"You can"t let her do this," she insisted.
"You know how she is. The bear can"t let things lie. I need your help with her. The thing is, Mac"s making a big deal about a shifter not having a pack, and he"s boasting about her being the first on his list. You"re technically a shifter, Val. He might come after you next."
She chewed on that idea for a moment. "And if he succeeds with us, he"ll move on to the werewolves."
"Bingo. Phoenix needs to be here, if only for that. I"d beg you to come back to us, but you might be safer in the sanctuary. I"m afraid they"ll come for you while we"re distracted with Esther. She said that every free shifter she knows of has disappeared. Either they"re dead or are being forced to stay with the pack. What"s off-limits to people like that?"
She swore under her breath. "All this because of Aiden."
"So they say," Peter added.
She jolted. "What does that mean?"
"We think it might be an excuse," I explained. "A lot of people have targets on their backs right now, and you"re strong, Val. You could win a challenge against Mac."
She released a sound of disgust and sat back down. "I could, but I don"t wish to run a pack. Especially not his."
"Right, but in Mac"s eyes, you"re still a threat. Your strength and dominance makes you a risk that Mac won"t want to take. That means taking you out of the equation completely," Peter said.
"Add that to the fact you"re a woman-and Mac wants women barefoot and pregnant-and you can see why we might worry," I said. "Leah will get caught up in the aftermath if you take on the shifters that might come for you."
"Are you sure I shouldn"t return?" Val asked, almost desperately. "What about Anka and Dita?"
"What if they came here for a while?" I suggested. "The cul-de-sac is supposed to be protected, but I have doubts about the authenticity of that claim. If someone like Mac can walk right in"
"Unless he hasn"t wanted to harm anyone before," Peter said.
"Can I trust that, though?"
"I trust it," he said firmly.
"Anka won"t come here," Val said. "She trusts in it, too."
"At least she"ll have the option to change her mind," I said. "All of them do."
My phone rang in my pocket. "Hold on." I frowned when a familiar name popped up on the screen. "It"s Margie."
The old woman was upset when I answered, and by the time I hung up, I was shaking with anger. "Margie and Anka just arrived at their shop. It"s been completely trashed."
"Let"s go," Val said. Peter was already on his way out the door.
Anka and Margie"s "little" potion-making business had been so successful that they had persuaded me to rent them a shop. I used the income to buy half their stock on a regular basis, and everyone was happy. The sweet, homey apothecary shop provided both women"s only income.
Peter broke red lights while driving to the shop, where we found Anka and Margie cleaning up gla.s.s on the footpath outside. I stared at the damage in horror, having to cover my nose from the smell. The windows had been smashed completely. The signs had been torn down and urinated on. Furious, I stepped inside.
"Careful," Anka said. "Some of it is potent."
I turned to look at her. "I"m so sorry."
Her eyes were gla.s.sy with unshed tears. "This isn"t your fault."
I gave her a brief hug then moved inside, careful not to inhale too deeply. The shop was only large enough for one centre aisle and shelves on one wall of the unit. All of the gla.s.s bottles had been smashed, and other containers had been crushed.
Gla.s.s crunched underfoot as I trod carefully around the shop. I wanted to burst with anger, but I was careful to keep calm. Whoever had damaged the shop had destroyed literally every item. The non-breakable containers had been opened, their contents upended onto the floor, and in some cases, the scent of urine was intense enough to make my eyes water. The message was their strongest yet: don"t screw with the shifter animals who liked to scare women.
"f.u.c.k!" I kicked at broken gla.s.s covered in syrupy, bubbly fluid. It slid across the floor, leaving a dark stain in its wake. Unable to take the stench anymore, I headed back outside.
Val had her arms wrapped around Anka in an embrace.
"This was too far," Val said.
"I know."
"This isn"t your fault." Peter laid a hand on my shoulder. "We"ll get through this."
Margie was crying. Peter patted her back; she wrapped her arms around him and wept against his chest. The sound of the older woman"s cries broke my heart. She had been loyal to me from day one, and the shop had been her lifeline. Anka had come from nothing, and the business had filled her with confidence for the first time since we"d met. The pair had put hours into creating the potions and remedies in their shop. Who were the shifters to just take all of that away?
Val was shaking so hard that Anka stepped away from her. "Stay calm," she said. "They"re not worth your anger."
"Look at this damage." Val glared at me. "I"m going to kill him. Mac is a dead man."
"I"m going to get the Senate to pay for this s.h.i.t," I said harshly. "I"m going to organise a meeting with whoever the h.e.l.l is left in the country, and they"re going to tell me to my face how they let this happen. I"m going to accuse Mac, and I"m not going to let it go."
