1. Chapter 1

1

A s Aldous laid out one of the best plans she’d ever heard for getting them all killed, Rebecca Bloodshadow could hardly force herself to listen.

Despising the guy was so much easier. It felt a hell of a lot better too—a sensation generally lacking within this magical task force Aldous seemed perpetually intent on running into the ground, with no regard for any of their lives.

If they gave out awards for Biggest Magical Vigilante Dumbass, this guy would win all of them. Every single time.

“Once I’m in,” Aldous continued, “we shouldn’t have any problems. Stand aside, leave the rest of it to me. I’ll do the talking. Make ’em see they have no choice but to work with us on this, and they’ll come around. Any questions?”

The humid air soaked with the tang of spices from The Curry House five blocks over almost made Rebecca gag—or maybe it was just the sound of Aldous’s voice. Either way, no one on the small team he’d dragged out to this empty parking lot in the middle of the night for their so-called mission said a word.

Aldous barely gave them time to respond, anyway. “No? Great. Let’s move—”

“What about a Plan B?” Leonard asked. The short, skittish mage practically shrank into the shoulders of his leather trench coat two sizes too big when Aldous’s bright-green eyes settled on him.

“Plan B? Did that literally just come out of your mouth right now?”

Leonard blinked furiously, glancing at each of the five other Shade members huddling in the group with him and finding himself entirely alone in this. “I…I j-just mean…j-just in case, you know? Like, if s-something goes wrong—”

Aldous moved in the blink of an eye. His skin took on a greenish hue as one arm reached toward Leonard, growing impossibly long across the team’s little huddle until he’d clenched one dark-green fist around the collar of that overlarge trench coat and practically lifted the mage off his feet.

“If something goes wrong?” he snarled. “You think something’s gonna go wrong?”

“N-no,” Leonard stammered. His terrified gulp probably could’ve been heard from miles away.

Rebecca wouldn’t have been surprised if that was what gave away their position to the gang of griybreki holing up in this abandoned apartment building on Chicago’s east side before they ever even got started.

“I j-just meant—”

“It won’t go wrong!” Aldous snapped. “It’s my job to plan this shit and your job to carry it out. Are we clear?”

“Yep,” the mage squeaked.

Aldous shook him again with his impossibly long arm before releasing the collar of Leonard’s trench coat.

The mage crumpled to the floor in a pile of worn dark leather and scuffling boots, then desperately tried to pull himself back together.

Before the mage finished clambering back to his feet, Aldous’s arm retracted to its original size, his green skin returning to the flesh-colored tone he preferred to adopt in a world overrun by humans. Then he inhaled deeply through his nose, smoothed his greasy green-black hair away from his forehead with both hands, and grinned. “That’s what I thought.”

Rebecca fixed him with a deadpan stare.

Fucking changeling.

Aldous readjusted his light-gray suit jacket, jerking his wrists below the cuffs and straightening himself out before he turned his back on the entire team he was supposed to lead. “You all know what to do and how this plays out. Try not to fuck it up.”

Then he took off across the parking lot, away from his team and the butter-yellow 1972 Volkswagen Bus currently serving as their getaway car.

Leonard finally finished dusting himself off, wobbled on his feet, then stared at the ground, his cheeks blooming with a hot, angry-red flush.

“You good?” Nyx asked, reaching toward him.

He brushed the katari’s hand away with a grunt. “Just forget it.”

Rebecca would’ve loved to pounce on Aldous now instead of the griybreki gang they were allegedly here to challenge and conquer the way their leader had planned.

She still didn’t know Shade’s other members all that well—on purpose—but she did know none of them deserved to be dragged through the mud like this over and over again, all so some changeling asshole could get his rocks off with another impossible power grab.

It certainly wasn’t what she’d signed up for.

Maxwell was the first to step forward after their leader. No surprise there. “Everyone knows the plan.”

“It’s a shit plan,” Rebecca muttered. “Even you know that.”

The shifter turned slightly to look over his shoulder at her, his eyes narrowing with a brief flash of silver as a low growl escaped him. “And we all have a job to do. That includes you, elf.”

