“If the situation were different, I’d put you down myself.”
“Oh my god, Zak!” I snapped. “If that’s how you feel, then—”
“He’s unstable. You may not trust me, but I’m not one wrong word from flying off the handle and killing you or your allies.”
My hands clenched into fists. “Ezra wouldn’t—”
“He killed three of my vargs.” Zak’s jaw flexed. “They’d been with me for ten years.”
A moment of silence.
“I’m sorry,” Ezra said quietly. “You created the circumstances that caused it, but I’m sorry it happened and that I was part of their deaths.”
Zak made a dismissive gesture, brushing the topic away. “I won’t die on anyone’s altar, especially not yours. But”—he turned to me—“I’m offering my help, whatever you think it’s worth. If that’s not good enough, then we’re done here.”
Tension vibrated between the three of us.
“I don’t want your help running away,” I told the druid. “What I need won’t be as easy as smuggling us out of the country, but if you’re still willing, then I have one question for you.”
“What’s that?”
I smiled—a grim, humorless smile. “Have you ever summoned a demon before?”
Zak, as it turned out, had not summoned a demon before. But he was about to learn how.
I greedily stuffed a burger in my mouth as I watched the druid. He stood at a plastic folding table pushed against a water-streaked concrete wall, its surface spread with everything from Robin’s backpack—the case of demon blood, the cult grimoire, and her notes and diagrams. He pored over them, shoulders stiff with concentration.
Me, I just kept eating my burger, too exhausted to worry about anything for a few minutes.
For Ezra, Aaron, Kai, and me, finding a safe, private location for conducting illegal activities had seemed like an insurmountable challenge. For Zak, it was just a day in the life of a career criminal. In a matter of hours, he’d found a location, moved us into it, and stocked it with everything we needed, including food, water, and cots to sleep on.
The faintest spark of hope burned in my chest. We had a location for the ritual. One obstacle down.
But we still needed an Arcana mythic to prepare and perform it, and I didn’t know yet if Zak could do it. And we didn’t know if the ritual would even work. And if it did, we didn’t know if Ezra would survive it. And if he did, we didn’t know if we could convince the MPD to let him live.
And even if we somehow, impossibly, accomplished all that, we still had to survive—and destroy—an insidious cult that had its invisible tentacles snaking all throughout Vancouver.
Crumpling his burger wrapper into a ball, Ezra stuffed it into the paper bag. “I’m going to scout around a bit.”
I nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on Zak.” As he began to stand, I caught his wrist and tugged him back toward me. “Wait. Actually … maybe you shouldn’t.”
The painfully fresh memory of Aaron being overwhelmed by Pandora Knights bounty hunters made my dinner churn in my stomach. Ezra had demonic magic, but he couldn’t use it. He didn’t even have a switch.
He smiled faintly. “I’ll be fine.”
Probably, but considering the way things had gone so far …
Still holding his hand, I rose to my feet and crossed the concrete floor, our footsteps echoing through the large room. A warehouse, really. Zak had rented the storage facility for us—or rather, he’d used a fake identity to pay a man to rent the facility under another fake name.
“Zak,” I said as we joined him at the table. “Do you have a weapon Ezra can borrow? He’s got nothing.”
The druid looked up, his gaze skimming across Ezra. “I only have knives.”
“That’s fine,” Ezra replied. “A larger blade would be closer to my usual switch, if you can spare it.”
Zak flipped open a buckle that ran around his upper thigh. It came free and he held the leather belt out, a sheathed blade hanging from it.
Taking the weapon, Ezra pulled the handle. A twelve-inch blade, wickedly serrated, slid from the sheath. I wasn’t sure if the serrated edge had a purpose—did it double as a utility knife?—but it certainly added to the terror factor.
With raised eyebrows, Ezra sheathed it and buckled the belt around his thigh.
“Thanks,” he murmured, then touched my elbow. “I’ll be back soon.”
I nodded. His fingers ran down my arm and across my hand as he turned away. He headed toward the door, but I kept my attention on Zak, whose eyes had followed the trail of Ezra’s touch.
He returned my silent stare as the aeromage’s footsteps grew distant and the door clacked shut.
Zak faced the table and resumed studying the myriad of papers. He’d shed his long coat, and his black t-shirt was clean but wrinkled. A tangle of artifacts hung around his neck, the colorful crystals resting on his chest.
My gaze ran down his sculpted left arm, free of Lallakai’s feather markings, to the tattoos on his inner forearm. Four of the five circles contained fae runes, and I craned my neck to peek at his right arm, curious to see how many more he’d replaced since his battle with Varvara.
My breath caught. I snatched his right wrist and pulled his arm up. White scars, edged in pink, raked through his druid tattoos.
“Why didn’t you get that healed properly?” I demanded.
He tugged his wrist free. “I was busy.”
“What’s more important than permanent damage to your arm?”
“The entire city knows who I am now. There’s no healer, rogue or otherwise, who wouldn’t see my tattoos, realize I’m the Ghost, and betray me in an instant.”
I clenched my jaw. “What about a fae healer? They have healing magic, don’t they? Could they fix your arm?”
“Probably, but I can’t leave the city to find one.” He set a diagram down. “Without Lallakai, I’m stuck here. Powerful fae rarely enter cities. They hate all the pollution and concrete and human filth. If I still had my
