Morgan pressed her lips in a line, but she raised her hands slowly.
I turned to Mary. “Give me the gun, Mary.”
“She killed Ryan. She has to answer for it.”
“She will,” I promised. “The right way.”
Mary shot me a scornful look. “You mean like last time? How would you say that’s working out?”
She had a point. “Mary . . . if you kill her now, she becomes a martyr, and the little witch uprising she planned might still happen. Besides, someone was funding her. We need to know who it is.”
“What exactly are you proposing?” Mary demanded, without looking away from Morgan.
“We take her to Maven. She’ll probably end up killing her anyway, but she’ll be able to expose all of Morgan’s lies first.” And I could keep my promise to Simon.
I could see Mary thinking this over. “How do you know you’ll get her to talk?”
It was a fair question. Maven couldn’t press a witch, and I wasn’t ready to resort to physical torture, but I thought we might be able to bribe Morgan, maybe with a visit with her kids. In the meantime, I could bluff. “One way or another,” I said heavily, “we can make her talk.”
Morgan visibly flinched for the first time, which made Mary cock her head with interest.
“No,” Morgan said, her voice edged with panic. “You can’t do this. You can’t torture me.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I told her.
“Just shoot me,” Morgan begged.
Mary gave a little shrug. “If you insist.”
She lowered the barrel and pulled the trigger. The silver slug hit Morgan in the soft tissue just above her hip, and she collapsed to her knees. Then she began to wail, and Mary darted forward and punched her in the side of the head. Morgan slumped to the ground, unconscious.
While I was still standing there with my mouth open, Mary held out her hand to give me the revolver, now hanging from her finger by the trigger guard.
“I’m starving,” she said. “Wanna get breakfast?” She raised her voice. “Hey, Katia! Breakfast?”
Chapter 47
The sun was rising on an overcast haze as I drove the hell out of Wyoming.
The radio was playing a sickly-sweet Christmas song, so I reached over and clicked it off. I adjusted the rearview mirror to check on Tobias, who lay sprawled across the back seat, snoring gently.
When we had finally climbed out of the fucking tunnels, with me supporting Katia and Mary carrying a still-unconscious Morgan Pellar, Alex and Tobias had been on the stairs in human form—along with Lindsay and Nicolette, the two younger werewolves who’d sat out the earlier fight. The rest of Mary’s pack had been on their way to rescue her.
Instead, Lindsay and Nicolette retrieved Barlow’s body, carrying it to a more concealed tunnel exit, while Alex and Tobias helped the rest of us get out of there. Then Mary and Alex had personally escorted Morgan Pellar to a doctor Alex knew in Fort Collins, who would stitch up the bullet hole, no questions asked. I was a little wary about leaving Morgan in the hands of Alex and Mary, but in the end, I had to trust they wouldn’t kill an injured, sedated woman.
Yeah, I may have given Morgan some of the morphine from the emergency kit before they took off.
Tobias was coming along to Boulder to retrieve the Ventimiglias’ vehicle and hopefully collect Dunn’s body, assuming Maven could pull strings to get it released. Mary and Alex would bring Morgan to Boulder that night, to hand-deliver her to Maven. I had already left messages for Maven and Quinn explaining the situation, and I’d called Lily and arranged for Hazel to drop the barrier preventing Morgan from coming into the state. The witches could set up a meeting with Maven and the werewolves later that night. It was about time all these people got in a fucking room and figured things out.
Which left me. As far as I was concerned, I was out of it. At the moment I had no standing at all in the Old World, and I was sort of grateful for that. When the dust settled, I planned to go to Maven and beg for my job back, but I was just as happy not to be around to complicate her negotiations with the witches. Most of them hated me, and I didn’t want to distract Lily and Simon when they needed to focus on family.
Also? I wanted some fucking sleep.
Putting the mirror back where it belonged, I glanced sideways, to the passenger seat. Katia was sitting with her forehead pressed to the cold window, and for a long time I couldn’t tell whether she was asleep. Then she turned her head to look at me, and I winced again at her bruised and swollen face.
“Stop looking at me that way,” Katia said. Her words were still slightly distorted from the puffy lip. “I have had worse.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
Katia began to stretch her arms, but it must have hurt, because she stopped almost immediately. “Did you talk to Lily?”
“Yes. She’s going to meet with Maven and the werewolves tonight, and Simon’s going to be fine,” I assured her. “He was just a little banged up.”
“Is Lily okay?” she persisted.
Something in her tone . . . I glanced over again and took in the very casual, innocent way she was staring at the road in front of us.
“Oh. Oh,” I said stupidly. “It’s Lily.”
I felt stupid.
