Change of Heart (The Potentate of Atlanta Book 3) Read online

  “What am I seeing?” I braced a palm on the building to anchor myself. “What did you do to me?”

  “I opened your eyes a crack. Just as I did before.” The curtain of black hair slid over his shoulder. “It won’t last long, only until dawn. I suggest you hunt while you can.”

  Wrapping himself in what I now realized was glamour, he returned to his green costume and shut the door.

  Ambrose hadn’t moved a muscle since the fae dropped his glamour, and now he studied the air around us. He pointed in one direction and yanked on me through our bond to urge me on.

  Despite the fact he had saved my life, thereby saving his, I recognized the danger in accepting help from him.

  “One trail,” I warned him. “We’ll see where it goes, and that’s it.”

  The shadow leapt and kicked its heels together.

  Anything that put him in that good of a mood was bad business, but I didn’t have any other leads. Given recent events, I did apply common sense and text Bishop an update.

  Hit Greenleaf. Bumped into your BFF. He gifted me with the ability to see glowing trails leading to goddess knows what to keep me away from Blithe.

  The distraction was a good one. Masterful even. He had offered me an opportunity I couldn’t ignore.

  >> #@$%*

  Just thought I’d let you know.

  I pocketed the cell before he found his words and let me have it. Accepting gifts from the fae? Dumb. Really dumb. But the guy hadn’t exactly given me a choice. If I was going to pay for it somewhere down the line, I might as well use it while I had it.

  Curious about the trails, I reached out, expecting my hand to pass through the nearest one, but it was solid as twine. I gripped it, yanked on it, and experienced an odd sensation down its length. As if I had tapped someone on the shoulder, and they had turned to look at me.

  “On second thought…” I dropped the trail Ambrose had chosen. “Let’s try this one instead.”

  Whatever I had disturbed when I touched that particular thread would be on alert. I sensed that much. I didn’t want to bump into it when it was expecting company, whatever it was.

  The next trail I kept well away from, and we followed it with care not to tangle in the other threads crisscrossing the streets and buildings. Whatever the fae man had done to me, he had more than opened my eyes. He had altered my perception, made the intangible tangible.

  As we gained on the person/thing at the end of the trail, I noticed its glow brightened, and the motes grew less defined, more scattered. As though its past were set, but its future was as yet undetermined.

  “This is too weird,” I told Ambrose, and for once he agreed with me.

  The trail ended in an abandoned building, the motes diffuse around me, but nothing else moved.

  “Well?” I risked the question out loud to Ambrose. “What do you sense?”

  Hisses filled the darkened corners, and a clicking noise sent gooseflesh racing down my arms.

  That was all the warning the Martian Roach gave me before launching its chitinous body at me.

  Two thoughts battled for top billing in my head.

  One: Frakking hell, that fae had given me the good stuff.

  Two: Frakking hell, I was alone with a pissed-off Martian Roach.

  Ambrose glided over to it and ran his hand down its spine.

  The creature whipped its head toward him and issued an earsplitting shriek that summoned more motes, enough to turn the blackened ceiling into a starlit sky.

  The roach had called for backup, lots of it, but all I had was Ambrose.

  The shadow coiled around my shoulders, waiting for my play. I only had one, and we both knew it.

  “Drain it.” We needed the specimen, and I had to be alive to call it in. “Don’t kill it.”

  I couldn’t put off feeding him forever. Not after the energy he expended saving me during the explosion. That came with its own issues. I might as well get it over with, then worry about draining him to a manageable level.

  Given the order, Ambrose dove into the creature, devouring its magic in chomps that filled my stomach with sympathetic pangs. Hungry as he was, he made quick work of it, and the creature went down hard. That was all well and good except its buddies were crawling out of the woodwork.

  I had maxed out my friendship with Ford, and Midas was in no shape to help. Ares wasn’t a fan of mine at the moment, and Lisbeth wasn’t ready to report for duty. That left me with a pissed-off Bishop, and maybe Remy. If she answered her phone.

