“Make sure he keeps it.”
Patrick scowled. “Fucking fae lawyers.”
Jono tightened his arm a little before pulling away. Patrick instantly missed his warmth. “If Gwyn ap Nudd leads the Wild Hunt, who leads the Sluagh?”
“The Sluagh hunt on Medb’s order, but they have no defined leader,” Gerard said.
“They went after the changeling. What’s so special about a changeling they left behind?”
Patrick frowned, thinking back on that night in the Wisterias’ nursery. “Maybe she wasn’t left behind at all. Maybe someone hid her.”
Gerard frowned thoughtfully. “If that’s the case, then why?”
“Marek could probably tell us if I wasn’t in the way of his visions.”
“Is the child safe wherever she’s at?” Jono asked.
“Setsuna would let me know if anything had happened to her. She never left a voicemail to that effect while we were past the veil. All she told me was that the State Department is getting stonewalled by the fae ambassador in DC. The SOA can’t get a straight answer out of them about the missing Wisteria child, the Wild Hunt, or the Sluagh,” Patrick said.
“Brilliant.”
“If your changeling case and Órlaith are actually linked, then we need answers,” Gerard said.
“No fucking shit,” Patrick said derisively as he picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. It had cooled in the cold winter air while they argued, but he drank it anyway.
“We need to go to the source. I can take us to Gwyn ap Nudd.”
“Because you’re a god?”
Jono sighed. “Patrick.”
Patrick ignored him. “You really want us to cross the veil again? We’ve already lost too much time already. You want us to risk losing more? You want to risk Órlaith that way?”
Gerard’s jaw tightened, and Patrick recognized the determined look in his eyes. Patrick wished he didn’t—wished he didn’t know Gerard like this at all anymore, if only to save himself from the hurt.
“We have no other choice,” Gerard said.
Patrick gulped down what remained of his coffee and crunched the empty cup between his fingers. He snapped the fingers of his other hand, and his mageglobe faded away, taking the silence ward with it. The sounds of the city rushed back between them all, the howling of the wind a counterpoint he didn’t like.
“Your funeral,” Patrick said as he headed for the street.
“Where are you going?” Jono asked.
“To get the rest of our pack.”
Because at least Patrick had them while the memory of his old team felt tainted now. He wasn’t burying the dead in Arlington that morning, but there were ghosts that would never rest between himself and Gerard now.
That realization hurt more than the gunshot wound he’d taken in the field years ago, the scar on his body nothing like the ones in his head now, in his heart.
16
Emma hugged Patrick,then shook him hard enough his teeth clacked together, then hugged him again. “I’m glad you’re okay, but you need to stop this self-sacrificing bullshit.”
Patrick glared over her shoulder at Gerard. “Wasn’t my idea this time.”
Marek’s apartment was crowded, the front door propped open for people to come and go from the apartments below in the building. Patrick wrenched his gaze away from Gerard to scan the crowd, not recognizing anyone except for Keith, Arthur Russell, and Darren Thompson, the latter two the only other survivors of the original Hellraisers team they’d all been on.
Those two looked more pissed than the rest of the team that Patrick hadn’t been introduced to yet, and right now didn’t care to know. All he cared about was the pack of cigarettes that Keith held up and shook at him.
