o f31e4a444fa175b2 (26 page)

“You sent only one sister after me so far, but you’re missing two.”

Her teeth clenched, and every Harpy around her tensed their bodies in anticipation of her command to attack. A command that never came.

“Rinda was an acceptable loss. She died honorably in combat, attempting to fulfill the contract we accepted from the mortals. But Sense went missing yesterday and not al my request. She would never go after a mark alone without explicit orders, so that means something else befell her. And I do not believe in mere coincidences.”

“The mortals,” I breathed, stunned at their stupidity—or sheer audacity. To abduct a Harpy after you’d engaged their services to carry out an assassination...

“Just so. I do not know exactly what they ‘are up to, but she went missing not too long after she was supposed to check in with a mortal representative. And then they tried to blame her disappearance on you.”

I shook my head emphatically. “Only one of your sisters ‘attacked me, and that was above Hounds of Anubis.”

“As I expected. Well then, in light of the fact that the mortals have stolen one of our own, the contract between us has been rendered null and void. We will not help you in your current quest, Fury, but no more will we hinder you.”

Her words must have been a signal to the others, because one by one they scurried back the way they came. Calaeno waited until the Harpy bearing the olive branch disappeared to speak again. “Find Sense, Fury. Return her to me dead
or
alive, and I will owe you a boon in kind. And that is no small thing.”

My eyes widened, but she vanished before I could respond. The Queen of all Harpies owing me an unnamed boon? No small thing indeed.

SCOTT AND TRINITY POUNDED INTO THE ALL
way moments later, skidding to a stop as they attempt catch their breath when they saw me safe and sound. that the silence lasted long.

He advanced on me first, fists clenched at each side lips twitching with barely suppressed fury. “What the hell was
that,
Riss?”

Had he seen the Harpies? Surely he didn’t think I was cahoots with them. ‘Ah, what. was what?”

Scott’s hands locked on my arms, and he shook me. Not painfully, just enough to get my attention.

“You ran without leaving a fucking note. I was scared shitless when I couldn’t find you.”

The vehemence in his voice surprised me. “I didn’t run off, Scott. The Harpies snatched me.” I shifted back mortal form and gestured to the bloody tears in my shirt.

His anger faded, and he tugged me into his arms and

embraced me tightly. “You’re going to get yourself killed ii don’t learn how to call for help, Riss, and then how you be able to protect anyone?”

Warmth pooled in my stomach. I allowed myself the luxury of nuzzling his cheek before pushing him away firmly. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t argue with. . . What did you say?”

I bit back a snicker. “I said you’re right, and I’m sorry.”

Trinity gave an unladylike grunt. “Jeez, that’s the second time in two days she’s said that. The apocalypse can’t be far behind.” She and Scott shared a glance of commiseration. One I chose to ignore for what was most important. Filling them in on what had just gone down with the Harpies. Of course, that just reminded me that we still had a traitor in our midst. Possibly two—even if I
didn’t
want to consider the possibility that a Fury might actually be involved.

“Scott, you can’t bury your head in the sand anymore?’

His expression turned wary. “Excuse me?”

“I’m sorry to keep harping on this, but you’ve got a mole. A very talkative mole.”

His golden eyes took on a hard glint. “You think someone on the inside collaborated with Doreen.”

“It’s a distinct possibility. And we didn’t exactly keep our little arsenal secret last night?’ I ran a hand through my hair in frustration. “Shit. We’re gonna have to call the whole thing off?’

Scott tensed. “Bullshit, Riss. They’ve got my sister.” I ionic about-face, seeing how he’d tried so hard to persuade me to hold off our attack when I’d been fresh out of my deathbed.

“They’ve got mine, too, remember?” I stomped several feet away, trying to get a handle on the sudden flare of Rage. “Or does she not count because she’s not blood 1 mine?”

Trinity glanced from Scott to me, eyes wide but wisely saying nothing.

He took a step in my direction. “That’s not what I meant, and you know it. But I won’t leave her—either of them—to be experimented on like lab rats.”

