Chapter Seven

Lydia

My breath plumed in front of my face the second we stepped foot outside.

That wasn't unusual for this time of year. Hoarfrost came in the night, coating everything in its path with crystalline shards. The wrought iron railing that led up the shallow steps to Occult Oddities was covered in the stuff. It left a slight tingle on my palm when I touched it, and I paused, frowning at the railing in confusion. What was that?

Magic, Indigo answered, speaking for the first time since I'd shouted her down. Faerie magic, I think. It's difficult to tell with you in the way. Your senses aren't attuned to magic the way mine were. I used to be a connoisseur of the different types before I ended up fused with you.

Oh, I just bet you were, I hissed back venomously.

So, are you going to have this attitude with me forever?

It depends. First off, I want to know if it's true? Were you really doing what it looked like you were?

And just what do you think I was doing? Indigo hedged. She was uncomfortable now, but trying not to let it show. She was in the wrong and she knew it, but just like a typical witch, she was too proud to admit she'd made a mistake.

You were killing people.

No. Monsters. Humans were never the targets.

My stomach sank. Those six words confirmed everything I'd seen. Part of me hadn't wanted to believe she could have been capable of something like that. I felt sullied, somehow tarnished by her presence in my body. If I could have scraped every trace of her off me, I would have. I felt her cringe at the thought, anger, and shame making her curl into a mental corner in a resentful little ball.

You know that makes it worse, right?

What makes it worse? she asked, like she didn't already know.

That you were killing monsters over humans. Humans aren't your species. Monsters are your peers, your own kind.

You wouldn't understand my reasons, even if I explained them to you, Indie said. And, just for the record, I wasn't killing them.

But you were labeling them to be killed. You were scouting them.

Right.She sounded tired, and for the first time, I could feel the weight of every year she'd lived. A hundred and forty-three arduous years and every single one had left her colder and more bitter than the one that came before.

"Lydia?"

Angelo's voice finally drew my head up. I realized I'd been staring at the railing long enough for the heat of my hand to melt most of the ice. I withdrew it gingerly and rubbed the feeling back into the tips of my fingers.

"Sorry, I spaced off. Were you saying something?"

"I was asking what you were doing." He gave me that devil's smile once more, causing heat to build over my cheeks.

"It's nothing," I said, descending the stairs. "I just sensed faerie magic in the ice. It startled me, that's all. I'm not used to this sensing magic stuff. I was pretty much a mundane before Indigo crashed into my life."

"That's probably Police Chief Morgan's doing," Angelo said dismissively. "We're in her season, after all."

"Her season?"

He nodded. "Winter. So, her powers are bound to be stronger. It's most likely affecting the weather."

"What do you mean?"

Angelo blinked. "... oh. No one told you about Taliyah, did they?"

"I mean, I know who she is, of course, but it's not like I know her backstory."

"She's the heir apparent to the Winter Court of Faerie. She was hidden from her Aunt Janara after an assassination attempt. The memory spell and power seal broke though, so she's a faerie princess now. She'd be queen if she deposed her aunt, but she doesn't seem interested in being anything other than the chief of police here."

I felt like sitting down on the steps for a little while, cradling my head in my hands. This place was just too weird. The coven of witches and a clan of vampires I could kind of wrap my head around. Things started getting wonky when I realized that the ice cream shop was run by a centaur and the best martinis in town were mixed by a sasquatch. My roommate was an incubus, and my overweight cat talked and helped me do magic. My distant cousin lived across a graveyard from a zombie. And apparently, the Chief of Police was Elsa. I could feel a hysterical giggle building in my chest. I wasn't convinced that I hadn't hallucinated everything after Indigo blew up. Maybe I was actually sitting in a padded room somewhere, making an orderly very uncomfortable.

"Are you okay?" Angelo asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No," I said. "I'm definitely not okay."

Angelo bounced his keys in his hands once before jerking his head in the direction of the street. "I said I'd listen to your woes. Let's get in the car. I'm freezing my magnificent ass off."

"You know most men don't have as high an opinion of their asses as you do your own," I said, sidling up to him. He offered me his arm and I took it.

"Most men don't have an ass like mine," he said smugly.

I rolled my eyes but couldn't hide a smile. Angelo was conceited, an incorrigible flirt, and fuzzy on the whole morality thing, but I was convinced there was a good man under all the pretense. He'd taken my fear and panic and asked for almost nothing in return. He'd pried me off him, refusing to take advantage of me when he easily could have—shit, I was basically begging him to. I wouldn't have blamed him if he'd followed through. Every signal I'd put out said I was down for a tussle between the sheets.

The interior of Angelo's BMW heated quickly, and I settled into the bucket seat with a contented sigh. He steered the car down Main Street slowly, careful on the thin coating of ice that clung to the blacktop. It wouldn't do to fishtail off the road and end up in someone's storefront.

"So, what's wrong?" he asked. "This isn't just about the hellhounds. The fear I understand, but not the disgust. Something else happened."

Indigo muttered mutinously in the back of my head. She disliked the incubus more with every human facet he showed. If he'd been a playboy, she could have written him off. The compassion... well, that made him dangerous in her opinion. Compassionate people were prone to doing things based on emotion instead of practicality. He was perceptive and she hated that too.