"We have no proof it was him," Anka said.
Val made a sound of disgust. "I can smell the shifters all over this. They made a mistake this time."
"Not all shifters are with Mac," I said. "Just remember that next time you smell a shifter. Please, n.o.body tell Esther about this. The last thing we need is for her to run straight into Mac"s clutches."
"You really think the Senate will listen to you?" Peter asked.
I thought of Willow and how she had begged me to be an advocate for those in need, how she wanted me to be the voice for those who weren"t being heard. I had my chance to advocate for the people I cared about. And if I stepped back now, people like Mac would keep pushing.
"I"ll make them listen," I said. "I"m going to raise h.e.l.l, and they"re going to hear every word. And that stupid vampire queen is going to regret ever taking Mac"s side."
"We need to go back to the old days," Peter said. "We need to make allies again. Ones who actually stay in the country for longer than five minutes."
"No, we need people to beg us to be their allies," I said.
Margie sniffed and finally let Peter go. "You all should go on. We can"t leave this here. If certain mixtures combine, they can become toxic."
"She"s right." Anka pulled a headscarf out of her bag and tied it over her hair. "We need to clean this up immediately. We use containers of different shapes and materials to protect the contents even if some are knocked over accidentally. This"-she gestured inside-"took time and effort. We can"t leave this here."
"I"ll stay and help," I said. "Val, Peter, is there any way you can track down known free shifters?"
"Anyone in particular?" Peter asked.
"Mac"s ex," I said. "He did this to her, too."
"Wait, the one who left the pack for a human?" he asked. "She was with Mac?"
"So Esther said." The story had broken in the papers weeks ago as a barring order against the alpha, forbidding him from contacting his ex, surfaced. According to the female shifter, Mac had stalked and threatened her before finally trashing her house, but the Senate had quickly covered up the story, then it was forgotten. "If we can find her, maybe we can figure out what Mac"s going to do next. I"d start with the human she ran off with." I hesitated. "If you can find him."
"Think he"s dead?" Peter asked.
"I wouldn"t put anything past the shifters lately."
"We should hurry," Val said.
Peter nodded. "Let"s go. Ava, call me if anything else happens."
The pair left in his car, wearing matching looks of determination.
"Setting them a task away from here was a good idea," Anka said. "Val would only have gotten more worked up if she"d stayed with us. You don"t have to stay, either, Ava. I know your sense of smell will make this difficult for you."
"Maybe I deserve a little punishment," I said. "I"ve sat back and let this go on for too long. I"m so sorry you two got caught up in this."
"Sometimes, I worry this world will never be right again," Margie said with another sniff.
We jumped into the cleaning, trying to figure out how to dump all of the materials safely. I kept my eyes open for any shifters coming by to see the aftermath, but none showed themselves.
Then another thought struck me. If I owned the shop that Anka and Margie rented, then it should have been protected by the same spell that protected the cul-de-sac. If those under my protection were so untouchable, then how did we keep getting attacked? Were we protected only from bodily harm?
As soon as I was done with the Senate, I was going to have to have a very long chat with Martin Breslin about the exact rules and loopholes of Baba Yaga"s legacy. The Eleven had allowed me to fight against the first vampire because it had suited their own ends, but I hadn"t done a thing about Mac yet, other than hiding Esther"s location from him. So how had he found a way around the very things that were supposed to protect, not just me, but the people I cared about, too?
Chapter Four.
Willow was only too happy to organise a meeting with the Senate on my behalf.
"I do hope you know what you"re doing," she said over the phone, but she sounded eager to help.
"As long as I"m doing something, I"m good." I thought of Margie"s face as she"d taken in the damage done to her livelihood. Being the little person at the whims of powerful people grated on me. The time had come for us to stop making ourselves such an easy target.
Willow organised the meeting for the following evening. In the meantime, the building that housed Martin Breslin"s office and Valeria Brannigan Investigations had been covered in graffiti.
"Can"t even prove it," Peter said as we stood outside. "How did this get so petty?"
"Three strikes," I said, unable to keep the anger out of my voice. "That bully is pushing me too far."
"I"ll be accompanying you to this meeting," Breslin said firmly. "I"ll make sure you"re recouped for the damages. Don"t you worry."
"I don"t think this is quite the job for a human solicitor," I said gently.
"I"ve been in more complicated situations before, I a.s.sure you. Baba Yaga taught me well."
"All right then," I said, curious to see what he would unleash on the Senate.
