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I let out a deep breath. “So you’re not going to waste away anytime soon?”

“Nope. Might get my ass killed taking those bastards out, but I’m not going to die of old age anytime soon.”

I couldn’t resist tweaking his nose. “Such language, young man!”

He leapt up the steps and bear-hugged me. “Don’t ‘young man’ me. I’m bigger
and
smarter than you.

Got you here for Mom, didn’t I?”

The screen door creaked open behind us. “He’s watching over you for some time now, Marissa, though you have made that just about impossible the last little while.”

I turned as Mom and Trinity stepped onto the porch. Mac settled his arm along my shoulder. It felt good to stand there next to my baby brother.

Until he drawled, “That’s for damned sure. Every time I manage to misdirect the mad scientists, you do something else to gain their attention. Has anyone mentioned you’re just a tad bit reckless?”

Scott, like ten thousand times before. But who was counting? “So, Mom, care to finish your story now?”

She herded the three of us to the oversized wicker chairs on the far side of the porch. “Well, it started three years ago with Vanessa’s disappearance.” My hands clenched in my Lip. She settled hers atop them.

“I always loved that girl, and when she vanished I knew it wasn’t her ex that took her. I feared you might be next, and knew I could wait no longer.”

Mac picked up the thread. “The scientists raised me to know and love Mom, but they used our love for each other against us. They trained me to spy for them and forced me to seek out arcanes they could later abduct to use for their own
purposes.” He stared at his feet. “I’m not proud of it now, but at the time. .

Mom broke in. “They brainwashed him, Marissa. Brainwashed him from birth to believe he was helping both mortals and arcanes move toward peace. And
she
brainwashed him most of all.”

The bitterness in her voice had me blinking.
“She?”

“The bitch Fury who betrayed me, who betrayed the entire Sisterhood, and was in cahoots with the mortals all along. Though I still haven’t figured out why.”

I leaned forward eagerly. “Who?”

Mac put a comforting hand on Mom’s shoulder. “Unfortunately, neither of us know her true identity.

She always wore a disguise when she appeared to us. Even though she treated me as her own son most of the time, she never trusted me with that knowledge. I only know her as Erinye.”

My eyes narrowed. Fit right in with the holding company siphoning money from the Sisterhood. And was it too much of a stretch that both
Erinye
and
Ekaterina
started with an
E?
I didn’t think so.

“So what finally prompted you to bust Mom out of prison? I assume that’s what happened?”

They both nodded, though she let him respond. “I was given the task to infiltrate the Murphy clan in whatever’ possible, something that was considered pretty sodding hard to do. Finally, when Elle’s wedding to the Houndling was announced, we thought that might be my only way gain entry to their family circle.”

I smirked. “Ahh, so you
did
set out to seduce her!”

He flushed. “Ah, no. That was completely unplanned, like I told you. I figured if I got in good with her, she’d g me in good with the Murphys.”

“Only you got in with her in more ways than one.”

Mom shot me one of
those
looks. “We don’t need hear
all
of the details, thank you very much.”

Mac coughed to cover embarrassment, then forged on. “Long story short: Elle and I fell in love, I grew to truly care about the Murphys, and when I realized who and what you were to me.. . I found ways to talk to Mom without being spied on, something I’d never done before. And the more she and I talked, the more I realized just how wrong I’d been. That Erinye and the scientists were the bad guys, and I had been working for the wrong side all along. So a few weeks ago, I secretly helped Mom break out of the ranch in the Southwest where they were holding her. That location was shut down almost immediately, and they launched a hellacious manhunt for us. Took a lot longer to smuggle her back here than I expected. And then we had to make sure that. . .“ His voice trailed off and he looked embarrassed.

Mom took pity on him. “We didn’t come to you right away, sweetheart, because we had to be sure you were you. That they hadn’t gotten to you trying to get to me.”

Okay, that made way too much sense. Though it didn’t really explain why they’d had to go to such extremes to come clean to me. “So what prompted the whole shanghai-Marissa routine? And”—I scowled at another thought—”is Scott in on this?”

Mac shook his head. “No, but he and Elle should be here any minute. And I brought you here to kill you.” This time the other brow arched. ‘Well, that’s what my superiors think, anyway. As of last night, you are officially dead.”

