Moment of Truth Read online

  When I first met Remy, she was posing as a Swyft driver, and not a very good one. She had been living out of her car until I gave her access to one of HQ’s bunkhouses while she got her feet under her. I hadn’t once considered she might be leaving anyone behind. As far as I knew, she was new in town and only here to murder Midas for killing Eight.

  Not for the first time, I was wrong, and I was humbled by my assumptions.

  “Will there be enough room?” I hated to nag, but I didn’t let that stop me. “There are two-bedroom floorplans, you know.”

  “Show them.” Remy cackled with delight. “Show them what you can do.”

  Lillian sat upright, and the scent of what I realized was her magic blossomed to fill the room. Her outline shimmered, leaving a lily behind in her place. Flowers, leaves, stem, bulb, roots, and all.

  It matched the flower in Remy’s hair down to the bright red-orange pollen on its anthers.

  The new fashion staple must be the fae equivalent of a friendship bracelet.

  “Whoa.” I took an automatic step closer. “How cool is that?”

  “You have no idea.” Remy’s chuckles tapered into a proud sigh. “She would plant herself at Home Depot, right? Just steal a pot, dump in some dirt, then make with the transformation. She would wait for a sucker to buy her, go home with them, then rob them blind and sneak out while they were at work.” Remy wiped tears from her eyes. “The store never caught on. Her marks didn’t either. She’s too slick.”

  The hairlike roots, bare and stringy, rustled against the crisp sheet as if Lillian was enjoying a laugh too.

  An unexpected shiver twitched in my neck as I downgraded her trick from cool to ever-so-slightly creepy.

  “Remy.” I hated to be such a downer, but it was in my job description. “Can we trust her?”

  A sentient plant could gather all kinds of intel while safe in her pot that could prove invaluable to an operation like the OPA, or the coven.

  The stubborn set to Remy’s jaw warned me I was in for an ear-chewing of epic proportions. She wanted me to let it go, to laugh and accept her friend, but I couldn’t do it. As much as I would love to relax my vigilance, I couldn’t afford to with the witchborn fae circling us. Perched on the tops of buildings, I pictured them as vultures waiting their turn to pick our bones clean and wished them indigestion if they tried it.

  The delicate flower shivered, its leaves rustling, and the girl reappeared with a greenish tint to her skin that looked natural on her rather than unhealthy.

  “I did what it took to survive,” she said with a jut of her chin I had seen more than once in the mirror, “and I’m not sorry.”

  “Goddess.” I rubbed my forehead. “How do I get myself into these situations?”

  “I won’t be any trouble,” Lillian promised me with liquid eyes. “I don’t want to be a criminal. I never did. I want to help out, like Remy does. She says you gave her a shot. Why not me?”

  The urge to cross to the nearest wall and bang my head until my brain fell out left my feet twitchy.

  “Remy, can I speak to you?” I jerked my thumb toward the hall. “Alone?”

  “Rem?” Lillian twisted her fingers in the sheet. “I didn’t get you in trouble, did I?”

  “Nah.” Remy waved off her worry. “I told you…” her gaze landed on me, “…Hadley is one of the good ones.”

  With a setup like that, any punishment or reprimand I handed down would cast me in the role of villain.

  Frak, frak, frak.

  Guiding her a few doors down, I pulled on my potentate face. “She’s not going to be a problem, is she?”

  “No,” Remy rushed out too fast. “I promise. And she’s got talent. A really cool talent. You can use her.”

  “I have too much on my plate as it is.” I had no room for extra helpings. “Lillian is your responsibility.”

  “She’ll sit in her pot on the fire escape all day and won’t bother a soul.” She crossed her heart. “I swear.”

  “And at night?” I searched her face. “What will she do then?”

  Not break into home improvement stores and pass herself off as merchandise. Not if she wanted to live here. But I was beating a dead horse with Remy. She wasn’t listening anymore. She had her heart set on Lillian, and I couldn’t find it in myself to break it.

  I was going to cave.