By the time the meeting rolled around, I was completely jacked up on nerves and anger. Mac had to pay, and I"d been left to deal with him.
Peter drove Breslin and me to the new meeting house, which was actually a refurbished courtroom. The Senate had once thought it a good idea to meet in an old theatre, but after it was attacked and set on fire, they"d realised something a little more secure was necessary.
Inside the meeting room, I started to worry. The Senate hadn"t yet arrived. In fact, the only person in the room other than the three of us was a man sitting at the end of the back row.
He turned to look in our direction, and his gaze locked on to mine. Something in those navy eyes made me uncomfortable. He had dark, curly hair that reached his chin, and his nose hooked a touch too far to the left. His mouth was little more than two thin pink lines pressed together. He didn"t look tall, strong, or intimidating, but something about the way he held himself called out to me that he was untouchable.
"We"ll take a seat at the front." Breslin led the way to the front row of benches that faced the main table where the Senate would sit, what was left of them anyway.
I felt the stranger"s eyes boring into my back. Curious, I sent out my other senses, those tendrils of power that could see a person"s "other" energy and, more often than not, their true form. My senses found the forms of the human men sitting on either side of me. Breslin, white haired and brown eyed, had a calm, confident sort of energy. His red pulsing ma.s.s was steady, instantly making me feel secure.
Peter had the same red energy of a human life, but his was a little different. I had never noticed before, not being in the habit of comparing human energies. Restless, Peter"s stirred constantly, and the faintest hint of "other" wavered about him. If I hadn"t known that his son was special, and therefore had to have inherited some of that from Peter, I might not have noticed. I had begun to wonder if Peter was hiding things from himself, never mind the rest of us.
I tried to move on to the stranger, but I seemed to get stuck in a web before I could reach him. I moved past him and outside, into the real world. There, I easily found more energies, more people. I returned to the stranger, again getting trapped before I could reach him. Shivering, I forced myself to face forward and not look him directly in the eye.
The door screeched open, and two sets of footsteps moved down the aisle and up to the main table. James, the human candidate more concerned with business than actual people, and Layla, the succubus representative, ignored us as they pa.s.sed. Peter nudged me, but I was too busy glaring at their backs to pay him any attention. When they took their seats, James kept talking to Layla, who graced us with the briefest nod. I wondered if my old neighbour, an annoying energy-vampire succubus, was also watching me through Layla"s eyes.
When Willow arrived soon after, she leaned over Peter to whisper to me that she hadn"t been able to get in touch with Phoenix, Elathan, or Vega. She sounded apologetic, and I knew that meant the numbers were stacked against me.
Daimhn turned up next, joined by Eloise, Jules, and the two shifters who served as Senate guards. Eloise sat in the bench across from us, giving me one of her enigmatic smiles. I hadn"t seen the child-like vampire in a long time, and I wasn"t exactly keen on seeing the green-eyed Jules more frequently. He was a biter.
The memory of him biting me shocked me into a second look at him. Jules"s eyes were pure green, which meant he hadn"t been feeding regularly. A glance at Eloise confirmed that her eyes were not a pure red, either, although she had been feeding more often than Jules had. He pressed his body against her side as though he were seeking comfort. What was going on in the vampire queen"s coven? She had boasted of being well-fed, but that apparently didn"t extend to the rest of her coven.
"Did you forget to feed your pet?" I asked Daimhn before she took her seat.
She gave me a sharp, surprised look. "Sometimes, even the lowest of pets require re-training. The most obvious punishment tends to work best."
"I"m more into positive reinforcement myself." I tried to look relaxed as the vampire queen focused all of her hatred on me. A giggle from Eloise creeped me out all the more.
Callista arrived then, interrupting what was becoming an increasingly awkward face-off. "I"m so sorry I"m late," she gushed. "I had to take some pictures outside."
She really meant her fans had been waiting, as always. The curvaceous blond siren had become quite the rising star since first appearing on the Senate. Her sessions in Finn"s bar were legendary.
Callista looked up at the waiting Senate. "Is this all who"s coming tonight?"
"We"re waiting for Mac," James said gruffly. "This is all down to him, apparently."
"We don"t know that for certain," Layla said.
"You don"t know that he trashed our properties?" Peter asked. "Or if he has somebody else pulling his strings?"
It was an empty taunt, Peter and I both knew, but half the Senate froze in their seats. I exchanged a bemused glance with Peter, and when I looked at Breslin, his expression was smug. He knew exactly what angle he was taking.
"Well," Willow said hesitantly, "I suppose we should wait for Mac."