It was quiet and cold, and said almost without inflection.There was no yelling, no theatrics, no anything.But he meant every word, and Hargroves knew it.
Cyrus got a brief nod in return before he glanced at me.“Five minutes, then I’m throwing them out.”
“Got it.”
I’d be lucky to last that long anyway.
He left, dragging his wolves with him, probably because if he stayed, the Corps would be minus another member.I waited until they were gone and collapsed back against the bed.Caleb must have the kids somewhere, because Hargroves and I were alone.Even the bodyguards the Corps required him to take everywhere, and which were probably going to be doubled after this, were outside, drinking up all the good coffee.
I could smell it, but hadn’t been brought any.
Probably not on the invalid approved list.
I allowed myself a small sigh.
Hargroves stood up straight and adjusted his lapels.“It seems I might have a few things to learn about Weres, after all.”
I blinked at him.Damn, I thought.I’m hallucinating.
And then I knew I was, when heactually sat down on a corner of the bed.
“I’m getting old, Lia,” he told me, pinching the bridge of his nose.“I thought I knew everything worth knowing about magic, but lately...”The silver head shook.“I don’t know this.Perhaps I’m slipping.”
“If you’re slipping, what does that make the rest of us?”I asked hoarsely, and had eyes as sharp as lasers suddenly bore into mine.
They were gray today, to match his suit, or possibly his mood.The face around them certainly appeared thunderous enough.And his voice wasn’t any happier when he spoke.
“I don’t know.I don’t know what to make of any of this.All I know is that the pressure I’ve been getting—and resisting—to use Jenkins’ discovery was substantiated tonight—”
“Resisting?”I sat up straight again.“Was that why you came here yesterday, when you never do that?Was that why you told Caleb that the Corps is thinking about developing a Relic task force?Why you said, and I quote...‘who could subdue a Relic but another Relic’?”
I broke off panting because that had taken a lot out of me, but my fury from last night, which had gotten me to the Corps’ HQ in the first place, lent me strength.My God, I was just as angry now, and for a moment, we glared at each other.
Then Hargroves’ thin lips got even thinner, to the point that I was surprised he could answer at all.“I hate this,” he announced.
“What?”
“All of it!The slaughter at HQ—we’ll be digging flesh out of the walls for weeks, some of it ours!In the area we’re supposed to be safest.Safest!”he looked disgusted.“We’re not supposed to need safety; we’re supposed to be the ones protecting others.But who can trust us to do that when we can’t even protect ourselves?
“We lost six good men last night, and may lose a seventh before this is over.And the toll would have been much higher than that, would have been all of us, if you hadn’t burst in like—” he broke off and stared at me for a moment, searching my face for something, probably the same thing I had searched my counterpart’s for.He didn’t seem to find it.
“We don’t even know how they got in,” he added, after a moment.“The wards weren’t overcome, they were switched off.Meaning we have a traitor among us.When we can least afford it!
“So I came here to ask if you noticed anything—anything at all—that could help.Point me toward the man, Lia,” he said, leaning forward, his face terrible.“Tell me who to look for, before he does this again.Or something worse!”
I’d never seen Hargroves like this.I wasn’t sure many had.He was always so starched, so prim and proper, so old school Corps—
But then, maybe he still was.There were rumors of how things had been done back in the day.Of Corpsmen who just...disappeared...and nobody wanted to talk about it afterward.I wondered if the same thing would happen to the traitor.
I thought about Noah and wondered if I cared.
“Think,” he told me.“You must have had better senses than we did, in that other guise.You must have seen something, heard something, smelledsomething—”
“I mostly smelled blood,” I said, but I tried anyway.
The problem was that the other mind I’d been in for most of the attack hadn’t thought like a modern human, or a human at all.But it hadn’t been like the animal mind I had glimpsed at times with my wolf, either.It was fully Other, something so alien, so strange that I didn’t know how to explain it to him, or even to myself.
She had felt pleasure in her pack; that was familiar enough.She had enjoyed savaging her enemies; I could get behind that.She had understood her role as Lupa better than I ever had, accepting the leadership role with a calmness that had persisted even up to the moment of her death.
