Page 39 of Bitten By Desire

“I hate to interrupt, but I could really use a minute with my sister,” Zoe said from the now open doors.

With a swift kiss, Julian swept past her, and Zoe took his place at my side, hugging herself against the cold air.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m great,” I replied, mind still on Julian’s promise.

“No, you aren’t. You haven’t taken a fucking minute to process and every bad guy in the known universe is after you.” Zoe pulled me into a hug.

I inhaled her sweet scent and squeezed her back. “I know. Hey… I think I’ve worked out one mystery.”

“What’s that?” Zoe backed up and rubbed her arms again.

“Those supposed gods Dad said told him to experiment on us? I’m pretty sure they were demons.” I watched her carefully in case I’d overloaded her brain. But she simply stared over my shoulder and sucked in her bottom lip in thought, so I continued. “The widow we questioned said they call themselves that because others do, but they obviously have no problems impersonating other beings for their own gain. And…well, your portals look a lot like the ones that lead to their dimension. And I feel drawn there, almost like I’m being called…home.”

“Right. We have demon DNA in us,” Zoe said flatly then tugged her sleeves down to cover her hands. “Great.”

“They want me there to see what happened when the DNAs were mixed, I’m pretty sure. And well, the general was watching us when you opened that portal into the base.”

The color drained from her face as the information sunk in.

“Just be careful, okay?” I said. “There’s no reason to expect them to come for you. As far as anyone’s said, they’re after me because I’m psychic.”

“We have a plan of action,” Hazel announced from the doorway.

“What?” I asked, pulling Zoe past her into the room.

“You said Bres was creating something then destroying it. We assumed it was so he could kill the board members without leaving clues,” Tabitha said. “He’s the King of the unseelie, by the way.”

I froze. If the seelie queen was bad, the unseelie had a far worse reputation. “Don’t they hate each other?”

Hazel shrugged. “You know what they say. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If they made a deal like you said, they both have something else up their sleeves.”

“Okay, so how does this help?” I asked.

“When you said the demons created a golem, I got to thinking,” said Hazel. “What’s the fae equivalent of a golem?”

I chewed the inside of my cheek, trying to puzzle it out. A memory surfaced of a warm night on a veranda when Binx had shared the story of his sister. Suddenly, things clicked into place.

“They made a changeling,” I said.

“Bingo!” Tabitha said, stuffing a cookie in her mouth.

“But those are to replace babies,” Zoe said. “Children, so they can steal the human ones. Or that’s what the stories say.”

That’s what I’d thought too. But Binx had explained that it depended on how much magic the fairy creator infused in it and its purpose.

“She needed something much more intricate,” I said, looking around. “A copy of someone the targets trust, and that takes more power.”

“The queen needed a killing machine that looks human and can be discarded when she’s done. Like a disposable hitman,” Tabitha said.

“Now we know what we’re looking for,” I said, brightening. “Good work. But what’s the plan you mentioned?”

“Step one is to make a bargain,” Hazel said.

“What sort of bargain?” I asked, mouth dry. I’d thought I could handle a fae bargain once upon a time, and that had almost cost me my life.

Hazel waggled her eyebrows. “We trade you for the captive.”

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