Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,52

bookishness and had gone vigilante, knowing the Fund wouldn’t approve of pushing back harder against the people who threatened the shadowkind. Just like I’d always kept my breaking-and-entering to free collectors’ menageries secret from the rest of my branch. Like father, like daughter?

I swallowed hard. “What if I told you that I think the people who murdered him and my mother might still be around? That they’ve hurt a whole lot more people—and shadowkind—since then?”

The Man in Black straightened up. “Well, then we’d have to do something about them, obviously. We haven’t seen anything major happening here, though. You think they’ve managed to keep it hidden?”

“I’m not sure how much they’re doing in Austin right now,” I said, measuring out how much I told them with an eye to caution. “The people I think are responsible have built up quite a network across a bunch of different cities. I think I know where they’re the most active here in the US—there are a few of us who’re going to travel there and see if we can stop them from continuing.”

The green-shirted elf-guy frowned. “Stop them how? If they’re that entrenched…”

“Clearly we’d have to try!” Klaus drew himself up straighter. “We haven’t had more than minor incidents to deal with in years, and not many of those. We could make a trip for a greater cause, couldn’t we, Monica?”

The woman blinked, her eagerness fading, but then she lifted her chin. “I suppose I don’t see any reason we couldn’t… in one way or another. There have to be steps we can take without making a commotion out of it.”

Right. Because here just like back home, avoiding a commotion took precedence over actually protecting the shadowkind from murderous psychos.

The tension in my chest condensed into a lump that settled into my gut. I was human—and right now all I could see was how right Omen was to disparage my kind. They hadn’t even noticed when one of their own members was murdered right under their noses. And now that they did know, they’d gone straight to figuring out how they could address the issue with as little disturbance to their own lives or the villains’ as possible.

I’d accomplished more in defense of the shadowkind in the past month than these people would in a lifetime.

But they were willing to pitch in somehow or other, and if that was good enough to bring Antic on board, it was good enough with our human allies too. I had to look at this glass as half full.

“Great,” I said. “I’m going to do some more poking around in the city to see what else I can find out about my parents, but when we have a plan for tackling their killers, you’ll hear from me.”

And maybe once the idea had sunk in, they’d care a little less about commotions and a little more about justice.

15

Sorsha

All the questions still hanging over me cast an unsettling gloom. Still, I put on my best upbeat front when Omen demanded a report of the meeting and through the other conversations that followed, both with my shadowkind companions and the various mortals I encountered as I made what I could of Klaus’s information.

Unfortunately, none of that talk got me anywhere. Klaus sent me snapshots of a couple of old photos he’d found that included a skinny guy around the age I was now with shaggy blond hair and copious freckles, but seeing my dad didn’t tell me all that much about him, let alone myself. My Saint Nick couldn’t even recall Philip’s last name.

I checked the public records I could find through the city’s administration, but there’d been no Sorsha born or any kid at all born to a Philip on or around the day I’d always believed was my birthday. Was that a lie, or had my parents simply refused to document my birth?

Given what I was, the latter didn’t seem totally unbelievable. But it did mean I had nowhere to go from here—no way of tracking down other relatives or even having good questions to ask.

By the time we’d had dinner, the weight of the uncertainty was wearing on me. I retreated to my bedroom to gather myself.

Pickle might have forgiven me a little since I’d accidentally toasted his scales, but we weren’t back to best buds just yet. When I scooped him up for a cuddle, he squirmed out of my arms, scampered across the bed and around the room a few times, and finally darted under