Chills ran up Roger’s spine. “An Arcana? Have the warrior fae emerged from the Flush?”
Alder shook his head slowly. “Not that we know of. We haven’t seen or heard of any movement. I’m also getting reports of a huge release of magic last night. The human papers are calling it a burst transformer. Reports say the sky lit up in the parking lot of a grocery store. It looked like an explosion, but all anyone heard was magnetic buzzing.”
Roger held very still. He’d already identified Charity as a custodes, based on her ability to summon light and turn a touch into an explosion, but he hadn’t seen anything that might mimic a transformer bursting. He hadn’t thought her royalty.
But he’d seen her before she’d taken a trip to the Realm. Before she’d spent time with other magical people to coax her out of her shell. Maybe her magic was just waking up, having been mostly dormant in the Brink, unused.
And if that was the case…
Roger stood in a rush and threw down his towel. “Find out everything you can about these rumors.” He brushed by Alder and into his main office. “Put someone on Devon’s crew. I don’t want Devon to know he’s being watched—he’ll think I don’t trust him, and that might affect his judgment—but I want help close, just in case. Vlad knows something, and I want to know what.”
“Should we extract the girl?”
“No. If Vlad is sectioning off the Realm, it means he doesn’t want to involve the elves. I agree with him. Thankfully, we have more power in the Brink. We don’t need to move around in the shadows. It’s a stronger play for us to protect her there, not to mention it is her home. Besides…” Roger hesitated in grabbing his computer. “I’m planning to take her to the Flush to get training, but not before she has a strong reason to come back out. She took to Devon’s pack easily, and from Devon’s reports, she has settled in with them well. I want them to build a sense of family. I’m hoping their connection and her schooling will be a strong enough reason to draw her back out.”
“You hope to tie her romantically with Devon?”
Roger chuckled darkly. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. No, I wouldn’t go so far as that. He shows exceptional promise and ambition—he’ll be great someday, I have no doubt—but he’s emotionally closed off. I doubt even a beauty like Charity could break through that.” Roger headed for the door. He wanted to get to the Brink to check out the situation for himself. “Organize those men. I don’t want anything to happen to Charity. If we need to extract her, we’ll probably have to fight our way through. And then hide her. That’ll take manpower. We’re playing chess with a master—we need to up our game.”
“Yes, sir. Should I tell Steve to call in his sisters?”
Steve could try the patience of a saint and didn’t like being ordered around. Still, get Steve agitated, and step back. The shifter was fierce and extremely competent. Put him with his five lioness sisters, and their pride could tear through the center of the world.
An ideal crew—minus the family squabbles, their unwillingness to work with anyone but each other, the sisters’ habit of picking on their baby brother, and the fact that three of the five sisters had just had babies. That family of cats was a nightmare.
“Are they back in commission?” Roger asked, debating. To protect Charity, he’d put up with almost anything.
“Yes, sir. All five were-lionesses expressed their interest in getting back to work. Steve won’t be pleased, but…”
“Steve will do what he’s told.” Hopefully. Steve had gone rogue more than once. What a pain. “Dangle the bait of a pretty warrior fae. He’s always had a fascination with the fae. He’ll take the job just to check it out. Have Cole ready, too. We might need a were-yeti to cut a path to the portal.”
“Yes, sir.”
Roger rubbed his temples as Alder left the room. He needed to figure out that girl’s lineage, but he also needed the last three newbies taken out. There’d already been too many deaths so far, and if the young vamps were left unchecked, there’d be more. Add to that two new demon sightings reported from a neighboring pack, the vampires’ efforts to close off Santa Cruz, the elves’ interest in Charity, and the were-cats he was about to unleash, and Roger was in the midst of a high-stakes clusterfuck.As the pale light of dawn filtered in through the bedroom window, Devon slowly came to consciousness. A soft, warm body pressed against his side, her smell delicate and feminine. Wisps of hair tickled him pleasantly and her hot breath soaked into his neck.
He pulled back the blanket and glanced down at his body. Several bandages were taped to his skin, most soaked through with blood. Peeling one of the larger ones to the side, he revealed a puckered, angry wound, still healing. The bleeding had stopped, though, and only a dull throb remained. The blood smeared across his body from last night was gone. Charity had cleaned him and then patched him up.