“You must have a way with animals. That dog doesn’t even know you, and yet you’d think you were his owner.” Elijah gave the dog an affectionate look.
“They realize once they get past the predatory thing that I’d never hurt them. They sense these things.”
“I’m a bit like an animal in that regard,” he replied. “I sense things. I sense danger.”
“How does that work?”
“It’s like precognition. My heart races suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck go up, and I feel … dread. Yes, dread is the right word for it.”
Fascinated, Echo asked, “And this is always before something happens that might endanger you?”
“Or others near me, yes. Except …” He narrowed his eyes and raised his arms to gesture with his wrists. “With you. I didn’t sense this coming.”
Remorse flooded her. It would have been so easy to lower her eyes in guilt. Instead, she forced herself to meet his gaze. “I am sorry. I didn’t … I didn’t fully understand what I was doing with those cuffs.”
“Well”—he heaved a heavy sigh as he lowered his hands—“you saved my parents’ lives tonight, so you’re forgiven.”
She nodded, still uneasy, and she didn’t know why. Echo just knew she didn’t like it.
The plane glided forward, and Milo’s heart beat faster beneath her palm. Soothing him, Echo held him tighter as they began to move. However, not long later, as the plane took off and began to ascend, Milo panicked with fright. Nothing Echo did calmed him, and her chest ached with sympathy for the poor dog. She grew angry at its owner. The terrier was small enough to fly with the passengers. He shouldn’t have been left down in the bulk hold if he was terrified of flying.
A tingle of energy calmed Echo, an accidental overspill of Elijah’s magic as he reached over to pet the frantic creature. Immediately, Milo calmed, his heart slowing, his body relaxing.Soon, his eyes closed and he slept deeply. Amazed, Echo watched Elijah ease back against the wall.
“Thank you,” she said. The plane was loud, but with their supernatural hearing, they could still hold a conversation.
He nodded. “No problem.”
“What else can you do?”
Elijah shook his head with a smirk. “No. I asked my questions first.”
With another slow exhalation, ignoring the nervous flutters in her belly, Echo drew on the cool calmness William had taught her. “Never let them see how you really feel,” he’d always said to her when she was growing up.
“William raised me,” Echo said matter-of-factly. “I don’t remember anything different. As a child, he told me I was the daughter of two human friends killed in a car accident. So he raised me as his own. I grew up in the supernatural world but was taught to keep it a secret. Most of my life was spent at boarding schools in Canada. During the summers, William brought me to Europe, to his home in Munich. Sometimes we traveled to The Garm headquarters before they were in Munich, and that’s how I knew of Eirik. He was like a strange, slightly terrifying uncle. I was brought up with the stories of Faerie and the prophecy … about you.”
Elijah’s expression hardened. “And obviously you were taught I was the enemy. What changed?”
A bitter darkness threatened to swallow her whole as the memory of that night just over a month ago flooded back. She clutched Milo closer, taking comfort from his warm little body. “The fae I’m going to connect you with … her name is Niamh Farren. We believe she’s mated to a werewolf of unknown and mysterious origins. A werewolf who seems to be … immortal.”
“An immortal werewolf?” Elijah gaped. “What else is out there? Never mind, don’t answer that … just keep going. This Niamh woman—she’s like me?”
“One of the fae children, yes. But she has psychic abilities. For a while, The Garm was tracking her because she kept turning up in places where disasters happened, and she averted them with her gifts.”
“Like a superhero?”
“Yeah.” Echo narrowed her eyes at how intrigued Elijah looked with the idea. “And don’t even think about it. It almost got her caught by her enemies. She went off the radar again and we lost her trail. But then she showed up, alone, at my apartment in April.”
“Why the hell would she take a chance like that?”
Echo paused a minute to regain mastery over her neutral expression. “Because she’d discovered the truth about my parents and about William. She left me with files she’d gathered on my family, and I spent a few weeks verifying them. Everything she shared with me was true.”
“Which was?”
An image of her mother filled Echo’s mind. “My mother is alive. Her name is Margaret Lancaster. She lives and works in London and is under constant surveillance by William. She’s very beautiful, even now … even with everything having been stolen from her.”
“I don’t like the sound of that.”
She gave him a dark smirk. “Yeah, it’s not a pretty story. William must have been besotted with her, but she left him for my father. A human man. And William waited until I came along to take his revenge. He butchered my father.”
