Page 48 of Paris and the Reaper

“He was your father’s henchman. He was in Vincent’s thrall.”

Paris righted his gaze, chin propped on his knee. “Then why did he make sure I had the best tutors? Why did he make sure I had the history lessons to understand the context of what’s happened to me? Why did he help me help others that worked for my father? Why did he save me from my father’s wrath more times than I can count?”

“Why didn’t he save you that night we did?”

Paris lowered his knee and raked a hand through his hair, tugging at the ends, frustration bubbling over. “It doesn’t add up, Mac.”

Mac knew the feeling well. “For the record,” he said, “I don’t disagree with you.” Paris whipped his gaze back to him. “He helped us save Adam and Icarus the night your father was killed. And she knows something she’s not telling anyone, about Atlas and all this.”

“Maybe you should trust her.”

Blind trust didn’t come easy, though. Not for a cop and not for someone who’d witnessed allegiances shift and sway through the years. She was Nature, the highest power in their world, but to what end she used that power, and how she moved them all around her chessboard in her game with Chaos, was still a mystery. As someone who solved those for a living, Mac didn’t like being kept in the dark. And as someone who found himself miraculously bonded again, falling more in love with the person—the human—in the car beside him each day, he liked it even less. He had too much at stake now; he needed to know the rules and the players, all of them.

His phone beeped with a text, interrupting his darkening thoughts. He read the text from Jenn aloud. “All clear.” Paris inhaled deep and straightened in his seat, steeling himself, butthe fear in his eyes was unmistakable. Mac cupped the side of his neck. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I want to,” he replied with zero hesitation.

Fuck, he was amazing. Mac hadn’t been bluffing when he’d told Robin he’d end him if he laid a hand on Paris. He would go to war for this man, against anyone. He drew Paris closer and kissed him deep, pouring all his affection into the kiss and their bond. “Then I’m with you every step of the way.” Exiting the car, they met at the edge of the sandy path that snaked through the sea grass. Mac laced their fingers together, giving Paris’s a squeeze. “I didn’t get to say it before, but I’m proud of you. For making a stand, for the way you handled your father’s assets, and for the way you handled Robin.”

“I could do that because of you. My father snuffed it out all my life, but you helped bring it back. Bring me back.” Paris returned the earlier kiss, and then they followed Liam’s lead through the fog, wind whipping the sea grass and fog around them, soaking them through by the time they reached the clearing where Jenn and Abigail waited. The pack had spread out along the peninsula’s land edges, while Liam and the flock of corvids were scattered along the rocky beach behind the remnants of the giant’s altar.

As Paris gravitated toward the altar, Mac surveyed the rest of the scene. The charred mounds of flesh and bone in a semicircle, the burnt sea grass around the edges of the scene, the deep stains in the earth. All familiar, reminding him of the ridge, except for the silence.

He joined Paris by the altar, a broken mess of rock and driftwood, the pile of bones from the picture Mary had received gone. “A reaper’s been here already,” Mac said, and Paris nodded.

But as Paris stepped around the altar, he froze midstride and swung his wide-eyed gaze back to Mac. “Out there,” he said witha nod toward the Bay, and as Mac drew closer, he heard it too, a whisper on the edge of the waves.

Paris took off running, scattering crows and ravens as he tripped and slipped over slick rocks. Mac grabbed the back of his jacket, helping him stay upright, but as they hit the edge of the water, there was no stopping Paris from sinking to his knees and plunging his hands into the cold, dark water.

Liam jumped into the air, squawking in alarm.

“I know,” Mac said. “I know.” His worry ratcheted higher with each passing second, the water lapping at their knees too cold for Paris to withstand, but he was gone from his plane, lost in whatever vision the voice on the waves was sharing with him. In human form, the best Mac could do was curl around his body and keep him warm, then be there for him when he returned.

Which he did after another minute, shivering and pale, and with a purple hue to his brown eyes. Mac gasped. What was happening to him? But before that question could occupy more of his thoughts, Paris stuttered through chattering teeth, “I saw him. The giant who did this.”

Mac bundled him in his arms and lifted him out of the water, Jenn and Abigail steadying him as he crossed the rocks back to stable ground. “Can you paint him?”

“I don’t need to,” Paris said, voice fraught with agony—and terror. “I know who he is.”

Mac stumbled. Would’ve hit the dirt if not for Jenn and Abigail holding them up. “How?”

“He worked for my father.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Mac stoodat the end of the island in his parents’ bustling, chaotic kitchen, unsure if he’d made the right decision fleeing his place for the evening to come here. But he’d been shooed out of the infirmary by Monte and Chaz, and he hadn’t wanted to stay on the main floor either, listening through the ceiling as Icarus streamed a scene, Adam watched him, and the inevitable ensued. Maybe Mary could tune that out with her headphones and hacking, but he’d nearly died of embarrassment the first time, no doubt would for sure now that he had a better idea of what exactly was going on upstairs. Pati likewise wasn’t there to distract him, the elders and midwives from her tribe having made the journey to the mountain and set up camp on one of the outparcels. Not far from where Robin and Jenn were meeting with the rest of the pack to organize the hunt for Wallace Boyle, the giant Paris had identified from his vision at the Stick.

“No Paris tonight?” Rena asked, as if reading his mind. She sat between Cherry and Abernathy at the kitchen’s eat-in table, helping the children ice a cake.

“He’s in YB with Abigail, Jason, and Kai. Recon for her.” Once they’d had a face and name to go with another giant ontheir map, the search was on. Mac had held Paris through the rest of the day and night, made sure he’d recovered from his dip in the cold Bay, and then reluctantly seen him off yesterday morning to the condo in YB. He would have liked to keep him at home another day, to wallow in the bond between them before it disappeared again, but Paris’s drive to do something was irrepressible. “They’ll be back later tonight.”

“Yay!” Cherry and Abernathy cheered, spatulas in the air, icing more of the table than the cake.

“When do we get to meet this man?” his mom asked as she slid the foil-covered skillet of ratatouille he’d helped assemble into the oven. Normally, he stayed out of the way, but he’d gotten used to cooking with Paris. “The kids can’t stop talking about him.” She wiped her hands on the front of her apron, then slipped it off over her head, her silver and black braid resettling over her shoulder. “I didn’t think anyone could top Icarus as their favorite.”

“You should bring him to the Samhain festival,” his dad said from where he and Liam were slathering loaves of bread with garlic butter.

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Mac started, only to be cut off by his youngest brother, Declan, who joined Rena and the kids at the table, taking a swipe of icing for himself.

---