hustled over there while Omen raised my arm to catch the light better. He was frowning as if I’d managed to disappoint him somehow. Had he expected me to produce skin of steel?
Whatever he’d intended, he definitely didn’t look remotely worried about my well-being. As Ruse returned, brandishing an adhesive bandage, my stomach knotted. Omen dropped my hand and stepped away, all trace of emotion vanishing.
I couldn’t trust him, clearly—couldn’t rely on him to care whether he chopped my arm in two. And as long as Bossypants held me in such contempt, I couldn’t totally count on my trio either. As much as they’d supported me, they still followed his orders. They’d never leave me in danger on purpose, but all it would take was one risky situation where they couldn’t get to me fast enough because he’d occupied them elsewhere, and my ass would be kaput.
As long as the shadowkind quartet were the only people at my back, at least. Vivi was coming home—and maybe I should start thinking about what other allies I could round up who’d follow my lead more than Omen’s.
Ms. Super Hacker must have recovered from her blood-induced queasiness. She let out a cry of victory and drummed her hands on the console in front of her.
“I’ve got something. Someone’s set up an exchange to happen in just a couple of days—potent creature of unusual inclinations. Isn’t that exactly what you were looking for?”
A hint of a smile curled Omen’s lips, but I couldn’t say I found it reassuring. “I believe it is. Let’s hear the full story.”
3
Sorsha
I was stumbling through the dark hallway of a house. Our house, the one Luna had rented the first floor of—and Luna was there by the door, so tense her skin had broken out in its supernatural sparkle. I could almost see the flutter of her fae wings behind her back.
“My shoes,” I said, clutching the duffel bag I’d kept packed for emergencies, my head full of a sleepy haze. I had no idea what this emergency was, only that my guardian had shaken me awake with an urgent hiss of my name. “I can’t find them—”
“Never mind that. Someone’s coming, Sorsha. I can feel it. Wear these, and we’ll go.” She grabbed her sparkly sneakers off the shoe rack and shoved them at me. As I tugged them on, they pinched my toes. Her feet were at least a size smaller than mine.
“Are you sure we’re actually in danger?” I whispered as she eased the door open. The only real concern my self-centered sixteen-year-old brain could process was: where the hell were we going to go now? “We’ve moved how many times already, and no one’s ever—”
She tugged me with her outside, ignoring my protests. As Luna crossed the lawn, I stopped to try to wriggle my feet more solidly into the shoes. When I looked up, she’d reached the sidewalk—and several figures sprang at her from the night.
Whips that seemed formed of light slashed through the air; a blade flashed; someone hurled a glinting net. Luna whirled around with a shocked squeal. The bindings squeezed tight around her skinny form before I could so much as cry out. Her body shuddered—and then burst into a firework of sparks.
I jolted awake with my shriek still locked in my throat. The air around me was glittering, but it was the gleam of sunlight through crystal, not the sparkly shattering of my guardian’s death. Sunlight through several crystals, actually—there were about a dozen of them dangling from silver chains in front of the window in the little cabin we’d found not too far outside of town.
The clang of horror faded from my nerves. I rubbed my forehead and sat up, but my stomach stayed clenched.
The fae woman I’d called Auntie Luna—the woman who’d saved me from the hunters who’d murdered my parents, who’d given me the best mortal childhood a shadowkind could, who’d never made me feel anything less than unreservedly loved—had died more than eleven years ago. I hadn’t dreamed about that night in ages. It brought the same old questions back to nibble at me: if I’d just moved a little faster, left my own freaking shoes somewhere I could easily put my feet into like she’d reminded me a million times…
But all those what ifs didn’t change the fact that she’d died at the hands of attackers with the same weapons the sword-star crew used, at least one of those weapons marked with that sword-star symbol.