“The other half of the fae team who tried to take Jesse,” Mercy said, sounding as if she were talking about something mundane … like grocery shopping. “She jumped me when we parked, and Asil killed her. By the time it occurred to me that it would be smart to tell the police about her, the kids had already taken off in the car with the body.”

Adam damned near stopped the car. On any other day, he’d have been upset about a body in the trunk of the kids’ car. But that was before he’d heard Asil’s name. “Bran sent the Moor?”

“Asil,” Mercy agreed, so he knew he hadn’t misheard. “He said Charles sent him, but he was talking in front of Agent Armstrong of Cantrip.”

Armstrong must have been the fed who was at Kyle’s house, the one who’d tried to get him to wait when Adam had hustled out to find Mercy.

Mercy was right, Bran had sent the Moor to take care of Mercy and Jesse. The Moor, who was so crazy his own son had sent him to Bran to be put down. Except that Bran, for his own reasons, had decided not to do it.

Asil. Maybe he had recovered from being crazy.

“He kept that bastard from wiping the floor with me,” said Tad. “I was overmatched—and that’s an understatement. I might have been able to slow the spriggan down long enough for Jesse and Gabriel to get the kids away, but it would have been a close thing, and I would have had to pull out my big guns to do it.” He looked out the window, and continued blackly, “My control of the big guns isn’t what it should be. So I’m glad Asil showed up.”

College had changed Tad. It was supposed to, Adam knew. But looking at Tad for a moment longer than was really safe while he was driving, Adam was afraid that he’d gained the sort of knowledge that a chick learned from being pushed off a cliff rather than the low branch of a tree, and had taken damage from the fall.

Adam had grown up that way, too.

The Moor was waiting for them, leaning on a lightpost and looking bored. Adam had never actually met Asil, but he looked Moorish, wolfish, and dangerous. Who else could he be? He didn’t have a mark on him from the fight, though it would be hard to see a bruise on his skin from a distance. People were looking at him as they drove past in their cars, mostly, Adam thought, because Asil was wearing nothing more than a summer-weight shirt. It took a more experienced eye than most people had to see exactly what Asil was.