“Scott, think with your head, not your heart. What do you think will happen if we rush in to rescue them when we know we have a traitor in our midst?”

He gritted his teeth and I winced. The grinding noise raised the hair on the back of my neck. “So what, you’re just giving up?”

“Don’t be stupid, Scott. When have you ever known
me
to give up on anything?”

“Even when it might be the smart thing to do,” Trinity murmured under her breath. Not quietly enough to escape the acute hearing of either Hound or Fury. She shot us both an innocent smile when we glanced at her.

Scott let out a breath, frustration seeping away from his voice when he spoke again. “Fine, then. What did you have in mind?”

“Funny you should mention rodents,” I said. “I think it’s time we catch our own little rat. .

BEFORE WE COULD BAIT OUR TRAP WITH THE proverbial cheese, it was time to tie up another loose end. Scott arranged for a meeting with both Harper and Red—the better to pool their extensive networks of sneaky resources, since I couldn’t exactly use my own. I only briefly considered suggesting that Trinity wait at another safe house before deciding I’d rather keep all my teeth intact. Besides, I had to get over that pesky instinct to protect her from all harm if our partnership was ever going to morph into something more solid.

And I
really
wanted to avoid the need for expensive dental surgery.

I tried not to curl my lip as we entered the smoky, out-of-the-way honky-tonk Red suggested as the rendezvous point. Guess he never got the memo that variety is the spice of life.

My eyes widened when we approached a semiprivate booth at the rear of the joint and saw an animated Harper sucking down a longneck beer and hanging on Red’s every word. Funny, I’d never pictured her for a beer-guzzling country music fan, but there she was dressed in tight jeans, pretty red-and-white checked shirt, and expensive black cowboy boots. Her body swayed in time to the heavy twang peppering the air.

Red shot us a smug grin as we slid into the booth across from him and Harper. I rolled my eyes with a mock groan. “It’s like déjà vu all over again. Don’t expect me to save your ass if you start a barroom brawl again.”

His full-throated laugh had his belly jiggling more enthusiastically than Harper. “Sugar, if you’ll recall, those polecats were after
your
pretty little ass last time.”

I mouthed
Polecats?
with an exaggerated look of disbelief, which only had him chuckling all the more.

He sobered after a waitress brought another round of beer. “Seriously though, darlin’, I’m glad to see you back in action. It was touch and go there for a while.”

Scott’s arm tightened along my shoulder, his only visible reaction to the reminder of how close we’d come to losing out on our potential second chance. Something stung my eyes, but I pretended not to notice.

“Thanks.” I cleared my suspiciously husky voice. “Glad you could break away from the men in black for a brewsky, Harper.”

Her eyes crinkled in amusement as she tossed back another slug of beer. “Glad the Sisterhood is buying.”

My lips twitched but I forced them into a scowl. “Better be drinking the cheap crap, then.”

Scott snickered. “Harper never buys cheap anything. One reason we never—” He cut off at the sudden glint in her eyes. “Ah, so, nice laptop.”

She tilted her head, narrowed her eyes, and pursed her lips, but let his little dig go as she slid the laptop around so we could see the screen. A bunch of statistics marched along the monitor, but one line of text especially caught my eye.

“Oooh, that the dirt on Erinye Unlimited?” It
really
sucked that I couldn’t currently access my databases to dig up my
own
dirt. Made me feel handicapped in a big way.

Harper nodded. “Yeah, everything Red and I could track down on them. I’ve already sent the encrypted file to Mac’s secure e-mail address as requested, and I brought a CD as backup. Erinye first registered with the Department of Revenue about a year after the War ended. They’ve dabbled in a few different industries since them and seem to be mostly a holding company for other corporations. Recently, they’ve put just about all their liquid assets into one particular venture—which is possibly the reason they took the risk of funneling money from the Sisterhood in order to pay off the sorceress to take you guys out at the Carrington Building.”

I couldn’t even hear that without rolling my eyes. The Carrington Building. Never let it be said that Dre lacked a healthy ego.

