Percy honked the truck horn twice.
“COMING!”
I shouted at the window, which sent me into another fit because the word landed differently in the context of what we’d just done, and Solomon covered his face with his paint-streaked hand while his shoulders shook once.
This man. Quiet, deadly, painted head to toe in cream, lying on a drop cloth in my half-finished bookshop with his heartbeat living in my chest.
My life was a romance novel. And not one of the light and fluffy ones.
Definitely from the bottom shelf.
24
— • —
Lucian
The results arrived by raven at dawn.
I intercepted the bird right away. Took the sealed scroll from its talons, fed it a strip of dried meat from the pouch and sent it back before Mira woke up.
She didn’t need to see the contents. At least, not yet.
Solomon was already in the kitchen when I came downstairs. He stood at the counter with his back to me, coffee mug in hand, and I could tell by the set of his shoulders that he knew. He’d been waiting since the raven arrived.
I set the scroll on the counter between us.
He unrolled it and read. His jaw tightened incrementally with each line, the only indication that what he was absorbing was as bad as I’d expected.
“The compound matches,” he said.
“To what?”
“The dart that hit Percival. The compound is a modified silver-wolfsbane. The carrier is the part hard to identify because it doesn’t exist. It was engineered.” His pale eyes lifted from the scroll. “Someone designed it with specific knowledge of lycan physiology.”
The device Solomon had recovered from outside the diner sat on the table wrapped in his handkerchief. I’d examined it the previous night while Mira slept. The casing was silver, the internal components beyond anything I’d encountered in my long lifetime.
“The device is a listening instrument,” Solomon continued. “Our contact confirmed it picks up vibrations through walls. Whoever planted it was monitoring our conversation at the diner.”
So someone had positioned surveillance equipment and possibly been tracking our movements with enough precision to anticipate our location, employing weapons specifically designed to neutralize lycans.
“The scent masking from the forest,” I said. “The dart compound, the surveillance device… Do you think one can pull this off alone?”
Solomon nodded once. “No. They are definitely working in groups.”
The word settled between us. There was this nagging theory in the back of my head that I didn’t want to consider unless there were no other answers.
“We don’t have confirmation,” I said. “Not enough to act.”
“We have enough to prepare.” Solomon’s voice was controlled, but beneath it, I heard the calculating threat levels. “I’ve asked our contact to trace the device’s components. If they were manufactured, there’s a supply chain. If there’s a supply chain, there’s a location.”
“How long?”
“Weeks. Maybe less if the trail isn’t buried.”
Footsteps creaked on the stairs. Both of us went quiet in the same breath, the scroll disappearing into Solomon’s back pocket with practiced efficiency.
By the time Mira appeared in the kitchen doorway, rubbing her eyes with the sleeve of my shirt that she’d claimed as sleepwear, we were two men drinking coffee.
