“Come on, we’ll fill you in on the way.”
* * *
“What the actual fuck?”Nick stared at my phone screen, watching as he served me and Callum at the upstairs bar in Midnight.
“I take it you don’t remember that?” I expected the glare I got in return, but I’d had to ask.
“No, Mase. I don’t fucking remember. If I did, then I wouldn’t have been so surprised to see you when you came in to talk to Zane.”
“I don’t remember either,” I added quickly.
“And I take it Callum still hasn’t woken up?”
“Not as far as I know,” Max answered.
Nick slumped back in his seat, and I twisted in mine to face him. “You think magic’s involved? That’s why I’m here, right?”
“Can you think of what else could do it?” I asked, checking my phone for the fourth time since we’d picked up Nick, but still nothing from Rys.
“I don’t know. Since moving here, I’ve kept sort of a low profile.” He shot me a pointed look. “I wasn’t exactly popular when I got sent up here.”
“But even if you’re not practising much magic, you still know what can be done, right?” I asked, needing Nick to have at least some answers for us. “Could someone erase our memories?”
Nick’s forehead scrunched together. “It’s possible, I think. I’d have to check a few things. But we were in the middle of the club. You can’t erase everyone’s memories.”
“But they wouldn’t have to, would they?” Max offered. “No one else would know what they were looking at.”
“And bythey, I take it you have someone in mind?” Nick glanced at Max, then back to me. “Mase?”
I waited for Max to answer, more than willing for him to take the lead on this. “We think Caleb Tombs might be behind all the cases of non-humans suddenly losing control.”
“Tombs?” Nick’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve seen him?”
“No, but…” I looked to Max, and he nodded for me to continue.
So I caught Nick up on what Max and I had discovered that morning. We were almost to Rys’s territory by the time I finished.
Nick looked decidedly unconvinced.
“Just say it.” I gestured for him to spit it out already.
“I get that you’re worried, with you being connected to all the victims, but Tombs?” He shrugged. “I know the guy’s a cunt, but going to these lengths to what, frame you?” I nodded. “Seems a bit elaborate, even if he was always weird about you. Are you sure you’re not latching onto him because he’s the nastiest wanker you know?”
Was I?
“Maybe?” He’d made me doubt myself now. “Fuck, I don’t know.”
“Sorry,” Nick offered. “I mean, it could be him. Someone’s definitely behind it because memories don’t just disappear on their own, and if what you said about Blake Tehlin is true, then someone’s manipulating him too. But would Tombs go to all that trouble just because you left his hunter group?”
When he put it like that, it made no sense. Tombs was pissed off with me, yes. But I wasn’t the only hunter in that group. Even if I had been one of his favourites.
Max pulled up in front of the main house for Rys’s pack. “Let’s go see Rys and get him up to speed.” At Nick’s raised eyebrow, Max grinned. “He and Mase bonded last night.”
I scowled at him as Nick’s mouth fell open.
It took a good couple of seconds for him to form words. “I thought you seemed different. And fuck me, Mase. I guess mine and Rys’s little chat worked after all.”
“What chat?”
