19. Chapter 19

19

I f Maxwell figured her out, if he realized he was messing with a completely different kind of elf he couldn’t take on his own, Rebecca would be forced to flee.

And she was running out of places to hide.

She took the quickest route back through the city toward Shade’s compound, sticking to the shadows and the darkness.

Rebecca didn’t want trouble, and she didn’t want attention.

She had to figure out how to deal with it. How to deal with him . And she had to do it now, before Maxwell had a chance to make it worse.

Fortunately, no one was waiting for her when she slipped back through the compound’s underground parking garage and made her way back through headquarters toward the residential wing.

Either Maxwell hadn’t told anyone where he was going, which meant he didn’t want anyone to know about his interest in her, or he’d given orders not to ask.

Rebecca wasn’t particularly certain which one of those was better. But now that she was back at the compound, with her pent-up frustration released just enough to hear herself think clearly again, she had better things to worry about.

More important things.

Like why the Azyyt Ra’al thralls had made their way into Chicago. And why they were running around the city, terrorizing humans with magical artifacts.

And exactly what kind of artifact she’d taken from Boyd the Cruorcian—a voodoo-esque hex doll with very clear origins right here on Earth, even after it had been modified as a vessel to compel some seriously strong Xaharí magic.

The old-school kind few Earthborn magicals had ever seen and even fewer could ever hope to control .

The thought made her grit her teeth with a snarl as she barreled through the compound’s ground floor, ignoring the odd looks and wide-eyed stares of other Shade members catching sight of her in the hallway.

Twenty-four hours. That was how long it had taken for everything to unravel.

It was only just the first few threads, but even a few threads in the wrong hands could be deadly.

And the snag that had started it all was Rebecca’s refusal to let an idiot like Aldous get their entire team killed on a mission that had been beyond pointless in the first place.

Now she had a changeling idiot threatening her protection under Shade’s roof, a deadpan shifter stalking her every move, at least one dead the Azyyt Ra’al thrall added to her personal casualty list, and an old-world hex doll she’d never seen before that did not belong in this world.

Each one of those things was its own separate universe of potential issues and obstacles for a Bloodshadow Elf trying to hide—and stay hidden—in plain sight.

Add that to the growing tension within Shade and the budding rebellion brewing from the inside, presumably with Rebecca as the “perfect” person for whatever Leonard and Diego were cooking up, and she was in over her head before anything had even happened.

She reached the door to her private room and sent a bolt of silver light cracking into the doorknob. The lock popped open beneath such a ridiculously simple spell. So simple, in fact, that everyone else in this compound seemed to respect its use simply on principle.

Then again, Rebecca might just have been the only Shade member in this building who carried around such deadly secrets with her on a regular basis. Maybe even the only member with anything to lose if someone felt like breaking into a simple lock spell and taking a look through her personal belongings.

Not that she had much of anything with her in her room. She wasn’t that na?ve.

But a few specific individuals thought she was.

Aldous clearly assumed Rebecca didn’t have the firepower or the reputation to back her up after she’d refused his disgusting advances. So he’d threatened to banish her from Shade if she couldn’t produce the Darkspawn in some undisclosed amount of time likely to change at whim to suit the changeling’s brainless purposes.

Maxwell underestimated her too. He had to, if he thought he could follow her around indefinitely like this, either to eventually catch her screwing up or eventually wear her down enough that she could no longer resist his prying .

Neither of those things would happen. The only thing Rebecca had to resist when it came to the shifter was the urge to rip him apart for sticking his over-sensitive wolf’s nose in her business.

She’d have to keep a much better eye on Shade’s Head of Security from here on out. If he started digging too deeply—especially into her past and her truth and her identity, even more than he already had just by showing his face in the alley tonight—she’d be forced to do something about it.

At that point, it wouldn’t even matter that she kind of liked the way he looked at her when he wasn’t being a suspicious ass. There was such a thing as having fun here and there, sure. There was always such a thing as letting her guard down far too much.