“What is Lily?” Katia was still trying for innocence, but she didn’t pull it off.
“You said you liked someone, romantically. It’s Lily, isn’t it?”
There had been signs—nothing huge, but now that I thought about it, Katia never asked after the Pellars—just Lily. When she’d asked me about Morgan, she’d called her Lily’s sister. For crying out loud, Katia had blushed when Lily complimented her hair.
Katia craned her head around to check on Tobias. When she turned to face front again, she began to study her fingernails in silence.
Why hadn’t I seen it? True, I hadn’t known Katia was into women—but then, I hadn’t known she was into men either. Katia was so self-contained, she often came off as cold. And maybe because she’d witnessed—and possibly been the victim of—so much sexual assault, I guess I hadn’t . . .
I felt ashamed of myself. Hadn’t what, Lex? Hadn’t thought Katia could enjoy sex, or have feelings? I spent a few more seconds berating myself, then realized Katia was sneaking glances at me, and I had to take care so she didn’t misinterpret my expression. “Why didn’t you say anything?” I blurted.
She gave me a look. “She’s your best friend, and you are the only family I have left,” she said in a quiet voice. “I didn’t think you would approve.”
“Why not?” I asked, though I suspected I knew the answer.
“Because of the things I’ve done,” she said simply. Unspoken were the words because of what I am.
I had no idea how to respond to that. “Katia . . .”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean,” she said, her voice still subdued. “I pressed a vampire to kill innocent women. I stood by and watched as those vampires Oskar had imprisoned were tormented and raped, then I forced them to forget their pain, just so they could go through it again. I told myself I was helping them—but I never tried to save them.”
“Do you think you could have?” I asked. “Could you have pressed Oskar?”
She shook her head. “I tried to press him once, but he was too strong for me. It . . . didn’t go well.” One hand lifted to rub her collarbone. Katia always wore crew-neck shirts, usually with long sleeves, but this one was ripped, and I could see the beginning of scar tissue. I forced my eyes back to the road. “But I could have done something else,” she went on. “Found a witch to release them from their bonds, or pressed them to run as far as they could. Reported him to a cardinal vampire. Anything. But I was scared, and I did nothing.”
My heart ached for her. She sounded . . . well, she sounded like me, really, when I’d first returned to Boulder after being blown up in the desert. Only Katia hadn’t signed up for the army; she’d been kidnapped and victimized by a monster. He had literally killed her when she was fourteen, in order to activate her boundary magic. And yet she couldn’t stop blaming herself for everything that had happened afterward. If I were a betting woman, I would put down every penny in my savings account that she had night terrors, just as I did.
“You’ve heard the stories about boundary witches,” she continued, with the smallest tremble running through her voice. “There’s death in our blood, that’s what everyone says. But what if it’s not just death? What if it’s darkness?”
I had to admit, I’d had similar thoughts. Doing serious boundary magic, the kind where you played around with another being’s soul, it felt way too good. Someone could get addicted to that kind of high, and if I hadn’t had Simon and Lily and Quinn to keep me grounded, I probably would have gone . . . well, what Scarlett would call “full dark side.”
“I raised the dead last night,” I blurted.
Katia sat up straight. “What? When? Why?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter now. I did it, and I can’t go back. And I’m still here, Kat. I’m still breathing.”
She let out a soft grunt that suggested she was unconvinced.
I sighed. “Look. I’m the wrong person to judge good or bad. I’m definitely in no place to judge your actions twenty years ago. But one thing I’m pretty damn sure of is that you get to decide who you are and what you do now. And it never would have crossed my mind that you might not be good enough for Lily.”
One corner of her mouth instantly tugged up, as though just thinking of Lily made it impossible not to smile. Then her frown returned. “Anyway. Nothing will come of it. I couldn’t do that to her.”
“Do what to her?”
She gestured helplessly at her chest, like there was an airborne toxin inside her. “Lily is like . . . sunshine in human form. I could never risk that out of selfishness.”
“Well, that’s just horseshit.” That got a tiny smile out of her. “Lily is a grown-up. She has the right to make her own choices without you deciding what’s good and bad for her.”
Katia relaxed back into her seat and stared out the window again, her face betraying nothing. “I will think on it.”
I drove straight to the hospital in Boulder, where I would check on John and Katia could go to the ER to get checked out. She thought this was unnecessary, but I badgered and insisted until she gave in. I was not going to be in another situation where I didn’t find out about internal bleeding in time.
We pulled up to the ER entrance and I put the Jeep in park, watching the EMTs bustling in and out of the building. Katia and I both glanced into the back seat, but Tobias was still out.
“You should really come to the ER too,” Katia said quietly. “I saw your arms and legs before you changed your clothes.”