He also didn’t trust nosy werewolves, which was why he’d told Nadine he was going to be an hour late to give him time to lose anyone following him.
“You could’ve requested breakfast to go.” Nadine gave him a sidelong look as she buckled up.
“Had to eat with my pack this morning.” Patrick smacked his hand against the roof, filling the car with a silence ward. Static washed through the vehicle, providing privacy. “We have a problem.”
“That’s the general nature of our jobs.”
“My pack ended up having to fight the London god pack last night to get pass-through rights. Sage won, not like there was any doubt, but one of the alphas killed their dire because he lost.” Patrick switched lanes, glancing at his phone and the GPS map there. He could drive in London just fine, but not getting lost was another matter entirely. “That alpha has a demon riding her soul, and no one in the pack seemed to know.”
Nadine turned her head to stare at him. “Please tell me you’re joking?”
“Wish I was.”
“How does a pack ofwerecreaturesnot know they have a demon in their midst?”
“I think it’s old, and it’s good at hiding.”
In Patrick’s experience, the older a demon was, the harder it was to banish or kill. He hated working those kinds of cases.
“Fuck.” Nadine stretched out her legs, shifting to straighten out the skirt of her sheath dress. “Any idea which hell it belongs to?”
“No. But it has to be powerful if it can hide itself from werecreatures.”
“Is it hiding itself from its host?”
Patrick thought about how Cressida had acted last night—comfortable in her skin, with no hint of distress about her. “Pretty sure Cressida accepted it willingly.”
“Gods fucking damn it. You can’t get sucked into pack politics right now.”
“Iknow, but that doesn’t mean I can ignore whatever the fuck is going on. We needed the pass-through rights so I could work without drawing attention to us. The WSA doesn’t need to know I have a pack.”
“We need to focus on the auction. Pack politics are not the mission.”
“I am aware of that, but what are the fucking odds that Estelle and Youssef hire a bunch of hunters to come after us and the packs under our protection earlier this year, and the London god pack has been infiltrated by one?”
Nadine scowled out the windshield. “It could be coincidence.”
“Coincidence doesn’t fucking happen in my life when the Fates are looking over my shoulder.”
“You can’t fix the London god pack.”
“I’m not gonna fucking try. But I still have to deal with them, and if they’re being led by a demon, like hell am I going against them alone. We’re already dealing with a bunch of necromancers, demons just make it worse.”
“You can’t tell the WSA about the London god pack. They’ll want to know how you learned that information.”
“I know. We aren’t telling them anything, same way we aren’t telling them the location and date of the auction. But we still need help.”
“Gerard?”
“No. I asked Setsuna to have your director put Spencer on a plane.”
Nadine groaned. “Patrick.”
“He was read into the joint task force back in December. It’ll be fine.”
“Heruinedmy Alexander McQueen dress the last time we were all together!”
“Technically, the zombie ruined it.”
