The other man—the one sitting in the corner—stood up, anger darkening his features. His head was shaved to the wick and his eyes were hooded, hiding the colour from me, but I’d have laid money at that moment they were a tawny yellow. “You bitch, who do you think you are collaring a werewolf?”
He stalked toward me and my normally submissive Alex stiffened against my leg, his body inching forward. “No mean to Rylee!”
“Smith, ease down,” the tall man said, motioning for the werewolf, Smith, to sit.
Surprisingly enough, he did. Good to know. Perhaps he wasn’t a true Alpha?
“Alex, enough,” I said, lowering hand to the top of his head.
“Boss said take care of you. Keep Rylee safe,” he said, scratching at his ear with a back foot, the ‘almost’ confrontation already forgotten.
My heart squeezed. O’Shea, he meant O’Shea had told him to look out for me.
The other men were talking and I overheard Agent Valley call the tall man Denning.
I grabbed a chair and slumped into it, Alex sitting beside me with his head on my knee. Smith glared at me from across the room and I stuck my tongue out at him.
Alex mimicked me, then proceeded to make progressively worse faces until Smith looked away with a glower. Chuckling to myself, I put a hand on Alex’s head, rubbing him behind his ears.
Will pulled a chair up beside me. “What do you think we should do next?”
“It would be nice if we could figure out what kind of supernatural is taking the kids.”
“Are you so sure it isn’t a human?”
I snorted. “What human is going to know about crossing the Veil, and not just crossing it, but using it as a means to travel? And has the ability to hide the entrance to the Veil so well that in a ten by twelve room the two of us couldn’t find it?”
He was silent.
“Besides,” I said, “they wouldn’t have brought me in for a serial kidnapper unless there was a supernatural element.”
“Are you so sure about that?”
I thought for a moment about the group of men that had been in the room to gawk at me. No doubt Jack Feen would never have stood for that kind of reception. As if reading my mind, Will spoke.
“Jack was a little more low key than you. He only had a few contacts within the agency. Worked with me for the most part and didn’t like Denning all that much. And he never came into the office. Ever.”
Glancing over at the verbally sparring men, I could see why. Denning was arguing that I had to be on a short leash, controlled like the wild card I was. Agent Valley was arguing for me to do what I had to and worry about the consequences later. Maybe O’Shea had been wrong about his boss, or maybe he’d changed since losing his number one agent to the world of the supernatural.
I leaned my head back against the wall behind me and closed my eyes. Jet lag was finally kicking in and it looked like it was going to be a bitch.
Welcome to London, Rylee.
*-*-*-*
Milly crooked her finger, and O’Shea stepped forward, his innards twisting with fury. But all that moved was a subtle twitch over his right eye. She’d commanded him to get into her car, and drove deep into the badlands to the old mining shaft where Rylee and he had crossed the Veil, looking for India in what seemed like forever ago.
He’d done what Milly asked him to without hesitation, unable to stop his body from reacting to her commands. When they reached the mineshaft, there were still remnants of police tape, and he could smell the blood and viscera under the snow as if it were fresh and not months old.
“Come now, don’t fight this,” Milly said. “In the end, this is better. You have to trust me.”
Of course, he couldn’t so much as utter a god-blasted grunt without her giving him a command to speak. Witch or not, Rylee’s best friend or not, he’d rip her throat out the second the torc was off. She commanded him to slip on a repelling harness and pick her up, which he did; and then they went over the edge of the shaft and slid into the darkness.
“Careful now,” Milly said, her voice close to his ear. “You aren’t just carrying my life in your hands, but one other too.”
He could flick his eyes over to hers, and though there was little light he had no problem seeing the glint there. The glow of happiness.
No. Fucking. Way.
*-*-*-*
Finally, after what seemed like hours of arguing, Denning let me and Agent Valley go. With nearly free rein. Will was to stick with me at all times, and Officer Smith was to be our third. That stuck in my craw like a sideways fishbone.
“Another werewolf is not a good idea,” I hissed at Agent Valley as we strode through the precinct to the area that had been set aside for us.