Just another thing she’d already promised herself she would never do.

The door to her room slammed shut behind her under a swift kick and locked itself again beneath one more blast of silver light aimed at the doorknob.

Rebecca kicked off her heels and inspected them briefly to confirm they hadn’t been damaged during her adventurous night out. Then she stripped down as quickly as possible on her way to the bathroom, leaving a trail of stained, blood-spattered, grime-smeared clothing behind her along the way.

She’d gone out to blow off a little steam. That was it. To help clear her mind and flush out the stale pressure of having found herself thrust into the very center of Shade’s obnoxious new rebellion bubbling up from within.

A rebellion she’d honestly wanted nothing to do with in the first place.

But now, because she’d dared to think she could still move about freely without her every move being followed, she’d jeopardized a hell of a lot more than she’d intended.

Maxwell was a suspicious irritation. Nothing more. For now.

Rebecca didn’t want to have to hurt him, either. Not because he was Head of Security, which would come with its own set of complications on a whole different level, but because he hadn’t given her a reason to clear him from her path. So far.

If he did give her a reason, though, if his curiosity grew too much that he couldn’t stop from following her, and watching her, and digging into her private business, Rebecca might have to do something she really didn’t want to do.

All in the name of protecting the secrets she couldn’t afford anyone else discovering.

The wrong move made by the wrong magical, even Shade’s Head of Security, could bring her whole life crashing down around her.

That was a risk Rebecca simply wasn’t willing to take .

She climbed into the shower, turned the water on as hot as it would go, and let the steam wash over her. While the near-scalding temperatures cleared away the physical grime from her night out, the simple act of washing herself cleared the muck from her mind.

Blood, mud, soot, and the remnants of her own charred skin flaking off the wounds she’d healed all fell away together in the steaming water, splattering onto the shower floor to swirl down the drain and out of sight.

Complications of the night notwithstanding—like evidence of the Azyyt Ra’al now in Chicago and that baffling hex doll—Rebecca couldn’t ignore her growing hunch that things were about to change for her here. Drastically.

Joining Shade six months ago was supposed to have been a sure thing. A safe choice to keep her relatively out of trouble and completely off everyone else’s magical radar.

Now, clearly, her involvement with this organization had become anything but safe.

A fter sleeping in until just shy of noon the next day, Rebecca almost felt like a brand-new elf.

Despite how risky it had been to whip out her Bloodshadow magic last night—whether or not Maxwell had shown up to spoil all the fun—the use of her darkest magic didn’t come without its own benefits.

Namely its surprisingly restorative effects after the fact. Just one more item on the list of things that made her so useful and damn near invaluable in the field of battle, which she’d been trying to avoid altogether for decades.

She intended to stay off the battlefield for as long as possible, no matter what shape it took, or who fought on opposite sides of it, or even how many other players thought they could reach out and grab her to join them when the time came.

Like Shade’s little rebellion brewing in secret library meetings, where everyone else seemed to be in on the plan but no one had told Rebecca a damn thing.

That was how she preferred to keep it.

Could she have drummed up a detailed plan for executing crucial objectives like overthrowing Aldous from Command so the rest of the task force could turn this ship around before it wrecked itself on stony shores? Absolutely. Thanks to a lifetime of extensive training in practical warfare and tactical strategy.

But that was Rebecca Bloodshadow, not Rebecca Knox.

Offering a professional, actionable plan to dozens of insurgent magicals wanting to overthrow their current commander as soon as possible would give her away more than anything else she could have.

Solitary, displaced Elves with nonexistent backgrounds roaming across Earth and popping into different magical fringe groups when it suited them just didn’t have the kind of knowledge Rebecca possessed.

They didn’t come with centuries of Xaharí history embedded in their memory or generations of Bloodshadow magic coursing through their veins.

Rebecca could have helped. She could have stepped up to be the ringleader for this rebellion, which she was pretty sure Leonard and Diego had singled her out for anyway in the library.

