Rufus closed his eyes and, if possible, went paler. When he again looked at me, grief and resignation warred for dominance. “I’m so sorry, Evy, that he pulled you into this fantasy. He should have let you rest in peace.”
“Yesterday, I might have agreed with you, Rufus, but today? Not so much. Wyatt isn’t crazy. Something is happening; we heard it this morning from a gargoyle. The races are choosing sides, and something’s about to blow.”
I crouched in front of him, trying hard not to shiver in the chilly room. “Now, I’m thinking one of two things is happening here. Either the brass know what’s coming down and are trying to cover it up by making an example of me and Wyatt, or—are you ready for this? — someone in the Fey Council is keeping us in the dark. They aren’t talking to your bosses, so nothing comes down to you. The Triads stay running in circles, hunting one another, while something else much more sinister takes place right under our noses.”
Rufus sneezed, and a tremor racked his body. “Why did you kill your partners?”
I blew air between my teeth, creating a frustrated whistle. “I didn’t; not really.” I explained it again, as it had happened. The mere fact that Jesse had been turned before death shocked Rufus as much as it had shocked Wyatt. Nothing like a dose of truthfulness to wake you up to reality.
I sensed warmth behind me. Wyatt stood to my right side, so close I felt his heat. Tension vibrated from his body. Rufus shifted his attention between us, coming to some sort of silent decision, weighing my words against Wyatt’s actions.
“Why would they lie?” Rufus asked. “About Jesse, I mean.”
“Like she said,” Wyatt replied. “To keep the Triads off balance and hunting one another, instead of sniffing around what’s really going on. If the attack on my Triad was a setup from the get-go, we’ve all been played for fools. You and Baylor and Kismet have been so wrapped up in hunting—first for Evy, and then for me—that you haven’t had time to notice anything else happening.”
“Like a consolidation of power?”
“Precisely.”
It made a horrifying kind of sense. Handlers had a free hand to run their Triads as they saw fit, doling out assignments and keeping tabs on the activities of their Hunters, but even the Handlers had bosses (the brass) to report to—three officers in the upper echelons of the Metro Police Department, whose identities were carefully guarded. Especially from the regular police department.
Triads are isolated, only allies to one another. The real cops can’t help us; normal people barely notice us. Turn us against one another and we fall apart; change the status quo and the center can’t hold. As Triad Handlers, if Rufus, Baylor, and Kismet received a Neutralize order from the brass, they followed it. No questions. Just action.
“We need to find out who got rid of the bodies,” I said.
Rufus blinked. “Which bodies?”
“All of the Halfies that Ash, Jesse, and I killed that night. The ones that support my version of events.” I swallowed against a lump in my throat. “I had to leave them to call for backup, but I was blindsided by Kismet’s team before I could get back to the site. They already had orders to Neutralize me for murdering my teammates. Less than ten minutes after they died, I was wanted.”
“So someone set you up,” Rufus said.
It was exactly what Wyatt had said a week ago. Someone on the inside knew how to get us to that train bridge, and how to get nine other Triads to turn against me. To focus all of their energies on finding and Neutralizing me, instead of paying attention to the Dregs.
“Yeah, someone set me up.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Rufus said, shaking his head.
“Of course it does,” Wyatt snapped. “It makes perfect sense. And it was also a terrific excuse to massacre the Owlkins, one of the largest Clans that sympathized with our species. We’ve been chasing our own asses for the last ten days, while the Bloods and goblins have been amassing power.”
I crouched, getting eye level with Rufus. He didn’t look away. “Rufus, I need your help,” I said. “I don’t have all of my memories back. I don’t remember the final three days of my—Evangeline’s—life, or anything that happened while I was captured. We need to piece this together, and we can’t do it alone. We’ve only got two days to prove that Wyatt isn’t nuts, that I’m not a traitor, and that there
His hazel eyes captured mine for a moment, as though attempting to see past Chalice’s plain brown irises and into my soul. To see the person I’d once been, who lurked deep inside of the shell of a woman he didn’t recognize.
“On one condition,” he said.
“What’s that?”
He glared over my shoulder. “Hot coffee and a blanket.”
Chapter 11
54:15
“Where’s your team?” I waited until we were back in Wyatt’s car, with Rufus wrapped up in a blanket from the trunk, and us well on our way to get some drive-thru coffee, before asking the question foremost on my mind. I twisted around in the front passenger seat to face him.
“No idea,” Rufus said. He’d taken on a bit of color since we helped him limp out of the refrigerator. “I’ve been locked up for the last thirty-odd hours, so they could be anywhere in the city, probably looking for me. My kids are loyal, too.”
The last was directed at Wyatt, but he kept his concentration on driving.
“Could you convince them to help us?” I asked.
Rufus shook his head. “I’m still not convinced
“I really don’t, and I wish people would stop second-guessing that. Do you think I like not knowing where I was or what happened to me?”
Wyatt grunted. Okay, so he knew what had happened to me, but I still couldn’t bring myself to ask for those details. Instinctual revulsion at those goblins had been enough to hint at the torture they’d inflicted; I didn’t need it drawn out in pictures. And yet I knew that my desire to remember everything for myself was costing us precious time. Time we couldn’t afford to waste.
“Okay, you guys know what happened the night I was found,” I said. “Since I can’t seem to get it together, tell me your side of what happened. Who was there? Who said what? Maybe it will jog something.”
“I got the page in the afternoon and called in, like usual,” Rufus said. “The message said you’d been found, and that my team was needed on the scene. When we arrived, Wyatt, Amalie, and her guard, Jaron, were already there. So was Tybalt, but no one else from Kismet’s Triad. Kis told me later that the others were on patrol down by the docks and couldn’t get there in time. That’s everyone.”
“One of your team was missing,” Wyatt said. A small amount of accusation tinged his words.
Rufus flared his nostrils. “Tully and Wormer were there. Nadia didn’t respond right away.”
I knew the three by name and by the occasional joint operation. We’d met maybe half a dozen times in our careers, which wasn’t unusual in our line of work. Death followed us around, so it was better to maintain a distance. Befriend only your two Triad partners, and keep everyone else at arm’s length.
And Tybalt … I think I punched him in the face once.
“It was a train station on the old track,” Rufus said. “Part of the abandoned passenger line that followed the river over the Anjean tributary and into the East Side. No one was guarding it, so they must have heard us coming….”
“Or been tipped off,” Wyatt added.
Rufus quirked an eyebrow at the back of Wyatt’s head. “Would you like to do the telling here?”
Wyatt raised a dismissive hand, attention never wavering from the road in front of him.