  The magic saturating Ambrose swelled him like a tick and left him too dazed to be much use, except as a battery. That worked just fine for me.

  I took the small jar of ink from my pocket and dipped my finger to draw a circle around the unconscious roach and myself, careful to keep Ambrose locked in too. I had to nudge him to push magic into the design until it snapped closed in a protective barrier the other roaches couldn’t penetrate.

  First things first, I called the local sentinel HQ. They dispatched a unit of their Elite to help me crush the roaches. That took care of the most pressing danger but left me with a roach in the circle with me. Definitely a job for Bishop.

  “Can you rent a U-Haul and meet me?” I gave him the address. “We need to move fast before it wakes.”

  “You and I are going to have a talk,” he warned. “You’re getting in too deep with the fae.”

  “I didn’t ask your friend to help, he just did it.”

  As if Bishop already knew the friend’s identity, or could guess, he didn’t ask for specifics.

  “No fae ever just does anything, kid. He’s marked you as a person of interest, or he wouldn’t bother.”

  Magic tingled through my forehead where his fingers had touched my skin. “What does that mean?”

  “Let him build enough debt between you, and he’s going to ask you for a favor in return.”

  “How does him giving me this indebt me? I didn’t agree to anything.”

  “You accepted his help. That’s all the opening he needs to worm his way into your life. Trust me.”

  “He’s your friend.”

  “He’s not my friend. He’s…” A spate of annoyed Gaelic filled my ear. “He’s trouble. Stay away from him.” He cursed, in English this time. “Don’t let the bastard touch you again. Gods only knows what else he did to you when he gave you this gift.”

  “That sounds…bad.” I was not a fan of people doing things to me without my knowledge. “Ambrose?”

  The shadow picked up on the drift of my thoughts, which creeped me out to no end, but he shook his head. Whatever hooks the fae had used hadn’t lodged in my skin. Ambrose would know, and he would do his best to devour the magic before I noticed what he was up to and reprimanded him for it.

  “Don’t move a muscle,” Bishop snapped. “I’ll be right there.”

  A glimmer caught my eye, and a figure emerged from the shadows. “He’s such a whiner.”

  “Remy?” I started at her voice. “How did you get in here?”

  “I have my ways.”

  “You were stalking me again, weren’t you?” I squinted at her. “Are you even you?”

  “Stop trying to define that which defies definition.”

  “That sounds like a no.”

  “I’m Six.” She walked closer. “Happy?”

  “I’m trapped in a circle with a giant bug in a warehouse full of giant bugs, so not really, no.”

  “You forgot him.” She jerked her chin toward Ambrose. “Hello, beastie. Fat and happy, are we?”

  Ambrose ignored her and curled into a ball on the concrete.

  “He took down the roach.” I shrugged. “He’s digesting.”

  “I hear Bishop is on his way with a truck, so what do you need from me?”

  “Ideally, I would like to pack up this nice, sedate Martian Roach for Abbott before the sentinels arrive to kill the rest.”

  “Except the building is surrounded by giant bugs, so there’s no way that’s happe
ning.”

  “I said ideally.”

  “Realistically?”

  “Can you bring all yourselves here? Between them, Bishop, and me, we should be able to load this guy into the truck after the smoke clears. I’ll tell them we need the body for testing, which we do. I’ll just neglect to mention it’s still alive.”

  “That could work.” She tugged on a piercing in her ear. “But I’m not out to Bishop.”

  There was nothing I could trade her about him in kind. The geas prevented it. His secrets were his own to share or not. But she had seen where I took him, and who had taken him in. She might suspect the truth of his nature based on that alone. I wasn’t sure how aware fae were of one another. It’s not like necromancers could tell species from a glance, except when it came to vampires, but that was a result of the necromantic magic used to animate them. That’s what we picked up on, an active casting, basically. A long-term spell with a generous, but definite, expiration date.