Hell, she could have done exactly what she’d suggested during that meeting in a moment of aggravating tension and losing her nerve.

She could slit Aldous Corriger’s throat in his sleep any time she wanted, and then Shade’s internal threat would be gone. Not to mention another threat to Rebecca’s maintained anonymity.

With Aldous out of the picture, she wouldn’t have to worry about whether or not his threatened “shadow” truly existed or how far he was willing to go to make her retrieve the Darkspawn for him—which she was almost positive didn’t exist beyond the legends.

But she chose not to lift a finger.

For everyone’s benefit.

If Shade put her in a position of leading their rebellion against Aldous—plus everything else that entailed—Rebecca wasn’t sure she could successfully play the part.

She wasn’t sure she could separate who she truly was and what she’d been created to do from the regular, everyday vigilante elf on Earth dedicated to picking up the slack on magical crime where more official agencies couldn’t quite reach.

To do so would have been far too exhausting.

She couldn’t think like the Bloodshadow Heir who’d been taught to think this way. She’d have to plan a rebellion from within the mindset of the random, out-of-place elf who’d shown up on Shade’s doorstep alone six months ago and passed all the organization’s initiation tests and challenges shortly thereafter .

She’d have to lead this thing like someone who didn’t possess ancient hidden knowledge capable of toppling worlds or recreating them from the ground up.

Like someone who could both start wars and end them with the magical equivalent of snapping her fingers.

Sure, she’d had plenty of experience planning magical heists, breaking into highly secure and heavily warded locations, and working with a team. None of that was new.

But staging a coup against an already powerful magical simply for the title he held and the friends he’d made in and around Chicago, all without making it abundantly clear that she was the mastermind behind it all?

That was new. And damn near impossible.

Operating on the fringes and beyond the confines of any magical law was so much easier. It kept things tight. Small. Personal. Contained.

A coup with this level of publicity, simply because of Aldous’s connections, was political.

Rebecca didn’t do politics.

She didn’t want to lead Shade in anything. She didn’t want to be the one calling the shots or teaching anyone how to effectively overthrow current leadership.

Even if it meant getting what they wanted and preventing all other operatives from risking their lives during pointless, reckless, tactical ops Aldous had a habit of turning into suicide missions.

The best decision was to stay neutral, stay out of it, and stay alive.

Whoever ended up coming out on top once Leonard and Diego put their mystery plan into action, Rebecca would deal with them then. Most likely, she wouldn’t have to deal with anything. She could go along with the majority, remain a part of the task force, and retain her anonymity.

All it took was for her to do nothing.

Easier said than done.

No, Rebecca would just have to go the extra mile to avoid all of it.

Which meant, at this moment, she was willingly choosing to lock herself up in her room and do absolutely nothing for the next several hours, because anything more than that was potentially devastating to all her efforts and even to the rest of Shade itself.

Puffing out another sigh through loose lips, she stared blankly up at the ceiling and could hardly believe the situation in which she now found herself.

She was actually doing this. Right here.

Rebecca Knox, the missing Bloodshadow Heir, was choosing to lie on an overstuffed mattress-topper on a tiny bed in her private room at Shade headquarters, doing absolutely nothing because every other option would only make things worse for her.

Because the way things stood right now, if Rebecca went down as a result of her own stupid mistakes and letting herself get far too deeply involved—even when she knew she shouldn’t—the rest of this task force was coming down with her.

And if it came to that, none of them could do a damn thing to stop it.

But as she settled onto her bed, the silence around her seemed too heavy, too expectant—like a predator waiting for its prey to slip up.

Was she making a huge mistake?

R ebecca could only hold off until the regular dinner hour.

While separating herself from whatever Shade’s rebels were planning was her top priority today, it seemed silly to do so at the expense of her own physical well-being.

And if she took the time to dive a little deeper past her painfully growling stomach, she might have admitted her curiosity had peaked to the same level as her hunger.