I pushed myself upright. “Now, that could come in handy.’’

A smug smile curved his lips. “I know.”

Mom coughed slightly. “And whose idea was that, son of mine?”

He leaned across the glass table to pat her hand. “Our brilliant mother’s, of course.”

She nodded once, satisfaction gleaming in her eyes. “Just so.” Her gaze met mine. “Bringing you here had two purposes. One: to throw Mac’s superiors off your trail long enough to put your plans in action.

And two: to flush out the true traitor in your midst. Unfortunately, I think we’ve only succeeded in one of those aims.”

I tilted my head. A car droned not too far off in the distance, but I tried to ignore it. “So nobody took the bait last night except Mac?”

His voice became rueful. “Nope. Which was surprising, seeing as how Trinity and I managed to sneak you out right under their very noses.”

My toes began tapping on the warped floorboards. “Well, if the traitor’s working for the mad scientists, and they thought you were taking me out, is that really a surprise? I doubt they’d want to lose both their agents if they could avoid it.”

Mac pursed his lips. “I thought of that myself, but they haven’t hesitated to throw everything they have against you every other time they’ve tried to take you out. You’re a bloody Fury, Riss. And you’ve managed to survive every single assassination attempt they’ve made.”

“True. Maybe we’ve been looking at this all wrong.”

Mac and Mom focused their attention on me. Trinity seemed to be staring off into the distance.

“Maybe you
were
their only agent at Hounds. They could just have an extremely talented tail on me.

Or,” I added doubtfully, “maybe a tracking device of. . . some... sort.” My heel clunked against the floor with a particularly loud thump, and my voice trailed away as I thought back to that instant of biting pain on the beach where we found the Sidhe’s corpse. “My boots.”

Mac shot me a look that clearly suggested I’d lost what few marbles I had. “Your—boots?”

I yanked the fabulous piece of leather off my left foot and eyed it regretfully.
This is going to hurt me
more than it does you.
And then I ripped the heel off with one swift jerk.

“What did they ever do to you?” Mac drawled.

“Well, if my suspicions are correct, they’ve been leading those assholes to me all this time.”

His expression grew intrigued. “They got a tracker on you without you noticing?”

My cheeks flushed slightly. “I was a little preoccupied by the fact that my best friend’s body had just washed up in Boston Harbor. And I didn’t really think much about the nail I stepped on at the time.”

“Whoa. They planted a tracker on you through a nail next to the corpse they dumped? How the hell did they make sure you stepped on it?”

“I don’t think it actually
was
a nail. I just chalked it up to that at the time. They must have used some device that implanted the tracker in the boot, and I felt it enough to think I’d stepped on something sharp.

Gee, ain’t technology grand?”

Mac grinned. “Damn straight it is.” Hrmph. Damn man probably owned stock in Apple
and
Microsoft.

Sort of like me and Starbucks.

Blocking out his voice, I sifted through the mess of leather and wood but came up empty. Not the tiniest sliver of out-of-place metal or plastic. I frowned, and then felt a whole lot of stupid.
The pain came
from your
other
left,
I thought sourly.

Trinity scooted closer. “What’s up?”

I growled, dumping the now-ruined boot and jerking the other off even more violently. “Wrong foot.”

All three of them bit back smiles and purposely avoided looking at each other. Jerks.

A triumphant smirk replaced my scowl when a small circle of plastic and metal gleamed up at me.

“Aha! Gotcha.”

My fingers were less than an inch away from plucking the manmade hitchhiker from my boot when the purring engine suddenly became an all-out roar. I froze, eyes widening when I realized the awful truth.

I’d found the tracker too late.

I snatched the bug, smashed it beneath my good boot, and then shifted into full Fury form, repairing the damaged boot with a smidge of magic. I vaulted from a sitting position clear over the porch railing, landing on bare earth and trampling several early spring flowers in the process. Fury magic pulsed at my back.. The familiar rush of warmth pleased me absurdly. I hadn’t worked with a sister—or brother—Fury in too long. Not since Vanessa.

