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“But we can’t prove it,” I told him. “And if it’s what we have to say against the entire Augusta County Sheriff’s Department, who do you think the DA or a judge is going to listen to?”

Elliot growled.

“Which is why,” Hart continued around the rest of his spring roll, “I have to figure out a way to get this punted to the Bureau. I’ve ostensibly got a dead shifter—you—which should let me justify federal intervention, but I don’t have a ruling of vehicular homicide, just a load of bullshit about a possible accident. And I’ve got a murder, but while the perp is a shifter, the victim isn’t, which leaves me up shit creek with no fucking paddle.”

11

Seth Mays

Hart is dragging me in with him.

I don’t wanna go.

Elliot Crane

Be careful.

Don’t get arrested.

Again.

They didn’t arrest me last time.

They cuffed you.

But they didn’t actually arrest me.

Let’s not change that, okay?

Not on my to-do list.

Don’t get beaten, either.

Or killed.

Please.

I’ll do my best.

I love you.

I love you, too.

Specifically,Hart was dragging me in to the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office in order to demand access to my property and so that I could ostensibly identify the body of my boyfriend. It had me on edge, even though Elliot was obviously not dead. It felt like some kind of curse—mocking the fates or something like that, even though I believed in neither.

Okay, technically, I did believe in curses. I knew more than one witch and a warlock, so I absolutely couldn’t pretend magic wasn’t real. Fate, on the other hand, I wasn’t so sure about. Or God, either, for that matter. The God I’d been raised to believe in wasn’t the kind of God I wanted to believe in—cruel, vengeful, petty, demanding.

Elliot talked sometimes about a Creator, a being who gifted the world to people and bade them to take care of all that walked on it, whether animals, plants, people, water, earth, or air. Hands-off, rather than hands-on. A deity that was distant, but benevolent. Who wanted people to protect and care for each other and the world around them.

That sounded nice—the idea of mutual benevolence, gratitude, and reciprocity. Giving back for what was given. I didn’t know that I was there yet, but that was something I thought that maybe I could believe in.

Provided both Elliot and I got out of this alive.

And Hart.

And the Hills. Even though Helen and Ray had insisted that the Community would leave them alone—as they always had—I worried that in choosing to protect Elliot, they were making themselves targets. That, at the very least, they’d lose the peace and solitude to which they’d become accustomed, even if they didn’t face direct or violent retribution for their kindness.

It seemed as though everyone around me was at risk—Noah, who’d been arrested; Elliot, who’d nearly been killed; Hart, who was making himself a target; and the Hills, who might face retaliation for their generosity to a nearly-complete stranger.