Thorn made a sound of consternation but looked as though it was more that he wished he’d thought of making the same gesture than that he objected to the incubus’s forwardness. He seemed to decide Pickle wasn’t causing any real trouble as long as the tiny creature stuck close to my legs and left off that chase. When Ruse released me, the warrior squeezed my shoulder, not quite smiling himself but with a thrum of pleased energy emanating from his brawny frame.
“It’s good to have you back where you belong,” he said, which from the wingéd was practically a standing ovation.
“Then I expect an even more enthusiastic welcome than that,” I informed him. I bobbed up on my toes with the devourer’s arms still around me, and a hint of a real smile crossed Thorn’s lips. He brought them to mine, giving me a taste of the passion that resided beneath his stoic front.
The other wingéd man who’d joined us more recently, Flint, hung back but appeared to at least be not upset to see me. Antic bounded around our cluster with actual applause and bursts of gleeful giggling.
“She’s back, she’s back; the Highest didn’t eat her!” she crowed.
Yes, I was rejoicing that fact too, even if I wasn’t totally clear on what had won Omen over. Just for that moment, I didn’t feel any need to dwell on that. I was back where I belonged, a monstrous human among monstrous shadowkind, and I couldn’t imagine wanting any company more. Not even the bitter tang of asphalt baking in the warm autumn air could cut through my relief.
Omen gave Snap a sharp look. “How much do our new recruits know now?”
The imp’s chant appeared to have stirred something in my devourer. He lifted his head just enough to fix his moss-green eyes on Omen. I felt his body bristle against me with a trickle of aggressive energy as if he might be about to rise into full devourer form, both wondrous and horrifying.
“Enough to realize how awfully you treated Sorsha. How could you have even thought about giving her to them?” His clear, sweet voice came in a more forceful tone than I’d ever heard it take before. “You didn’t even talk to her—or us. You hurt her.” He touched his gentle fingertips to the bruise Omen’s blow had left on my temple, careful not to provoke any further pain. His other arm tightened around me as if he thought the hellhound shifter might change his mind and attempt to charge off with me again.
Huh. Apparently it wasn’t just the warrior wingéd who was prepared to do battle to keep me safe. I’d never thought of Snap as much of a fighter, but I wouldn’t have wanted to go up against him at his fiercest.
I glanced over in time to see Omen practically gaping at the devourer, obviously startled by the chiding. His jaw worked, and his face returned to the same tense, unshakeable mask it’d been since he’d hauled me out of the cave. He took in the rest of our companions assembled around me, all of them now watching him in silence. Possibly wondering whether he was going to attempt to take off Snap’s head for insubordination.
I shifted my weight, preparing to do some defending of my own if the hellhound laid into the devourer, but I didn’t need to. Omen ducked his head, just slightly, and said, “I acted too hastily. It won’t happen again.”
He was admitting he’d made a mistake? My eyebrows shot up. “It’s the end of the world as we know it,” I couldn’t help saying.
Omen’s eyes narrowed as they returned to me, and I tensed all over again. I had the feeling my release wasn’t so much a free pass as a conditional reprieve. And Omen hadn’t bothered to tell me what the conditions of my remaining free were. Probably he’d be noting every slip I made for any excuse to proclaim me a real disaster after all.
“It had better not happen again,” Snap said to the hellhound shifter. “If you try, it might be the end of you.”
I wasn’t sure how easily he could make good on the threat, but given that he had Thorn for back-up, it wasn’t impossible.
Omen appeared to take it seriously enough. His voice turned curt, a few tufts of his hair rising with his temper. “If I say something, I mean it. She’s back, isn’t she?”
Snap made a discontented sound as if to say he wasn’t excusing the matter that easily, but he let it drop for now.
Omen scanned the lot again. “Did we lose the night elf?”
Ruse waved his hand dismissively. “Gloam felt ‘uncomfortable’ with the ‘hostile energies’ and took off.”
My heart sank a little. We were just getting started against an even more powerful enemy that we were anticipating, and we were already shedding allies like a cat shed hair.
The incubus folded his arms over his chest. There was something wary in his expression as he considered his boss. “So, where are we taking things from here?” he asked, a little too purposefully casual to be casual at all. “Off to tackle your good friend who’s mixed herself up with the Company?”
“Tempest is not my ‘friend’,” Omen muttered, and drew himself up a little straighter. He wasn’t the tallest of our bunch by a longshot, but the power and authority he exuded simply standing there gave him a stature that couldn’t be ignored. “But I do know her well, and I think we may be able to use her to our own ends—both to dismantle the Company and to convince the Highest they can lay off on Sorsha. But first we need to get over there.”
Thorn frowned. “Over where?”
“From what she’s said, I assume she’s set up shop in Versailles. She always used to talk about this dream of convincing some royal figure to build a palace so lavish it outdid all others. She finds mortal extravagance both incredibly amusing and appealing. I thought the Sun King’s tastes in that area aligned awfully close to hers—if I’d known she was still alive, I’d have recognized her influence in it immediately.”
Omen squinted past the warrior toward the Everymobile. “Do you think you and your wingéd brethren could handle heaving Darlene through the nearest rift—and bringing her out one of the Paris-area openings?”
“I might even be able to manage it on my own,” Thorn said without hesitation. “I’m not sure how well the mortal vehicle will adapt to the journey, though.”
I’d never heard of any shadowkind taking a mortal-side object that large through the shadow realm before. I’d never been taken into the shadow realm before myself. A chill rippled over my skin despite Snap’s embrace. “Are we sure that I’ll adapt to the journey?”
Omen gave me another of those unreadable looks he kept a collection of. “I’d imagine you’re shadowkind enough to survive the trip, but I wasn’t planning on making an experiment of it just yet. There may be something about your hybrid energies that would alert the Highest if you ventured into their realm. I was thinking you’d fly over the traditional way, with the incubus to smooth over matters of tickets and passports, and we’ll meet up on that side. That way we’ll have our living space and transport wherever we have to go rather than starting over from scratch.”
That made sense. Before the unicorn shifter and centaur who owned the Everymobile had lent it to us, we’d been going through vehicles like a squirrel went through nuts. Although generally those nuts didn’t get blown up. It was awfully handy having a place to crash—if you needed to sleep, like I did—and to hold meetings in and so on that could be on the road at the same time.