Page 12 of Royal Ransom

The real problem was that I didn’t have my usual backup. Maverick was great in a fight, but he could never hold an official title the public could know about. He wasn’t a moving part of the bureaucracy that made a small town run. Roland was. I needed someone other than my prickly warlock husband to have my back in a crisis. We were in over our heads on this one, and if we didn’t extend a little trust, we might as well turn ourselves over to Janara now. This situation was bigger than me, which meant I had to take Astrid’s advice and start letting mundanes in on the secret, no matter how much that altered my life and relationships with my coworkers.

Roland glanced up from the picture. The look he gave me wasn’t exactly pleading, but it was as close as my deputies would get. The Force was a boys’ club, whether I liked it or not, which meant there was a certain unspoken code to follow. I broke it at my peril. He wanted an excuse to laugh this off, to ascribe a perfectly reasonable explanation to what had happened at my house.

There was no reasonable explanation, and that was the most horrifying truth of all. I’d left my safe, reasonable world behindwhen I’d moved to Haven Hollow with the boys. Even if I left now, my troubles would follow. Living here had changed me in ways I didn’t want to think about. I certainly didn’t want Roland in on the secret. But with Janara sending assassins into town for me, I couldn’t afford to leave him in the dark. He could only get himself killed.

“His name is Rime,” I said quietly. “And it’s not a costume or a body modification. The wings are real. He’s a winter faerie, and he was at my place… well, to kill me.”

The words rolled off my tongue with sickening ease. It was as if I’d been dying to say them aloud to someone. Deep down, I kept expecting to wake up to a handsome doctor telling me I’d slipped into a coma years ago and had made the whole thing up. It seemed too absurd to be real. And now I was dragging my deputies into this mess.

Roland’s face couldn’t seem to settle on an expression. His half-smile looked strained, as though he wasn’t sure whether he was allowed to laugh. The smile dropped when I didn’t laugh or smile back. He glanced down at the photo once, shaking his head.

“Okay, Chief. It’s a good prank, but it went too far. There were shots fired. I can’t ignore that. I can keep the other guys out of the loop. I know you’ve been going through a lot lately, but I need you to be straightforward with me, at least. What’s really going on here?”

I sighed. I should have known that telling the truth wouldn’t be enough. This sort of insane claim required extraordinary evidence to back it up. The question was, how big a demonstration would I need to convince him the situation was as serious as a heart attack? Did I drop my glamour and let him see what I truly looked like? Did I drag Maverick out of my office in the precinct and let him loose a blood bolt? Call Roy and have him transform into bigfoot before Roland’s eyes?

I leaned back in my chair, casting a longing glance at the closed door to my office, where Maverick was sitting and waiting to understand what in the hell he’d wandered into at my house. Granted, he’d arrived after Wren had left, but there was still a shit-ton to explain.

I understood why Roland had separated Mav and me. Witness testimony was important to the initial investigation, and he didn’t want our stories to influence each other. I didn’t care that I would have done something similar if the roles were reversed. I wanted to feel Mav’s hand warm in mine. After the night I had, I deserved a little comfort.

I had to remind myself I was on a time crunch. I had to find a solution to Janara’s ultimatum fast. I couldn’t spend all night hand-holding Roland through the realization that the world wasn’t what he thought it was.

“It wasn’t a prank. They ambushed Darla outside my front door and set her up as bait. They wanted to kill me. I’m lucky I had the quick thinking to attack the way I did, or you might have found my body in the driveway instead.”

Doubt flickered far back in his eyes, but the look of stubborn denial didn’t thaw. “Chief—”

I raised a hand to forestall any well-meaning “have you lost it” looks or gestures. “I know it sounds crazy. I know you all thought Cain was losing it, considering how much he went on about the cult. But he wasn’t wrong. There is a secret subculture here; it just isn’t as malevolent as he made it out to be.”

Roland shook his head. “I think maybe we should go to the hospital. You might have hit your head when you got jumped.”

I was tempted to let him believe that. It was easier than telling him the truth. A crazy man in a costume was more comforting than a monster lurking outside your front stoop. You could shoot the crazy man and be sure he was dead. A supernatural threat? Not so much.

“I can prove it to you, so long as you promise not to tell anyone else.”

Roland crossed his arms over his chest, jaw flexing stubbornly. It reminded me so forcefully of Cain’s obstinate streak that it made my eyes burn. I doubted the big lug would have believed my story without proof, either.

“This ought to be good.”

Well, I’d tried to warn him.

It was almost hysterical to watch that unimpressed mask crumble when my glamour gave way to the ethereal faerie I was supposed to be. I hated what I was most days. I identified as human, no matter how pointy my ears were.

But, at the moment, I had to admit the effect was priceless.

Roland scooted back from me, chair legs squeaking as he attempted to put distance between us. I wasn’t as scary as some of the monsters who called the Hollow home, but I was certainly among the more striking ones. To Roland, it probably looked like another person had beamed in, taking my place across the desk from him. I could see my face in this new form if I squinted, but the reality was Olwen’s face didn’t feel like mine. I wore it because I had to, not because it fit.

“What the hell?” he demanded.

I laughed. “Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction when I first learned about what I was. It just gets stranger from here, trust me.”

Roland glanced between my face and Maverick pacing the confines of my office. I could hear his footsteps in the near silence of the precinct. At this time of morning, most of us were at home, asleep in our beds. Roland usually had the night shift, which suited me fine.

“How did you do that? Was it an illusion or a magic trick...?”

“Glamour,” I answered. “It’s magic—real magic. A lot of people in our town have some version of it. Mav is a warlock. I’ma faerie. A Winter Faerie—just like the one I had to gun down. If it makes you feel any better, Rime’s been trying to kill me for years. It was a clear-cut case of self-defense. Roland, I just wish you hadn’t documented it and sent the body to the morgue. It’s going to be a mess trying to explain it away.”

“Explain it away?” he echoed, shaking his head as he looked at me like I’d just sprouted a new head. “You can’t just explain it away!”

“We can. We have before. It’s just...” I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “The stakes are higher than usual. I know this is going to be hard to accept. I know you won’t like doing what the job asks us to do. But I need someone I can trust to hold things down here while I deal with the spooky business you just witnessed. Can you do that for me, Roland, just this once?”

---