Page 19 of Elven Shadow

Rebecca raised her eyebrows. “No answer for that one, huh?”

Maxwell merely scowled back at her, and when he returned his gaze to the road again, he left it there.

Staring contest officially over, apparently.

He definitely knew he’d screwed up. Hehadto know. Wherever the guy had gone after wolfing out, he wasn’t proud of it. That much was clear.

Rebecca had no idea what might have kept Maxwell away from their fight for as long as it had during some pretty crucial moments. The shifter had his secrets, sure. How could he not with a scowl like that? But it didn’t really matter.

They’d still failed their mission. Shade was still a total joke with Aldous at the helm, and they were still crawling back toward headquarters now with their proverbial tails between their legs.

Still, if Maxwell insisted on not-so-subtly insinuating thatRebeccawould be paying some kind of price for her actions at the target site—like blowingup the deadly, destructive, insanely powerful magical weapon Aldous wanted for himself and saving all their lives because of it—she could play that game right along with him, sure. No problem.

She’d been raised on playing games like that, after all. Some of them had been as messed up as this completely fucked mission. Most of them, admittedly, had been even more dangerous.

By the time they returned to Shade’s official secret headquarters outside Roseland, Aldous still hadn’t regained consciousness.

Rebecca wasn’t particularly worried. If the changeling’s head was as thick against asphalt as it was against common sense, he’d be just fine.

Aldous was collected out of the van after Maxwell parked in the stuffy underground garage attached to the old steel factory that hadn’t been used for almost half a century. Not by humans, anyway.

Shade’s current healer Zida, who even from a distance looked like a walking corpse, moved around the rear of the van to extricate their leader with a flurry of sparks in her hands and a mostly levitating gurney behind her.

Without a word, she cast every member of the team multiple condescending scowls as she settled the changeling the way she wanted him on the gurney, then spun on her heels and hauled Aldous away behind her.

“I don’t get it.” Diego stared after them. “Not even a, ‘Hey, glad y’all made it back in one piece.’ But she’s gonna giveusthe stink-eye like that whenhegets himself knocked around on a mission?”

“Who knows what goes through that old daraku’s mind at any given time,” Leonard said with a shrug. “As long as she keeps her mitts offme, I’m fine with it. All good here. No healer needed.”

Rebecca cocked her head at the mage, frowning at the slashes in the sleeve of his trench coat and the blood that had since welled through them. “Looks like you might, though. Unless you wanna find a better method for healing.”

Diego looked sharply up at her as they all filed out of the van, eyed her up and down a few times, then clicked his tongue. “You offeringhealingmagic too now, elf? ‘Cause…what? Blowing up our acquisition wasn’t enough for you?”

She fixed him with a deadpan stare—the kind that had, once upon a time, practically defined Rebecca and her roles within other groups in other parts of the world; groups now far behind her out of necessity and the changing times.

The Cruorcian wanted to know if she could heal, and he wanted to be a smartass about the whole thing. Fine.

He had no idea.

And he would always have no idea because that was the point.

One massively important, crucial point she couldn’t afford to screw up. Especially now.

6

That was the whole reason Rebecca Bloodshadow was here, with the likes of Shade.

Keeping her secrets.

At least, that had been her reasoning in the beginning, back when she’d thought the organization still held up to its former reputation. But then she’d officially joined Shade’s ranks and learned the highly disappointing truth.

Diego’s sarcastic sneer melted into genuine confusion as he stared at the side of Rebecca’s face. “What’s that? What’re you doing?”

“What’s what?” she asked blandly, turning her gaze on him one more time.

He wrinkled his nose, crimson eyes growing wide until he seemed to realize how clueless it made him look and scowled at her again. “That look on your face. It’s like a smile, but it’s definitely not a smile, and I don’t know what the hell it’s supposed to mean.”

“Looks like you’ll just have to keep guessing on that one,” she said.

---