Jericho didn’t bother to wake Dusk and drag him to the station the following morning. With a K.N.I.G.H.T. unit in the hall, and two heroes posted in a car across the street, she was sure that Dusk wasn’t going anywhere.

“You left him? Alone?” Erling asked, his eyes narrowing. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“You sent men to guard him. Are you telling me you don’t trust your men?” Jericho countered. She wasn’t particularly in the mood for whatever tirade Erling thought to go on. There were other things to worry about, like reading over the evidence list from the lab and seeing if anything had actually been salvaged. Although, Jericho knew there wouldn’t be. If Dusk didn’t want them to find anything, they wouldn’t find anything.

“You should have brought him back in! He should be locked up in the hold right now for that little stunt he pulled last night!” Spittle flung from Erling’s lips, his wings expanding behind him threateningly.

“And what good would that do? Huh?” Jericho crossed her arms over her chest, unperturbed. “He thinks he’s got us all figured out now. He thinks he fooled us. What good would bringing him in do?”

“It would mean we wouldn’t have to worry about him escaping from your custody.” Erling stood taller—his height nearing two heads above Jericho—in an attempt to intimidate the werewolf. But Jericho had never been one to be bothered simply because she was smaller.

“Erling! Jericho!” Oakfur barked from his office door. “My office. Now.” He turned without waiting for them to follow. “Sit,” the captain ordered as they entered, pointing to the chairs across from his desk.

They dropped into the seats.

“Captain, I feel that Soliel Tsuki—villain name: Dusk—should be brought in and detained in the hold. It has been made clear that Jericho has lost control of the situation and is too close to all of this. Not to mention that all the information Jericho has gotten us through the investigation has—” Erling’s words were cold, clipped, concise, but they were cut off by the captain’s raised hand.

“Jericho?”

Jericho gritted her teeth, hands fisting in her lap. “The moment he’s brought back into custody, he’ll clam up. We won’t get anything else out of him. I just—”

“Then he should be put into the custody of another hero. Someone who isn’t so close.” Erling wasn’t looking at Jericho. He was focusing on pleading his case to the captain.

“Yes, and undo all of the work I’ve put into building a relationship with him.” Jericho rolled her eyes.

“Which you just threw out the window by betraying him. Like he’d trust you now.” Erling snorted.

“And whose fault was that?!” Jericho shouted. “You weren’t supposed to—”

“Enough!” Oakfur slammed his hands on his desk, scowling at the pair of them. “I had a meeting with the council this morning. This is an epic fuck-up, Jericho.”

“Yes, sir.” Jericho clenched her teeth to keep her tone respectful.

“But lucky for you, your exemplary record has spoken for itself,” Oakfur continued as if Jericho hadn’t spoken. “You have till this time next month to turn this around.”

“Yes—”

“Let me finish,” Oakfur cut her off. “If you cannot get us any viable information within that time, Soliel will be sent to the Isle, and you will be demoted and investigated for conspiracy.”

Erling’s expression turned smug as he leaned back further in his chair. “Sounds fair to me.”

“It would,” Jericho muttered, rolling her eyes again.

“What was that?” Oakfur asked.

“Nothing, sir. I’ll have information for you as soon as possible.” Jericho rose from her seat, bowing her head respectfully. “You can count on it.”

“Yes, well, let’s hope so.” Oakfur nodded. “You’re dismissed as well, Erling. Please do keep your bickering to a minimum from here on out.”

“Yes, sir,” Erling grumbled, rising from his chair. Then the duo was back out in the bullpen. “This isn’t over,” Elring growled under his breath, sitting down stiffly.

“No, it’s not,” Jericho agreed, her hands clutching the arms of her chair so hard her knuckles turned white.

They worked in silence for the remainder of the morning until Jericho decided to take her lunch down to Ildri’s workshop.

“Now is not a good time,” Ildri called through the door when she knocked.

When Jericho opened it, she was rubbing a bit of grease from her nose, smearing it in a way that only seemed to make matters worse.

“We’re in quite a bind, J. A bind indeed!” A near hysterical laugh left Ildri at the words, and she shook her two-toned head, wisps of blue and pink hair falling into her face.