  I could feel it.

  “She doesn’t have a head for numbers, but she loves to decorate. She can help with interior design for the new Peachy Keen stores. You should have seen the box she was living in. It was beautiful.” She squinted one eye. “Well, it was on the inside. The outside looked like trash.” She shrugged. “It discouraged folks from stealing from her.”

  “You’re playing the sympathy card hard right now.”

  “You’ve got a marshmallow heart. It’s all big and squishy, and it goes all ooey-gooey.” Remy grinned, scenting victory. “You won’t turn her out now that you’ve met her.”

  Ugh.

  I hated when she was right.

  “No one stays at the Faraday long term without approval from the board. She’s got twenty-four hours to fill out the proper paperwork. After that, if she doesn’t comply, or if they reject her application, she’s got to go.” I could put a rush on it, but that was as far as I was willing help. “You’ve got to teach her the proper way to enter and exit the building too. Like now. Tonight. She can’t sneak past Hank again. Or any other gwyllgi. Their noses are too keen.” Which brought up a good point. “How did she manage invisibility?”

  “Check out her hands when we go back in. She invests her money in protective charms.” A few ounces of her usual bravado leaked out of her. “She can turn into a plant. Plants can’t defend themselves real well. She can do a few more tricks, thanks to the charms, but none of them are offensive. Only defensive. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone. She just wants a safe place to crash while she decides what to do with her life.”

  Most lesser fae fresh from Faerie ended up on the streets until they learned how to conform. More ended up dead when they couldn’t learn fast enough. It was a brutal reminder the grass isn’t always greener.

  “You stamped sucker on my forehead while I wasn’t looking, didn’t you?”

  “Nah.” Her grin bared pointy teeth. “I waited until you were asleep. You can sleep through anything.”

  Sleep.

  Man, that sounded good right about now.

  “Just don’t let word get out I’m a soft touch,” I warned, “or I’ll never get my street cred back.”

  “You make a difference, you know.” She was oddly earnest for a change. “You helped me. Now I get to help Lily. I’m paying it forward. She will too.” She fell silent. “It’s not much, compared to what you do, but—”

  “No buts.” I gathered her into a hug that left her squawking and flailing like a parrot with its tail feathers stuck in its cage door. “I’m proud of you.”

  I wished she had waited to exhibit growth when I had more time and energy to babysit her metamorphosis, but at some point, you had to climb out of the driver’s seat and pass over the keys.

  Shoving me back, she curled her lip for show and grumbled, “That’s got to be a workplace violation.”

  “Probably,” I agreed, “but we’re not at one of our stores, or kiosks, or on company time.”

  After smoothing her clothes, as if my hug left a stain, she flounced off down the hall, back to her friend.

  I followed at a more sedate pace, and Ambrose cast himself as a cat-sized snail inching along the wall.

  “Jerk.” I swatted at him, not that it would do any good. “Go pick on someone your own size.”

  Ambrose twisted himself back into his Hadley shape, making us identical.

  I really should have seen that one coming.

  Midas exited the exam room as I arrived, and he brushed his fingertips under my eyes. “You’re tired.”

  A tingle spread from that touch, and I leaned in for more. “You’re sexy.
”

  “Thank you, but flattery won’t get you out of taking a nap.” He tucked me against his side. “Remy can handle things from here. She just went through the application process, so she can guide her friend through it without us.”

  “I hope this doesn’t come back to bite me.” I sighed. “Remy is a good egg who was dealt a bad hand.”

  “Eggs have hands?”

  “Ha-ha.” I elbowed him. “Funny guy thinks he’s funny.”

  An audible vibration sent me on a wild-goose chase for my phone.

  “It’s in your left hand,” Midas informed me without so much as twitching his lips.

  Well, look at that. He was right. “How did it get there?”

  “You must have gotten it out while you were talking to Remy.” He cleared his throat, which did nothing to hide his laughter with me plastered against him. “You were probably considering beating her to death with it.”