  “I’m not going to force you out.” It wasn’t my place. “What if he drops off the van, and you and me handle it?”

  “How pissed are you about the Linus thing?”

  The change in topic threw me. “I am both excited and terrified for the opportunity.”

  “So, you’re not going to fire me?”

  “Uh, no.” I couldn’t believe she would ask. “You got us into this mess. You’re going to get us out of it.”

  A tentative smile teetered on her mouth. “You’ve been nicer to me than anybody has been in…a long time.”

  “You were down on your luck when we met.” I slid my gaze toward Ambrose. “I know how it feels when you stumble and fall, but you can’t get up no matter how hard you try.” I frowned. “There are times in life when the only way to climb out of the hole you’ve dug for yourself is to have someone throw you a rope. You still have to pull yourself out, but at least you’ve got an anchor waiting for you at the top.”

  “I tried to kill your man, and I’m not saying I’m over the impulse.”

  “As long as you don’t act on the impulse, we’re good.”

  “I can probably restrain myself from murdering him.” She cocked her head, considering. “As long as you give me a raise proportionate to my contributions to the company.”

  “You’re asking for a partnership, aren’t you?”

  “Oh. Hmm. A partnership?” She tapped her chin. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Yeah.” I snorted a laugh. “Seems to me, you’ve thought of everything.”

  The world had indeed flipped upside down when I was handing off a business on the verge of becoming. I had invested years to earn my MBA, and I was turning over my franchised empire to a fae without any qualifications aside from wit and determination.

  “Think on it.” She danced away a few steps. “Back in a few.”

  There was nothing to think about, really. I struggled to run a mall kiosk and keep my head above water on the potentate front. There was no way I could manage more than one kiosk, let alone a store. This was Remy’s passion fueling an old dream of mine.

  The surrealness of it struck me, that I was getting a thing I had always wanted only to discover I didn’t want it anymore. My world had been so small and certain back when I thought earning a respectable degree for a Low Society woman that would guarantee me a respectable job and a respectable match would earn my parents’ approval. Only after I realized that would never happen had I reached for bigger dreams that turned my life into a nightmare.

  Now I had trouble picturing a life where that kind of work fulfilled me. Perhaps because it never had, but I had bought into the idea for so long I had been afraid to let it die until Ambrose helped me kill my old life.

  The wail of sirens alerted me to the approach of the sentinels in their APD squad cars, the better to make this seem like a routine police raid and not a magical mutant shootout, which, now that I thought about it, would make an awesome movie title.

  Used to the routine, I raised my hands to show they were empty and that I was not a threat. Most of them recognized me, but there was always a risk of a new hire getting trigger-happy before they determined I was one of the good guys.

  And how wild was that? One of the good guys. That was me, all right.

  Gunfire erupted all around, and insectoid screeches gave me a good idea of the formation the APD was using to infiltrate the building. Low Society necromancers rarely had any magic, and it wasn’t the type of magic you could fling at someone or something anyway. It required tools and preparation. It was all but worthless in a fight. But guns with armor-piercing rounds, which I suggested after the OPA’s first encounter with the Martian Roaches, worked just fine.

  “Clear,” a woman called, and she was answered by several other voices. “What the actual hell, Whitaker?”

  A short woman in black tactical armor with a vicious-looking firearm in each hand entered the building.

  “Hey, Lizzy.” I lowered my arms. “Long time, no see.”

  Lizzy Frommel was the pack’s liaison with the Atlanta Police Department. She was a lawyer, but she was also an enforcer. Kind of like Rambo but with a degree. She represented gwyllgi in police custody and made arrangements with the undercover sentinels to ensure justice was served outside human law.

  Between her, my Lisbeth, and Ares’s Liz, I had a Liz adjacent overload in my life.

  “It’s been a week, tops.” She kept her fingers on the triggers, and her eyes in the darkened corners. “What have you gotten yourself into this time?”

