AVERY HELD HER breath as Keona explained to Ryse exactly who she was and what she was doing at Evander’s compound. The undeniable fear of Ryse was a cloud that hung in the room.

Her mate didn’t move as Keona spoke. He stared at Evander’s body, motionless and silent, like a tiger ready to strike at its prey.

“I tried to save him.” Keona’s voice quivered with each word as she clung to the man she loved, now gone from this world.

Evander was another Castille casualty. Avery had no doubt that the Avondales were behind this, or at least Ashton. But how did they prove it?

Avery didn’t know much about murder investigations, but she knew to start at the scene of the crime. Each moment they stood there talking to Ryse, explaining it all out, they lost precious time.

This girl was telling the truth. That was all Avery needed to know. She recognized a woman in love and in pain at the loss of that love. There was another Grace out there in danger and this girl was the key to finding her.

As a group of Elites and Thracians prepared to go back to Evander’s estate, Avery glanced down at Brenden’s leg. It was bandaged up, but blood was still soaking the cloth.

“You need to stay here, Bren. You’re hurt.”

“Just a flesh wound.” He brushed her off. “Besides, where you go, I go. And I’m kinda the lead investigator of the Thracians.”

“Really?” Was he pulling her leg or was he for real? She never really knew with Bren.

“How’d we meet, Avery? Think about it.” He winked and elbowed her.

The first time she’d met Bren, he’d come into her café as a police officer. “Oh,” she said to herself. Of course Brenden was a trained officer; he’d been under cover for months before all hell broke loose in her hometown. Thracians were placed in every position of human law enforcement from traffic cops to the CIA and FBI. With Brenden’s animal instincts, he surely made one hell of an investigator.

The group that was going back to Chicago circled and Brenden started giving out orders. All of the Elites and a handful of Thracian soldiers were at the ready.

“Listen up,” Brenden barked. “I’ll lead group one through the house, where our primary victim was found. With me are Avery, Keona, Dante, and you three.” He pointed at a group of men Avery had never seen before.

Dante raised his fingers in the air. “I’m afraid if the method of travel is based on teleportation,” he sucked in a breath, “I won’t be able to go.”

Avery sighed as, one by one, people caught on.

“Why not?” Keona asked. “I can take multiple people.”

Dante touched her shoulder. “Try to go.”

Keona’s body jerked once, twice, three times before she backed away from Dante with wide, frightened eyes, her hands in front of her defensively. “Holy shit, man.” She glanced at the people standing around. Her body shivered. “What the hell was that?”

“I cancel out Olympian powers.” Dante lifted his tensed jaw, but Avery could see the sting of rejection in his eyes.

“Dante is also a shield from attacks.” She stepped up in his defense. “He’s saved my life.”

“Yeah, that’s great, but don’t take it personally if I keep my distance.”

Dante’s lips went tight. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

Brenden clapped his hands together, taking the focus off of Dante. “Okay, Dante will be our contact here at base. If you need backup, he’s the man to call. He can relay with Keona. Hammon, you’re incident commander for group two, who will be in the clinic. Cutter will join you and the four of you will assist.”

That group sectioned themselves off.

Brenden pointed to his left. “Yankee, group three commander. Philippe will assist, and since this is in a park, I need you.” He studied the remaining soldiers. “You, and you in civilian clothes in two minutes. Nikki will provide you with those. Go in there.” He sent the men off with Nikki to a nearby office area where they could change. “The rest of you guys are on exterior patrol and recon. The compound covers about ten acres and we need every shred of information we can get. I want to know how these Rogues got past the guards, I want a head count of every Thracian soldier there and where they should’ve been during their watch.

“We have a high body count, which means this is not going to be a quick in and out. I want pictures of everything before you touch anything. I want patient logs from the clinic and matching bodies. If there is so much as a janitor who’s missing, there but shouldn’t be, or should be but isn’t, I want to know about it.”

“Plan of entry?” Yankee asked.

“Keona will take team three to the park first, exterior recon team second, team two will be third, and once the mansion is secured, team one will enter.”

“And she can do all that?” Yankee’s eyes traveled up and down Keona, who all but snarled at him.

She cocked out one hip and crossed her arms over her chest, glaring back. “Yeah, I can do that and more.”

