She didn’t have time to savor the burst of warmth that came with that easy acceptance into every aspect of his life, let alone his easy confidence that soon this would all be over. Maybe later she would, but not now, when she felt like someone had hooked up a generator to her nerves and cranked it up to the highest setting.
Silas tapped the screen, answering the call. “What did you hear?” he grunted, eyes already back on his computer screen.
Rasmus had a deep, raspy voice. Even coming through the tiny speakers in the watch, it made an impact when he announced, “You can’t come back to the city.”
Silas’s fingers paused their rapid movement. “Why?”
Her heart jumped into her throat when Rasmus answered, “I just mediated a little get together between a certain spymaster and the McCorrans. You remember the bounty put out for Dr. Atria Le Roy and Ruby Goode?”
“What bounty?” Petra reached for Silas’s arm again. Speaking directly into the digital watch face, she pressed, “There was abountyon Atria?”
They hadn’t met yet, but Petra knew Margot was good friends with one half of the duo famous for their breakthrough with the m-generator. The other half, Ruby Goode, was her cousin — who had been mysteriously absent from the m-generator’s presentation. Her absence had sparked a tsunami of rumors, but Petra had been too caught up in her plans to pay attention to any of them. She was pretty sure she’d remember talk of a bounty, though.
“Pet?” Rasmus sounded surprised, but his tone immediately shifted to gruff concern when he growled, “You all right? Shade wouldn’t let me see you. If you need help, say the word.”
“I’m fine. Just?—”
“I told you to stop calling her that. Do it one more time and I’m taking a finger,” Silas warned. “You know what? Actually I’m taking all of them.”
Petra lightly swatted her mate’s arm. “Who cares about that? Rasmus, I’mfine.Explain what’s going on. Why can’t we come back to San Francisco?”
“A couple months ago, someone put out an anonymous bounty for Ruby Goode and Atria Le Roy. Now we know it wasprobably to get their hands on the generator shit, which is worth more money than you or I could ever imagine, but at the time it seemed fishy. Some anonymous entity offering a comically huge amount of money for two random scientists? Please. If it wasn’t a trap, then it was bound to start a war between the shits dumb enough to all go after it at once. Anyone with sense ignored it, thinking it was either a scam or not worth the trouble, but obviously there are people without any fucking brains in their heads.”
Silas bit out, “Who?”
“A rogue group of gargoyles split off from the McCorran clan. Kaz took them out.”
Kaz?Petra summoned the name out from a deep place in her memory. An outrageously handsome orcish face came with it.
Looking at Silas expectantly, she asked, “Isn’t Kaz a captain of a Patrol unit?” She’d only met him briefly once, but she’d noted his rank because she thought it was pretty strange that the sovereign would give an orc such a powerful position in his military.
“That’s his official title, yeah,” Silas answered, like he knew the man well. “But his real job is intelligence. He’s in charge of security for the entire territory.”
Huh.It wasn’t the time to ask, but she was suddenly extremely curious about how an orc came to be the eyes and ears of the sovereign himself.
Shaking her head, she pressed on. “What does any of that have to do with us?”
“The McCorrans came to settle up with Kaz. They didn’t give their permission to accept the bounty and didn’t want any retribution for the attempted kidnapping on elvish land — or from him personally. To square things up, they gave Kaz information on whoever put their men onto the job.”
A heavy stone of dread dropped into the pit of her stomach.Oh, Glory, no.
Silas met her gaze when he slowly asked, “And who was that?”
“Don’t know,” Rasmus answered, “but their last known location before they started their hunt for the witch was St. Emaine’s.”
Petra closed her eyes. “When?”
“Sometime in early May, maybe late April. Dunno.”
“I’m wrapping up a project,”Antonin told her the night he turned up at the cathedral out of the blue.“Just thought I’d stop in and finally behold Glory’s rising star for myself while I had the chance.”
“Demon,” she whispered. “The first visit. When he made the proposal. He showed up out of nowhere and only stayed for a night. It fits.”
He squeezed her thigh. In a deep, threatening voice, he asked Rasmus, “What does that have to do with Petra?”
“She suddenly went on sabbatical and disappeared off the face of the Earth right before a major festival, Shade. It doesn’t take a genius to see what Kaz might get when he puts those two things together. If I didn’t know better, even I would be suspicious.”
There was a long, tense pause before Silas’s sharp smile unspooled across his face. It was the smile that promised pain, and even now it sent a shiver of unease down her spine. “Kaz is hunting for my mate. That’s a bad choice.”