Then he stalked across the parking lot after Aldous without another word.

“I’m telling you guys,” Leonard whispered once Aldous and Maxwell were out of earshot, shaking his head. “This isn’t gonna work.”

As the team fell in line anyway, Diego tugged his baseball cap farther down over his forehead to hide the deep, glowing red of his eyes, then shot the mage a sidelong glance. “You think we don’t all know that already? This whole thing is shit. But you heard Mr. Head of Security over there. We all got a job. And I’m not trying to get my ass handed to me by the dude in charge like you almost did.”

Leonard glared back at him. “You think I wanted that?”

“Better get moving.” The low, rumbling voice from behind made everyone else take an involuntary step forward to move out of the way. Titus was one of a kind—giant as hell, built like a fucking tank, and almost as impenetrable.

Rebecca just hoped for his sake that the vuulbor was as immune to Aldous’s stupidity as he was to nearly every other form of attack, magical or otherwise.

Pursing her lips, she stepped forward with the others, producing a streaking crackle of crimson battle magic in one hand. “Let’s get this over with, then.”

With Aldous taking an arrogant twenty-foot lead and his shifter Head of Security stalking off after him, the other five Shade members followed suit, quickly fanning out across the lot to take their designated positions.

Rebecca kept her mouth shut through sheer force of will, which was almost more painful than the epic failure she knew their leader was about to drag them through tonight. Not for the first time, either.

It wasn’t because she was afraid of the changeling, like Leonard and Nyx were. Once upon a time, Rebecca wouldn’t have hesitated to shut Aldous’s mouth for him and teach the guy a lesson he desperately needed; if it ended up saving innocent lives in the process, that was a bonus.

She didn’t hold back out of some misplaced sense of order and duty, either, like Maxwell. The shifter was a stickler for the rules and wound up tighter than the extra coil of firing wire she’d once found in Shade’s basement armory. No doubt about it.

He’d been that way from the very beginning, from the second Rebecca had stumbled into Shade’s sights and found herself passing their tests and surviving “initiation”.

Honestly, the shifter’s diligent carrying-out of orders and obeying all the rules had at first made joining Shade’s ranks fairly attractive.

All because Rebecca had assumed six months ago that she’d be joining a cause meant to sweep Chicago’s streets clean of the magical scum too slippery for the Magical Judiciary Council’s grasp.

Misplaced magicals bringing justice and a hell of a fight to the overlooked criminals who thought the laws of the human world didn’t apply to them and the Xaharí laws of the old world wouldn’t catch up to them.

Yeah, it had seemed like the perfect way to stay busy. To give back a little where she could. To keep her head down, out of the spotlight and out of broad public speculation.

Fighting underground battles in the dark of night against the kind of deviant assholes who kept their shady business on the down-low and out of the public eye in the first place—this should have been a perfect fit for her.

Clearly, that wasn’t the case.

But she kept her mouth shut anyway because it was safer. It kept her relatively anonymous. Just another grunt following orders, another cog in the giant machine of living on Earth as a magical from a different world.

Rebecca didn’t say a thing because it kept Aldous from noticing her any more than he had to. It kept her from drawing Shade’s attention, it kept others from looking too closely, and it kept all her secrets neatly bundled and stashed away where no one would ever even think to look.

She kept her mouth shut because opening it would open the door to who and what she was, and once it was open, it could never be shut again.

Best to keep it all locked away, even if it meant going along with Aldous’s bullshit plans like she’d been doing with Shade for the last six months.

Now that the team had broken away from each other in the parking lot, Rebecca cut to the right with Nyx to flank the building’s northern wall and keep a lookout for movement from the side exits or around back.

Why Aldous still thought he could successfully pull off a mission like this without endangering Shade’s members and without making himself look like a complete ass was beyond her.

Why not just get the hell out now?

The answer was simple.

Six months of running with this crew, and now Rebecca was just in too deep to back out.

Even when the shit hit the fan like she knew it was going to tonight .

She could practically taste it in the air at this point.

And here they were, this five-person team plus Maxwell and Aldous, rolling up to their target site and hoping to hell their leader had finally figured out how to stick to a plan.