Before they could tear into each other, the other Thracians and Nikki returned. One came back dressed as a runner, one a businessman, and another wearing jeans and a baseball cap. Even in their “civilian clothes,” the three of them looked like wrestlers.

Nikki came to stand right behind Avery. “Wherever you go, I go.”

Avery nodded once. “Can you handle this? It’s ugly. Trust me.”

“Wherever you go, I go.” Nikki swallowed hard and kept her stance firm, her eyes focused away from Avery’s. Gone was the soft and sweet woman Avery had come to love. What remained of Nikki was hard and determined. It hurt to see the drastic change in her friend, but there was no going back, and both of them had to come to terms with who Nikki was now.

All the men checked their phones and various communication devices. The different teams all had cameras and bags full of tools used for gathering evidence.

“Got your man purse?” Keona asked as she stuck her hand out to Yankee, who threw the satchel over his shoulder.

He sneered at her and took her hand.

“I have to make contact with those I’m transporting, so hang on.” The guys in Yankee’s team all grabbed on to her arm or shoulder and once she double-checked that she had everyone, she disappeared.

“That is freakin’ cool.” Avery grinned at Nikki.

“Her gift is her greatest asset and her greatest liability.” Dante’s sand-colored eyes met hers. “She is hunted, and I have no doubt her existence is what led to the massive loss of life at the compound.”

Avery tilted her head to the side. “You say that like you hold her responsible.”

“I can’t make that call. But if she was using her gifts in the open, a power like that would’ve caught the attention of every Olympian nearby. If she’s really Marlaina Nadal’s child,” he shrugged his round shoulders and crinkled his nose, “she should know better.”

About that time, Keona returned and locked hands with the recon group. She tipped her head to Brenden and, poof, she was gone.

“Did you feel that?” Dante asked the two women.

Nikki and Avery both shook their heads. What did they miss?

“She knows how to shield her aura, which means she should’ve known her powers are like a radar to trackers.”

Avery shook her head again. “Well, you don’t know what you don’t know, you know?”

Dante and Nikki both looked at her with blank expressions.

“That must be a southern-ism.” Dante rubbed his forehead.

“It is,” Brenden and Avery answered in unison and then exchanged grins. Both of them came from Texas and they understood the little sayings and spoke the same language.

Keona dispatched team two with the same speed and efficiency as the others. Once Hammon called with the green light, Keona reached out a hand to Avery.

“You ready?”

“Oh, now you ask me? That’s like closin’ the barn door after the horses are out.” Avery rolled her eyes dramatically.

Keona’s lips pulled back into a shy smile. “You’re going to be trouble, I can tell.”

“You betcha, girl.” She winked at Dante, whose tense shoulders and flared nostrils signaled his displeasure with not being able to go with her. “I’ll be careful.” Avery held Keona’s hand and, once again, the world flipped inside out and upside down as she transported them back to the compound.

The stench of blood hit hard, knocking the air out her lungs. “Oh, god.” She closed her eyes and covered her mouth, trying to get control of her gag reflexes.

“If you need to leave, go,” Brenden said, his voice laced with concern. “You don’t have to be here, Avery.”

She waved him off. “No, no. I want to help. I need to learn. It’s, uh, just a strong odor. I’m fine, really.”

Nikki and Avery both observed as Brenden went over the crime scene. The other men did exactly what they were told. Every minute detail was photographed, catalogued, and numbered.

Keona was essential to helping identify clinic staff, household staff, and showing the investigators how she remembered things.

“What will you do with all the bodies?” She looked to Brenden, her dark eyes full of unshed tears and her voice quiet.

“We’ve already called in a local team for cleanup. The humans will never know what happened here and the Olympians will all be identified and investigated along with everyone they are linked to. Don’t worry.” Bren gave her a tight smile. “We have a lot more troops than you think.” He cleared the main part of the house and then went to the master suite. “Can you handle this?”

Keona glanced to Avery, then nodded. “I promised Prince Hayden I would come back quickly. But Evander will need something to wear for…” She glanced up at the ceiling, blinking back the tears. Keona bit her trembling bottom lip and gnawed on it until she could speak again.

“It’s okay.” Avery took her hand and put an arm around her, giving her strength and support. “I’ll help.”

Keona didn’t speak, just nodded fast and led the way into the master closet to pick out the last change of clothes Evander would ever wear. She knew exactly what he preferred, right down to the socks.