Jericho dropped onto one of the stools and prodded at her mushy bowl of ramen with a fork. “What’s it this time?”

“It’s all fried! Everything! The blast he sent through the tables destroyed every bit of information we may have gotten from what was there.” There was a contradiction in Ildri’s tone—it should be bad that they could get nothing from the lab equipment, but she looked almost thrilled by it. “Impressive, very impressive.”

“So, we’ve got nothing.” Jericho sighed, her stomach rolling as she set down her bowl. Nothing. They’d gotten nothing. Fuck. How was she going to turn this around in a month? Cold sweat crawled down her spine. What if she couldn’t?

“Don’t put that there,” Ildri said sharply, her eyes narrowing on the bowl of broth. “In fact, get that out of my lab. Now.”

“You let Dusk eat in here all the time.”

“Dusk understands how fragile this equipment is.”

“Fine. I’ll hold it,” Jericho snapped, her hands wrapping tightly around the bowl and setting it in her lap. “Better?”

Ildri didn’t answer, she just turned back to whatever she was tinkering with. It was something from Dusk’s lab, though Jericho wasn’t sure what it was for, and it had a distinct burn mark on the outer shell. “I don’t know where your boy learned all this.”

“He’s not my anything,” Jericho hissed, but it sounded weak even to her own ears. Dusk was her . . . something. Just . . . she didn’t know what.

Ildri made a noise in the back of her throat like she didn’t agree, but she didn’t say anything to contradict Jericho.

“He said his mom taught him.” Jericho scooted closer to get a better look at the device Ildri was working on. It looked to be some kind of recorder, like one might use for surveilling an office. “What’s this?”

“A bug,” Ildri said, confirming her suspicions. “Long-range would be my guess, much better than anything we use here. Basically, he can stick it on a person or in a room and listen from anywhere in the city.”

“How?” Jericho blinked down at it. It didn’t look like much. Just one little hole to indicate the microphone.

“It runs off the wireless network in Mythikos. Which is extraordinary.” She unscrewed the shell, setting it aside and poking at the innards with a pair of needle-nose tweezers. “But that’s not the best part.”

“What’s the best part?”

“The battery,” Ildri whispered as if she’d come across something miraculous.

“The battery,” Jericho repeated blandly. “What about it?”

“There isn’t one!” she blurted, throwing her hands up in excitement and nearly knocking Jericho’s bowl of ramen out of her lap in the process. A wild look gleamed in Ildri’s eyes.

“I’m sorry?”

“It runs entirely off the latent magical energy in the air.” Ildri’s bright eyes had gone wide as saucers.

“Can that be done?” Jericho moved closer, squinting down at the little device. With the shell removed, it was even less impressive, just a tiny bed of circuits and wiring. Jericho couldn’t see what was so special about it, but the air buzzed with Ildri’s excitement.

“Clearly! I mean, every fae excretes a certain amount of latent magic—that’s how we’ve managed to cut back our energy consumption for things like cars and cell phones. But I’ve never seen anything that runs exclusively off of it. It must be incredibly efficient. If we could harness this kind of technology, we could get rid of our dependency on the solar fields almost entirely.”

“Right.” Jericho’s brows knit together. How much of a genius was Dusk? Or had this been another of Adelia’s gifts? “So, I have an evil genius living in my apartment?”

“I mean . . . yeah. If you’re looking at him through the lens of the council.” Ildri ducked over the device again, eagerly prodding the wires.

“And if I’m not?”

Ildri looked up, blinking behind safety goggles that magnified her eyes by about a hundred. “If you’re not . . . ” She bit the inside of her cheek for a moment. “If you’re not, then I guess you have to decide what Dusk is, don’t you?”

“And what are my options?” Jericho asked, more to herself than to Ildri. It was a question she’d struggled with since the moment she’d brought Dusk to the hold. What was Dusk? His methods were skewed, yes. But his ideals . . . They were something Jericho felt she could get behind. Was Dusk the hero of the people, or the villain of the council? At this point, was there a difference? Jericho didn’t hear Ildri’s reply as she left the workshop and headed back to her desk.

She had some thinking to do.

