“Good. We’re going to need him,” she said.

  Meaning she had killed her attacker. Well, weren’t we off to a great start?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  In an abandoned barn in the middle of a sprawling spread of land nestled between grassy hills, we “discussed” the best way to get information out of Dan. Ty and Vidar had located this place for us while we’d been playing the helpless victims at the bar. The two-story structure stood on sheer willpower alone, it seemed, the fading sunlight pouring between so many boards in the walls and roof we all looked like we had stripes.

  The musty smell of the place reminded me too much of when Ayra and I had been abducted last summer and had our powers forcibly awakened. Old barns had been ruined for me. Whether it was that or my desire not to become complete savages, I couldn’t say, but I argued strongly against torturing the truth out of Dan. Yes, it would have been easiest. Yes, he probably deserved it and more. But at the risk of sounding cliché, I insisted, “We do that, we cross a line we can’t come back from. Let me talk to him.”

  Of all people, Ayra surprised me by being the one to shrug. “Sure. We have nothing to lose by trying it your way first.”

  Gaze pinching down to a glare I shot at Ty and Vidar—who had argued strongly for torture—I let out a breath. “Thank you.” Though I wanted to make it a command, I asked, “Why don’t you guys step outside and give us some breathing room?”

  Big, dark arms crossed over his superhero T-shirt, Vidar gave Ayra a questioning look. Turmoil boiled in Ty’s gorgeous blue eyes, and it looked very much like he was biting his tongue against a protest. But to his credit, he said nothing. He cocked his head at me as if to ask if I were sure. I gave him a subtle nod. With the rest of them here, it would be harder to play to Dan’s ego and get him to slip up and say something. One big bad wolf in the room was enough, four was the definition of overkill.

  For a long moment, Ayra stared at Dan, who sat on the dirt floor bound to a support post. At first, the ma’ii held his chin high and stared right back. By the end of their little staring contest, he looked like he might pee himself. But he didn’t look away. That defiance strengthened my belief that I was right. This one would take a scalpel instead of an ax.

  Something between a growl and a sigh came from Ayra. “Fine. We need to keep an eye on the perimeter anyway.” She turned her back on him and walked to me. “Tag me in if you need me.”

  I dipped my head. “Always.” And I would, like always. Just because she and I were two opposing forces didn’t mean I didn’t understand the need for her. What was yin without yang?

  From the rafters above, Gripp called out a farewell to her. She smiled up at him and winked.

  Leaning against a support beam, arms crossed over his chest in a way that made his biceps bulge deliciously, cheek-length blond hair falling into his eyes, Ty looked like a pissed-off Viking. Which, I supposed, he was. I couldn’t fault him for it. If he’d been the one acting as bait, having another woman pawing at him, I’d have wanted to call down a hurricane.

  Instead of pummeling the man like I knew he wanted so badly to do, Ty pushed away from the beam and came to me. For a breath, he stared at me. Concern, sympathy, and frustration shone in his eyes. But so did trust. He bent down and kissed me lightly on the lips, then turned and left with Vidar and Ayra.

  “How touching. Can we get on with this good cop, bad cop routine already?” Dan asked in a snarky tone that I took as a challenge.

  Snorting, I strode over to him with a shake of my head. “This isn’t a game, Dan,” I said his name like the lie it was.

  Time for shit to get real. I touched the pendant hanging just above my breasts and whispered, “Verte off.” The magic—Gods, I still had trouble even thinking that word—that obscured my true nature went dormant like a switch being flipped, feeling somewhat like the tide drawing away from the beach.

  “What the fuck?” Dan jerked against his bonds and tried to pull back, only succeeding in slamming his head against the post he was bound to. “What kind of shifter are you?” He sniffed the air. “You’re a…a wolf?” The last word came out like a question.

  Power stretched out from within me like a cat that had been sleeping. It felt so good it made me sigh. “Yes, a wolf,” I said.

  He shook his head rapidly enough to make his neck pop. “No, not just a wolf. I’ve come across every supernatural known to this world. This power is next-level shit.” To my surprise, his eyes widened with an odd mixture of fear and delight. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” He didn’t wait for me to answer. “Gotta be the seeker since you’re playing good cop.”