Would Leonard and Diego try to pull her into this rebellion all over again the second they saw her? Would they drag her into the plan against her will?

Had they ignored her last night with the intention of starving her of knowledge just to draw her out at the last second when they needed her most?

That was her old life talking.

Rebecca didn’t think Leonard or Diego or the majority of Shade’s task force were capable of thinking like that. This was Earth, where the political subtleties and manipulations of both adversary and ally had no place in the daily machinations of this world’s citizens. The magical ones, at any rate.

No one in Shade would try to play her the way the Bloodshadow Court had for so long.

No one knew Rebecca Bloodshadow.

The only elf they knew was Rebecca Knox, and she was the kind of person who did what had to be done in sticky situations but who generally stayed out of the thick of things otherwise.

At least, that was who she’d been until recently .

Whatever Shade’s little party of rebels was planning that had nothing to do with her, she certainly couldn’t let it keep her from eating at the very least.

What would they do to her otherwise? Force Rebecca to join the coup?

With a snort, she got dressed, slipped into her canvas jacket, and left her room to head through the compound for dinner chow.

Just to eat, she told herself. She couldn’t afford getting any more involved. Hopefully, she’d made that perfectly clear by disappearing last night and not having made an appearance anywhere today.

But she couldn’t hide forever.

It was a little ironic coming from the Bloodshadow Heir who had literally spent the last several centuries in hiding, though at an unimaginably greater magnitude. But this was different.

This was Rebecca staying out of other people’s business and clinging solely to her own.

That was what she told herself over and over as she moved through the compound’s labyrinthine corridors to make her way to the common room for her first and only meal of the day.

No one stopped Rebecca in the halls. No one dragged her aside before she reached the common room. No one even seemed to notice her entering, heading toward Bor’s service window off the kitchen, or grabbing a tray of food with a nod of thanks and a tremendous amount of effort focused on not stuffing tonight’s meatloaf surprise into her face with her bare hands. Or even snarfing it right off the tray.

She took her food and water to her usual dining spot in the common room—the gray leather couch along the far wall, its upholstery chipped, ripped, and fraying while the left end drooped closer to the floor despite the fact that she almost always sat on the right and no one else seemed to enjoy this particular seat as much as she did.

While she ate, Rebecca watched the common room fill with more operatives by the minute.

No one paid her much attention beyond the occasional glance and a nod of greeting. Nothing to hint that the rebellion that had swept through nearly the entire task force had a presence in the common room this evening to put something into action.

Nothing to suggest there even was a rebellion, or that the magicals here had come together to plan an internal takeover barely more than twenty-four hours ago.

As Rebecca finished her meal in record time, washing everything down with the rest of her water in one long, breathless chug down to the last drop, she finally noticed what was different tonight .

There was no sign of Diego or Leonard.

No sign of Nyx either, which could have meant anything when the katari could disappear and reappear at the drop of a hat.

But Leonard and Diego?

Those two never missed a meal.

So where the hell were they?

She scanned the room again, and her gaze fell on the entryway into the hallway leading to the second-story staircase. Standing within that entryway was Maxwell, and by the time she found him, he was already staring at her.

Dammit, couldn’t he just leave her alone?

The shifter’s silver eyes flashed as he just stood there in the entryway, his expression cold and unreadable like always, his furrowed eyebrows casting darker shadows across his face Rebecca just couldn’t read.

She hated that she couldn’t.

Trying to pick out the shifter’s thoughts was like pulling teeth in most scenarios. Only now, as they stared at each other, she found herself captured by a different look in those silver eyes she hadn’t seen before.

If she had, she would have recognized it.

There was a challenge there, yes, a darkness that pulled at every forbidden thing Rebecca had the capacity to carry out but hadn’t let herself give in to in so long.

A darkness inside Maxwell Hannigan that called to her, tugging at her core, trying to convince her she was safe with him, her darkness with his.