"Yeah," I whispered. "It did. I figured out what Indie and her crew were up to. Part of it, anyway."

Angelo didn't turn, but I could feel his attention sharpen. I hadn't told him about Indigo's status as a felon, but from his remarks, he'd guessed it was something along those lines. You didn't piss off powerful people like Murrain unless you ran in some pretty dark circles.

"Oh?"

"They were killing monsters," I said with a shrug, like it wasn't such a big deal—like it was something we all should have guessed. "And I think they were stealing their magic. The witch that died said something about ‘rendering'. Do you know what that means?"

He frowned. "Can't say I do." Then he looked at me. "Do you have any idea what it means?"

"Maybe in a human, mundane sort of sense."

"Okay."

I nodded, realizing he wanted me to explain. "My dad used to work at a meat packing factory until my powers developed. He quit when the smell on him kept prompting me to run away, just to get away from the feeling that saturated the house. ‘Rendering' is the process of cutting and grinding animal carcasses into small pieces. The final step in the process is separating fat to be made into lard or tallow from the meat and bone meal."

Angelo considered that for a second and then the implications sunk in. He looked faintly green, and his next swallow was audible. I wondered if he wanted to puke as badly as I did.

"They're... eating these monsters they catch?"

Of course not, Indigo sniffed. That's barbaric. They're buried when we're through with them. It's just their power we were after.

Oh, because that's so much better.

"No. I think they're somehow extracting magic from their targets. And, in doing so, it seems to kill them."

"Of course it does," Angelo snapped, and there was a note of absolute ice in his tone that I'd never heard from him before. "Magic is a part of who we are. It's why I fought to keep Fifi from trying to amputate her succubus side."

"She wanted to do what?"

"She tried to starve her inner succubus until it was too weak to resist the curse a witch intended to use on her to remove her succubus. Thank the dark ones below Fifi found the sasquatch and came to her senses." He paused, and I could tell he was trying to push the memory out of his head. When he turned to face me again, it seemed he was victorious. "Do you think that witch was one of Indigo's partners? Could she have been trying to do that... that rendering thing to my sister?"

It's possible, but I doubt it, Indigo said.

Why do you doubt it?

Silence.

Indie, I said warningly. Spill it now or I'm going to make life hell for you.

You already do, she grumbled. But fine. Except for very rare occasions, we weren't directed to take anything that could pass for human.

Why?

I'm not telling you that.

And why the hell not?

Because you haven't earned my story, Lydia. And for the love of the Goddess, will you quit judging me right the spell now!

I saw what you did! How can I not judge you for it?

Because you don't know why I did it. Why I was with them in the first place.

Unless they were forcing your hand with a hostage, I don't give a damn. You went into the situation knowing what they were doing, and you helped them to do it, anyway. That makes you a monster in the worst sense of the word.

I never claimed I was a hero, Lydia.

Well, you for damn sure are anything but a hero. You killed people.

As I told you before, I didn't actually kill anyone. I was a spotter. I scoped potential targets, nothing more. I didn't like the work I did, no, but it was necessary.

That's almost as bad—you basically painted targets on their backs. That's almost as bad as pulling the trigger yourself. In might even be worse. At least Susan wasn't a coward, trying to hide behind justifications. She was batshit crazy, but she was at least honest about what she was doing, even to herself.

Indigo didn't say anything to that. She either had no defense or, more likely, was tired of arguing with me.

"Maybe," I said eventually, answering Angelo's question aloud. "But I doubt it. They seemed to go after things that weren't human-passing. Susan was rendering a Grimm when Indie arrived."

Angelo poorly hid a shudder. "Jesus."

"Yeah, pretty much," I said with a sigh. "I feel... dirty, being attached to her after learning all that. It's gross and wrong and now… how am I meant to use her power when I know what it's done, what it's responsible for?"

"That's why you need to use it," Angelo said. "Because power was meant to be used better than the way she used it. You take her magic and you do better."

I chewed my lower lip, trying to hide a smile. This wasn't a conversation that should elicit a smile. But Angelo's attitude was oddly inspiring. Put that way, it made sense to get better at using Indie's magic—to make up for the things she'd done with it. If I tried, I could probably get to the skill level she'd been at. And when I did, I was going to find every single one of Murrain's freaks and make them pay for what they did.

"Thank you," I whispered.

I leaned across the space between us, aiming to brush a kiss over his cheek. He turned, mouth open like he might say something, and our lips met. It was just a feather-light touch, but it made me shiver. It felt more genuine, more precious than any soul-searing kiss he'd laid on me since we'd met. Because it was the sort of thing a human man might have given me. Something real.

"You're welcome," he whispered back.

We turned the corner slowly, and he seized my hand, lacing his fingers with mine. That made me smile, too. Holding hands with an incubus. It was probably the most ordinary, humanlike thing he'd done in his life, and he didn't seem to mind. His fingers tightened almost painfully around mine a second later and he coasted to a stop, staring ahead with wide eyes.

A cop car was lying on its side in the middle of the road, its windshield torn loose, a bloodied limb flopping bonelessly out of one window.

"Hexes and hoarfrost," he swore. "What the hell happened?"