  How had I lost control of this? Dammit. The plan had been to scare him with the reveal. I had to recover fast. “Like I said, this isn’t a game. If you don’t talk to me, then you’ll have to talk to my counterpart, and I guarantee you will not like how that conversation goes, and especially not how it ends.”

  That made him swallow hard. Good.

  Bending down, I grew my claws and waved one before his face before sticking it under his chin and pulling up. He obliged without the slightest resistance. “You have been abducting women. Why?”

  His pink tongue darted out to lick his lips, which turned upward. “I like to roleplay.”

  I stared at him for a long time, working on controlling my anger, before speaking again. “You’re an opportunist. One who preys on those he thinks can’t fight back much. Though you hide it, you have low self-esteem and a pressing need to exert dominance over others, particularly women. This points to a trauma in your childhood, maybe a mommy who didn’t love you or who abused you. You are weak, pathetic, a man who uses his past as an excuse to do horrible things.”

  Eyes pinching down into slits, he bared his teeth at me. No sign of fangs, which meant he didn’t have the level of control to shift only his teeth.

  “I hit a sore spot there. Your lack of ability to shift just your fangs tells me I’ve hit the mark dead on,” I observed aloud.

  He growled at me and jerked his chin away from my claw. “Stupid bitch. You don’t know shit.”

  “I know I pegged you right the moment I laid eyes on you. And I knew you were the one we were looking for. You are the one who apparently didn’t know shit.”

  Ugly laughter burped from him. “Okay, all-knowing Seeker. Why am I biting in other supes?”

  Other supes, not skinwalkers, supes. Which meant he wasn’t limiting himself to just skinwalkers. I did my best to keep my expression neutral so he wouldn’t know he’d given something away. I took a wild stab to keep him talking. “To strengthen the ma’ii numbers.”

  More of that grating laughter came from him. “Do I really strike you as the type of guy who is concerned about the greater good of his kind? You are really bad at this, aren’t you?”

  Little did he know, that admission had revealed yet another tidbit to me. From the rafters above came a condescending squawk. I wasn’t sure if it was for me or Dan. I shot Gripp a scathing look, just in case. He squawked again, wings fluttering.

  “Even your pet bird agrees,” Dan said with yet another laugh.

  I was seriously starting to consider shoving one of my socks into his mouth. It would make it hard to get anything else out of him, though. Wings beat the air, and I braced myself. Feathers caught in my hair and pulled. Talons dug into my skin as Gripp struggled to perch on my shoulder. Another squawk erupted from him as he thrust his beak in Dan’s direction. At least he seemed to be supporting me instead of the potential serial killer. I reached a hand up to steady him—mostly so he didn’t pull more of my hair out. He rubbed his head against my hand.

  “Damn thing looks like a menace.”

  While that might be true, no one got to insult my raven, especially not a jerk like this guy. “One who likes the taste of eyeballs. Insult him again, and I’ll let him have one of yours.”

  Gripp puffed his feathers up and made a clucking sort of coo that made me think he rather liked my idea. Adam’s apple bobbing with a hard swallow, Dan eyed the bird. Insulting me was one thing, but insulting Gripp I would not tolerate.

  Leaning close, which brought Gripp closer to Dan’s face, I went on. “I never thought you did it for the greater good. Notoriety, gratification, money, maybe, but not the greater good.” I said each option slowly, watching his face closely. At the word “money,” a muscle near the outside of his left eye twitched. Interesting. That meant someone was paying him to do it. But why?

  “How much would your client pay for me?” I asked, taking another wild stab.

  Despite Gripp being no more than ten feet from his face, his eyes lit up with greed. “A lot.”

  “You took two other women. I want them freed.”

  Shifting positions to lean away from Gripp’s beak, he sneered at me. “You’ll have to be more specific. What were they?”

  This son of a bitch. How many women had he taken? “They are skinwalkers.” I didn’t bother with giving him their names. He wouldn’t know them. They weren’t people to him.

