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He ignores Rainey. “Let’s all hope so. Though I wouldn’t bet on it. Seems you lot get yourselves into tight slips fairly often. At least, if the past few months are any indication.”
“Can you help her or not?” Rainey snaps.
He turns to her. “As for your accusation, I was helping.”
“By missing for days? How so?”
“I was in Faerie. As this is my first time dealing with a dark witch to this capacity, I wanted to know exactly what we were dealing with.” He glances at Fearghas. “Had a nice chat with your mother about it, and she suggested we may have a rogue soul on our hands.”
“A rogue soul?”
He nods at my question. “Occasionally, the soul of a dark witch will tie herself to her magic. Typically, they don’t do it because it would mean unrest for all of eternity and experiencing everything the host does.”
“And how exactly can a soul do that? If we’ve learned anything from my special experience, it’s that only a single soul can occupy a body at one time. Unless, of course, Bronywyn is a super-secret lunar witch.” Rainey turns to me. “When is her birthday?”
“September,” I reply.
“So, not a lunar witch.”
“The soul is not technically a soul anymore,” Ridley answers. “Not in the way yours or mine is. It’s more of a parasite, eating away at the host until there’s nothing but a shell left.” Moving closer, he looks her over, eyebrow raised at the gauze peeking out of the top of her gown. “She piss someone off? Why is she unconscious?”
“Someone stabbed her; then I shot her three times.”
He turns to Rainey. “You shot her three times,” he repeats cautiously.
“With iron and silver laced bullets.”
“Any particular reason? I thought you lot were pals?”
“She pissed me the fuck off. Ask Fearghas. My trigger finger gets all itchy when someone pisses me off.” Her last words are meant as a warning, but Ridley is not even mildly bothered by it.
“They did something to her while they had her. Something that repressed the Bronywyn we know and brought out the shadow magic,” I tell him. “Or rogue soul, if that’s really what it is.”
Ridley is silent a moment. “You’re telling me that she’s fully dark? She’s completely embraced the shadow magic?”
“We don’t know.”
Jaw tight, Ridley shakes his head angrily. “We can’t do a damn thing until we do know. If I do this, and she’s completely dark, it will kill her. You do realize that, don’t you? I can’t exactly pull out the dark magic of a dark witch without draining her of the very power keeping her soul alive. Especially given her little backseat driver. If the parasite has devoured her soul already, there’s not anything left to save, and we should just kill her now.” He mutters a curse. “And you should have left the damned bullets in her.”
“Why?”
“Those shackles won’t contain a rogue soul—if that’s what she is. The shadow magic can exist for short periods of time outside the body. So unless something is keeping it inside, it can escape.”
“Which is why she was able to attack Tarnley and me,” Delaney adds with a shake of her head. “We were completely caught off guard.”
I’m barely listening to their conversation, my mind unable to focus on anything but his warning. “How do we know if she’s fully dark?”
“Someone is going to have to go into her mind.” Fearghas mutters a curse under his breath. “That is bound to be one hell of a trip.”
“I can do it,” I offer.
“It has to be a fae,” Ridley replies.
“Why?”
“Because we’re the only faction with the ability to exist in a completely different plane. If we were to send you in, and her soul is still intact, the weaker one would be forced out. As fae, we can separate our souls from our conscious minds. It’s how we travel in and out of the veil without trapping ourselves.”
“So, you’re going in?”
