Chapter Forty-Eight

Kierse vaulted into Nate's car as he skidded around the corner and dropped into the driver's seat. He put his foot to the pedal and revved the engine.

"Didn't mean to blow your cover," Nate said.

"I don't want to talk about it. All I care about is Ethan right now," she said as she watched the city zip by in the night. "I can deal with Graves later."

"All right," he said.

"Tell me what the fuck happened. Ethan was in the club? What the fuck was Ethan doing in the club?"

"Look, he started learning to bartend with Cara," Nate said, running a hand over his curls.

"Excuse me?" she asked lethally low.

"He wanted to," Nate said. "I told him it would be fine to learn from her but not to be officially on the floor. It's hard being locked in your room, Kierse."

"His life was in danger! He's been drugged!"

"I know. Fuck, I know. The place should have been safe. There are plenty of drugs that run through there, but basically none of it works on my wolves like it does on humans. And three of them are just as bad off, including Cara," he said. "So I take it fucking seriously, and I'm fucking sorry."

"Sorry?" she snapped. "You were supposed to keep them safe."

"They were safe," he insisted. "But fuck, they still have to live. Gen has been working with Maura, training to be a nurse. She fits right in."

"Has she been going out with Maura?"

"No, no, just after her shifts and stuff. She's safe. I swear."

"If Ethan dies, Nate, so help me God."

He blanched and nodded. "I know."

Kierse couldn't relax on the entire drive to Five Points. She closed her eyes to calm her racing heart. Freaking out would only make things worse. She needed to be levelheaded. There had to be a solution.

Nate jerked the car into a garage a block from Five Points, and together they hustled through Dreadlord territory. After staying up for nearly twenty-four hours, Kierse was bone weary, but she had to keep going. Nate directed her to a back door where Finn stood guarding the entrance.

"Boss," the man said with a nod and a sad smile when he saw her. "Kierse."

"Hey, Finn."

Finn reached for the door, yanking it open for them.

"Update?" Nate barked. Ronan fell into step beside them as they headed up the stairs.

"Cara, Elijah, and Haylee are all fighting whatever is in their system, but they're reacting worse than what drugs normally do to us wolves." Ronan chanced a dark-eyed glance Kierse's way. "Ethan hasn't progressed further, but he hasn't gotten any better, either. We moved them all to the conference room when Mateo shifted."

Nate's eyebrows rose. "He shifted?"

"Involuntarily."

Nate ground his teeth together. "Fuck. And the substance?"

"We interrogated the bartenders, the doormen, and the regulars who were there when it happened, but no one noticed anything out of the ordinary."

Nate nodded. "Good. Return to your position."

Ronan tipped his head at Nate, then Kierse, before disappearing back into the shadows.

Nate pulled Kierse up another flight of stairs and then thrust open the door to the conference room. She burst inside with Nate on her heels. The room would have been crowded without two full-grown wolves lying on the table. Cara was the last wolf to remain in human form. Her pallid skin was bleached white, and she was shaking as if fighting the shift.

Ethan lay sprawled on a table with Corey clutching his hand. His complexion was sallow, and his scar puckered against his now-sickly face. If it wasn't for the labored rising and falling of his chest, Kierse would have thought he was already dead.

"Oh, Ethan," Kierse said and rushed to his side, taking his other hand.

Gen threw her arms around her. "You made it."

"Of course I did." She pulled back to look into Gen's red-rimmed eyes. She looked thinner, as if this had drained the life out of her, too. "How's he doing?"

"I don't know," Gen said. "Maura is the nurse. I'm only her apprentice."

"And we need a doctor," Maura said tightly. Nate went to her side, pressing a kiss to her cheek. Maura looked at Kierse with a neutral expression, but Kierse saw what wasn't there. It was bad. "Ethan's alive. They're all alive, for now. I already administered activated charcoal to try to keep the drugs from absorbing. But it's not working."

Maura's gaze went to Gen's as if seeking reassurance from her own assistant. Gen had that effect on everyone.

"I can give Ethan another dose," Gen insisted.

"But we can't give it to the wolves. Not without injury to ourselves," she said clearly. "I don't have the equipment to intubate anyone here to pump their stomachs. I'd have to take them to a hospital."

"We could take Ethan," Gen said. "Cara maybe. But what about the wolves? In their shifted form?"

Kierse knew the perfect hospital. "There's a monster hospital. In Queens. They could treat your wolves."

"Queens?" Maura asked. "They'd never make it. I don't even know if we could move any of them."

Cara cried out in that moment, and they all froze as claws suddenly carved divots into the conference table. Her back arched. Her eyes opened wide, going from large and blue to pinpricks in a second. Then, between one breath and the next, she shifted. Her body extended, fur appearing, and when she collapsed back on the table, she was an enormous honey-brown wolf with fangs that could cut a person in two.

"Fuck," Nate cried. "They shouldn't be shifting involuntarily. That's not natural. Maura?"

She shook her head, her calm demeanor nearly shattering.

Gen went to her. "What do we need to do?"

Maura closed her eyes for a split second before saying, "We have to try to get them out of here. I can't do anything more."

"You have to," Corey cried. "If we move him, he's not going to make it."

"If we do nothing, he definitely won't," Nate told him, putting a hand on Corey's shoulder.

Maura sighed. "We don't have time to figure out which one it is. We just need to get him to the hospital."

"I was there when it happened," Corey said mournfully. "One minute, he was completely fine, and the next, he went wild—like completely uninhibited. I'd never seen him like that. I thought it was cute at first, and then..."

Kierse looked into his distressed face. He wasn't crying, but his eyes were distant, lost. As if someone was carving out a piece of him while Ethan lay there on that table. To see this strong Roulette breaking down almost put Kierse over the edge.

"Do we even know what drug could do this?" Kierse asked. "Make wolves shift like that?"

Kierse shoved her hands into her pockets, feeling helpless as fuck. She wished Graves were here. She wished that she had asked him to come with her. Not because he could have done anything to help. He didn't have healing powers. If he did, then surely he would have done something to speed up her own healing when Imani's magic had almost killed her.

What kind of drug could make someone do this? Go completely uninhibited. Make a wolf shift involuntarily.

Could it be that it wasn't a drug at all?

Could it be magic?

And that was why the human methods weren't working?

"I've never heard of anything that can force the shift in my wolves," Nate said.

"There's that new drug on the market," Corey suggested. "We don't even know what it looks like to overdose on the red powder."

Kierse froze. "Wait... red powder?" Maybe it wasn't just magic. Maybe it was Imani's magic. "Is the new drug called wish powder?"

Nate nodded. "Yeah... how did you know that?"

Kierse shook her head. Graves had said that Imani's powder wasn't dangerous. That the product she was producing for her parties just intensified sexual desire. She didn't know if this was an attack from Imani, but someone had clearly wanted to hurt Ethan to get to her.

Either Ethan needed a hospital or Kierse would have to try her magic. Except she didn't know how to use her magic. She'd worked with Graves unsuccessfully for hours. Not once had she been able to even sense him; not once had she been able to use her intent to draw a ward.

But if they took Ethan to a hospital and it was the wish powder, then even if they got in, which was a slim chance at best, there was nothing the doctors could do for him. It would all be for nothing. They could pump his stomach, and the magic wouldn't dissipate. His wish could still kill him.

Graves would know if there was magic involved, but they didn't have time to go get him.

They only had her.