  He nodded. “She hasn’t given them back yet. I could exchange you for them.”

  “She” and “given them back”—more tidbits.

  “Them, and all the others she’s given back already,” I pushed.

  Eyes rolling slightly, he blew air out through his teeth. “I don’t have them. They’ve been rehomed. What need could I possibly have for a bunch of hybrid women?”

  So he had bitten them all in. That answered yet another question.

  “I want them back,” I growled. From my shoulder, Gripp made a copycat noise.

  Again, Dan swallowed hard. “No can do. They’re overseas by now.” A hint of greed shone in his eyes as his gaze shifted to Gripp. “That thing isn’t some weird kind of shifter is it?”

  Fighting the powerful impulse to kick the bastard, I instead took a step back. “He’s a raven. That’s all you need to know.” In his way, Gripp was more than that. Much more, considering he had somehow covered about five hundred miles in two days—a distance that should have taken him five, at least. “What do you mean they’ve been ‘rehomed’?” I asked, pushing a little power and command into the question.

  Nose scrunching, Dan clamped his lips together.

  This time I poured a lot of power into my words. “What does rehomed mean? Tell me!”

  “Sold.” The word erupted from him so fast spittle flew from his lips.

  As if taking a personal affront to this, Gripp cronked at him and puffed up his chest feathers. Prickles of dread splashed across me, followed quickly by rage. “What did you say?” I whispered, taking a step closer to him.

  “Sold,” he hissed out through his teeth.

  “I want the names of the people you sold them to, where you met them for the exchanges, and all your contacts. Give them to me, and not only will I keep the reaper from torturing and killing you, I’ll let you take me to your client. She’ll pay you enough to retire. I guarantee it.” What I didn’t say was my people would be the ones to retire him, permanently. There was no way he was walking away from this, and I felt zero guilt over that.

  He licked his lips, the wheels churning behind his eyes. The urge to bring the claws and fangs out and force the answers from him made my fingers start to twitch. I couldn’t, though. Such methods weren’t my thing, but after what he’d done, a huge part of me wanted to make an exception in his case. But no. If he took me to his client, things would go much smoother.

  “Okay. But I have conditions,” he finally said.

  Growing fangs forced my teeth to stop grinding. Considering how bad this guy kept pushing my buttons, I couldn’t let Ayra anywhere near him or he’d end up dead. “Tread lightly,” I warned, following it with a growl.

  “You and I are the only ones to go to my client’s place. That one isn’t negotiable, or no deal.”

  So he knew Ayra would probably kill him. I could use that. “The other conditions?”

  “You get the info via text when we arrive at my client’s place.”

  I shook my head. “No way.” That meant we’d have to let him have his cell phone back.

  Eyes rolling up, he made a rude noise with his lips. “You don’t really think I’m stupid enough to give you the info before that, do you? I know you’ll try to kill me the second you have it.”

  “No we won’t. I need you to take me to your client. Getting to them is just as important to me as those contact names.”

  A bitter, disbelieving laugh barked from him. “You think you can cut off the head of the snake.”

  I didn’t give him the satisfaction of a response.

  “Well, I’ll need a phone to get a hold of my contact,” he said through a sneer.

  “We’ll get you a phone for that.” I knew the number wasn’t in his phone. We checked it already. It was a burner phone with no numbers programmed in, and the call log wiped clean. The guy was thorough, I had to give him that. It told me he either respected his client, or was afraid of them to the point of taking all precautions not to trace back to them.

  The moment we let him use his phone, it could be tracked. I’d checked with Detective Sandalius and she had confirmed the possibility. And if he used code to tell someone we’d snatched him, they’d know right where we were.

  He let out a growly sigh. “You don’t seriously expect me to remember the number?”

  Tapping my claws against my thigh, I stared him down. “You don’t seriously expect me to believe you programmed such a sensitive number in your phone? Your client would likely kill you for doing such a thing.” It was a stretch, I knew, but Sandalius had mentioned it when I asked her about his phone, so I was rolling with it.

