I sucked in a shaky breath. "I"m just saying that people can get into your head and make you think a certain way. And if it goes on long enough, it"s hard to break. Maybe Aiden changed things, but he was around for only a few years. This is an entire species" go-to response to life. Thousands of years of a certain mind-set. This is hard to break, and the ones who did escape, the ones who did break the mould, they were the ones trapped in those barns. They were punished for having the strength to leave, and who knows what they"ve been through since, because the women in the second barn didn"t even seem human anymore. They lost themselves completely."
"How do you even deal with that?" he asked. "Your grandmother and all of that."
"I made her forget me."
"That"s not dealing with it."
I wrinkled my nose. "Maybe not, but it freed me from her anyway."
"I"m so sorry," he said after a moment. "I didn"t mean to drag up bad memories. I wasn"t blaming the victims. I just meant if this can happen to a powerful group of shifters, then what hope is there for the rest of us?"
Sometimes I had the exact same thoughts myself. I glanced at Shay. I"d met him while I was looking for answers, and little about him had changed since then. He had a few more lines around his dark-brown eyes, and the lack of March sunshine had kept his sallow skin too pale to look healthy. But despite his worries, our world hadn"t ruined him. It hadn"t made him bitter or twisted. He still had an easy smile for anyone. He still worked tirelessly to reach those who needed help.
"I think I get it now," I said. "Why you suddenly left the Senate."
"Ah." He smiled, completely relaxing. I hadn"t even noticed how tense the conversation had made him. "The big question."
"Some people think it had something to do with Phoenix. He left shortly after you resigned."
"He did, but that was just a coincidence. I was glad he left. It didn"t give him a chance to talk me around." Grinning, he glanced at me. "I can do more where I am now. I"m out of the public eye, and I don"t have to waste my time on niceties and press conferences."
"You"re always nice to people."
"Yes, but now I don"t have to be."
I smiled. "You"re full of s.h.i.t. Still helping out at the boxing club?"
"More regularly than when I worked on the Senate. A couple of the young "uns from the children"s home come out once a week. Alanii brings them. It"s good. They"re mixing with other kids, and they seem to be enjoying it."
"I"d love to run a kind of halfway house for the older ones," I said. "Help them get out of the children"s home. A few of them have jobs now. They need to feel more independent. I have an empty building that would be perfect, actually."
"Quite the little entrepreneur of late, aren"t you? I wouldn"t have expected it from you."
"What did you think I was going to do? Hunt bad things forever?"
"Sort of, actually. But I agree on the halfway house. Maybe if Phoenix ever returns, we can both hijack him and persuade him it"s a good idea."
"It"s a deal," I said. "And even if-"
Shay"s phone rang before I could finish the sentence. His face drained of colour as he listened. The speaker on the other end of the call mentioned a dead body, and I immediately went into high alert. Another death?
He hung up and looked at me. "I take it you heard that."
"Dead body. Check. Sounds like your people are suspicious."
"Yeah, I got that, too. I don"t have time to drop you home. Will you stay in the car if I go take a look?"
"h.e.l.l no."
"Ava."
"Would you rather I lie? Seriously, I can help. Mac"s body was dead too long for me to pick up on anything about his killer. And I might not be as good as a h.e.l.lhound, but I can pick up a scent from a fresh body." I winced. "And now that I"ve actually admitted something so awful, you have to let me come with you."
He had an inner argument with himself before sighing. "Do not touch anything. Do not say anything to anyone. Do not do a thing unless I tell you to. Are we agreed?"
"No."
"Ava!"
"I"m not going to screw up anything, Shay. Calm down."
"If you can scent the killer, you will not go after the killer."
"Not even a little bit?"
"If you"re not going to take this seriously-"
"I"ll be good. Now hurry up."
He spun the car around, screeching tires and all, and drove in the opposite direction. "We"re going to Kildare," he said. "An anonymous tip mentioned a suspicious amount of blood. One of my teams was sent out to a house just past Naas. The body is in the garden, but the home is surrounded by a high wall, so no pa.s.sersby can see it."
"How did the anonymous tipper know about it then?"
"There is blood on the front gate, as far as I know, but we"ll see soon enough. I really hope this isn"t something weird."
I pointed at myself. "With this lucky charm hanging around? Not a chance."
He offered me a small smile. "We haven"t had much violence lately. At least, not as much as this time last year. But every single time I get a call about an anonymous tip, I start imagining ritual sacrifices and the like."
"Life is screwed up enough without your imagination adding to it. They didn"t say the body was human, did they?"
"They weren"t specific. I think they were afraid someone would hear. If the anonymous tipper heard something rather than saw it, then they could still be hanging around, listening in."
"Well, that"s not creepy at all."
For the rest of the journey, I kept up the job of trying to steer Shay away from dwelling on the dark side. It wasn"t too far, but every minute counted when the media had a habit of hanging around, trying to figure out Shay"s every move. He might have been the press"s golden boy for a while, but half of them currently spent their time trying to figure out what nefarious deeds had gotten Shay kicked off the Senate.
"How"s Emmett doing at school?" he asked. "And Dita and Leah, of course."
He genuinely cared about Emmett"s welfare. He had been on the scene the night Emmett had gone missing as a baby, and he had been one of the few Garda to believe that Peter was telling the truth about finding the bodies of the rest of Emmett"s family. Peter"s longstanding respect for Shay had somehow been twisted into a weird rivalry that Shay seemed oblivious to, but I was pretty sure they both thought a lot of each other.
