His eyes were red and a hint of moisture welled along his lids. “Am I going to be okay?”
I held him tight for a long moment. “Yeah, kid. You’re going to be fine. You’re going home.”
A quick search of the place revealed an old office phone still connected. A simple 911 call did the rest. I wouldn’t stick around for the authorities to show up, knowing they’d get the kids taken care of.
Sometimes the usual heroes aren’t around to save the day. You’ve got to hope someone else comes along, and if they don’t, you’ve got to hope you can do it. And in my experience, hope works, and we can all be the heroes someone else needs.
I headed back to the church to wrap up my case.
SILVERSPELL
by Chloe Neill
1
We’d made mistakes. And we were paying for them.
Shards of pink cardboard were spread before us. Only hours ago, they had been a glossy box holding a dozen donuts shipped from Lulu’s parents in Portland to our loft in Chicago. Now they were compost.
Beside me, Lulu sighed, hands on her petite hips. She had pale skin and a dark slice of hair down to her chin, some of it now falling across eyes I knew were as furious as mine. She was a sorceress who didn’t practice; I was the vampire she allowed to share her home.
“This is your fault,” she said.
“You can’t blame me every time she has a tantrum.”
The aforementioned “she” was Eleanor of Aquitaine, the sleek black cat who ruled this particular roost. Eleanor of Aquitainehad no fear. But she had a canny sense of entitlement and punishment for presumed wrongs.
“This isn’t a tantrum,” Lulu said, and picked through the cardboard, looking for remnants. “It’s a shot across the bow. There was one glazed left, and I’d been saving it.”
I narrowed my gaze at the cat. She sat in her usual spot—atop the window radiator—tail swishing as she watched us, boredom in her green eyes.
“Have a banana?”
Lulu looked at me, gaze dry as old toast. “Seriously?”
“Until she adopts a new personality, that is my only suggestion.”
My screen buzzed. I pulled it out, and found a message from Roger Yuen, the city’s supernatural Ombudsman.
sup death in south lawndale, the message read, and gave an address on the south side.shifter, he added.ca pack.
I was Elisa Sullivan, daughter of two of Chicago’s most prominent vampires, born because magic and fate twisted together. Me and my partner, Theo Martin, were associate Ombuds, liaisons between humans and sups: problem solvers, mediators, and occasionally investigators.
CA was an abbreviation for Consolidated Atlantic, the shapeshifter Pack that controlled the Eastern Seaboard. And that explained why Roger had tagged me, even though I was off tonight. Chicago was the territory of the North American Central Pack, led by Apex shifter Gabriel Keene. And Connor Keene, Gabriel’s son and the heir apparent to the North American Central Pack of shapeshifters, was my boyfriend.
If Roger’s information was correct, the shifter wasn’t one of Gabriel’s wolves, but the death of a stranger in NAC territory almost certainly carried its own complications.
acknowledged, I messaged back, knowing he’d given me theinformation to prepare me for what I’d see—to assure me that it wasn’t a shifter I knew. I was doubly glad of it when he sent the image: a wolf lying inside a pale white circle drawn on the street, its gold-tipped beige fur stained with blood.
I blinked, looked closer, and sent another message.is that a salt circle?
limited info, Roger responded.you and theo tell me.
That was fair, I thought, and put my screen away.
“What is it?” Lulu asked.
“A shifter is dead,” I said. “And it looks like magic was involved.”