  His right cheek twitched, a sign Sandalius had warned me to watch for. Jackpot! I decided to press the point. “Look, I don’t want to go all good cop, bad cop on you here, but if you aren’t honest with me, Ayra will insist on beating the answers out of you, and considering what you’ve done, I’m not completely against letting her.” I let the truth of that statement show in my eyes. A big part of me worried she’d want to do it regardless, but I withheld that.

  “Fine,” he spat. “I know the number. Get me a burner phone, and I’ll set up the meeting.”

  “Done.”

  Finally, something solid, concrete even that might lead us to the missing women. So why hadn’t the massive sense of dread weighing on me lifted in the slightest? A huge part of that was due to the fact now I had to call the IIA and let them know about the supe women who’d been sold overseas. Relying on the authorities fell so far out of my comfort zone it made me twitchy.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Crescent Coffee was nowhere near neutral ground, but that was why I chose it. I wasn’t about to give information like this over the phone. By picking Hemlock Hollow as a meeting place, I guaranteed she couldn’t slip her partner in with her without being noticed—despite them both being über skilled agents with a super secret agency. And I wanted absolutely nothing to do with Agent Hansson. Besides, to my surprise, Dan had set the meeting up with his client in southwestern Montana, so this was just as good a base as any. I’d more than half expected it would all go down in Wyoming.

  Thankfully, the local police had run the media out of town, so they weren’t lurking in the parking lot like they so often were. But then, the number of animal attacks kept reducing with each troubled I helped and condemned that Ayra put down. So it was slowly becoming old news. In a corner booth with a good view of the door, I should have been comfortable. But logic went out that door when it came to my authority issues. It didn’t help that Detective Elexis Sandalius of the Hemlock Hollow Police Department sat to the left.

  I liked the woman, I really did. But she was a detective with a police department, and that turned all kinds of anxiety keys for me. It helped that I’d asked her to come, but only a little. Dressed in what I could only think of as detective casual—a blue silk top and black slacks—with black hair with its electric blue highlights down and loose about her shoulders, she exuded a civilian air. But I knew better. Her power felt all alpha, and all cop.

  Ayra slapped a hand onto my bouncing knee hard enough to sting. Her cool gaze shifted from the glass doors of the coffee shop to me. “Relax. She has no authority over you. No one does save the Gods themselves. You are her superior in all ways.” The words soothed the anxiety twisting my stomach into knots that made me want to hurl.

  “True,” Detective Sandalius said.

  I emptied my lungs and nodded.

  Ayra slammed the rest of her Crescent Coffee cold brew, then gave me a look of pride. “That’s my girl.”

  The sound of a Tesla pulling up outside melted my cool in a flash. At my mother’s house, the agents had been driving a Tesla. It could be a coincidence. In this town of environmentally conscious werewolves, Teslas were pretty common. I leaned forward so I could see out of the coffee shop. From out of the car door came a gorgeous black boot with a two-inch heel followed by a long leg clad in black pants so finely cut and shaped I had a feeling they didn’t contain an ounce of synthetic fabric. The woman got out, gaze scanning as she did so. She straightened the jacket of her suit—one that looked like it cost more than all my med school books combined—pushed her long black braid over her shoulder, and strode toward the coffee shop.

  “Is that her?” Ayra asked.

  “Yep.” I surprised myself by sounding cool as a blended cocktail. Inside, things churned with a vengeance that threatened my breakfast. No authority, I thought to myself, turning it into a mantra. It helped, a little. A huge part of me wished Ty were here, for no other reason than I could squeeze the hell out of his hand. But he had professor duties to do, like actually teaching in person this semester for once. I couldn’t pull him away all the time, much as I might want to.

  Outside, a raven—my raven from the sounds of it—made a gurgling, croaking noise, followed by a shrill call. The sounds made me smile. When Ayra and I had come in the coffee shop, he’d taken up roost on the metal sign over the door. His call was both a warning to Benally and an alert to me. Clumsy and goofy though he might be, he had my back. After this was all over, I planned to go see Kari, the völva who had helped connect Gripp and me in a roundabout way, about his miraculous appearance in Wyoming. If my bird had some hidden skills, she might know about them.