He was sure that the Dolans knew their business, but this seemed . . . off. Not wrong, necessarily. But inside-out.
Cari didn’t fight his grasp, but when awareness came back into her gaze, she turned her head to the side—still shy, then—and shivered.
“Are you all right?”
She squirmed a little, as if to stretch. He could feel the darkness within her flex.
Mason tried not to curse. He didn’t want to be . . . rough in front of her.
“I’m fine,” she answered.
“You don’t seem fine.”
She lifted her black gaze. “I’m excellent, in fact.”
Somehow her skin, even through that tidy dress, was too hot. Or too electric. Dangerous, anyway. It had always seemed dangerous to get too close to princess Cari. Mason let go of her. Strays weren’t fools. “Did you get what we needed?”
Her expression gathered. The sadness he recognized. And frustration. Whatever had gripped her was passing. Good.
She shook her head. “It’s been too long. I should’ve come back immediately.”
“You sensed nothing?” He couldn’t quite believe her, after all that.
Her mouth tightened.
“There’s more,” he guessed. That mouth never lied. Someone should let her know before the wrong person discovered her tell. She had a House to protect.
“Maybe the fae,” she suggested. It sounded like the truth.
He had to make sure. “The fae?” Creatures of Twilight were drawing closer. And with all the Shadow she’d just used, the fae would be attracted.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Mason looked away to take a deep breath. This was going to take time. They’d just started. And finding a killer was nothing Cari had been prepared for. They’d put it together. Eventually.
It’d be easier if he hadn’t liked her so much back then, when they were kids. It made him worry for her now.
His vision focused on a group of people—humans—who were watching him and Cari from across the courtyard.
What had they seen? Not much from over there. Cari might have appeared ill, which was warranted considering her father had just died. Her eyes had been the most frightening during her episode, clouding with Shadow, but the humans were too far away to see, and only he could have sensed the storm inside her.
They’d witnessed nothing really.
But Mason recognized the character of their heavy stares. It was an us-and-them kind of expression. He’d felt it many times as a stray. These humans knew Cari was a mage and probably thought he was as well.
Just a few months ago only human elites were really aware of magekind—the politicians and wealthy trying to get the edge on the new age of Shadow. But these were everyday people, just like at the May Fair.
Now they knew and they believed.
This was her chance.
Leah watched her boss Ms. Dolan and the hot guy in jeans and a black tee—had to be a new bodyguard minus the suit jacket.
Ms. Dolan must have come to pay her respects to her father. That spot was where he’d died, after all. It was so sad. No one ate lunch out there anymore. Felt weird and creepy. Only the gamer guy from IT did it, but he’d been nasty to start with.
As soon as Ms. Dolan seemed finished, Leah would ask. Five more minutes wouldn’t make any difference. It’d been years already.
“Burn ’em,” Thomas from accounting muttered beside her.
Leah didn’t respond. The witches debate had gotten old quickly, but the consensus was that while some innocent people might have been hanged as witches way-back-when, obviously some real witches had been as well. Everyone had seen the footage from the Stanton May Fair. Magic was real. In fact, the word mage was now synonymous with anything bad, scary or unexplainable.
Hear a wraith scream? Magey.
Almost get in a car wreck? Magey.
Lose a sock in the dryer? Okay, that was magey, too.
The guard was shaking Ms. Dolan. Maybe he was a family friend instead. Not a boyfriend. Ms. Dolan had been dating that other guy for a while. Everyone in accounting called him Mr. Slick Shit. This new guy wasn’t her type at all.
Ms. Dolan turned, as if to continue on and enter the main building.
Now.
Leah walk-jogged after her, ignoring the “wha?” from Thomas behind her. Took a sec, but she finally caught up. “Excuse me?”
Ms. Dolan kept walking, but the guy in jeans looked over his shoulder. “Not now.”
Leah wasn’t about to stop. Her family needed to know. “Please?”
Ms. Dolan had slowed. Now she turned around. “It’s fine,” she said to the man. To her, “Yes?”
Look at those black, black eyes. Witch, definitely.
Leah gulped. She’d never told anyone this before. “My sister . . .”
Ms. Dolan got two little lines between her eyebrows, as if she didn’t get what this had to do with her.
Yeah, well it did. “My sister became one of those wraiths.”
And damn it, she was going to cry. Especially because Ms. Dolan and her friend seemed to immediately understand. They’d shared an uh-oh look. People like Ms. Dolan had known all along. It burned that these Shadow people had known, while everyone else was so scared.
Five years of her mom’s sad eyes. Leah had to know, even if it cost her job. “Is there a cure?”
Neither one answered. The muggy air clung. Leah could feel it oppressively holding them all together in the moment.
“Because you have to be one of those mages, right?” Leah asked Ms. Dolan. “The magic stuff. Shadow or whatever.”
The man put his shoulder in front of Ms. Dolan. He had black eyes, too. Crap.
“I’m very sorry,” he said, “but there is no cure after someone becomes a wraith.”
He sounded so straight, like a doctor giving bad news.
Leah ignored him and kept at Ms. Dolan. “But if she was infected by Shadow or bitten by something, and changed”—the possibilities raced through Leah’s mind—“then maybe . . . ?”
“Shadow has nothing to do with wraiths,” the man said.
Leah wasn’t talking to him. She was talking to Ms. Dolan. Just asking a simple question, that’s all. And they seemed to have the answer, but weren’t telling.
This was her sister she was talking about.
But he seemed to think Ms. Dolan, a mage, needed protection.
“Has to be Shadow.” Leah tried to step around him to get to her. “Couldn’t be anything else because wraiths are monsters. What they do . . . How nothing hurts them . . .”
“I’m sorry. The sister you knew is gone.” The man was trying to sound nice, but it felt patronizing when obviously he was lying. “She’s just not there anymore. Only her body remains.”
Leah flashed angry. They would tell her the truth. She’d make them. Her mom hadn’t been the same after what happened. “Well what happened to her? If she’s ‘not there,’ then where is she?”
Ms. Dolan finally reached out a hand, but Leah flinched back. “Mr. Stray is telling you the truth. The . . . person . . . who created the wraiths is gone. I’m terribly sorry, but there’s no way to undo what he did. Think of it like an accident . . .”
“But it wasn’t an accident.” Leah couldn’t help that her voice was rising, a little shrill. Okay, maybe she was losing it. So what? These people had no right to suggest it was random. “It was Shadow.”
The man had pulled out his wallet and extracted a business card. “If you contact the Segue Institute . . .”
Leah sneered at him. She’d heard about that Segue place; they killed wraiths there. She wanted to save her sister, not put her family through more hell. How dare they stand there and lie to her and then try to give her the shove off. “I want an answer now, or I’ll . . .” She didn’t know what she’d do, but something. Ms. Dolan would listen. Leah had been quiet about this too long.