Any plan at all, beginning to end. Even a terrible plan, followed through and executed as intended, would’ve been a major improvement.

But Shade already knew Aldous wouldn’t stick to it. He never did.

How they’d managed to do this for the last six months alone without dropping dead, Rebecca couldn’t fathom.

How Shade as a relatively successful underground organization had survived Aldous’s stupidity even before she’d joined them last winter was beyond comprehension.

Almost as if the katari beside her had read her mind, Nyx murmured, “There’s always a chance he could actually pull through with this one, right?”

Rebecca studied the front of the apartment building, where Aldous and Maxwell now slowed to a stop before the entrance. “You’re sounding abnormally confident about that right now.”

Nyx shrugged, her short violet hair fluttering in the next warm, muggy breeze. “I mean, last time wasn’t nearly as bad. Maybe his ideas are getting better?”

Rebecca couldn’t help but raise a dubious eyebrow at the katari—which brought a quickly darkening blush of violet to the human illusion across Nyx’s cheeks—before returning her deadpan stare to the front of the building.

“Better? Last time, his bullshit put Hank out of commission for at least two weeks, broke both Burke’s legs, and River’s still keeping us all up at night with her screams because she can’t stop reliving that nightmare. What part of that looks like he’s getting better, exactly?”

Frowning, Nyx swiped at the bottom hem of her dark-green velvet hoodie above matching joggers and cleared her throat.

Rebecca almost commented on the katari’s inability to explain or even support with a sliver of evidence her half-assed belief in this guy.

But then Nyx surprised them both when she finally found a response.

“You don’t just become the big boss by random accident. Someone wanted him there for a reason.”

Rebecca snorted. “When you figure out what that is, I would love to hear it.”

A crackle of static energy fizzled around Nyx’s form. She did an admirable job of making it look like it was all just part of her own personal prep for moving in on their target.

Rebecca had a hunch it was Nyx’s way of bristling in discomfort, the way a Boldrak snorted flames or a wolf’s thick hackles rose along its spine .

That thought made her return her full attention to the front of the building and the shifter standing a foot behind Aldous and slightly to the right.

Even if Maxwell didn’t have a military background before all this, like Rebecca and the rest of Shade assumed he did, their Head of Security was still a shifter. It was literally in his blood and the magic coursing through him to submit to the given hierarchy. To remain loyal at all costs. To put his life on the line for his pack.

Except Shade was the farthest thing from an actual shifter pack as a single group could get, and Maxwell’s loyalty had been handed over to a green-skinned fraud who couldn’t tell efficient tactical strategy from his own asshole.

Still, Maxwell stood at Aldous’s side, their leader’s literal right-hand man.

Though Rebecca didn’t see either of them move, she imagined the shifter stood there muttering updates in their leader’s ear, telling him everyone was in position.

Something Aldous could never have discerned on his own.

At least, she hoped their Head of Security had given Aldous the go-ahead instead of the changeling deciding to act now just because he felt like it.

“Knock, knock… ” Aldous’s booming voice echoed far more loudly across the parking lot than any natural voice could. He’d changed the makeup of his vocal cords and added a nice round bullhorn shape around his mouth for extra effect.

Not a new trick. They’d all seen it before.

“Here we go…” Nyx whispered, bouncing on the toes of her neon-pink sneakers and shaking out both hands at her sides. Her glowing violet eyes flickered back and forth as she systematically scanned every visible inch of the apartment building’s north-facing wall.

Rebecca sighed heavily through her nose, watching and waiting.

“I know you’re in there!” Aldous shouted at the front doors, spreading his arms wide. “You think you’ve been real sneaky, don’t you? Real fucking smart about all the heavy-hitting firepower you dragged back into your little hidey-hole out here like the fucking cockroach you are!”

Rebecca gritted her teeth, nostrils flaring.

Shit like that came tumbling out of Aldous’s mouth like water over the edge of a cliff.

And he seriously wanted the team to let him do all the talking?