Footsteps pounded into the house, no. doubt Trinity in pursuit of a conventional weapon. An unfamiliar car squealed into view just down the driveway. My muscles bunched and I
leapt,
wings flapping to gather momentum. I aimed for the hood of the car, intending to smash as much as I could in one swoop.

Mac’s screamed “Stop!” reached my ears at precisely the moment I recognized the wild-eyed driver.

Scott.

“Shit!” I backwinged to slow my fall and tried to redirect my landing. Disaster loomed—no way was I going to miss the several-ton bullet speeding toward me—but Hound reflexes kicked in at the same time as Fury. Scott

jerked the steering wheel and stepped on the gas, hard. We missed by barely a foot, and the ground slammed up to meet me in a dizzying blur.

I had the presence of mind to twist just before I hit, body instinctively going limp. Most of the impact spread through my lower back and rear. Much preferable to hitting legs or knees first.

Still, my vision grew dark for a moment and I blinked back stars. Somehow I found the energy to shift back to mortal form. Car doors slammed open and shut, and gravel crunched as someone ran toward me.

Voices rose and fell in heated exchanges, but then hands closed around me and I knew everything was all right.

“Took you long enough.” I settled into Scott’s arms when he swung me up in one powerful lurch. His eyes ran up and down my body, and I moved arms and legs slightly just to show I could.

“Sorry, baby.” Hearing him call me
baby
again sent shivers down my spine. He threw a scowl over his shoulder. “My
cousin”—he
injected more venom into that word than Nemesis and Nike could manage on a good day—”is fucking lucky I didn’t rip her apart when she let me in on her dirty little secret.”

He swept me toward the still-running car, and three people I hadn’t expected jumped out of the backseat: Con, Jessica, and David.
Oh,
this
has all the makings of a happy family reunion.
All three—even Jessica—hurried over, fussing and assuring themselves I was uninjured, a fact that seemed somewhat doubtful since Scott flat-out refused to let me down.

Gravel crunched again and I stiffened at Elliana’s voice, followed by Mac’s and then my mother’s, all of whom spoke too quietly for the mortals to really hear. But then they drew close enough to spit on. For a moment, I thought Scott was going to do just that to Mac, but David’s eyes zeroed in on our mother, and he cried out.

He shoved both wife and daughter behind him, backing them toward the car. “It’s another one of
them!”
When neither Scott nor I reacted, truth dawned across his face with agonizing quickness. “No, it’s
you~”

Mom reached a hand out, but David stumbled back another step. His face flushed red, then paled, then grew red again as conflicting emotions warred through him. I knew exactly how he felt, having gone through the same thing not that long ago, though at least he didn’t have immortal Rage to contend with.

“Son of a. . . you’re dead.”

Not wanting to see him put her through the same hell I had—especially now that I knew everything she had already gone through—I squirmed until Scott had no choice but to let me go or drop me. “They held her captive, David. Just like Vanessa.”

Some of the tension left his body. He glanced, briefly, from Mom to Mac, but then his eyes zeroed in on her once more as he drank in the sight of her. I counted, silently, one.. . two. . . three. . . and then he did the double take I expected, neck twisting from Mom to Mac, then back again. And he finally saw the resemblance to our mother neither of us had noticed when seeing Mac alone. Or with green eyes instead of brilliant blue.

“What in the hell is going—”

Jessica grabbed his arm. “David,” she whispered. “Isn’t that your—”

Cori’s eyes widened as she finally fit the pieces together, recognizing Mom from all the pictures we’d shown her over the years. “Grandma?” Her voice trembled and tears pricked at her eyes. Her lips twisted in determination, and she flung herself forward. “It
is
you, Grandma!”

Tears flooded down my mother’s cheeks as she clutch Con to her as if someone might snatch her away.

“Oh, baby.” She looked over Con’s shoulder to David and “All my babies with me at last.”

David’s glance flickered back to Mac, unease furrowing his brows. “Is there something I should know?”

“It’s not what you think, David.” I cleared my thro~ “Well, it’s not
exactly
what you think. Remember how always wanted a little brother? Mom came through for eighteen years ago.”

Mac’s lips twisted, but he kept silent, eyes trained o. David as if on a wild animal that might suddenly attack. Kind of funny, considering which one of them w mortal.