By the time Jericho left for the evening, she still hadn’t decided what Dusk was. She had decided that Soliel would never have grown into a villain. So, she supposed that was something. But if he wasn’t a villain, and he wasn’t a hero, what was he? Maybe he didn’t have to be one or the other. Maybe he was just a good person doing bad things for the right reasons . . .

Jericho shook herself. She’d deal with that later.

Two heroes were still parked in front of her apartment building when she arrived, and she went over to knock on the roof of their cruiser.

“You two can take off for the night. I got this.”

The younger of the two frowned. “But Erling said that—”

“I don’t give a fuck what Erling said,” Jericho interrupted. “The captain said this is still my case, so get gone.”

The girl’s face scrunched up as if she were deciding who she was more afraid of pissing off. After a moment, she seemed to decide it was Jericho. “Do you still want the K.N.I.G.H.T.?”

“No. I’ll send it down when I get up there, and then you lot can fuck off somewhere.”

“Yes, sir.” She nodded and rolled up the window before her partner could argue with the decision she’d just made for the both of them. Jericho didn’t wait for her partner to get up the balls to say anything either; she just turned and headed into her building.

The elevator ride went much too quickly as she breathed the recycled air, trying to calm her nerves. Dusk had been pissed. What if he still was? What if they couldn’t have a civilized conversation? What if Jericho couldn’t get Dusk to trust her again? That would be the end of everything, wouldn’t it?

A soft hiss told her that the doors had opened, and she shook her head to clear her thoughts before heading down the hall to her apartment. A large robot waited outside, its head turning and luminescent eyes giving an unneeded blink as it tracked her approach.

“Jericho,” it said in its dry, stilted fashion.

“You’re relieved. The heroes are waiting downstairs to take you back to the hold.”

With a soft whirr, the K.N.I.G.H.T. headed toward the elevator. That was the good thing about robots: they didn’t argue about orders, they just followed them. Jericho pressed her palm to the pad by the door, and it opened with a soft click.

“Dusk. I brought home pizza. It’s pineapple and ham, your favorite.” A peace offering that she could only hope he’d accept. Jericho dropped the cardboard box onto the island with a soft thump.

Lights flickered on as Jericho walked deeper into the apartment. Not a single sound greeted her, and everything was as she remembered it from when she’d left that morning.

“Dusk?” Jericho poked her head down the hall as the hallway lights lit at her approach. She frowned, pacing to Dusk’s door and taking hold of the handle. Surprise drew her brows together when it turned without resistance. “Sol?” Jericho pressed the door open, and her stomach dropped. Fuck. The room was empty. “That little fucker. How did he get past the robot?”

It took only a handful of minutes to search the rest of the apartment and find no sign of the villain. Dusk hadn’t packed a bag; he’d just slipped on his fancy shoes and left. He hadn’t even worn his overcoat. In fact, judging by the lack of empty hangers in his closet, Dusk hadn’t worn any of his new clothes.

Jericho pulled out her phone and dialed Ildri as she slipped into her own shoes and back out into the hall.

“Talk to me,” the voice of Ildri greeted through the tinny speaker.

“I need the GPS on Dusk’s tracker pinged.” Jericho jabbed the button for the elevator a couple of times, willing it to move more quickly.

“Is he missing?” Ildri asked, and Jericho could hear the click-clacking of keys in the background.

“Is he miss—Of course he’s fucking missing!” Jericho hissed, pinching the bridge of her nose where a headache was starting. “Tell me where the little fuckwit is.”

All sounds of clicking stopped for a moment, and Ildri let out a long, slow breath. “Are you sure that’s a good idea, J?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Jericho felt her hands grip the phone dangerously hard, glass and metal cutting into her palm hard enough to leave a sharp red indent. This is exactly what Erling had been talking about. Exactly what would prove that fucking birdbrain right. And what if something happened to Dusk? What if someone else found him first? There would be no way for Jericho to protect him then.

“Because,” Ildri said slowly, her voice like someone speaking to a wounded animal, “if I track him for you using that, I have to report it. That means Oakfur will know that he got out. You know what he’ll do if he finds out.”

Teeth ground together painfully. Jericho squeezed her eyes shut. Fuck. “Cancel that then. I’ll find the little fucker on my own.”

