, do it yourself, Charlotte. I suspect I will not be available to dole out justice shortly anyway.”
“I still can’t believe they’d arrest you.”
“I may not be able to avoid arrest,” he said to the windshield. “But I don’t want you to be unprotected with a killer on the loose. They’ll target you next if they’ve come after me. Don’t trust anyone, Charlotte.”
The Unseelie queen’s words came back to me in that moment. She said I’d be the only one able to see the killer. But she hadn’t meant with my eyes. I pictured Karma changing into different animals and sizes. I remembered Mabel’s complaint about the shifter changing from person to person while making out with Lauren in her cab…
“It’s a shapeshifter,” I blurted out as Julian reached for the door handle. “Not a shifter, shifter. But someone who can impersonate different people. What does that?”
“They’re rare, but there are several types of beings that can do what you describe. It would explain what I smelled. The killer may have been impersonating someone at the book club last night. We have to check the list from Gladys. When we find a supe with that ability, we find our murderer.”
We exchanged a look and rushed for the doors, but nearly ran into the general’s chest.
“Basement. Now,” he barked. “We’ve been waiting.”
“But—” I started to explain our need to get to the list, but the general’s glare stopped me cold.
