None of it did she plan to use. And, in the end, she’d probably give it all to some homeless shelter. But seeing the look of disappointment and insult on Kera’s face kind of made Erin’s day.
Okay. So maybe her life was that boring, too. Because there was nothing she loved better than messing with the former Marine. She was just so serious about damn near everything, fucking with her was all sorts of entertaining for Erin.
Grabbing several bags of the most generic, plain, cheap tortilla chips she could find, Erin dropped them into her filled cart and announced, “Okay. That’s it.”
“Gee,” Kera said flatly. “Really?”
“I think we have more than enough. I mean . . .” Erin blew out a breath like she was thinking really hard. “I know our strike team is coming. And a few of the other Crows said they’d try to make it. I think you invited Vig, and of course he’ll be there because he kind of has to . . . so, yeah. I think we have enough.”
Kera looked at Jace. “Seriously?” she demanded. So insulted, that one.
Jace stared at Kera for a few seconds before shrugging her shoulders and pushing the cart toward the checkout stands.
See? That’s why Erin didn’t have a problem with Jace’s silence. Who needed someone chatty when silence often worked so well in Erin’s favor?
Erin paid for the food and they made it to right outside the store before Kera stopped Erin. “Maybe we should cancel this thing. It sounds like no one’s coming. It’s gonna be lame.”
“Oh stop! It’ll be fine. Right, Jace?”
Jace gazed at both women, eyes darting back and forth before she gave a forced, closemouthed smile and pushed her cart toward the Hummer.
“You can’t force me to go through with this. You can’t!”
“You owe it to your sister-Crows,” Erin told her.
“You mean the ones who aren’t coming?”
“They’ll try!”
Kera’s eyes narrowed and Erin was sure the woman would finally spot what bullshit this all was, but then her head turned and her expression went suddenly blank.
“Hey,” she said, tapping Erin’s arm. “Who’s Jace talking to over there?”
Erin looked toward the Hummer. Jace stood by the passenger door. She no longer had the cart, and it looked as if she’d put the purchases in the back.
There were four of them. Three women and a man. The females stood around her while the male spoke.
“I don’t know who they are. Don’t recognize them.”
“Does she have friends outside the Crows?”
“Not if she can help it. Maybe they’re trying to sell her something.”
“Oh, or get her to sign some petition or something.” Kera’s face scrunched up. “Let’s rescue her.” Like any proper Marine, Kera hated the ones she called “crunchy-granola hippie types.” And anyone trying to get her to sign some petition fell into that category. And the gods forbid the poor petitioner was anti-government. More than once Erin had been forced to drag Kera away after a ten-minute-long yelling match. Especially once she heard the sirens and knew the cops were coming.
But before either of them could get over there to rescue poor Jace, their quiet friend did something extraordinary to the people speaking to her . . .
She backhanded one across the face. Punched another in the throat. Kicked the one standing behind her in the leg, breaking the woman’s femur. And the male she grabbed hold of by the back of his head and began slamming into the door of the Hummer while screaming.
“Oh shit!” both Erin and Kera yelped before they took off running.
She hadn’t seen them since before she’d been killed. But she’d seen others. They’d hissed at her when she’d walked into the courtroom to get the permanent protection order. They’d hissed and called her a sinner before the judge had them thrown out.
But none of them had ever bothered her after that. She didn’t even think they knew where she lived.
She thought, after openly working with federal prosecutors, she’d be dead to them.
But here some of them were. They’d surrounded her, not allowing her to get into the Hummer. Immediately, he started speaking for all.
Telling her they understood why she’d done what she’d done. How it wasn’t her fault. How they’d forgiven her for her sins. They’d forgiven her for her betrayal.
Then, he had told her that she was still one of them.
And that’s when Jace got angry.
She didn’t want to be one of them. It hadn’t been her choice. It had been forced upon her. Just like this conversation. Leaving her no way out.
Only this time, she took a way out.
By beating the holy shit out of them.
He was bleeding and crying by the time Erin and Kera reached her. Kera, the strongest of them, tried to drag Jace away. But she wasn’t done.
She tossed Kera off, startling them both. But then she reached down and grabbed him by the head again, pulling him to his feet.
She remembered him. His name was Bobby and he was still loyal. He always would be.
They all would be.
But not Jace. Not anymore.
“If you come around me again,” she whispered against his ear. “If you call me. Drive by my house. Send fucking smoke signals. I will kill you. I will cut your throat. I will bathe in your blood, and I will watch you die. Do you understand me?” she finished on a growl-scream, her teeth clenched tight.
Now both Kera and Erin had hold of Jace and they dragged her away.
Erin released her long enough to unlock the Hummer and get the door open before she and Kera shoved her inside. Kera pushed or dragged the others away from the vehicle. Then she leaned in and demanded of Erin, “Give me cash.”
Erin, who was now in the driver’s seat, tossed her wallet to Kera.
Kera walked over to some poor kid who’d been recording the whole thing on his phone. She took the phone from him and crushed it in her hand. Then she took a wad of cash out of Erin’s wallet and chucked it at him.
