Wyatt had paled beyond anything I’d seen before, his skin nearly translucent. He stared just past me to my right, at Call, so tense I thought he’d pop a spring like a cartoon windup toy. Didn’t move. Barely seemed to breathe. I wanted to run over there and shake him.
“I see you remember me,” Call said, a hint of amusement in his voice. I tightened my fist, aching to take a swing at him. “Come on, Wyatt, after four years, all you can do is stand there like a mummy?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, Cole,” Wyatt ground out.
“And the mummy speaks!” Call whooped like a delighted child. The sound sent a chill wiggling down my spine.
I shifted my stance enough to put Eleri at my back and Call just in the periphery of my right side. I hated having him behind me. Wyatt finally met my eyes; I made what I hoped was an “Oops” face. We were in the middle of an odd standoff, with Call/Cole directing the show.
“Aren’t you going to ask how long I’ve been back in the city?” Cole said. He circled closer to me, the muzzle of his pistol still pointed at my ribs. “Don’t you want to know what I’ve been up to? How I adapted to life in a strange city, with no memory of who I was or where I’d come from?”
“Not interested,” Wyatt replied coldly.
Cole snickered, then turned to me. “How about you, young lady? You’ve proved very hard to kill recently, you know that? I respect it, though. The Hunter’s instinct to fight and survive. We have something very much in common.”
My eyes narrowed. “I didn’t turn my back on the Triads to join forces with a bunch of fucking Dregs, asshole.”
“The brass turned on me first, but then again, I think that’s something with which you have firsthand experience, isn’t it, Evangeline?” The way he said my name made me shiver, as though he knew me. Knew every detail of my personal life, everything I’d been through in the last two weeks. Maybe he did, but that sure as hell didn’t mean he knew me, or that we were anything alike.
“Wyatt spared you,” I shot back.
“You think so?” he asked, as though we were discussing the use of cinnamon in a recipe in place of ginger. Banal conversation instead of life-and-death matters. “How would you feel if, right this moment, I shot Wyatt in the head and then put a spell on you to obliterate all your memories, sent you a hundred miles away, and left you there to forge a new life on your own? Would you feel spared if you woke up three years later and, for absolutely no reason any magic user you contact can explain, remembered your missing past? Is that being spared? Or would you feel violated? Raped of your entire existence, because I ordered it so?”
My temper reached a boiling point, overpowering any lingering ache in my head. “You have no fucking idea of the life I lost, or how I’d feel if I could put my hands around the necks of the assholes responsible. I’m still out here trying to protect this city, because that’s who I am.”
“You don’t think that’s what I’m doing?” Cole asked.
“By raising an army to squash the Triads? Hell no.”
“Even if the Triads need, as you say, squashing?”
“What gives you the right to do it?”
He smiled, and I was starting to hate how it made his face so innocent. “Interesting answer, Evangeline.”
“Yeah? How so?”
“You didn’t deny the Triads needed squashing, just said I wasn’t the person to do it.”
How the—? “You know who makes changes by imposing their will on others? Dictators.”
“Some dictators see themselves as visionaries.”
“Yeah, but history judges most of them as madmen and murderers.”
Again with his crazy smiling. “I can see why Wyatt cares about you. I imagine you drove him crazy as a Hunter. You seem the type to question things.”
I snorted. “Yeah, and I’m also the type to beat an uncooperative suspect to a pulp and laugh while doing so.”
“I hate to break up this little colleague interaction session,” Eleri said, “but time is of the essence.”
Cole pushed back the sleeve of his coat and checked his wristwatch. “Curtain goes up in twenty minutes. Thank you for reminding me, Eleri.”
Was that code? Or did he mean it was twenty minutes to seven? Either way, things had to progress faster than they were so far.
“I’m here, Cole,” Wyatt said. He took a step forward. Snow put a hand on his chest to keep him back. “What do you want?”
“Me? Not a thing, really. When I first came home, I wanted to cut your heart out with a butter knife. I watched you for a long time, making all manner of plans and contacting the right people. Then I heard about your affair with Resurrection Girl here, breaking your own fraternization rules by falling in love with your Hunter, and I decided death was too easy.”
Alarm bells clanged in my head. Through the disorientation of losing the Break and having my brain rattled by Cole, random dots finally began connecting. The orange blocking crystal. All the things he knew about us. The person helping Tovin run the mad scientist lab and control the goblin/Halfie forces. The timing of everything this past week. Jock Halfie’s admission that someone besides Tovin had employed him and his pals.
“I think someone’s put the puzzle together,” Cole said. I thought he was looking at me, but all I could do was gape at Wyatt. Wyatt just stared back, not understanding what must have been the strangest expression he’d ever seen on my face. “Go ahead and tell him, Evangeline. You know you want to tell him.”
I did. Instead, I rounded on Cole, my hatred growing. Understanding and sympathy for him had just died a quick death, and I let my disgust and rage boil over. Only the pistol, pressed to the center of my forehead, stopped me from jumping Cole. The cold metal held me there but did little to quell my fury.
“What the fuck did Tovin offer you, Cole? What did he promise you to sell out your own kind?”
Behind me, Wyatt made a strangled sound, but I had eyes only for Cole.
“Protection for Rain’s people,” Cole replied, “and for all the Therians. That when Tovin brought the Tainted over and began his rule, they would be promised independence in exchange for noninterference.” His brown eyes simmered with anger. “It seemed the very least we could ask for after the destruction of Phineas’s Clan.”
He wanted to protect the Therians because he had loved one. I understood the rationalization; however, I’d never be able to excuse his methods. Helping Tovin made him a party to the deaths of my partners, of Rufus’s Hunters, of the six who’d died at Olsmill. It made him a party to my own murder. “So you save the Therians, and humans get what? Served up as the main course for a bunch of demons while the goblins and Halfies sit around and snack?”
“I was so angry I didn’t much care what happened to humanity. All I knew was that the Therians were protected, and Snow and I would have our revenge on Wyatt for what he took from us.”
“Us?” Wyatt asked.
I backed off, sure the gun had left a little circular dent in my forehead, and looked over my shoulder. Snow leered at Wyatt, as if sizing him up for a fire spit.
“Rain was my sister, you son of a bitch,” Snow said. “She was a gentle spirit who never had a cross word to say about anyone. She didn’t deserve what you did to her.”
“No, she didn’t,” Wyatt said. “I had a choice to make that night, and if I had to make it again, I’d do the same thing.”
“Choose a human over a so-called Dreg?”
Wyatt bristled. “No, I’d choose a friend over a stranger.”
The answer did nothing to placate Snow. In fact, it seemed to do the opposite. He wasn’t a large man, but his lineage hinted at the ferocity lurking beneath his sandy hair and fair skin.
“So now that Tovin’s dead and the Tainted aren’t coming?” I asked. “What’s the grand plan? Challenge the Triads without backup and hope you win?”
“Hardly,” Cole said. “Snow is far more suspicious than I am, especially of humans. After your supposed murder at Phineas’s hands, Snow had the foresight to take a picture of you before he tossed you in that Dumpster.”
