Hired Hunter (The Rover 2)

“Are you listening, Zoey? Please, help me. We need you!”

The urgency in his voice drew me fully to consciousness. I sat up, wincing and aching in every muscle which twitched as I rolled over.

“Captain, what do you need? As you can see, I’m not exactly in fighting form at the moment. You have an entire battalion of well-trained guards at your house. Can’t they help you?”

“Not with this. I can’t trust them anymore. Someone has been spying for the Black Mage. I discovered it tonight.”

Oh, shit... Me too. No one should have known about my virginity or that I was more than a standard bounty hunter.

“You want me to catch your traitor? That’s easy enough done when it’s daylight and I’m not actually dying.”

“Zoey, please. I don’t have time,” he said. “I need you to find Fin. He and I share a connection, but it’s nothing like the vow you and he share. Please tell me where he is.”

I spun back to look at his ghostly self. “Why can’t you find him? Isn’t he at his house with you right now?”

Did I leave him in the woods with the fake Sol?

Damn it.

Chapter Seventeen

I eyed the captain’s spectral form. “What’s happening right now, by the way? How are you contacting me like this?”

His form wavered. No doubt whatever he did taxed his strength. Like me, he needed to recover. “It’s not something I advertise, but I’m also a mage. Born, like you, not created like the Black Mage.”

“Born?” I whispered. “That matters?”

“Of course it does. You’ve not taken anyone’s magic, their life, to bolster your own power. Neither have I. Once a mage crosses that barrier, he or she becomes something else, someone else. I work hard to maintain the lines of my power and keep it in check. Ideally, I don’t do any magic, but seeing as this was an emergency, I made an exception.”

I hung my head. “Tell me what you want me to do and I will so I can go back to sleep.”

“Find Fin. Use your bond and locate him.”

Instead of arguing, as was my first instinct with him, I closed my eyes and focused on the bond stretched tight between us. I followed it, trailing my consciousness down its length to find our missing fae. But on the other side, stood a door. Fin had hidden himself behind it to keep me out.

I blinked my eyes open and stared up at the captain, trying to hide the hurt in my chest at him cutting me off. “I don’t know where he is. He’s blocking me. I’ll come. Give me a little time and I’ll be there.”

He nodded and his form wavered and disappeared. I quickly dressed, noting my wounds looked weeks through healing, not just a few hours. Everything still hurt, but I grabbed my black steel knives and slipped them into their sheathes on the outside of my thighs, and walked out the door.

A black SUV sat on the curb, one of the captain’s guards inside. Was this the traitor? If I climbed inside would he take me to Fin’s? Or to the Black Mage?

I climbed into the back of the car and snapped my seatbelt on. “Take me to Fin’s.”

He pulled away without a word. Only one way to find out how this would end. I settled into the seat to wait.

When we arrived at Fin’s home, I wasn’t sure if I felt relief or disappointment. With the end in sight, I just wanted to finish things up and get back to my bed. One way or another.

The driver barely got out of the car before I charged into the house.

The captain met me inside the door, and we marched straight to his office. I half expected Fin to be sitting behind his desk, staring out the window. Obviously, he wasn’t.

I faced the captain. “When was the last time you saw him?”

“When you left, he followed you to the door, and that was it. I tried to speak to him, but he went into his room and refused to see anyone.”

Guilt raked down my insides in red, furious lines. “Well, don’t you two have a mental thing? Can’t you see where he is?”

He paced in front of the doors. “It’s only in person. Now I wish it weren’t, but he’s never gone off like this before.”