  “Nah.” I was too tired for that, cathartic though it might be. “I did consider giving myself a concussion to mentally escape the situation.”

  Gesturing toward my hand, in case I forgot where my phone was again, he asked, “That an update from Bishop?”

  “Yup.” I scanned the message. “He says he’ll meet us in the lobby in an hour.”

  While I was at it, I requested Anca run a background check on Lily using her application from the Faraday as soon as it was filed. It skirted a line, yes, but Remy would do the same for me. These days we couldn’t take anyone at face value, not when so many of our enemies wore so many different faces.

  Midas shuffled me into the elevator. “That’s good news.”

  “We’re sitting ducks in a giant blind spot.” I tipped my head back to see him. “How is that good news?”

  “They cut the feeds. That means their magic can’t hide them from the cameras.”

  “That is a silver lining, I suppose, but it won’t help us in the interim.”

  “The pack has recently purchased two dozen drones.” He kept me from wobbling as the car shot up to the top of the building then nudged me onto our floor after the chime. “I might be persuaded to loan a dozen of those to the OPA.”

  “You understand once Bishop gets his hands on them, he will never return them?”

  “That’s why I doubled my original order.”

  “Smart.”

  “Well?” He let me into our apartment. “Do I have your permission to send them over?”

  “Have them brought here.” I yawned. “Bishop can pick them up when he arrives.”

  A frown bisected Midas’s forehead. “He doesn’t trust his drop boxes anymore?”

  “Not for big-ticket items like this. I doubt one location would hold them anyway.”

  And he would want his new toys in his hot little hands as soon as inhumanly possible.

  “All right.” He got out his phone. “I’ll have Ford load them in his truck.”

  The urge to peek out the window to do a bit of spying of my own tempted me to locate the remote that operated the blinds, but self-preservation overcame my brain fog.

  “New plan,” I announced, thumbs flying over my screen. “I’ll bait Bishop with the drones, then let him figure out the logistics to get them—and Ford—here safely.”

  “I like this plan even better.”

  “Hello,” a silky voice purred from the shadows. “I wondered when you would arrive.”

  Midas flipped on the lights then prowled to my side where he vibrated with predatory annoyance.

  “Um.” I rubbed my eyes, but Vasco remained standing in the middle of our living room. “What are you doing here?”

  I rested a hand on Midas’s arm, a plea to let Vasco talk before Midas murdered him for trespassing.

  Arms spread wide, he turned a slow circle, putting his flawless body on display. “I’m a gift from Bishop.”

  Too bad I didn’t see a return label stamped among the feathers of the winged tattoo on his back.

  The blackout, okay, I could see the delay in the OPA warning me there, but this?

  Bishop owed me a heads-up before inviting dangerous fae into our home without our permission.

  “I’m not unwrapping you, if that’s what you’re waiting on.”

  “And here I wore laces, just in case.” Twisting to the side, he showcased the leather ties crisscrossing his upper thighs in a design that boggled me as to how he kept his pants on. “What do you think?” He wet his lips at Midas. “I have another pair in red, if you’re interested.”

  Jaw tight, Midas managed a polite tone. “I’m mated.”

  “So?” He toyed with the loop in one bow near his hip. “Let her watch. Let her participate. Let her learn.”

  As the youngest person in the room, with inarguably the tamest sexual history, I was not amused.

  “I hate to rain on your parade,” I lied, wishing for an umbrella to beat him with, “but I don’t share.”

  Midas slid an arm around my waist. “Neither do I.”

  “Give it a few centuries,” Vasco demurred, “then we’ll revisit the topic.”

  “Bishop sent you?” I prodded him. “Why would he do that?”

  “I have information.”

  A sigh moved through Midas. “What do you want for it?”

  Glaring at Midas, I stomped his foot while giving Vasco a hard pass. “We’re not interested.”

  “The price has been paid.” He lifted a shoulder. “You will hear it, whether you want to or not.”

  “What is the deal with you and Bishop?” I bristled at his smug tone. “Why can’t you leave him alone?”

