out for the phone. "It's not," he replied. "It's a code name."
Lucas tossed the phone to him, and Zed answered the call in one smooth motion as he brought it to his ear.
"Danny," he said to the caller.
My brows raised, and I indicated for him to put the call on speakerphone. If the mercenary guild was calling, then maybe they would help keep Seph safe in Italy.
"Zed, hey," the woman on the other end replied. Her voice was husky and low, like I remembered. I'd only met her once, briefly, but goddamn, she scared even me. "This is a friendly heads up," she said, sounding hushed. "You've pissed someone off in the Guild. They've assigned someone to Shadow Grove, and I don't think it's to help you out."
A ripple of apprehension ran through me at that, and I licked my lips. "Danny, it's Hades," I said. "Have you heard anything about Chase Lockhart?"
"Speakerphone. Cool," she replied, "Lockhart... Wasn't he one of the scumbag traffickers you offed in the Timberwolf massacre?"
"Yeah, he was. Except he didn't stay dead." I didn't think there was anything to be lost in revealing that information. Chase wasn't going to any great lengths to maintain his Wenton Dibbs identity now that the curtain had been pulled back.
"Shit," Danny muttered, sounding distracted. "Sounds like you're in a world of trouble down there."
Zed huffed an annoyed sound. "Yeah, you could say that. I submitted a job request to the Guild this morning..."
"Don't hold your breath," she replied in a dry voice. "Like I said, someone is not happy with you guys." There were some voices in the background, then the line went dead.
A tense silence filled the air before Cass broke it with a long exhale. "Well, that can't be good."
"No shit," Zed snapped and threw a carrot at Cass's head. For a dead man, Cass had impressive reflexes. He caught the vegetable before it smacked him in the face and took a bite of it instead.
"This is about me, isn't it?" Lucas asked in a quiet, thoughtful voice. "Whatever my uncle was doing with the Guild... or whatever he had planned for me?"
I wanted to reassure him, to tell him this likely had more to do with Zed and me or with Chase and the war he was waging on the Timberwolves. But... the Guild had never involved themselves in gang politics before; why would they start now? At that thought, it was unsurprising we hadn't heard back on help to protect Seph. They might have viewed Chase and his sham company Locked Heart as a gang dispute and declined on that basis.
"Probably," Zed admitted before I could think of a nicer way to say it. "The arsenal under your house raises a whole heap of red flags. Hell, I'm still not one hundred percent convinced you're who you seem."
I groaned. "Don't fucking start with that shit again."
"He's got a point," Cass rumbled, side-eyeing Lucas. "What if Gumdrop is some kind of sleeper agent and one day a duck will quack and he'll murder us all?" This time all three of us looked to him in bafflement, and Cass just shrugged. "It's been a long week being fake dead," he admitted. "I watched a lot of Netflix."
A slightly hysterical laugh was bubbling up in my throat, so I swallowed a couple of times to hold it back before turning my attention to Lucas. "There's a good possibility it has to do with you, yes. But whatever it is, we can work it out. Obviously, your uncle tried to train you up as a kid, but I think your mom took you out of town to keep you safe."
"It'd be useful if she could give us some more information," Zed said, drumming his fingers on the tabletop.
Lucas screwed his nose up and shook his head. "Yeah, I don't think that's happening any time soon. Every time I see her she seems to have lost more of her lucidity. It's weird, like there's something else going on, but her doctors haven't found anything outside of her MS."
"I'll look into it," Cass muttered, turning his attention back to his food and ignoring the way Lucas stared at him.
"Look into what?" Zed snapped. "In case you forgot, you're officially dead. You can't freaking leave the house, or we'll have the entire Shadow Grove Reapers breathing down our necks."
Cass's tiny smirk was way too fucking smug. "Who better to fly under the radar than a ghost? Don't worry, Zeddy Bear, I won't