She returned to the Hummer, jumping in beside Jace and slamming the door. “Go!”
Erin gunned it out of the parking lot and out onto PCH, heading back toward the Bird House.
After a few minutes, Kera suddenly gripped Jace’s chin and turned the berserker’s face toward her.
“Oh shit,” Kera muttered.
“What?” Erin demanded. “What’s wrong?”
“She’s not raging.”
“What?” Erin stopped at a red light and turned in her seat to look at Jace. She gawked at her for several seconds before asking, “You’re not in a rage?”
“No.” At least, not in the rage they were talking about. A berserker rage that involved complete loss of control.
If she had been in a rage, all four of those people would be dead now. Not just wounded. Not just sobbing. But dead.
Erin glanced at Kera before turning back around and moving forward with the rest of the traffic.
“Just so we’re clear,” Erin told them, “I’m pretty sure this is one of the seven signs of the Apocalypse.”
Wide-eyed, Kera looked at Jace, but Jace gave a quick shake of her head. So she wouldn’t worry.
And Jace was almost positive she wasn’t lying . . .
CHAPTER FOUR
It took less time than Jace would have liked for what had happened at the grocery store to spread through the Bird House like a virus.
And nearly everybody asked her about it.
They wanted to know why she’d beaten the crap out of four people for no obvious reason. Not that any of them had a problem with that. And Jace had a feeling if she’d said, “I didn’t like the shoes they were wearing,” more than one sister-Crow would nod her head sagely and reply, “Totally get that. You should have seen what Dora wore the other day. She’s lucky I didn’t beat her to death.”
Even worse, the story had transformed from Jace kicking some ass to killing four strangers. But Kera and Erin were quick to tell everyon
e that was not what had happened.
Soon the news spread to the Ravens and then the other Clans, so that by the time Jace showed up for her time to sit with the comatose Betty, the Holde’s Maid who was helping with her care—at least the mystical aspect of it—immediately asked as Jace walked into the room, “Hey. Heard you killed like thirty people because someone got your taco order wrong. Is that true?”
Jace gawked at her. “No.”
The Maid looked so disappointed, her lip stuck out in a pout as she packed away the candles and potions that the Maids used daily on poor Betty in an attempt to bring her back. So far nothing had been working.
She walked past Jace, briefly stopping to tell her, “You don’t have to use that tone. I didn’t get your taco order wrong.”
Jace closed her eyes and fought her desire to scream, “It wasn’t about tacos!” She was not going to open that can of worms and reveal her old life, though.
Once the door closed and she knew the Maid was gone, Jace dropped into the big, comfy chair beside Betty’s bed.
She wished Betty would snap out of it. Whatever “it” was. She wished the older Crow was here. More than once, Jace had gone to Betty for her counsel. As a Seer, Betty didn’t need Jace to say anything to her. All she had to do was hold Jace’s hands and she could “see” everything. Understand everything.
And, like any good Hollywood agent, she knew how to keep her mouth shut. She never talked to anyone about what she’d seen from others. What she’d learned. It was just between the Seer and the Seen.
Jace could really use that right now.
After a moment, Jace pushed herself out of the chair and leaned over Betty, gazing down into her face.
Then she yelled, “Betty! Betty, can you hear me?” When that got no response, she snapped her fingers three times in the woman’s face.
Nope. Nothing.
With a sad sigh, Jace dropped back into the chair and opened the book she was going to read to her friend: You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again.
She had a feeling that Betty would like the behind-the-scenes drama of Hollywood even if it was a little out-of-date. Last week she’d read her, The Kid Stays in the Picture: A Notorious Life: Robert Evans. Even though the book didn’t bring Betty out of her coma, she did seem more relaxed.
A few of Betty’s past assistants had tried to get books on their old boss published, but Betty had crushed those brief dreams like she was holding Thor’s hammer. Eventually, no one bothered to try. Not where Betty was concerned.
Of course, Jace didn’t really know that Betty. The Hollywood Betty. Scary Agent Betty.
She only knew her as Betty, the Crow, the Seer, the chocolate-chip cookie thief after an ugly episode involving a Holde’s Maids bake sale during one of the Clan tournaments. Jace didn’t know the terrifying, ruthless, cruel Betty Lieberman, Hollywood agent.
And to be honest, she didn’t want to know that person. Just like Jace didn’t want to know the sociopath that Annalisa once was before she died and Skuld gave her a conscience. Or the mean rich girl Alessandra once was, who tormented everyone around her out of boredom. They were different now, and that was all that mattered. At least to Jace.
Jace began to read where she’d left off the day before and was so fascinated by the machinations of terrible people that it took a little while before she realized that it wasn’t one of the local crows pecking at Betty’s window but someone throwing pebbles at it.
Marking her spot, she placed it on the side table and walked over to the window. Pushing it open, Jace rested her hands against the sill and leaned out, staring down at the yard.
“Hi.”