  The two kept getting closer, and I didn’t like it. Granted, I didn’t have to like it, but I worried for him.

  “I did not summon myself.” He smiled, all teeth. “Bishop called me, as he always does, and I gave him what he wants, as I always do. If you take offense to my presence, you should tell him so, not me. I am but a humble messenger.”

  Humble, my left toe. There wasn’t a meek bone in his flawless body.

  “Hadley.” Midas tightened his grip. “Let it go.”

  The relationship between Bishop and Vasco was none of my business, but the cost of Bishop doing business with him grated on me. Half our problems could be traced back to our bargain with Natisha. I didn’t want that for Bishop, regardless of his past with Vasco.

  “Vasco,” Midas exhaled his name. “We’re tired and have no time for games.”

  “Perhaps you would be less exhausted if you made time to play.” Vasco heaved a sigh when we refused to encourage his threesome sales pitch a second time. “Fine.” He raked a long-fingered hand through his curtain of black hair. “You’ve encountered a type of glamour that your gift of sight can’t penetrate, yes?”

  “Yes,” we agreed together.

  “Your sight can pierce witch and fae glamours. Necromancers too. Most illusions, in fact, or it would not be a gift worth giving.” He sniffed at that, as if the glamour’s resistance was an insult to him. “What you have encountered is not a form of glamour but a type of charm that requires the target’s blood to create.”

  “I don’t understand,” I confessed. “How is that not a glamour?”

  “Illusion is just that—a reflection of the caster’s vision of reality. It’s not an exact replica, and it can be modified on a whim.” He lifted a finger. “A charm of that nature creates a precise mirror image, untarnished by perspective.”

  Mulling that over, I got a handle on the basic premise. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?”

  As in, if I could cast, say, a Midas glamour, I might recall him as more handsome than he was in reality. I might forget a mole or a laugh line. His entire appearance would be shaped by how I felt about him, making it an imperfect version.

  “Precisely.” He appeared to consider his words. “The blood link gives the charm more weight than a glamour. That’s why you can’t see through it. It’s not real, but it’s forged in blood, and that makes it real enough.”

  “Gr
eat.” I rubbed my forehead until I gave myself an even worse headache. “What is their obsession with identity theft?”

  “All covens specialize, and theirs is no different. They are masters of their chosen craft.” Vasco shrugged a negligent shoulder. “The charms are ideal for the rare targets who have the sight or are immune to glamour.”

  The throb between my eyes made focus difficult, but I promised myself ibuprofen if I got through this. “How can we tell the difference?”

  “You can’t,” he said simply. “Not without my help.”

  “Bishop paid you for information,” I guessed, “but not for your assistance.”

  Vasco said nothing to the charges I laid at his feet. He let me work it out for myself.

  “That means there’s no easy way to tell the difference,” I decided, “or the ability isn’t worth the cost.”

  “Abbott’s test can still identify coven black magic users,” Midas added. “Bishop must be trusting in that.”

  We tested everyone and their momma, some multiple times a day, so no charm would protect them.

  “Can we trust you?” I hadn’t meant to ask, but the words popped out of my mouth.

  “No.” He blinked at me. “I am what I am, and you are what you are, and we are not the same.”

  Fae made my head want to explode. “You could have stopped at no.”

  “Rest.” He kissed my forehead, and cold seeped from his lips into my skin. “You will need it.”

  The headache vanished by the time he reached the door, but I bit my cheek to keep from thanking him.

  Maybe it was a coincidence and the pain had stopped all on its own. It didn’t have to be a gift, right?

  Hoping against hope, I prayed there were no strings attached. I was too tired to untangle any knots of obligation at the moment without garroting myself in the process.

  The door shut behind him, though he didn’t touch it, and Midas and I breathed easier after I locked it.

  “I’m taking his advice.” I stared up at the loft and the bazillion steps to reach the top, then dropped my gaze to the bedroom we seldom used but was right in front of us. “Up or down?”