“She’s not my mate.” Farrow looked over to Macy. “Yet,” he added. “Robert bargained, in exchange for bringing her back to life, that I give him information on dragon riders. I gave him some bogus lore, made some stuff up, and mostly told him about my own powers. I didn’t tell him a thing about yours.”
“What about what we saw you taking from my office?”
“Birth certificate,” he muttered, his eyes going to Macy’s. “You need a birth certificate to get married.”
Keifer’s jaw clenched.
“What else?” he pushed.
Farrow shook his head. “I gave him what I had and he’s left us alone since.”
“And what other powers does Macy have?” Keifer stared at Macy like he was studying a bug under a microscope. “Is she fully alive? What is Robert?”
Farrow swallowed.
“Her heart beats,” he was quick to inform us. “But he holds her life in his hand through an artifact.”
“Something like this?” I held up the one we’d been able to strip of its power over Wink only hours before.
That’d been Jean Luc’s doing.
He’d been able to use his skin walker skills to pull the charm’s ‘life force’ out and put it back into Wink. I’d watched him do the entire ritual and had been amazed while watching him work.
Usually, he was pretty secretive when it came to his skin walker abilities. He saw them as shameful. Something his parents had given him when he’d not wanted them. It wasn’t often when he practiced them. Only under very special occasions, he’d informed us.
Lucky for me and Wink that returning her life force to her was a ‘special occasion.’
Farrow nodded his head enthusiastically.
Macy, however, stiffened and pushed herself away from it, her face going deathly pale.
“Be careful!” she pleaded.
I blinked in surprise.
“Why?”
“Because they’re so sensitive. Anything you do to it, it does to the person who it controls,” she licked her lips nervously.
I nodded my head.
“Jean Luc was able to fix Wink right up after we got it from him. When we get yours from Robert, he’ll do the same for you,” Keifer promised. “But that doesn’t let either one of you off the hook.”
“How are you going to get it from him?” Macy’s voice quivered with unshed tears.
I looked over the blonde woman’s features.
She looked much different now than she had the last time I’d seen her, although then she’d had a lovely bullet hole through her heart.
How had I been so wrong about who killed her?
That’d never happened before. I knew exactly who did what based on their DNA signatures.
DNA was a simple thing.
For me, anyway.
I could see exactly who’d been in this room in the last forty-eight hours based on the skin cells that were in the room. If I wished to push further, I could even go as far as weeks past if I wished to dig that deep.
I, however, didn’t.
That took time. Time that I didn’t think we had.
“As soon as we find Robert…,” Keifer started to say.
“I can help you with that,” Farrow told us, standing up. “I can.”
Keifer looked at him skeptically.
“And how, exactly, do you plan to do that?” Nikolai piped in.
Farrow stood up.
“I can follow trails. All you have to do is lead me somewhere he’s been recently,” he nodded his head eagerly.
“I think, after this, you have some explaining to do.”Chapter 23Mating: when dating goes too far.
-Wink’s secret thoughts
Wink
Brooklyn, Blythe, Skylar, Merrick and I all looked at the newcomer with surprise. We were at the sanctuary, and we’d been having breakfast, when Macy was practically dropped into our laps.
“Take care of her, Skylar,” Farrow pleaded. “Can you look her over…make sure that she’s okay?”
I licked my lips, my eyes becoming calculating as I wondered exactly why she would need a checkup.
She didn’t look sick.
In fact, she looked perfectly healthy.
She must’ve realized we were wondering why, too, because she smiled and took a seat across from us on the windowsill that overlooked the sanctuary’s backyard.
By the time she was finished telling us about her harrowing experience, starting with getting shot, and finishing with being brought back to life by Robert, I was on the edge of my seat.
“That’s amazing,” Brooklyn breathed. “That’s, in fact, beyond amazing. Wow.”
I concurred.
The whole thing was fantastical.
“I…,” I hesitated when I realized how quiet it’d gotten. “Where did they go?”
“Where did who go?” Blythe looked over at me.
I turned around and scanned the big room.
“It’s too quiet,” I stood. “Why is it so quiet?”
“What do you mean it’s too quiet?” Brooklyn got up to stand next to me. “It’s loud. The TV is blaring, and the air conditioner is making quite a bit of noise. Quiet is not something that goes over well when you share a house with fifteen thousand people.”
I shook my head and walked to the window.
“Where are the guys?” I asked, starting around the couch to head for the door that led to the back yard.