"He"s doing really well," I said. "The school itself has been surprisingly effective. It"s weird what having a little focus does. They split the day in two: human studies then supernatural. I think that"s cool. They give the kids a chance to catch up on everyday skills, and a normal education in some cases, and then in the afternoon, they focus on their powers and heritage. A lot of people have lost too much by hiding away. I think it"s great that both the human and supernatural worlds are given equal weight."
"The next generation might have a choice of schools," Shay said. "Or better yet, every school will incorporate a little something from different cultures."
"When I was growing up, the thought of people knowing what I really was became my worst nightmare. I never imagined we"d get to this place so fast."
"And yet, here we are." He nodded at the road signs. "Nearly there. Sorry about this, Ava. I should be taking you to hospital, not dragging you to see a dead body."
I rubbed my tender jaw self-consciously. "I was too mad to be hurt at the time. Kinda stings now, but Anka will sort it out when I get home." I grimaced. "If she has anything left."
"I heard about the shop," he said. "Why didn"t you call the police at the time?"
"What would be the point? Besides, Breslin persuaded the Senate that they were responsible for damages."
"Breslin?"
"My solicitor."
"Oh." He glanced at me. "You sound like a grown-up. Stop making me feel ashamed."
"Blame my old landlady for leaving me in charge. I haven"t quite grown up yet."
He pulled the car down a side road and drove around to the front of a large house surrounded by concrete walls.
"Kind of an eyesore," I said.
"Yeah, well, people want to feel safe. Let them." He shook his head. "It wasn"t safe enough though."
"Come on," I said. "Let"s get this over with. It"s already been a long day."
As usual, he embarra.s.sed me by opening my door for me, then he made me wait at the gate while he went inside and spoke to a pair of stern-faced integration agents. The IAs both glanced at me and shrugged. Shay waved me over. I could already smell the blood. Yes, there were traces on the gate, but not enough that someone without a particularly strong sense of smell would notice. The female recruit was human, and the male, a shifter. He didn"t react when I reached them. My head swivelled as the smell of blood gripped me anew.
"Wow," I said. "This is" I shook my head and made my way over to the pulpy mess that might have been a body. I couldn"t even tell if it was a man or woman. Only the shredded clothing scattered across the blood-stained gra.s.s told me the form had been a human. The female recruit was looking a little green.
"This is awful," I whispered.
"It"s been a pretty grim day all round," Shay said.
He and I leaned over the body. Mac"s death seemed tame in comparison.
"Think it might have been vampires?" the brunette asked, covering her mouth.
"No way," I said instantly.
"How can you be so sure?" the shifter asked, but I could tell he agreed.
"The blood it doesn"t call to me," I said. "The vampires have specific tastes. Blood like this was protected generations upon generations ago. It made it less"
"Tasty?" the brunette offered.
"Something like that," I said. "And the vampires are supposedly overrun with human volunteers lately. They don"t need to attack like this." I thought of Jules going hungry. "Even if they were starving, vampires don"t actually eat flesh."
"I noticed that, too," the shifter said. "The organs appear to be missing also."
I moved around the body and noticed lumps of flesh flung across the lawn. Gross. I shuddered in disgust. When I sniffed the air, the smell of blood overwhelmed me, but underneath it was a trace of something else.
"It smells like wet fur. Did you pick that up? It is like fur, isn"t it?" I asked the shifter.
He nodded. "I don"t know anything furry that"s this vicious," he admitted.
I glanced at Shay. "I"ve seen creatures who have been ripped apart before," I said reluctantly. "I mean, it almost looks like-"
"A werewolf did it?" a male voice called out from the gate.
I turned, ready to defend myself, only to see the paragon standing there casually, his nose wrinkled in disgust.
"This kind of death has been seen thousands of times in the past," Regis said. "The werewolves were ordered into extinction for a reason."
"The werewolves didn"t do this," I said. "They wouldn"t. They couldn"t."
"You almost said it yourself." Shay sounded worried. "Do you know anything else that can do this?"
I shook my head. I didn"t, but I didn"t know of every species on the planet. "There has to be some other explanation. We know the werewolves. They haven"t harmed a single human since they were given land of their own."
"That"s not true," Regis said. "A human was slaughtered by werewolves last month, as it happens."
Shay"s flinch told me that was the truth.
"What happened?" I asked.
"A man was ripped apart. He had gotten drunk and gone out with a shotgun, tried to hunt himself a werewolf skin."
"What an idiot," I whispered. "Is that why you left the Senate?"
He gave me a sharp look. "I had left by then. It wasn"t a meaningless kill. One of the young werewolves was grazed by a bullet, and the pack destroyed the human in the attempt to stop the man from killing the child."
"s.h.i.t," I said. "Why haven"t I heard about this?"
"Because certain people want the werewolves to live," Regis said.
"What are you even doing here?" I demanded. "How did you know about this?"
"You think I am not informed when something goes wrong in this country?" he barked. "I know all. I see all. And I will deal with the werewolves this time. They are untameable killers, and they will all be put to death if I have any say in the matter." He sneered at me. "And what are you doing here, tainted one? Are you, too, capable of such destruction?"
"Okay." Shay stepped in front of me. "You two," he said to the IAs, "escort the paragon out of here. I"ll get the rest of the crew in to deal with the crime scene. Ava, I"ll take you home in five minutes, tops."
The recruits immediately moved forward, blocking the paragon from coming any closer.
I gave Shay a worried look. "This is bad, Shay."
"I know," he said. "But what can I do? You said it yourself-you"ve seen this before. So have I."
"I"ve seen werewolves tear the heads off vampires and beasts," I said. "I"ve seen them rip apart our enemies. I haven"t seen them harm any humans."
"I have, Ava, or at least witnessed the aftermath. Don"t you see?"
"Then why this man?"