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“No thanks,” I said. “I’ve already drunk three. Any more and my bladder is going to explode.”
“Should have thought of that before you let yourself get decked in the head,” Pat said with zero sympathy. “Drink it.”
I took the olive green drink and uncorked it. “My concussion is gone, guys. I’m fine. It wasn’t even that bad.” I took a slug of the drink, which had a strong, minty flavor.
“Not thatbad?” Joy flung down the latest copy of the Curia Cloisters’ newsletter that she’d been perusing. “You were stuck in your cat form when I got here! You couldn’t even sit up straight!”
I was starting to sweat, so I peeled off one of the many blankets tucked around me—my siblings still hadn’t let me get off my bed, which made for a comfortable but hot nest. “I meant it wasn’t life threatening.”
Pat grimly shook his head. “That’s not right, Chloe, and you know it. The only reason you’re okay is because a Book Nookery customer somehow recognized you. That shouldn’t even be possible with your magic. You had to have been at death’s doorstep for that to happen.”
No, I just have a soul deep connection with an elf king I haven’t told you about.
The thought made me squirm, but I wasn’t going to budge on telling my siblings about Noctus.
“How do you know a customer recognized me?” I asked, trying to figure out what kind of cover story my ex-friends had weaved for my rescue.
“He buzzed my apartment,” Joy said. “Said you’d managed to turn human long enough to unlock your door. You can’t even remember that much?”
“Everything is really fuzzy,” I truthfully said. “I mostly remember coming in and out of it at the rescue.”
“And yet you don’t get why we’re upset that you’re treating this so casually?” Pat groaned as he sat on the foot of my bed, his knees touching the partition that screened my bed off from the rest of my studio apartment.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have let the tracker distract me. I almost had him.” I balled my hand into a fist and had to bite back the desire to scream.
He was down! If I’d stayed focused, he’d be in the Curia Cloisters’ custody! Now who knows what he’ll try next, and my siblings are in more danger than ever!
Joy picked up the newsletter again—I think it was just to keep her hands busy, so she didn’t strangle me like she wanted to. “You said he distracted you, then decked you in the head. What did he say?”
I hesitated.
After I’d recovered enough that I could see straight, I’d told them the bare points about the fight so Pat could phone the incident in. But I hadn’t said anything about my birth family, and I wasn’t sure how they’d react.
“He said…that my parents used me as a decoy. They dropped me at the hospital in a way that would get attention from humans but not supernaturals, then disappeared. There was a public record of my existence, but not theirs, so I’d be easy to find, and their trail ended with me.” The explanation tasted sour, maybe even truthful.
Pat, unable to sit still, jiggled his foot. “That means someone is still hunting your family, too. Nobody knew shadows had managed to survive—much less what they are—and yet someone is still hunting them. Why bear a grudge that long?”
“Andwhocould bear a grudge that long?” Joy asked. “You said elves were the ones who hunted shadows to extinction, but they’re gone. Who else would hate shadows enough to carry on the elves’ goal?”
I rubbed my head as I tried to remember the muddled moments after failing to grab the tracker. “It might just be the tracker. He called someone after I stabbed him.”
Joy rolled the Curia Cloisters’ newsletter up and tapped it on her knee. “It is a little odd he didn’t just finish you off right then and there.”
“Not really,” I said. “He was in even worse condition than I was. He was going to pass out and probably die from blood loss if he didn’t get help fast enough, and I managed to scramble under a bush without him seeing.”
A smile twitched across Pat’s face, wiping away the worry that crinkled around the corners of his eyes. “That’s our Chloe,” he said. “You got him good!”
“Not good enough to actually catch him.” I glanced at the window—the only one in my apartment—and stared at the makeshift nest built out of ripped strips of paper take out bags and twigs. It was French Fry’s occasional home that he roosted in maybe once a week.
It was empty at the moment, but he must have dropped by relatively recently, because there was a salt water taffy wrapper in it that hadn’t been there when I’d woken up this morning.
Pat pulled me into a hug. “You survived. That’s what we care most about.”
I relaxed as he patted my back. “Thanks, Pat.”
He awkwardly cleared his throat, let me go, then ruffled my hair. “You’re okay, kid. And don’t overthink what he said. He’s a psycho. There’s no way he’d tell the truth.”
“Yeah,” Joy agreed. “Besides, if you were a ‘decoy’ like he said, it wouldn’t have taken him your entire life to realize you existed.”
