for a sword, just in case, and as I drew it, he glanced over my shoulder.
“Hadley.”
Heart thundering in my ears, I whipped my head toward the voice. “Ares.”
Mouth tight, she stepped into the streetlight. “Can we talk?”
“Kind of busy here.” I indicated the sword. “Can this wait?”
“You’ve been avoiding my calls, and you don’t use the lobby at the Faraday.”
“I’ll watch your back,” Bishop offered to me then warned her, “Talk fast.”
He drifted away, not that it made a lick of difference given his sharp hearing, but it did the trick.
“This is all my fault. I’m the one who put the idea in Midas’s head that he had to choose.” She yanked a tired hand through her hair. “I warned him you were bad for the pack. I convinced him giving you up was the best thing for us all. It came from a selfish place, and I’m sorry.”
This unburdening went a long way toward explaining that day in the lobby, and his comment.
As much as it hurt to hear her say those things, I couldn’t let her keep thinking she was to blame.
“Our breakup wasn’t your fault,” I assured her. “It was mine.”
Ares wasn’t listening. Neither of us were. We were too busy shouting over one another to be heard.
“Liz is pregnant. We’ve tried for years, years, and it finally happened.” She wiped her eyes. “I got protective, overprotective, and I let my fear get the better of me.” Her eyes pleaded with me. “I’m—I’m sorry. So sorry. Please, give him another chance.”
“Congratulations,” I said, and I meant it. “You’re wrong, though. Trust me. I screwed this up all on my own. Midas doesn’t need another chance. He needs to forget he ever met me.”
Bishop cleared his throat, and Ares deflated on the spot.
“I have to go.” I backed away from her. “I really am happy for you.”
Turning away from her, from that chapter of my past, I rejoined Bishop, and we plodded on toward our last stop.
“Do you feel better knowing?” He angled his head toward me. “It was bothering you.”
“Her opinion of me doesn’t matter anymore.”
This gave me closure in the arena of our friendship, but that was about it. It didn’t help, and it didn’t hurt. Information in one ear and out the other, only passing through.
“I haven’t had my heart broken in a good long while.” He kept a step ahead of me. “I had forgotten how utterly miserable love makes you.”
I didn’t love him.
That’s what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t speak through the tightness in my throat.
I didn’t know him that well.
Just enough I could see the hazy outline of a future together.
He didn’t know me at all.
Only better than anyone.
A long shadow peeled from the darkness ahead and planted its feet wide across the mouth of the alley.
Not to be outdone, Ambrose mimicked it. Mocked it, more like. Swelling himself to its size.
The short man who walked up behind it wearing a lab coat and thick glasses squinted at us.
“What do you want?” he demanded. “You’ve got the stink of fae and witchcraft on you.”
Thanks to the sight, and the charms I used to conceal my identity, he wasn’t wrong.
“Who are you?” I reached into Ambrose for my second blade. “Are you coven?”
“Are you coven?” He pointed what I realized was a pen at me. “Have you come to steal from me too?”
“I’m Hadley Whitaker.” I lowered my weapons. “The coven stole from you?”
“The new potentate,” he said thoughtfully. “Prove you are who you say you are, and we can talk.”
Aside from my debit card, I didn’t carry much in the way of ID. “What proof will you accept?”
“Your word.”
“I’m a necromancer,” I reminded him. “You get that my word isn’t magically binding, right?”
“Oh.” His nose quivered. “Fair point.” He eyed Bishop. “How about yours?”
“You have my oath that we mean you and yours no harm so long as you claim the same,” he said without hesitation, and magic saturated the vow. “My word is given.”
“Best we do this inside.” He jabbed the shadow in the knee. “Eustice, come along.” He glanced back. “I’m Dr. Ronald Smythe, by the way.”
The towering giant shriveled to the size of a large dog and loped beside the peculiar man.
Ambrose, not to be outdone, reduced himself into a cat that pranced over to strop my ankles.
Since he had been a good boy and leapt to defend us, more or less, I tossed him a salted caramel square.
“We’re safe enough.” Bishop allowed me to take the