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“You’re the same you as a Fury with the same witchy ways except faster, stronger, and more deadly which makes you—”
“A bloodthirsty psychopath?” I wondered when we would get to this conversation.
“Harder to kill.” He meets my gaze, and there’s respect shining there. “Which I appreciate.”
I did not expect that. Worse, I’m momentarily speechless. Taking my time putting a sparkly purple Muse bandage on his forehead, I do my best to hide any emotions because nothing has come off of him when he looks at me since my session with Dr. Bomani except beautiful threads of gold. I clear my throat. “Why be nice to me now? You gave back the grimoire. I agreed to help you. You have nothing to gain from pretending we’re friends.”
“Oh, we’re not friends.”
Now he tells me. I should’ve left the cut on his head to fester and swell. I shut the salve with a snap.
“Wait.” He touches my hand, trailing his fingers along mine. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Then how did you mean it? You’re amazing for four years and the best influence a kid could have. I turn fifteen and poof! You criticize everything on the rare occasions you bother to notice me. You take things from my family home without bothering to contact me for three years, and now—”
“I’m sorry.”
His apology catches me off guard, and I sit with a hard thunk. “About?” My throat goes dry. Nolan doesn’t do regrets or remorse.
He strokes a thumb over my knuckles. “For being a dick to you. For not reaching out sooner. For not protecting you and your family.”
Shit got heavy real quick. My stomach twists in a boulder-sized knot. “You couldn’t have protected us. They got past security wards and Lowell.” They would’ve come through Nolan too. I leave the last unsaid because I can’t say it. I can barely think it.
“Yet you think you should’ve stopped them.”
My brain flashes to the instinctive well, yeah that I’ve dwelled on for years, but something in his tone stops me from saying it out loud. “You couldn’t have saved them either. Their deaths weren’t your fault.”
“But I—”
“You died, Sadie. Those fuckers killed you, and you fought until the end.” He squeezes my hand as if he needs to hold onto me. “Lowell said he’d been followed. He didn’t want me to say anything because his position as the alpha’s son—”
“The same as you.” I can’t understand why Nolan and his dad didn’t get along.
“Not the same,” he says. “Not at all. Lowell didn’t want me looking into it. Thought it’d make him seem weak or paranoid. But better if people had thought that than him winding up…”
“Dead. He fought back too. And what could you have done? Trailed your younger brother everywhere?”
“I could’ve requested a protective detail to be assigned to Lowell. Asked the marshals to find out who followed him.”
“The wolf marshals aren’t known for being kind or helpful. They probably would’ve said no, you and Lowell would’ve been branded cowards, and wolves couldn’t have taken on flying killers anyway.”
“Could’ve shot the fuckers out of the sky.”
“And if they’d been deity daughters—more exist in the world than just the seven Houses of Syn City—you’d have brought curses down on every marshal who opened fire.”
“But the threat’s been in this town. It might still be here now,” he says. “Murdering a poor shifter who came here to work and learn. If I had solved the case sooner, she’d still be alive. So would the deer alpha’s daughters and the bobcat grandma.”
“The victims from nearby towns?”
“Yeah. I’ve questioned everyone close to them, analyzed the crime scenes, and know that the same killer or killers have committed each. But who?” He shakes his head as if trying to clear it, and I wonder how hard the Nymph smacked him in the skull. “The wings…” He stops himself. “I know you don’t want to talk about what you remembered in Dr. Bomani’s office, and I’m not asking. I just keep thinking the witness statements I got from prior investigations are missing critical information.”
“Like?”
“Like Stone saying that whoever dumped the cub’s body on the ice had to have flown her in. No one from the marshal’s interviewed the bears, and they sure as hell didn’t talk to Stone. I don’t even have a record of Kiva’s death. I wouldn’t have known except she’s your Fury sister, and her mate was willing to talk to me. Likely because of my connection to you. He has no love for the marshals.”
Stone’s patiently teaching a Nymph how not to hold her spear like a little leaguer getting ready to take a swing at her first tee ball game. Releasing her chokehold on the weapon, the woman’s blue and silver wings shimmer like ocean waves in motion. They’re so peaceful and lovely. So unlike the wings in my memories. “If those memories I had in Dr. Bomani’s office were true”—since she warned us both of the possibility that false memories could surface—“I haven’t seen wings like those of my killer’s in this second life as a Fury.”
“Did you see any faces?”