Startled by the voice coming at her from the tree in front of her, Jace jerked up to see Danski Eriksen perched on a branch. He watched her with those big pretty eyes behind designer glasses that managed to make him look geeky and sexy all at the same time. Plus, she kind of expected him to hoot at her from there. What with the Protectors’ owl wings, powerful legs, powerful hands, and ability to turn their heads almost completely around.
“What are you doing?” she whispered.
“I need your help.”
“I don’t want a job,” she insisted, becoming exasperated. “Stop bothering me.”
“It’s not about the job. Well . . . it is. But not about you wanting the job.”
“What?”
He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and handed her a legal-sized sheet of lined yellow paper with a list of names.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Names of potential Russian translators that my brothers came up with. Thought maybe you could steer me in the right direction.”
“What makes you think I would know?” she asked, a little more testily than she’d meant to. “I don’t even leave the house if I can help it.”
“Which is probably good since I heard you just killed a busload of nuns earlier today.” She didn’t say anything, but her expression must have been clear because he laughed and said, “You should see your face right now. Good thing I can fly.”
She glanced down at the list. “Look. I don’t really want to get involve—”
“Please,” he said. “They’re driving me nuts. Really, Bear is driving me nuts, but then they all sort of join in and it becomes a chorus of seriously obsessive compulsive guys bothering me, which is something you should understand . . . right . . . nun killer?”
“I didn’t—”
“I know,” he said, still laughing. “I know.” He gestured to the list. “Just take a look. Please?”
As soon as she looked down at the list, she held her hand out and snapped her fingers. Without thinking, Ski gave her a pen and she began scratching names off.
“No on this one, this one, and this one. They’re all gangsters. You’ll end up killing them after they try to blackmail you. Or steal something you value.” She stopped, read a few more, began scratching their names off. “They have an American sensibility about Russia. And they don’t know enough about the early dialects to help you with some of those books, I’m guessing.” She cringed. “Definitely not this one. He did the worst translation of War and Peace that I’ve ever read. And these three will not keep their mouths shut about what they discover. And this one is a high-level sorcerer. He’ll steal important information from the books and possibly start a world war or something.”
She handed the sheet back to him. “There you go.”
She’d scratched out every name.
Every. Name.
“Uh . . . that was very helpful. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“But perhaps you can—”
She closed the window on him before he could ask if she knew anyone who could help him and whom she would approve of, and then shut the shades.
Unreasonably annoyed—women were usually a lot more helpful than this with him—Ski sat there a few moments, thinking on what he should do, when a Raven noisily landed on the branch behind him, his weight making the poor wood creak, and snarled, “What the fuck are you—”
Turning just at the waist, Ski grabbed the Raven by his head and rammed it into the tree trunk several times before tossing him out.
With a sigh, he looked down at the decimated list. “Back to the drawing board,” he muttered before jumping out of the tree, landing by the Raven, who was trying to pick himself up.
Erin Amsel sat at one of the outside tables, a big umbrella blocking the sun. She sat with a few other Crows who didn’t seem too interested in him or the Raven groaning on the ground.
He nodded and Erin gestured to a pitcher. “Iced tea?”
“No. But thank you.”
“Sure.”
Carefully folding up the list and putting it back in his pocket, Ski returned to his car.
“He likes her,” Alessandra noted about the Protector after he’d left. The Protectors had great hearing, and it was wise for her to wait.
“Probably,” Erin replied, flipping the pa
ge on her tattoo magazine.
“Should we help them out?”
“Nope.”
“Yeah. You’re probably right after she killed all those people.”
Erin looked up at her sister-Crow. “She didn’t kill anybody.”
“You don’t have to protect her. It’s not like we’ll think less of her.”
“Shut up,” Erin snapped, tired of explaining what had gone down earlier in the day.
“Are you going to help me?” Stieg Engstrom barked. His words muffled because his face was still buried in the dirt.
Erin looked over at the Raven, stared a few seconds before replying, “No.”
CHAPTER FIVE
After taking Lev and Brodie for another walk—good thing both dogs loved to walk because they got a lot of it with the other Crows taking their turn—and spending some time hiding behind the couch in the living room so she could get some more reading in, Jace decided it was time to find something to eat. She tended to forget when she was reading. But her stomach growled, giving her no other option.
She did briefly stop to think about why a stomach growled. What was actually happening inside a person when their stomach growled? She decided to look that up later and began her sneaky way toward the kitchen. But just as she reached the swinging door, Rachel grabbed her arm. “There you are.”
“What?” Jace asked, immediately beginning to panic. “What’s happening?”
“Chloe’s looking for you.”
“Yeah, well . . . uh . . . I—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” Still gripping Jace’s arm, Rachel dragged Jace—literally—down the hall to Chloe’s private office.
“Found her,” she announced, yanking Jace into the room.
Chloe looked up from her laptop. “You dragged her here?”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Not that.”
“She wasn’t coming on her own. I could see it in her eyes.”
Chloe took a moment to rub her brow with both hands.
“What?” Rachel snapped. “Now what did I do?”