Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,24

made my pulse flutter despite my nerves. “I’ll do my best.” He picked up the scrunchie first, giving it a curious look before raising it closer to his mouth.

Luna’s devotion to ‘80s culture had included not just music but all forms of art and fashion. I’d rarely seen her without her light auburn waves pulled high in one of those contraptions. The purple one had been mixed up in my emergency-bag clothes—I’d only found it days after I’d fled. I didn’t know how often she’d worn that one, but I’d never used it.

Snap’s tongue flicked from his lips, and his moss-green eyes hazed. I stood beside the coffee table, trying to keep a relaxed stance, but my shoulders kept stiffening despite my best efforts.

I’d told him to look for impressions that didn’t involve me, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t still pick those up. When I’d pulled the thing out of my bag eleven years ago and realized what it was, I’d bawled for a good half hour.

The chance of him seeing that was worth the embarrassment if he also sensed anything that might tell us who’d been after my guardian—and what they’d meant to do to her.

Snap drew in a breath and paused. The corners of his mouth tightened. He shifted the scrunchie in his grasp and tasted its energies again. A restless itch crept under my skin.

Then his eyes widened. His voice came out as dreamy as it had at the bridge. “A shadowkind wore this. Yellowish-orange hair. A light sort of energy—she was fae. She fixed a flower into her hair with this once: an iris. Purple goes with purple—I can coordinate at least that well.”

His voice wasn’t at all like Luna’s high soprano, but he hit the melodic cadence just right. A shiver ran down my back, equal parts thrilled and pained. I hadn’t expected to be offered an echo of the past quite that potent. What I wouldn’t have given to really hear her voice—to have her still with me. What would she think of the woman I’d finished growing into?

Thorn stirred, his jaw flexing as if he wanted to say something, but he held himself in check while the other shadowkind continued his inspection. Finally, Snap set the scrunchie back down. When he looked at me, I saw more than just an apology in his gaze.

The lump in my throat came back. Everything else he’d gleaned must have had to do with me. Not surprising after all that time.

He might have been clueless about a lot of mortal things, but he was shrewd enough—and kind enough—to keep whatever private moments he’d uncovered to himself, no acknowledgment other than that hint of sympathetic sorrow. “I couldn’t find anything else from her,” he said. “She’s the one you were hoping I’d reach?”

I nodded, not totally trusting my voice to stay steady. Thorn cleared his throat imperiously before Snap could reach for the next item. “Who was this fae? Do you believe she was captured by the same group that took Omen?”

I inhaled slowly, making sure I had a grip on myself, before I met his demanding gaze. Stick to the facts, keep it short, and there was no need to get emotional about it. All of this was more than a decade past anyway.

“My parents died when I was three,” I said. “They were involved in the same kinds of activities the Fund is—helping the shadowkind. One of those was a fae woman named Luna. I don’t remember much from back then, but I know they stayed close friends with her. She came by the house a lot, played with me… She was with me when my parents were attacked, and she got me away from there.”

That day had become reduced to a few fragments in my memories: chasing fireflies in the backyard, their glow and the beat of their wings against my hands, a scream carrying through the back door, my mother’s ragged voice crying, “Luna, go!” Luna’s skinny arms around me as she’d leapt up with supernatural speed to carry me over the fence and away.

“Luna didn’t like to talk about what happened, but from what I gathered, some hunters found out that my parents had interfered with their business and came after them in revenge. After that, she raised me. We moved around a lot because she was always nervous, but no one bothered us for a long time… When I was sixteen, she somehow knew people were coming—we grabbed the things we