Page 156 of Veil of Death and Shadow

Assuming I was still alive long enough to be present for it, of course.

I glanced at the two reapers hovering next to us, their presence now a cloying reminder that Death was close.

“Do you know where Sora might be?” Finding Sora was the only thing that mattered right now. “Will you help me find her?”

Rina studied me, silent and unreadable, for what felt like forever. Then finally, she nodded. “Tell me everything you learned from Claude. And that guy . . . Rex, did you call him?”

Relief shot through me.

Burying the baggage of our past, I combed through our visit to the market, then to the bar—Rex, Lav, Manny, Claude, every detail that I could remember.

And then, the second time through rehashing it all, when my memory snagged on Manny, my words died away.

He’d been the last to see her. The one to escort her out, according to Claude.

The realization settled in my chest, a cloak of fear.

“He mentioned something.” I glanced up at Rina. “There’s a bounty on you, right?”

Her lips pursed into a thin line.

“House of Lust?”

She nodded.

That calcified it.

Manny, who’d bought everyone’s drinks tonight, an uncharacteristic occurrence, judging by the bartender’s reaction.

Manny, who was upset that his sister was getting involved with the Seven Sons.

Who’d handed over one sister, thinking that she was the other.

“What if one of the vampires called in that bounty?” I said, my body vibrating with the sudden certainty of it. “Is it possible they took her, thinking she was you?”

Rina cursed, then stabbed her knife into the edge of the table.

Her fingers shook—with rage, with fear, maybe both.

“Stay here,” she said, then shot me a look when I started to argue. “I mean it, Mareena. Do you want my help?”

I nodded.

“Then do not leave this property. I need to get in touch with Danvers to see what resources he’ll let me take. This war’s been brewing between Wrath and Lust for a while now, and Danvers is hungry for blood. If I can frame it properly—as a reason to escalate things—then we might stand a chance with Wrath’s backing. Otherwise, we don’t have any shot at getting her out alive.” Her eyes were wide, pleading, and I thought, for a moment, that I saw a flicker of the old Rina in their depths. “I’llcome back for you. I promise. If all goes well, we’ll head out at dawn.”

29

MAREENA

Present Day

Ishould have been sleeping. Nothing was going to change between when Rina left and when she got back, but sleep was proving impossible.

The strange vacancy of the small house made me squirm. There were two bedrooms, one of which was clearly decorated for a small child. Something about seeing the abandoned toys, the impossibly tiny clothes still hanging in the closet, the race car starter bed, filled me with a thousand questions about what had happened to the people who lived here before? What could make them pick up and leave, without what appeared to be most of their things? Was the small child who lived here simply gone?

I knew the nature of the House of Wrath, knew how ruthless, how bloodthirsty they could be. Had they forced this family to leave behind the only home they knew? Or worse—had they killed them, simply because of the house’s proximity to their stronghold?

Thinking that Rina belonged to their ranks made my head spin. I didn’t blame her, of course, for murdering Cheryl andJoe. Not if they attacked her. And she was right, as much as Sora and I had been through over the years, I had no idea what kind of suffering Rina experienced in our absence.

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