Shadow of Doubt - Hailey Edwards Page 0,11

exit. “For a while, we kept that mix, but these days we’re true mutts. Gwyllgi, warg, human, and who knows what else.”

“That doesn’t divide your society?”

“Why should it?” He laughed. “Your Society are the separatists, not ours.”

He wasn’t wrong. The Society frowned on its necromancers mingling with other species. Vampires were the sole exception. They were our creations, and therefore immune to the unspoken rule.

Less our than their.

Only the High Society had enough magic to turn willing humans into vampires. Low Society practitioners didn’t have the juice to perform resuscitations.

All the magic in me I owed to Ambrose. Every last ounce. I had been born without a single drop.

And I had proven I was willing to go to any lengths to rectify that.

Careful what you wish for, you just might get it…and spend the rest of your long life regretting it.

“I didn’t mean to step on your toes,” Ford ventured when I didn’t offer a comeback.

“You didn’t.” I trailed him past the nightshift doorman, working yet another double. Just my luck. He narrowed his eyes on me, more suspicious than ever. Until Ford firmed his mouth. That was all it took for the doorman’s expression to relax several degrees. “I was thinking that must be nice. Not to have your worth decided by your blood.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.” He opened the passenger-side door on his truck, cupped my hips, and lifted me. “Gwyllgi decide everything by blood. Usually by how much they’re willing to spill to prove a point.”

Ford’s boost left me bouncing on the seat when he let go and made me curious how often he interacted with other species for him not to know his own strength. The pack’s heir might not be the only one who’d benefited from a recent promotion.

Then again, it might be a reminder of what he, and his kind, were capable of should I fail to get justice for Shonda.

Paranoid? Nah. Not me.

Once I settled in, Ford shut the door and jogged around the truck to join me in the cab.

“You’re the best driver I’ve had since I got here,” I confessed as he merged into traffic.

“Momma always says it’s one thing to drive a monster of a truck and another to drive like a monster in a truck.”

“Your mom is wise.”

“Yeah, she had to be to survive raising four boys on her own.”

“There are three more of you? Two brothers were bad enough, but three?”

The slip caused my breath to catch, my heart to thud louder in my ears, and my palms to go damp.

Hadley didn’t have brothers. She only had a sister. I had to keep it straight. I had to sell him on me.

Luckily, he seemed to think I was referencing his earlier mention of his brothers and not my personal experience with having them.

“All older.” He was grinning now. “I’m the baby.”

“So, you’re spoiled.”

“Harsh.” He cut his eyes toward me. “I wouldn’t use that word exactly.”

“What would you call it?”

“Lucky? Besides, you’ve got no room to talk. You’re the baby too.”

“No, I’m—” The middlest. I bit my tongue so hard it bled. Frak. This was why making friends was dangerous. Too much potential for blowing my cover, especially with Ford. He was slick as spit. “Sick kid trumps birth order.”

“Yeah,” he said after a minute. “I could see that.”

With that brilliant zinger, I single-handedly managed to kill the vibe, and we settled in to listen to the radio for the rest of the trip.

Three

Fresh from visiting the Randalls, Midas sat with his back against a ratty pine gnarled from abuse and rotting from the inside out. The sun was rising, the air warming, but the earth remained cool beneath his palms, and a faint breeze nudged the warped plank he and his sister had fashioned into the seat for a rope swing what felt like a million years ago.

This was his thinking place. He came here to escape when life closed around his throat like a fist. The only corner of the city left where he could breathe without choking on duty, on expectations.

Here he vented all the things he would never breathe to another person, even Lethe, though he still directed his gripes to her out of habit.

“You screwed me over, sis.” He tipped his head back against the trunk. “I don’t want this. I never did. I’m not like you.” He grimaced when the coarse bark tugged on the long hair he ought to trim soon. “Shonda is dead, the Randalls are demanding justice, and Mom