One more sin added to my black soul that I would never wash clean.
“That bird…” Pieces of the puzzle snicked together in my head. “You sent it to harass Colby.”
“My familiar,” he corrected me. “With you away, there was no harm in him testing your defenses.”
“With the added benefit of scaring the bejesus out of Colby,” I snarled, too late to quiet my rage.
With that outburst, I told him all he needed to know about our relationship. She wasn’t only a familiar. It wasn’t just her magic that made her special to me. He knew now I cared about her. I loved her. And that made me more vulnerable than I was already. Gone was any hope of convincing him she was a means to an end. I might have sold him on me using her as a power source otherwise, but my heart spoke loudest.
Life had been so much easier when I lived like I didn’t have one, didn’t need one, didn’t want one.
“Colby Timms,” he repeated. “You brought her with you. I can sense her. Where is she?”
Wings fluttering over my head made me twitchy, but I held my ground. “How did you know about her?”
“Thaddeus told me.”
The big-mouth bird squawked at the compliment, and I understood my mistake. “You were there.”
“I was a senior agent, but I wore my true face then. I got called in as backup along with my partner.” A scratching noise warned me the crow was still above me. “I sent my familiar ahead to scout the location. I can see through his eyes when I choose, and what I witnessed that night changed everything.”
Everything had changed. He was right about that. But it changed for all of us, changed us, not just him.
“I thought you would consume the loinnir, I expected no less from a Báthory, but you didn’t. You tucked that little moth girl in your pocket and vanished without a trace. I thought at first you meant to feast on her in private, but I scented your magic at the scene. You bonded her to you. Saved her. She’s your familiar.”
Limbs shook overhead as the blasted crow took flight, and it leaving was somehow worse than it staying.
The scabs over my heart bled to recall that night. “Where are Arden and Camber?”
“The humans?” He hesitated. “I did promise to return those to you, didn’t I?”
“You did.”
“You know what I want in exchange.”
“Show yourself,” I ordered instead. “I’m tired of talking to shadows.”
An unassuming young man stepped from behind a tree too thin to shield him without magical help. I had only seen him once, for a few minutes at the third crime scene as I unraveled the spell, but I recognized him.
David Taylor.
The junior agent Kidd introduced to me as Taylor wasn’t a warg after all, but I bet the real one had been.
The masque Taylor wore emitted the same paranormal frequency as its original owner. It was enough to fool most people. Me included. If you didn’t know to look.
“There were two possibilities for how this would end,” Taylor said with an air of resignation. “You were this great and terrible creature once. Men trembled before you. You were a feral and depraved beast contained in the skin of a woman.” He wet his lips. “I idolized you. When Black Hats came for me, I let them take me. I wanted to join the Bureau, to be your right hand, but you broke before I got the chance.”
“Who were you?” I squinted at him, knowing it would tell me nothing. “I don’t remember you.”
“Everyone was beneath your notice then.” He smiled in remembrance. “Gods, you were a sight.”
A hollow sensation carved out my stomach as another thought occurred to me, worse than the others.
“You targeted Colby to punish me,” I realized. “Did my defection wipe the stars from your eyes?”
“Yes,” he growled, stepping closer to the water. “As a matter of fact, it did.”
Sparks ignited in his palms, dark purple and midnight blue, and he raised his arms out to his sides.