  The tone recalled my insecurities about what Ares must have said to Midas to provoke the response I had overheard, but I couldn’t let it get to me here or now. I couldn’t go through life suspecting everyone wanted me out of the picture. I mean, that might be the case, but I couldn’t let it matter.

  “You heard about Faete?”

  “Your office sent mine a dossier, so yeah.”

  “Well, here’s your origin.” I swept my arm out to encompass the destruction. “Don’t let these things bite you.”

  “Their spit is a drug?” Her nose wrinkled. “Are you sure you’re not the one who’s high?”

  “Their spit is the basis for the drug,” I confirmed. “My team has been working around the clock to isolate the exact components used in the compound.”

  “You mean your team has been working alongside the cleaners, right?”

  “Um, yes.” I snapped my fingers. “That.”

  Lizzy crossed to me and crouched, taking in the bug behind me, which had started to twitch. “What gives?”

  “Hmm?” I leaned into her field of vision. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “That thing is alive, and you put it in the circle with you.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re protecting it.” Her finger caressed the trigger. “The question is why? And you better have a damn good answer, or I’ll have to assume you’ve been infected.”

  My brilliant plan had hinged on sentinels rushing in to save the day while Remy and I exited, stage left. I hadn’t taken into consideration that Lizzy might catch wind of my call and decide to come on behalf of the pack. Normally, she wouldn’t have done it. But, as Midas and I got more serious, I was starting to see myself for what I was: a liability to the pack. Lizzy had come here in case I got myself in trouble I couldn’t get out of without help.

  Ares had been right when she said this courtship thing had little to do with twu wuv and everything to do with politics. Though I might be paraphrasing that last bit, the logic still held, and it still sucked.

  “We need an unadulterated sample in order for my people to start working on an antidote.” I kept my voice low. “We will send samples to the cleaners for their database, so that anyone who wants to can access the information and help work on a cure.” I leaned in closer to the edge. “We brought in Doughty too. Between him, Abbott, and Reece, we’ve got a better chance of cracking this than anyone else.”

  Bishop sauntered in, swinging a ring of keys arou
nd his finger, and I wanted to beat him with my shoe for being late and so blasé about it.

  “Liz,” he said in greeting. “Her authority outstrips yours, and you know it. Don’t waste our time.”

  “I was handling it,” I growled at him. “We were reaching an understanding.”

  “She’s posturing,” he sighed. “She’s a high-level dominant, or she couldn’t do what she does. She’ll take tiny bites out of you until there’s nothing left if you let her.” He stepped right up to the circle’s edge. “Her beta is courting you. You outrank her. Play nice if you want her to step all over you, but do it later.”

  As was often the case, Bishop was right. On multiple fronts.

  “By the authority of the Office of the Potentate of Atlanta, we’re seizing the body. We’ll send out samples to all major factions as soon as they’ve been collected.” I erased the line with my finger, and the circle collapsed. “We’re happy to share our resources with anyone who has a better idea about how to assist people who have been victimized by this drug.” Ambrose slithered across the ground, alert at last, and sniffed Lizzy’s ankles. “But you won’t stop us.”

  “Big words.”

  “I have big swords too, if you need me to clean out your ears.”

  “I heard you carried Midas out of the fire.”

  “He saved me first. I was repaying the favor.”

  “There are people who don’t care much for your relationship.”

  “So I hear.”

  “You want my opinion?”

  Not really, no. “Sure.”

  “Fuck ’em.” She offered me a hand up then held on. “Bad things happen, and it sucks, but it’s life. There will always be some dickhead next door who spots greener grass in your yard and has to trample it to be happy.”

  “That sounds perilously close to an endorsement.”

  “This was coming. That it’s arriving now, before you officially take over, tells me the people behind it are more afraid of you than they were of Linus. They want this done before you take office and claim Atlanta. They’re worried what you might do with that power boost.”

  “And if your pack pays for it?”