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I arrived at the Minskoff Theatre before Ridley. The theater was dark. I pretended to study the Lion King posters in the windows.
If only I knew what, exactly, had gone down back at the Garnet.
Tomas was ashes, but Rafe was okay.
Princess Zoe had been hanging on to Rafe like he really was her mate. Still, it was hard to wrap my head around the idea that my brother had mated with a Tremblay.
And had Tomas really staked Victorine Tremblay?
On my way to the meeting, I’d told myself it was time to face facts. Ridley’s doubts had infected me.
What if she was right? What my father was behind my kidnapping? What if he was in the first stages of blood madness?
If so, then Rafe was fucked. If he’d died in that restaurant, I would’ve never forgiven myself.
But now I didn’t know what to think.
Rafe was still alive. That single, indisputable fact pushed the pointer on the balance back to my father’s side.
With Tomas dead, Father could’ve staked Rafe and blamed it on Victorine, but he hadn’t.
Why not? If he wanted us dead, what the fuck was he waiting for?
I squeezed my eyes shut. I was exhausted, too tired to think straight.
Time. I needed time.
A man jostled me, a beefy weight-lifting type.
The toothed beast surged up and took over my mind. I whipped around and bared my fangs at him. He whitened and swerved into the street to get away from me. Car horns blared and brakes slammed, but he didn’t stop until he was on the other side.
I shook my head at myself, disgusted. Way to fly under the radar, Zaq.
I took a steadying breath and, with an effort, leashed the vampire.
Ridley still hadn’t arrived.
You could just leave.
But I couldn’t. Something linked us, the same thing that had kept me returning to the Bronx when I could’ve escaped multiple times.
A soft footstep behind me, accompanied by the scent of fresh-cut grass, out of place in this concrete-and-glass jungle. I was turning to meet Ridley even before she said, “Hey.”
Half her face was shadowed, the other half bathed in bright light from the video walls. She’d kept her own clothes but used a glamour to change her face and paint her hair black with lime-green roots. She looked like Billie Eilish, if Billie had a twin who was an assassin.
“Let’s go.” I tipped my head toward the west, where the crowd was marginally less thick. “I haven’t seen any Kral men, but that doesn’t mean they’re not around.”
Ridley nodded and fell in beside me. “We have to find a new place. We can’t go back to the squat.”
“Because of that woman in the alley?”
She shrugged—and I knew.
“So it was someone from SI. Your alpha?”
Her face tightened. “Just take my word for it, all right? The squat is out for now. In fact, we probably shouldn’t go back at all.”
I squeezed my nape, thinking. “I have a loft on the West Side.”