Seeing Keona lovingly petting Evander’s dress shirt broke Avery’s heart. She couldn’t imagine losing Ryse, even after the short time they’d been together; her entire life would fall apart without him. He was her reason for waking in the morning and the reason she could sleep at night. If Keona had had found even a fraction of that love with Evander, the loss would be devastating.

“Keona, who is this?” Brenden was crouched over a woman holding a child. She’d been shot in the back of the head.

“That’s, oh god, that’s Evander’s maid.” She closed her eyes and blew out a breath. “Her name is Sylvie, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s her son, but he didn’t come around much.”

“This boy didn’t die here.” Brenden called over several of his men to examine the pair. He stood up and talked to Avery and Keona. “Most of these bodies are in the very beginning stages of rigor. They’re still fresh; the settling of the blood is still happening. This boy is in the final stages of rigor and has obvious lividity, which means he’s been dead much longer.”

“How can you tell?” Avery, unfortunately, only saw a dead child and nothing more with her untrained eyes.

“When the blood settles after death, it turns the skin purple, except where something was pushing on it. See how the boy has these striations on his arms? That means when he died, he lay against something with ridges.”

“What would make those?”

Brenden put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “I won’t know until we can get the body in for processing. But if I had to guess, these two right here are the answer to a lot of questions.”

Since Avery had nothing but questions, she hoped Brenden, with all this training, had some answers.

The men took care to take pictures and examine everything around the bodies curled up together.

“Yeah, this boy didn’t die on this surface.” Brenden touched the boy’s arm. “Hell, he’s not even warm.”

“What are you thinking?” Nikki bent down and placed her gloved hand on the boy just like Bren did.

“Someone moved his body here to make him look like a victim of the raid. You said he was hardly ever here?” Bren eyed Keona.

“In the last couple months, I’ve seen him twice, maybe three times, when she came in to get her paycheck.”

Brenden bent down even closer to the little black-haired boy and sniffed him. Then he sniffed Sylvie, the mom. “Two different scents. I can tell they are family, but he has been in a different location for a while. His scent is off.”

“I don’t smell anything but blood.” Nikki inhaled deeply and coughed.

“That’s because I’m part wolf and you’re part angel.” He touched her chin and winked.

Nikki shook her head and stood.

“Okay, I’m going to stay here for a bit and keep looking. Avery, Nikki, you need to get back to the Haven. Keona?”

She had gone over to Evander’s desk and picked up a picture frame. Tears trickled down her face. Avery wanted desperately to relieve her of her pain, but that was far beyond her skills.

The two faces in the picture smiled at the camera, so in love and happy. Evander and Keona had magic together and it was evident even in a photograph.

“We were right here in this office,” she whispered. “He said he needed a picture of me to put on his desk.” She sniffed and wiped her nose. “He hated the fact that it was a selfie, but it was something he could print here.” She handed Avery the picture.

Avery held it up to get better light and realized she was facing the wall behind them in the picture. A black hole in the books on the wall wasn’t there in the picture. Her eyes flickered to the bookshelf, the picture, the bookshelf, the picture. “There’s a title missing.” She approached the library wall and pointed it out to Brenden. “Look, this book was right here and now it’s gone.”

“Books are thrown everywhere. How do you know it’s not on the floor somewhere?” Nikki bent to pick up a book.

“Don’t touch, please.” One of the Thracians with a camera came over and snapped a bunch of pictures.

Brenden’s cell phone rang, interrupting the clicking and mumbles. “Sir? Yes, right now, okay.” He pointed at Avery. “Sending her now.”

Avery rolled her eyes. “Fine, fine, I’m goin’. I might’ve just cracked the case, but I can’t be unattended for five minutes.”

“You do tend to get yourself killed,” Nikki said softly, receiving a side glare. “Sorry.”

Avery cleared her throat and held out her hands. She focused on the weight of the picture, the components like the wooden frame, the glass cover, the colors of the picture. Keona wiped her eyes when Avery handed her the replica. “Can’t take the original, but this one’s all yours, sister.”

“Thank you.” Keona tried so hard to be strong. She really did. The effort was valiant, but Avery wanted her to feel free to be vulnerable in front of her. One day, they would be family. In the eyes of the gods, they already were.

Avery cringed when she thought about what had happened to her first conjuring experiment. “Oh, um, be careful because that might catch on fire.”