Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,75

awkwardness was still affecting him, he hadn’t let it show in any way I’d noticed so far. Maybe he’d decided pretending his momentary arousal had never happened and praying it never did again was the better course of action.

I was allowed to feel a tad disappointed about that, don’t you think?

“Perhaps I don’t understand because I haven’t spent enough time in this realm,” he said, “but I can’t see what those people would want with us. With higher shadowkind in general. What are they doing with Omen and whoever else they’ve taken, and why?”

“The collector who had us felt awfully proud of the power he had over us, keeping us locked up,” Ruse said. “Remember how often he’d come around to gloat? Mortals can be just as addicted to a sense of power as shadowkind can—maybe more so.”

Snap hummed. “It didn’t seem as if that building we searched before was for just holding and displaying the shadowkind they’d captured. They were going much farther than that.”

“Everybody wants to rule the world,” I said carelessly.

The godly shadowkind blinked at me. “Do they? I don’t.”

“No, it’s just— It’s words from a song. Never mind.” I gave a vague wave of my hand. “Whoever these people are, they’re probably power-hungry too, just for a different kind of power. The hunter M.O. has evolved before, right? From what I’ve heard, way back in the day, all they were interested in was tracking down and slaughtering any of you they could find. It took a while before they found out that they could actually make money from the hunt—mostly if they kept the beings they captured alive.”

“There were always collectors,” Ruse said. “Just like there were always sorcerers.” He glanced at Snap. “Those are the mortals who’ve developed a system for manipulating shadowkind into using their powers for the sorcerer’s benefit. But I remember hearing of collectors in my early days… There were only a few of them, and it was harder for them to arrange the purchases without the internet and all, I’d guess. And mortals in general were much more bloodthirsty about anything remotely supernatural back then.”

“At least when the creatures are in cages, I can let them out again.” I kicked the back of Thorn’s vacant seat and scowled at the street outside. “These sword-star people are definitely something else, though. So many of them and so organized, plus they’re trying to get shadowkind from the collectors instead of for them. And from what you said about the impressions you picked up in that lab, Snap—I don’t like it; that’s for sure.”

The incubus opened his mouth as if he were going to add something else—and the gray minivan that had passed us just a few minutes ago drove back into view, turning toward Meriden’s house at the intersection between him and us. I sat up straighter, studying it. Why would they have come back around?

The minivan slowed to a stop toward the end of the next block, and a figure hustled over to it from one of the driveways I could barely distinguish at this distance. I tensed even more. “Start the engine,” I told Ruse on instinct, a second before Thorn flickered in and out of view in his signal to us to pick him up.

“Thorn’s calling us!” Snap said.

Ruse peeled out of the driveway but rumbled on down the street at just a smidge over the speed limit, despite the urgency he must be feeling as much as I was. If we looked like we were chasing the minivan, we’d blow all the care we’d put into this cover.

I gripped the door, my heart thumping. A baby blue compact had pulled away from the curb behind us. Great, now we had two sets of spectators to worry about, not counting anyone who glanced out their house’s windows.

The incubus didn’t even slow down as we passed Thorn’s post. The warrior must have sprung into the sedan from one shadow to another. With a blink, he was sitting in the passenger seat as if he’d never left.

He jabbed his hand toward the windshield. “Meriden got into that van. Don’t lose it. But make sure they don’t know we’re tracking them.”

“I remember the plan,” Ruse said mildly. At a stop sign, he drummed his fingers against the steering wheel, the only outward sign of his own impatience. The minivan turned out of view up ahead, and I stifled a growl.

Now that the people in the van couldn’t see us either, Ruse gunned the