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“Any flashbacks?”
“Not so far. But we haven’t let him shift.”
“You can do that?” I asked, brows raised.
Alexei took a drink, nodded. “Shifting takes magic. We have a method to block that.”
“The Apex can do it alone,” Connor said. “But without the Apex, it takes a few.”
“And there are at least a few of us on the side of right and justice these days.”
“Anyone else come by?” Connor asked.
“Everett and a couple of others came by earlier, looked like they were in a fighting mood.” He gestured to the shotgun on the table. “I told them they were welcome to come in if they wanted.”
“Did they want to talk to him?” I wondered. “Or did Cash tell them to come?”
“That’s the question,” Alexei agreed. “Cash hasn’t been here yet.”
“We are,” Connor said.
Alexei gestured toward the hallway. “He’s in the bedroom. I’ll stay here.”
Connor squeezed his shoulder, and we walked down the hallway. A bookshelf had been moved in front of the back door, presumably so Alexei only had one door to guard. A door to the left was open, and we looked inside.
Beyo lay on a bare mattress in a room empty but for a stack of boxes in one corner. His arms were extended at his sides, cuffed to the steel supports of the bed frame.
Alexei had been right. Other than his skin having a little less gray pallor, he didn’t look any healthier than he had the night before. He wore jeans and a T-shirt that bagged on his gaunt frame, raw scrapes and bruises visible where cotton didn’t cover.
His eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. He jerked when Connor knocked on the doorframe, lifted his head before dropping it back again.
There was misery in his face, mixed with what I thought was guilt. Feeling guilty was probably his first good decision in a very long time.
“Beyo,” Connor said. “You know who I am.”
“Yeah.”
“I take it you’re one of the Sons of Aeneas?”
Beyo’s head popped up again, surprise in his eyes. “You know.”
“We have pieces,” Connor said. “The Sons, the spellseller, Loren. We don’t have the full story. And you’re going to tell me, right now, or we’re going to have an even larger problem than we already do.”
Beyo swallowed, lay back again. “It started with Paisley. Or she was the first time we got serious.”
“Got serious about?” Connor asked.
“Making changes. Fixing things around here. Cash, Loren, Everett, the rest of them. We’ve been pissed for a long time and tried to get someone to pay attention, to do what needed to be done around here. But they’re living in the past. And then Paisley happened.” He looked up again, and anger was a fire in his eyes. “He killed her.”
“You have evidence of that?”
Beyo muttered something. “How the fuck were we supposed to get evidence? You think Loren didn’t fix things? Didn’t arrange things just so to cover his tracks? He was the last one to see Paisley alive, and then she was dead. He has a reputation around here, you know. For getting whatever he can from the women of the clan and taking what he can’t get willingly.”
Connor didn’t ask for evidence this time, presumably because he had expected the same answer. “So you decided to get even,” he said.
“We decided to get stronger,” he said. “Cash, Everett, Loren, they’re all old. Their time is done. We were going to work together, take the lead.”
“Because none of you were strong enough to take him individually. None of you alpha enough to challenge him for the clan. So you decided to cheat.”