Nyx sucked in a sharp, hissing breath through her teeth. The intensity of static electricity crackling around her kicked up a few notches.

Still, the team had their orders to wait for the changeling’s signal .

“Well I found you dickbags anyway!” Aldous shouted. “You got the slip on the MJC, but not me. Oh no. I’m smarter than every head of every Council branch, I can tell you that! And I found you here . They’ll be singing my praises after this one. Maybe even make a statue of me, if I feel like allowing it. To be honest, I’d rather watch every Council head abdicate and hand over that cold iron crown they like to hold over all of us in this world. Hell, I’ll wear ’em all at the same time!”

Holy shit, he was really pouring it on thick.

“Just get to the point,” Rebecca muttered through clenched teeth.

Nyx’s nervous, high-pitched giggle made Rebecca want to toss the katari to the other side of the parking lot, but that wouldn’t have helped them, either.

“But enough about me,” Aldous continued, shifting his weight onto the opposite foot as he flipped a fist over to inspect his own nails at the ends of curled fingers. “I’m here for all of you. But I want Edwardo, specifically. That’s the moron leading this epic failure of a rebellion attempt, isn’t it?”

No surprise that the griybreki who’d barricaded themselves physically and magically inside the apartment complex offered no response to Aldous’ heckling.

Somehow, he still thought talking to them like this was actually going to work.

“Come on, Edwardo! If you know what’s good for ya, you’ll come on out. Talk to me mano-a-mano. Test your mettle against mine and see what happens! I might even let some of your pathetic underlings live afterwards, but I am gonna take your shit. And you’re not gonna be happy about what happens next.”

Still no response from inside .

Though unlikely and rare, Rebecca was starting to feel the smallest drop of hope about this whole thing. Which was definitely new.

Three minutes into this mission after Aldous had indirectly threatened Leonard’s physical safety for questioning this absurd excuse for a plan, and so far, the changeling hadn’t managed to screw it up.

Three minutes had to be a record.

And now Aldous was getting antsy.

He cleared his throat, sliding the sole of one dress shoe back and forth across the asphalt like he’d stepped in shit and was trying to scrape it off. His scowl aimed at the entrance rose up the front of the building and all the east-facing windows stacked ten stories high before he spread his arms again.

“Or did you just leave your balls somewhere back in Xahar’áhsh?” he shouted. “Because as far as I can tell, only the most pitiful fucking coward would hide inside a flimsy building like this one instead of coming to face me like a real chief.”

The changeling paused only for a second before huffing out a laugh. “You make your griybreki wipe your ass for you too, Edwardo?”

Maxwell visibly shifted his stance and tightly clasped his hands behind his back.

Probably to keep himself from strangling the idiot right there with his bare hands.

Rebecca would’ve preferred some attempt on the shifter’s part to talk Aldous down from his preening pedestal. If she were in Maxwell’s place, she would’ve warned Aldous away from further poking this griybreki-gang bear two minutes ago.

This path of least resistance was absolutely going to bite them all in the ass. It was only a matter of when .

Aldous lifted his left wrist to check a watch he wasn’t wearing, nodded, then folded his arms. “You got five minutes, Edwardo! Now’s your chance to keep a little dignity. Or I can tear you apart without ever lifting a finger, and everyone who answers to you is gonna see what a pathetic fucking joke you really are. It’s up to you, shithead! Your move!”

It should have ended there.

Aldous’s terrible plan might have actually been enough.

If the griybreki didn’t come down from their apartment tower to try to talk shit out, the changeling would give the signal, and his team would move in. Breach the apartment building. Engage any and all resistance they encountered on the way to the head-honcho griybreki calling himself Edwardo while also calling the shots for this little fringe gang.

A fringe gang that was supposed to have been easy enough to take down once Shade found their hideout.

Rebecca was almost ready to admit she’d been wrong about yet another mission gone disastrously belly-up under Aldous’ inadequate command.

It looked like he was finally following his own damn plan for once—a serious step up from the last six months.

He might actually pull it off this time.

Then again, Rebecca had always had impeccable intuition. Her biggest mistake here tonight, she would soon realize, was doubting that for even a second.