“Well, thank you very much,” she says, and makes a purring noise. “Now where was I…oh right, boring. I was a little peeved, you know, that you and Ash would go to London to take on Jag in a fit of epic stupidity and not even think to invite me.” She gives me a look. “So I invited myself. And I must say, you were disappointingly easy to find. You went to Logan’s smithy only hours after I agreed to trade with him for information about you if you happened to stop by, which, predictably, you did. I could have found you two in my sleep. You’re not even making it interesting.”

“Logan—” I say, my thoughts whirling from Aarya’s nonchalant delivery.

“My cousin. A distant cousin and a total wanker,” she says, and I groan at the obviousness of it—of course he’s her cousin. “But he’s also a wealth of knowledge and a talented tracker.”

So Logan knew we’d be showing up. For a brief moment I’m furious. “He tried to kill us, you know!”

“Yes,” she says with no remorse.

The men from the pub enter my thoughts. “And there were these two guys at the Dirty—”

“The trackers who recognized you?” Aarya says. “Yes, Ash told me about them.”

“How much do you wanna bet they were there as a result of Logan, too?” I say.

After a couple of seconds, Aarya laughs. “Yes, that has Logan written all over it,” she concedes. “Your escape from the pub deposited you right in his path.”

I rub my shoulder where it aches from the dart. “You’re right. He is a wanker,” I say, but the British expression sounds awkward in my American accent.

“Family,” Aarya says like she agrees more than anyone. “But thankfully for you, my fast negotiating skills won out in the end and we got you the antidote to the drug he tipped the dart with and managed to get out of there before the trackers from the pub showed up. At which point Ash fell at my feet groveling, as he should, and we dragged you back here to my parents’ apartment.”

It’s hard to know how much of what Aarya says is true and how much is concocted in her twisted brain, but right now her self-aggrandizing is the least of my concerns.

“Right, so who else did Logan talk to?” I say. “How do you know Logan didn’t also trade information to the Lions?” I don’t attempt to hide my frustration.