Shadow Fall

feeling.”

“But I am not your wife, and I can read your mind.” Custo was incredulous. “That has to bother you.”

“Nope.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Adam’s smile grew. “Then read my mind and find out. You know me too well for me to really hide anything from you, regardless. Anything important, that is. Just stay out of my bedroom.” Adam’s smile hit his eyes. “Or don’t, if you need a few pointers in that arena. You never really could keep a girlfriend very long. I’ve wondered…”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.” But Custo was grinning a bit, too.

The knowledge was more than welcome. Talia, a child of Shadow, could sense emotion. Custo, a denizen of Heaven (however unwilling), could glean thoughts from people’s minds. The dichotomy made perfect sense considering the respective characteristics of each world. Magic and inspiration pervaded the Shadowlands, while order and deliberation represented Heaven. Mortality drew from both. No wonder the battleground was Earth.

“Does she know?” Adam tilted his head toward the bed. The question was weighted with Adam’s opinion—he thought she should.

Custo ignored it. “Nope. She’s pissed at me enough already.”

“Chicken.”

Chi—? No. “She has enough to worry about without feeling self-conscious about something as intimate as her private thoughts.” Custo gestured to her. The woman had been attacked not hours ago. She needed a break.

“You like to learn things the hard way,” Adam said, with a sorry shake of his head.

“Look, I’ll tell her when I’m good and ready. When I think the time is right.”

Adam shrugged, saying, “Your call,” and motioned to bring the first Segue special operative into the room, but he thought, clearly and distinctly, but be careful or she’ll never trust you again.

He was being careful, meticulously so. Adam just couldn’t appreciate how difficult it was to respond to only verbal dialogue when the internals were much more telling. Like with the sequestered Segue soldiers—a couple of pointed questions, and bam, they’d have their traitor.

“Watch and learn,” Custo said to Adam.

The soldier took a seat in front of him. He had a dark buzz, a swirl of tattoo inking out of the collar of his T- shirt.

“What’s your name?” Custo had it on a card in front of him.

“Lieutenant Michael Joseph Parnham, Third Division, Segue Spec Ops.” But in his head he said, Mike.

Time to get down to it. “Are you working in collusion with the wraiths?”

Mike straightened. “No, sir!” His thoughts echoed his exclamation, No, sir!

Annabella stirred. Hell, she was bound to wake up with twenty-odd soldiers going in and out of the room. But Custo wasn’t about to leave her alone. It had to be this way.

“Are you aware of anyone working in collusion with the wraiths? And keep your voice down. Yelling your answer doesn’t make it any more or less true.”

“No, sir.”

“Have you ever passed information outside your authorized unit?”

“No, sir.” Except for that one time I told Jeni about going overseas because I promised her I would let her know if I was leaving the country, but she left me anyway for an accountant because she wanted to have a baby and a minivan and a pretty house with a…

This guy wasn’t the traitor.

Next?

Annabella sat up during the third soldier’s interrogation, after which Custo called a temporary halt. Adam was right—her color did look much better, though she kept her lips pressed tightly together, her body tense, startling easily. Still wouldn’t eat.

She was debating in her head whether to call Venroy and tell him she wasn’t going to the party, or to save herself the discomfort and blow it off altogether. She was leaning toward the latter, a very bad sign. She’d already discarded the impulse to call her mom.

A little more than twenty-four hours, and they’d come full circle. She was preparing to give up her dance. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t Annabella.

“What time is the party?” Custo asked.

“Doesn’t matter,” she answered. “I’m not going anyway.”

Custo had been undecided until that moment, even though Abigail-the-psychic had said they should attend, per Zoe’s report. He didn’t like the idea of taking Annabella out in public again. Segue wasn’t safe either, but at least they had the home-field advantage. The defeat in her eyes, however, was as perilous as the wolf itself. She had to live her life, revel in her accomplishment with dance, or the wolf’s offer would become that much more tempting, her desire for Shadow that much more acute.

“We’re going,” he said.

“Custo,” Adam said, “I don’t know that…”…going to the party is the best course of action at this time.

“No, Adam,” Custo said. Making allowances for her fear would only sap her energy and have her doubting herself more.

Adam shot him a look. You said it yourself. She’s been through enough today.

Custo deliberately hardened his tone. “She doesn’t have the luxury of wallowing in her self-pity. She needs to go to the damn party. She needs to find her spine again. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?”

Annabella raised fear-stricken eyes. Custo watched her fear transmute to recrimination and anger, but she didn’t say anything. He touched her mind: Her thoughts were full of murder, but not for the wolf. She wanted to scratch Custo’s eyes out.

Good. There was fire in her yet, though there was little chance he was ever going to get to touch her again. To move inside her. If that sacrifice weren’t angelic, he didn’t know what the hell was.

“Besides,” Custo said, “the wolf wants to take you away from the life you’ve fought so hard to build. It would be one more victory for him if you didn’t attend the reception. As one of the lead dancers, the reception would be in your honor, yes?”

He saw the delicate muscles of her jaw contract as she clenched her teeth, but she nodded, yes.

Her gaze darkened, and Custo knew that she was thinking about what he’d said. He felt the right decision form in her mind.

“Then we go,” Custo confirmed. “We don’t have to stay long.”

“I don’t have anything to wear,” she said, voice thick, “and I’m not going home for my dress. I’m never going back to that place again.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Adam said. “Custo, do you want my tux?”

After Peter’s murder, Annabella was definitely going to need a new place to live.

“Custo?”

The tux. “The shoulders will be a bit tight, but it’ll do,” Custo answered by rote. It was an old joke between them, and a lame effort at lifting the mood.

It got a weak smile out of Adam at least, and a clap on the shoulder. Annabella turned sullenly away and climbed back on the bed. Adam brought over a laptop for her to pass the time during the soldier interviews. She downloaded a movie, Dawn of the Dead, so the sound of soft screams filled the room while Custo worked.

A more effective “screw you” he couldn’t imagine. Very well played.

Twenty-four interrogations later, Custo was beyond perplexed. He’d asked questions from every angle, but a more straight-up, true-blue batch of men he’d never seen.

He was stumped, and he was man enough to admit it. He had to have missed something somewhere, but he’d have to think it through before taking another approach. And it was getting late.