Page 55 of Paris and the Reaper

Mac hated to wipe it from his face, but he had one more favor to ask, and Adam was the only person he trusted to fulfill it. “If for some reason he doesn’t make it, I don’t want to either. Not again.”

Using the hand still on his shoulder, Adam pulled him into a crushing embrace. “I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it does, you have my word.”

Mac hugged him back, blinking back tears and forcing words out around the lump in his throat. “Thank you.”

“Hey, wallflowers!” Icarus shouted, yanking them out of their melancholy moment. They drew apart, eyeing the courtesan standing with Paris mid-tent, the former holding up an orange gingham, Paris a violet one. “Need your votes.”

Paris’s smile grew wider with each step Mac came closer, his gaze bright with happiness, with the confidence Atlas and Robin had tried unsuccessfully to chip away at, with the love that had been growing between them these past few weeks, that Mac had no intention of existing without.

“I like the violet,” he said as Mac reached him.

“I should hope so.” Smirking, he looped an arm around Paris’s waist, trapping him in said violet and kissing him with his whole soul.

Cheers erupted and a camera clicked somewhere, capturing the second love of his life. His last. “Forever,” he whispered against Paris’s lips.

“Forever,” his mate promised back.

THIRTY-ONE

Infirmary no longer needed,the tasting table had been moved back into the barrel room and all but one seat was occupied around it, the room full of people, including Mac with Paris sitting beside him, waiting for the last person to arrive.

To confirm the wheels had been set in motion.

Jason, on the other side of Paris, leaned across the table, asking Icarus, “What happened to Miss Types-Like-the-Wind?”

“You wouldn’t want me to send these messages to the wrong people, would you?” Mary said as she cleared the bottom step.

No, they would not. With Charlotte’s help decoding Vincent’s books and contacts, Mac’s cold case files and access to missing persons reports, the pack digging deeper into Atlas’s potential whereabouts, and Mary hacking surgical records, official and not, they’d identified three possible suspects as the giant who’d attacked Paris, all of them erased persons, presumably all the names they’d associated with them aliases too.

Brett Barrett.

Samuel Thomas.

Neil Roberts.

And just now, Mary had sent encrypted emails to each, putting it out there that Paris, as Vincent’s successor, wanted to meet at the Stick tomorrow, the day before Samhain, to discuss a possible partnership for future endeavors. They were counting on the giant, whichever one he was, to see an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. A chance to catch the one who got away.

And Paris acting the bait on his own terms, with plenty of backup.

Mac looked again at the pictures of their three suspects—a single photo of each that Mary had managed to scrounge up. “Can you give us a more likely than not?” he asked Paris.

Paris pulled each photo closer, taking a long look then trading one for another. “All of them are the right build and appearance, perfectly average. But all of their beards are too thick for me to see if the scar is there,” he said, tapping at the spot on Brett’s chin where the raised slash would be. “And the photos are too grainy to see much else.”

“Best I could find,” Mary said. “We’re lucky to get any for erased persons.”

“Samuel is the most likely candidate,” Robin said. “If that report he paid a surgeon for fixing his face after a bar fight is legit.”

“A bar that has the ingredients for the drink you smelled on his breath,” Mac said.

“Wrong eye color,” Jenn countered.

“Could be contacts,” Kai said, and he would know. The white raven’s contacts had fooled people for years into thinking he was a human.

“Then there’s the loan shark, Neil,” Abigail said. “Vincent did business with him.”

“He could’ve taken that knife Paris painted as collateral,” Jason speculated. “High value.” The smuggler would know.

But Icarus shook his head. “Atlas would’ve known him.”

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