Hating him hadn’t occurred to me. No, I despised myself too much to blame him.

A tired sigh deflated her, and she brought my face down to deliver a sound kiss to my cheek.

“I think I’ll stay in tonight.” I broke away from her gently and used my sleeping guest as the perfect excuse. “I have some research waiting, and I still have to figure out what to do about that.”

Silvery legs dipped in white kicked in prey dreams.

“Have fun.” A chuckle turned into a smile that crinkled her cheeks. “I’d like to meet him when he’s got pants on.”

I almost confessed pants didn’t happen as often as she might think, but I didn’t want to encourage her to hang around until he shifted. “Tomorrow,” I promised, ushering her toward the door.

Outside, night had fallen. Isaac had left and flipped on the generator running strings of fairy lights between our trailers. Seeing that glow comforted me all the way to the bone.

The twinkle bouncing off the silver exterior of the trailers painted the closest trees with glimmering stardust.

Figuring the wards and the wolf would keep me safe enough, I scooped up the bubble package and my laptop. I retreated to the rear of the trailer, where I stripped the mattress and sat on the edge. I perched the laptop on the narrow desk sandwiched between my closet and the bathroom. My luggage stood as sentries beneath it, and I had dumped Harlow’s bag there for safekeeping too. After folding my legs under me, I tore open the bubble mailer and popped in the CD.

Time to get to work.

Chapter 4

The quality of the black-and-white surveillance footage failed to improve with repeated viewings. Tapping the pause button on my laptop, I squinted at the screen, trying to make out useful details. Another tap and the video lurched forward in slow motion. Frame by frame, I watched as a humanoid fae stepped from a closet limned with blinding light into a trashed office at the marshal outpost in Wink, Texas.

Based on the information I had compiled, along with Thierry’s statement on her early involvement in the portal breach, I felt safe naming the fae in question as Charybdis. He exited the portal from Faerie and walked straight out the door leading into the hall. The camera was mounted flush against the ceiling in a corner opposite the office door, and that slight crook in the wall made the angle wonky.

Once in the hall, Charybdis stood in plain sight for a full three seconds before cocking his head to the left. This was the part where I wished the video came with an audio accompaniment, but no such luck. The recording was mute. Had I not watched the video a dozen times already, I might have missed the shadowy crease revealing a grainy smile that cut across his mouth as he spoke.