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A lump clogs my throat, and hot tears sting my eyes. I am not going to cry. For years, I had only my family. Here in Syn City, I’ve made a new family and each time someone else accepts me exactly as I am, it reminds me of what I’ve found more than what I’ve lost. That happiness? I don’t deserve it. Not without completing the mission that’s the whole reason I have this life—avenging our deaths so that no one else suffers as my family did. “Yeah,” I manage to say past the strangling knot. “Friends and sisters.”
“Syn City needs to survive. Otherwise, where will humans who practice the craft be able to go? The witch sanctuaries won’t take them. The world shuns them. We know that better than anyone.”
She’s right. I clear my throat. “Here are the incantations and invocations to the gods and goddesses that I worked on last night. With that, your family’s rituals, and the magic in this town, we should be able to come up with something.”
“We will. I’ll get to work on the first spell jars while you collect the still water under the moonlight. I’m glad it’ll be you at the swamp and not me.”
No one but Tisia might understand my weird connection to the sea hags. Except Nolan. He has disappeared since his captain arrived. “The sea hags at the swamp. Do they scare you?”
“They scare everyone. But then they don’t bring me trinkets they found on the sea bottom like they do you.”
“One time. They brought me something once, and it’s all anyone remembers. It didn’t even belong to me. The dagger was my Fury sister’s.”
She drops my share of the spell fixings into my basket. “Why do you ask about the sea hags anyway?”
“The legends say they used to be witches. Do you ever look for your family in their faces?”
Her expression goes soft. “Do you?”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “My mom and my sisters from my first life.”
“You can keep looking for your past, or you can accept the sisters you have and this second life.” She closes the lid on my basket. “Or maybe get some lovin’ from that cute wolf marshal before he heads back to Nashville.”
The reminder that Nolan’s leaving? It hurts. There’s nothing I can do to change his mind. The marshals come first, and I refuse to come second. Which is why I need to concentrate on keeping my city safe and exorcising whatever evil has shown up this time beyond our usual serial killers, monsters, and nightmares. “Thanks, Tisia.”
“Be careful out there.”
“I will. Promise.” I step into the alley, close the door behind me, and take to the sky.
After dropping off the precious ingredients at the House of Furies, I make my way to the swamp to collect the jars of water we need. Despite Tisia’s sensible advice, I stare at the sea hags who swim close. I try not to search their grey-skinned faces looking for any resemblance to my family, but I can’t help it. I don’t look away even as the curling yellow light spreads along the dark waters to wrap around me, letting me know Nolan’s here.
“You won’t find your family with those hags.” His rich, deep voice strokes its way down the bunched muscles in my neck and shoulders the same as his touch might.
“You a mind reader now?” I hope the strange mating link that shines pretty colors doesn’t let him pick apart my thoughts.
“Don’t need to be. The question was all over your face.”
I glance up, and his intense gaze is focused solely on me. The same as he’d centered only on my pleasure yesterday…before the fire, before I almost lost him, before his job came first again.
He looks tired and defeated from his wrinkled shirt to his pinched brow beneath the cowboy hat. I’d barely had a chance to see him and he hadn’t bothered with letting a medic check him when he left with his captain. Zaleski, he called her.
If that Nymph hadn’t shown up with her ability to call snow and the Huntresses with a makeshift firehose, he would’ve died in that fire. I’d barely felt relief at seeing my Fury sisters alive, and he’d taken off into the hotel.
I’ve fought to ignore the fear and sadness over what ifs all day, but they rush to the surface now. “What were you thinking running into a burning building?”
“I’m a marshal.” He says the explanation as if I’m the idiot.
“They teach you to sprint toward unknown danger without plans or a strategy?” Or any thought of how the world would shift irreparably if we lost him? If I lost him?
“I save people. It’s what marshals do.”
“Is it? From what I’ve seen, marshals tend to take care of their own. They don’t bother with the rest of us. You sure this isn’t from your real dad’s side of the gene pool?”
He blanches as if I’ve insulted him, his freckles going stark against the pallor of his skin. “Trust me. I didn’t get anything good from him or his thieving, lying skulk.”
Skulk. Not a pack. What kind of animal calls their group a skulk? I don’t know so I ask. “What beast side could you have that would be more self-centered than a wolf?”
“No.” His voice goes rough, and not in the sexy way. “If I tell you, you’ll hate me.”
