My brow furrowed, because I couldn’t tell if he was kidding or not.
“You threatened to kill her family? Geez, man,” Luka said from behind me.
“She tried to starve you!” Sawyer shot back. My gaze flicked to a tattoo at his collarbone, one I recognized.
Five Crew.
My head swiveled back to a shirtless Luka, and there on his collarbone was the same thing.
Interesting. They had a little gang and it was kind of adorable. Walsh and Bennet had the same tattoo…
I stepped across the lawn and into the house, when I heard Liv wail. “Just go! You lying witches! Get out.”
Oh no.
“Livvie.” I strode inside and Liv broke away from where she was on the couch and threw herself at me. “They’re lying, the app was a lie. It has to be!” She broke into sobs and I met Sage’s, Demi’s, and Izzy’s gazes just behind her.
“I think you guys should go now,” I told them.
The truth was, I thought the app was real, but I needed more proof than that. Maz was … family … and I couldn’t believe she would knowingly lie to us like this. Maybe she was tricked too, and I had to find out who was doing this to us and put a stop to it.
The three girls nodded and moved to leave.
Izzy stopped, looking over at me curiously, her black glossy hair in stark contrast to her glowy white skin.
“Shall we bring Luka back tomorrow for his feeding or…?” She was making sure I wasn’t going to pull this stunt again.
“I’ll be back in Spokane tomorrow. I’ll come to him,” I told her.
She nodded curtly. “In case you were wondering how we found you, we had a witch track you. We can find you anywhere you try to hide.”
Great. Point taken.
They left then, the fading whirr of helicopter blades marking their absence.
Liv pulled back from me and wiped her eyes. “What if its real? What if we are hired assassins? Just killing bloodsuckers for other bloodsuckers?”
I swallowed hard. “Then we’ll find out who’s tricked all of us and take their head.”
Liv nodded in grim determination at that.
As we quickly packed our things and closed up the house, readying it for another stretch of long months unused, I started to think of hundreds of small little things. Connecting the dots.
Like the way that all of the House of Rose hunters were orphans. The way that Maz hadn’t really seemed to age the whole nineteen years I’d known her. The fact that there were no hunters at the House of Rose over the age of twenty-five—I’d assumed they all retired or died like Sterling said, but … what if they found out? What if they were silenced?
An epic knot formed in my stomach as Liv and I started the three-hour drive back to Spokane.
I couldn’t stop asking myself the same question over and over.
What ifIwas the bad guy this entire time?
Chapter Thirteen
Livand I agreed to say nothing to Sterling or Vasquez or any of the other hunters until we had more information. We arrived early the next morning back at the society and I started to make a plan.
“If you can make sure Maz is out of her office, I can sneak in and try to find something on her computer,” I told Liv, who was basically catatonic on the couch with red-rimmed eyes. She couldn’t believe our entire life might be a lie. I’d accepted it, and moved right on to the anger phase of grieving. I wanted proof, and then I wanted to hurt whoever was doing this. She was still in denial.
“Maz gets info on the marks with photos of victims. I can check her emails and see who sends them to her. Maybe the chief of police is the ringleader.” I really didn’t want Maz to be the bad one.