“Probably for the best. You have any idea where he might be?”

“Not really, but—” She stopped, a thought striking her. “No. I know exactly where he is. Thanks, Ildri. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Right. Just . . . let me know once you’ve found him and he’s safe, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

It took over an hour to hail a cab and make it to Ilygroth. By the time Jericho reached the old playground, the clouds had opened up. Late summer rain pinged softly against the metal of the crooked slide, and the ground squelched beneath Jericho’s boots.

“You’re not even wearing a fucking coat.” Jericho glared at the darkly clad figure hunched on a swing.

“I’ve got a hood.” Dusk tugged at the strings of the black hoodie he’d clearly pulled out of Jericho’s collection.

“How long have you been sitting out here?” Jericho moved to sit in the swing beside Dusk, ignoring the water seeping through her jeans.

Dusk tilted his head to the side as if to consider the question and then said, “Little while.”

“Are you ready to come home?”

A heavy sigh, the oversized hoodie shifting with the movement of his narrow chest. “I have something for you.”

“You can give to me at ho—”

“No.” Dusk rooted around in the big pocket at the front of the hoodie for whatever it was.

“No?”

“No. Because if this doesn’t work, then I’m not going back with you.”

“If what doesn’t work?”

Dusk didn’t answer. He just pulled out a small handheld screen, not much bigger than the cellphone Jericho had tucked into her pocket. A video began playing, the sound barely audible above the rain.

“Is that Councilman Pendragon?” His face was out of focus, and the sound quality wasn’t great, but Jericho would recognize that man anywhere. He was the head of the Council of Elders in Mythikos. He’d been in office for longer than Jericho had been alive. “Or did you hire some fucking shifter—”

“You know shifts don’t show up on Oracle cameras,” Dusk muttered, sounding tired. “Just watch.”

Jericho grunted, skeptical.

“No,” Pendragon’s voice cut through the gentle patter of the rain. “I don’t care what you have to do. I want that property.”

“It isn’t a high crime neighborhood,” another voice responded, one Jericho didn’t recognize. “We can’t just make it look like crime spiked out of—”

“What’s its Unseelie population?” There was a rustling of papers as the other person slid them across to Pendragon. He adjusted his glasses on his nose, looking over the numbers. “Higher than average.”

“Well, it is a lower income—”

“It’s perfect,” Pendragon cut in, a smug smile tinging his voice.

“What do you plan to do with the property?”

“Does it matter?” Pendragon asked, an edge to the question.

“No. I suppose not. How soon do you need it cleared out?”

Pendragon tapped a finger on his chin, muttering to himself for a moment before deciding on, “Five years.”

“Sir, that’s—”

“That’s what I want.”

“We’ll have to get the heroes involved.”

“Whatever it takes. I want Ilygroth cleared out in five years. That’s where I’m building my new estate. Maybe if we stage a murd—” Pendragon drawled, but the video cut out before he could finish.

Jericho stared at the dark screen as water splattered it. “So that was . . . ” She let the words drift off, scrubbing at her damp face.

“A plot to blame the Unseelie for increased crime in our neighborhood so a member of the ruling political class could purchase the land cheaply and build himself yet another fucking mansion?” Dusk asked, tone bitter. “Yes, it was.”

“That could have been a shapeshifter.”

“It’s an Oracle camera. I can show you the base file when we get back. It’ll have all the spell markings to prove it’s shifter-proof.”

“Fine. But there’s not enough there to be conclusive—”

“No, there is no concrete proof,” Dusk agreed. “But it’s a start. And imagine what the public would do with this—”

“We can’t show anyone this. Not yet. Not until we have concrete evidence. Not until we know everyone who’s involved.” Jericho frowned, her mind already working on what they’d need for this to not blow up in their faces or be brushed off as a hoax. “Otherwise, people will just think it’s a stunt.”

Dusk nodded in understanding. “You’ll help?”

“For Ilygroth,” Jericho said.

Dusk chuckled, shaking his head. “No, for Mythikos. Pendragon isn’t the only one twisting the facts here. You saw Fizz’s records. So, are you in?”

Jericho bit her lip, thinking. Then she nodded. “Yeah, Sol, I’m in.”

“Then let’s go home.”