A door clanged open on the second-floor landing, railed off and partially obscured by dangling vines. I braced for another flood of guards to come racing in, but a single woman bolted inside, her eyes wild and her loose raven hair mussed from sprinting a long distance.
“Lee!” Delilah bellowed, hands gripping the railing.
She looked like she might collapse in relief at the mere sight of him. Lee dropped the gun he’d been fostering and left Tammy restrained on the bay floor as he sprinted for the stairs. Delilah ran with a slight limp, favoring her left leg. Halfway down the stairs, she crashed into him, airborne as Lee’s arms locked around her, swinging her around to his side.
“Thank God you’re alive,” he said into her hair. He pulled back, searching her. No Cliff. No Sylvia or Ben. Then hecaught sight of the blood streaking down her calf, and paled. “Sweetheart, your leg!”
“My regeneration hex was hasty,” she said, wincing at the mottled wound. “Bullet’s out, but I’ll patch it up prettier later. I couldn’t waste the time.”
I jogged over to meet them, hope flickering that maybe—just maybe—Sylvia and Cliff would be bursting through that door shortly behind her.
“Where are the others?” Lee demanded. He cupped her face, thumbs brushing at the sweat beading there.
Delilah’s eyes moved to me, hesitating. For the first time since I’d met her, she looked entirely lost for words. Breathless in a dazed, horrified sort of way.
“Cliff took them,” she rasped. “He double-crossed us.”
The words barely registered. “No, he’s working the system,” I said. “We’ve done that countless times in tight situations.”
Delilah whirled on me, putting her face just below mine. “Jon, we werewrong. Eros isn’t just another player in these acquisitions. He’s Cliff’sfather! The whole thing was a goddamn trap to pull him in.”
Cold shock washed over me.Chandler Everett. The name we hadn’t spoken in nearly a decade.
“No, he… He’s a pharma exec. He doesn’t—how could he—” I stumbled over my words.
“Clearly, things changed.”
“Cliff wouldn’t do that,” I said numbly, my own voice foreign to me even as it rose in volume. “He wouldn’t. You don’t know him.”
“He made his position pretty damn clear when he let me get shot,” she snapped. Pity flickered as she searched my frozen expression. “He caged Sylvia. I’m sorry, Jon. I saw it all. He chose his family, and we need to take him out to get the others back.”
Delilah caught sight of Tammy struggling weakly against her bindings, and her stare became murderous. “And her. That fucking bitch—”
She summoned a spell, the smell singeing the air like smoke as she shoved between us with a crackling orb of energy forming over her palm.
I seized her arm. “We’ll deal with her later.”
Her wide eyes met mine, holding such viciousness that I expected her to turn the spell onto me instead. She yanked herself free.
“Oh, I see,” Delilah spat. “I suppose she’s as fond of you as she is of Cliff? You better decide very quickly whose side you’re on.”
Although every pillar holding me together was coming apart, I didn’t flinch. “I’ve done everything on my side of the plan. If you take a look at the bloodbath, you’ll see the monsters are dead, and the guards are out of the way. Lee is still breathing and on his feet. So listen to me. We arenotkilling her.”
My mind kept racing. Tammy had worked with Eros all these years and must have known his identity, yet she never told Cliff. Even if I could scarcely recognize the person she had become, I knew that was meant to be a kindness.
Lee cut in, cupping Delilah’s face and turning her toward him. “There’s no time to argue over it. You should save your strength—no use wasting magic on her. She says they’re heading north on the highway.” His heavy breathing shuddered, eyes brimming with panic. “We need to get Benny.”
After a beat, Delilah faltered and doused her magic, stalking away at Lee’s side.
I spared Tammy one last look, an array of emotions ripping me apart at the seams. “If I lose Sylvia because of all of this, there’s nothing and no one in the world that can protect you.”
She grimaced, too exhausted to struggle any further. “Mouth like hers, she may not last long. I suggest you get moving.”
A fresh blaze lit in my chest.They will not lay a single finger on Sylvia.
Catching up with Lee and Delilah, I squeezed through an opening in the wall: a garage shield that had been obliterated by one of the trees.
The mild air felt unnatural after nights of bundling for warmth. We hurried around to one of the small valet lots. Voices were coming from the other side of the building. It was only a matter of time before panicked gala guests started running for the hills. Mysterious as the rattling of the building was, most of them likely understood it was more than a mere earthquake.