Red cut in. “By the way, after our little incident the other day, I wanted to make damn sure and well the government I devoted my life to serving wasn’t involved in this unholy mess. And you have my wholehearted assurances that the program I told you about
was
disbanded just after the Accord was struck. Whatever mortals are participating in this evil do
not
have the support of the United States government.”

A weight I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying was lifted from my shoulders. “I appreciate you telling me that, Red. It’s nice to know I’m not working for the assholes trying to do me in.”

That brought a much-needed moment of levity and had us all chuckling.

“So, back to the misappropriated funds, were they sending some sort of statement by robbing the Sisterhood to assassinate one of their own? Or. . ?‘ My lips tightened and I couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud. Scott patted my back while Trinity slapped another beer in my hand. I used that as an excuse to swig and avoid finishing my sentence.

Harper continued without missing a beat. “I have to say that, in my opinion, it’s highly unlikely that a complete outsider siphoned those funds from the Sisterhood and into Erinye’s coffers. As anyone with half a brain would guess, the Sisterhood’s accounts are
very
well protected, both electronically and magically. No second-rate hacker living at home with Mom and Dad could even hope to pull something like this off. Or a first-rate one working for a shadow governmental organization, either.”

“I have to concur with Kitten here.” Red winked when I tossed him a sardonic look. My, hadn’t they become friends awfully darned fast? “Much as it pains me to have to tell you that, little darlin’. You’re looking for an insider here, and my money would be on someone placed up high. Real high.”

Which could only mean an Elder. All signatories on Sisterhood accounts were required to be Elders—generally those with seats on the Lesser Consensus. Excitement thrummed in my veins at that realization.

I’d just narrowed my list of suspects from the thousands in the Sisterhood, to the hundreds of active Elders, to the handful currently serving in the Lesser Consensus. So our traitor was most likely one of fifteen women.

My lips twisted as I thought back to my appearance before the Conclave just days earlier, and I went over the list of suspects in my mind, trying to figure out which sister might be most likely to have a motivation strong enough to betray not only the Sisterhood to which she’d sworn the strongest of vows, but all of arcanekind. Not surprisingly, one sister in particular shot straight to the top of my list—

Ekaterina.

She’s the coldest, most ambitious bitch of a sister I’ve ever seen. And she is currently the number one
signatory on the accounts. She could do
anything
without anyone else gainsaying her...

Honesty forced me to admit that although that was true, she was also the Fury I most loathed, so mine was not exactly an unbiased opinion. I needed to run this by another sister, preferably an Elder, who would know her fellow Elders better than lower-ranking sisters like myself. And right now, I could only trust one Elder completely.

“Well. Looks like Stacia’s going to have to get her ass down here whether she wants to or not.” And now, I just had to figure out how to make that happen...

FOR ONCE, THE FATES DECIDED TO BE KIND and (as Trinity would have said) help a sister out. I didn’t have to come up with some big, convoluted scheme to entice Stacia to the mortal realm. She ambushed me before we even left Red’s honky-tonk du jour. Inside the ladies’ room.

When her face appeared behind mine in the cracked mirror without any warning, I was fully shifted and halfway spun around before my mind registered friend rather

than foe. The grim set of her lips relaxed enough to give a tight, approving smile, and then she reached behind me to lock the outer door.

“How did you—” I shook my head. Senior Elders had some sort of travel power the rest of us could only have wet dreams about. “What happened?”

“We have a traitor, Marissa. A gods-bedamned traitor in the bloody Sisterhood.”

“Well, hell. And here I planned to tell
you
that. Shoulda known you’d beat me to the punch somehow.”

She blinked in surprise. “How do you know about the traitor? I only just found out.” Her eyes narrowed. “And why didn’t you inform me immediately?”

“I only just discovered proof, and filling you in was the next box on my to-do list.” I went over what Mac, Harper, and Red had uncovered, which had her alternating between curses and nods.

“The minute I heard about the sorceress attacking you on that elevator, I realized we could very well have a leak somewhere feeding the mortals information. How else have they managed to repeatedly track you down so quickly when you have been bouncing around the whole bloody city? So I launched a detailed search myself and found that a very large sum of money had been wired from our account to another.”