I used almost the last of my phone’s battery to summon a ride.
Chapter 7
The hyena bar was divetastic, with bad lighting and dubious hygiene. I still had my purse on me. I’d found it in Namir’s place, and in it, the wad of tips I’d been on my way home with the prior night.
So I tried my luck with the bartender, the person sitting in the darkest corner of the place, regulars at the bar, and people coming in, flashing cash and showing them my screenshot of the picture the other swan had taken, telling them he was either the father of my child, a long-lost boyfriend, someone who killed my non-existent dog—anything crazy enough that would get the man himself a texted warning that there was a strange woman with ice-blonde hair passing out cash for his attention.
Because the only thing that would make the feathers they were auctioning off even more valuable was actually auctioning them off with their swan.
I spent an hour there, acting essentially unhinged, until my phone was dead and I was out of cash, and then I knowingly stepped out the back alley, where I was jumped.
Chapter 8
The shifters who grabbed me were too busy congratulating themselves on the easiest kidnapping of all time to realize that I didn’t scream, not even before they put tape on my mouth. They were all blustery and overconfident, and they didn’t stop talking excitedly in the car after they’d put a bag on my head and driven off.
I wondered if Namir was all right...and also if I should’ve told him about this scheme. The only thing that’d stopped me was the knowledge he’d definitely have come back to his condo and tied me to a chair. But what he didn’t understand was that my feathers weremine. And if I got them back on my own, it’d prove I didn’tneedhim.
Because I didn’twantto needanyone.
I wanted to be wanted, yes...but not predicated on some servile version of love, purchased by rescuing my feathers for me. How would that be any better than my feathers being sold? My love wasn’t something you could barter for, and I wanted to be his equal, not his underling...which was why I hoped like hell the rest of my rather foolish plan would work.
The car we were in stopped, and the shifters in it pulled me out into the night. I was still wearing my heels from work, off balance with my wrists behind my back. One of the shifters shoved me to go faster, and I fell, scraping both my knees, groaning in pain behind the tape they’d covered my mouth with. They laughed at me, yanked me up, and kept propelling me forward until I was indoors; I knew because my heels were suddenly clattering on tile. The air changed from the humid outdoors to air conditioned, and they suddenly took an interestin my health, two of them practically picking me up, one on each elbow, to make sure I didn’t take a header down a flight of stairs.
I was rudely shuffled into a room, a door slammed, and the bag over my head was finally taken off. It was the man from the casino; he had the same scar from his forehead, up into his hairline—the other swan’s intel had been right—and I knew my feathers were here. I could practically feel them. I swiveled my head around the room, trying to figure out where they were at.
“Did you really think this was a good idea, ballerina?” he asked, stepping up to me.
I couldn’t answer him, ’til he ripped the tape off my mouth. “Ha, ha,Swan Lake, I get it,” I said—and then spat at him.
He wasn’t expecting that—he swiped it off his face and made a vicious snarl. I braced for a blow that I was sure was coming, and then he squinted at me, reaching forward to grab my jaw roughly and swipe my cheek with his thumb.
The tape had torn my skin, and there was blood on it. He looked between it and me like I’d been lying to him, somehow, and this was it, my only “amazing” ploy: how obscenely normal I was, without my feathers on.
“I don’t shift like you. I don’t heal without my feathers.” I twisted my injured hand up for him to see, and took a swing at his groin with one of my bleeding knees. “So you’d better let me put them on, or you’ll be selling damaged goods.”
“Some guys’d pay more for this,” he said, giving me a gesture. He had a weird wheeze on his inhale that made it sound like he was laughing.
“Sure. But the true pervs would want to beat me up themselves, don’t you think?” I looked around the shabby office we were in. “I doubt they’d want to outsource it to shady-ass shifter-parts dealers like you.” He snarled, and I made a face at him. “Yeah? A hyena’s afraid of a swan? You think you can’thandle me?” I said it in my most mocking tone and then I rushed him.
He batted me back, sending me bouncing to the floor, rattling my spine, definitely bruising my ass.
“There goes another hundred grand,” I warned—and then I pulled the oldest trick in the bird book.
The broken wing maneuver.
I appeared to crumple.
I never cried—I’d already cried more in this one day than I had in my entire life combined—but I dredged up the power to produce more tears now, suddenly bowing in front of him, sobbing big, fat, wet tears, my eyes going red and my nose going snotty. “I just want to wear them one last time. Please. And then I’ll be pretty and I’ll do what you want. I’ll be good, just please, mister, please—” It had to be coming up on auction time soon, so either this would work, or Namir would save me, maybe—God-please-may-something-just-break-my-way—and some of my fake tears became real ones.
The hyena snarled and cursed, and then grabbed me by my hair, yanking me back in the room.
I just needed to touch one feather—one feather would be enough—the hyena-shifter opened up a box and yanked out my feather-skin.
I hadn’t even seen them myself since I’d boarded them up behind my mirror months ago.
That was the worst thing about being a swan—being forced into hiding from your own soul.
I threw myself at them, touched them, and changed instantaneously.