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That was not my point.

Not mine either. But I didn’t say anything to him. I didn’t need or want a babysitter. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

I left him standing in the lobby, looking both annoyed and worried—again, unusual for Victor. But I couldn’t give him false reassurances. Time ticked away, both whittling Jude’s soul into nothing and my tie to sanity along with it.

I threw my bag in the backseat and headed not toward home, but the Holt house.

Why did I have a feeling that’s where I’d find not only Jude, but answers to some of the questions I had? Why hadn’t anyone searched it yet? Was someone covering up something? Or was this just negligence?

The street arrived in a picturesque sprawl of high-end homes, perfect street lighting, and manicured lawns with sprawling backyards fenced in white composite slats. A single cop car parked down the street from the house, as if Adrian wouldn’t notice it if he tried to return home.

I passed the street with little more than a long glance and turned on the next block, searching for any unmarked cars or possible movement at the late hour. I found none.

Parking two streets over, easily a mile from the house, I kept to the shadows of some giant oak trees lining a large lot as I stripped and shifted into my Bastion form. Part shadow, part cat, I melted into the dark, slinking past yards filled with cameras and dogs, toward the place my mate had grown up.

Jude shared little about his childhood. I wondered if he remembered much of it. Trauma could steal memories. But so could changelings.

And that worried me more.

What else had Jude lost? He’d been replaced temporarily. His file indicated a change when he was three, but it resolved. Returned? Why? Maybe there were answers in the Holt house.

The property sprawled behind the house, larger than I’d expected. The two-acre lot stretched into darkness; trees clustered at the edges like they were keeping watch. An eight-foot fence ran the perimeter, topped with something that glinted in the faint moonlight.

Motion sensors, I realized. Strange that an insurance mogul would need that much security. What was he trying to keep out? Or maybe in?

I circled the fence, finding a spot where the branches of an old oak overhung the barrier. The tree was massive, trunk as wide as a car, roots breaking through the lawn like buried bones. I launched myself at it, claws sinking into bark, and climbed. Even one leg short, I made quick work up the tree, cursing the growing combination of fade plus motes.

The fence loomed below me as I reached the lowest branch. I could see the yard now, unlit, slightly overgrown, the kind of land that had been allowed to run wild. The grass was patchy, tangled with weeds. No one had cared for this place in a long time.

A trail in the back of worn dirt led off through the closed gate and beyond into the wooded area that separated one subdivision from the next.

I dropped from the branch and landed silently on the other side of the fence.

The house waited ahead, dark and still.

Jude was in there. I could feel him, a pull through the bond, faint but present. He’d gotten better at moving things as a ghost, though it wore him down faster. Could he let me in?

I crept along the shadows near the fence line, trying to decide the best way to break into a house covered with multiple locks and cameras to reach my mate’s side.

A strange overlay of color flickered across my vision, something my cat brain struggled to decipher. It almost looked like lines. Writing. Symbol? Runes.

A chill ran down my spine.

What if this was another one of those death curse things?

I crouched lower, scanning the walls, the windows, the roofline. The symbols weren’t obvious, not to human eyes. But in my Bastion form, they glowed faintly, a lattice of protective magic woven into the structure itself. Intricate. Old. The kind of spell that had been there for years, layered over and reinforced. Almost like a prison cell of woven lines.

And Jude was in there.

36

JUDE

I stood in the doorway of my childhood room, now some kind of wannabe library, and tried to remember what my life had felt like before everything fell apart.

My bed had been shoved into one corner to give me more room. A desk near the window. A dresser in the wide closet. But the walls had been bare, no posters, no art, nothing that suggested a person actually lived here. Clutter hadn’t been allowed. Every surface had to be clean. Every item had to have its place.

It hadn’t been a room. It had been a holding cell.