“The night the pack was on the property. Claude hadn’t moved in then, but he’d come around to see me.”

I could see Jason trying to figure out the sequence. “So Basim warned you about the fairies he tracked, but he didn’t tell you he’d seen some? I don’t think that holds together, Sook.”

“You’re right,” I admitted. “And we still don’t know who the other fairy would be. If there are two, and one of them isn’t Claude, and the other one is Dermot . . .”

“That leaves one fairy we don’t know about.”

“Dermot’s seriously messed up, Jason.”

Jason said, “I’m worried about all of ’em.”

“Even Claude?”

“Look, how come he showed up now? When you have other fairies in the woods? And does that sound crazy when you say it out loud, or what?”

I laughed. Just a little. “Yeah, it sounds nuts. And I get your point. I don’t entirely trust Claude, even if he is a little bit family. I wish I hadn’t said yes to him moving in. On the other hand, I don’t believe he means to hurt me or you. And he’s not quite as much of an asshole as I thought he was.”

We tried to put together a few more theories about Basim’s death, but we could punch too many holes in all of our theories. It passed the time until we arrived.

The house Alcide had moved into when his dad died was a large two-story brick home on large grounds, enhanced with impressive landscaping. The—estate? manor house?—was in a very nice area of Shreveport, of course. In fact, it wasn’t too far from Eric’s neighborhood. That gnawed at me, thinking of Eric so close to me but in so much trouble.

The confusion of what I was feeling through our blood bond was making me more jittery with every passing night. There were so many people sharing in that bond now, so much feeling going back and forth. It wore me out emotionally. Alexei was the worst. He was a very dead little boy, that was the only way I could put it: a child locked in a permanent grayness, a child who experienced only occasional flashes of pleasure and color in his new “life.” After days of experiencing what amounted to an echo of him living in my head, I’d decided the boy was like a tick sucking on the life of Appius Livius, Eric, and now me. He siphoned off a little every day.