That whatever trouble Maxwell posed to her would be trouble well worth it.

Trouble she wanted .

What the hell was that feeling supposed to mean?

As soon as she recognized her own thoughts, she snuffed them out of her mind. It was useless thinking. Pointless. Dangerous.

In a different life, in a different place, maybe the kind of trouble Maxwell Hannigan caused would have been worth it to her. But here? Absolutely not.

While all this raced through Rebecca’s mind in seconds, making her hate the feeling of his gaze on her while not quite wanting it to end, the sight of the shifter just standing there staring at her, challenging her, letting that coldly suspicious smirk of his flicker again like he knew something she didn’t, infuriated her.

What did he know that she didn’t?

And where the hell were Leonard and Diego?

When Rebecca had finally had enough, she pushed herself off the couch and decided to go tell him off herself .

He’d been following her for almost an entire day, inserting himself into her personal affairs, watching her like some secret knowledge of his would be the one and only thing that could possibly protect her from what came next.

That thought was almost laughable—that someone like Maxwell could predict what came next.

Or was he the reason for Leonard and Diego’s absence?

She couldn’t fully explain why that sudden thought made her gut twist on itself or why it felt so believable, so possible the moment it occurred to her.

Was that why the shifter had sat in on the rebel meeting in the library? To pinpoint who was leading the rebel charge so he could get rid of them on his own without anyone ever knowing?

The more she ran that possibility through her mind, the more Rebecca started to believe it.

Which meant Maxwell Hannigan was far more dangerous than she’d given him credit for.

It also meant the shifter had to be stopped.

If he could follow her around at all hours and stick his nose into none of his business to make everything harder for her, she could absolutely do the same.

She could press him for information of what he’d done to the mage in the leather trench coat and the Cruorcian in the baseball cap.

And once he told her everything, she would make him regret putting his hands on anyone in this task force.

A violent fury of validation coursed through her, and Rebecca was ready to storm right up to the shifter and stand toe-to-toe with him to figure out what it was he really wanted and just how dangerous he was to Shade.

How dangerous he had always been but no one had ever known until the moment he decided to turn against his own.

No, she had no proof of that yet, but she fully intended to find it.

As soon as she was on her feet, though, all her priorities changed.

A low rumble spread through the floor, tickling her feet through her shoes a split second before a loud pop and explosive bang ripped through the bowels of the compound.

Meal trays clattered on tables. All conversation in the common room ceased. One of the overhead lights let out a warning buzz before the silence returned.

Still staring at her, Maxwell raised an eyebrow and now looked more curious than anything.

If he thought she had anything to do with whatever had exploded down there toward the training gym, he was sorely mistaken .

A series of rattling pops filled the air while the energetic charge within the common room prickled like ozone, and the ground beneath her feet felt like it was about to shift.

Maxwell’s smirk widened, and Rebecca almost set off toward him again before a different possibility occurred to her—one she should have considered much sooner.

Maxwell could have done something to Leonard and Diego, sure, but he also could have been waiting for them now.

This could have been the start of the rebellion’s plans she hadn’t been brought into either before or after she’d refused to get involved.

Whatever was blasting away down the halls of the compound could have been Leonard and Diego themselves.

It could have been this budding rebellion and their planned coup kicking off right here, right now.

Holy shit. And she’d just unwillingly stepped into the middle of it again ?

Another tremor rumbled through the floor, and now other operatives were rising to their feet as well.

Rebecca’s gut clenched with disastrous realization as she and Maxwell glared at each other and time seemed to freeze.

Damn him and those silver eyes rooting her to this spot.

Rebecca was not supposed to be here. She was not supposed to get involved.

If that bang from down the hall was some sort of signal that the time had come for an in-house takeover, she didn’t want to be anywhere close to the bulk of the action. Or everything would fall apart.

She had to get out of here while she still had the chance.

But now, staring at Maxwell, she had the sinking feeling he would go out of his way to make that impossible.