Hmm, maybe this Sigrid she was talking to is family.
“Okay,” Juliet says as she steps down the sidewalk, resuming our walk. “Sigrid knew Barbara before she died, and yes, itsounds like she did have a supernatural gift. Did Ophelia’s mom or dad have a gift too?”
I shake my head. “I mean, Ophelia obviously never mentioned anything about gifts. Her mom was an addict who died when Ophelia was little. Her dad was a drunk who was never around. Ophelia’s grandmother raised her for a while, but it wasn’t a great situation. She never mentioned if her grandmother was particularly influential.”
Juliet shakes her head. “It doesn’t work that way,” she confesses. “You don’t necessarily get the same gift your parent had. In fact, it doesn’t really ever happen that way.”
She’s revealing so damn much without really saying the direct things. But holy shit. It feels like my brain is expanding by the second.
There are supernaturally gifted people out there, and it tends to run in families.
And apparently, there are more than a few of them in Chicago.
“Have you heard of someone who could do something like this?” I ask, speaking faster by the moment as my hope and excitement build. “She just tells them what she wants or what she wants them to do. She said it tends to work better if she touches them.”
“Not exactly, but similar,” Juliet admits. She cringes a little, as if realizing how much she’s revealing by the minute. “Please tell me you’re a good person because somehow you’ve got me blabbing about things Inevertalk about, and I really don’t want to have to kill you. This shit… it’s important. And really secret.”
I shake my head. “I have no desire to expose whatever secrets Chicago is keeping, so long as you’re not doing shady shit there. I just want some help fixing my fiancé.”
“Ophelia can’t just undo it?” Juliet asks, looking over at me.
I shake my head. “Not so far. But when we said we were in the middle of something, we were literally in the middle of this shit. Ares has kind of been on the run for the last few days, and I finally just caught him and brought him to where we can contain him. So, we were just testing if she could undo what she did. But she’s never tried to undo anything before.”
“Shit,” Juliet says, raising her eyebrows. “This sounds like a damn mess.”
“They haven’t stopped happening lately,” I say through gritted teeth.
“I know a little something about that,” she says, and I can just hear it in her tone—she does in fact know.
“Do you think you could help me?” I ask, hoping and praying she’ll answer yes. “So far, you know a whole lot more about this stuff than anyone else, including the person who did it. And I’m feeling really fucking desperate.”
Juliet looks over at me, caution in her expression. But I see it there. She’s a good person. Complicated? Yes. But somehow you can just tell sometimes when someone is a person who is good at their core. And I can tell that about Juliet.
“Just, try not to ask me too many questions, okay?” she says, the conflict in her tone obvious. “You get me talking too easily.”
“I’ll try,” I say with a smile tugging at my lips. “But don’t expect me to be very successful.”
Juliet just chuckles at that and follows me down into the subway to head back to Brooklynn, where Ares is waiting in the vault.
Chapter 10
Ares is still unconscious when Juliet and I arrive back at the vault. Thankfully Harry thought to add me to the biometric scanner before I left earlier; otherwise, we would have been sitting on our asses outside waiting for him to get back.
I close the heavy steel door behind us, the familiar chill of the vault crawling up my spine. Juliet walks beside me like this isn’t weird, like this maze of boxes hiding a vault isn’t just a little crazy. She carries that kind of effortless, contained chaos—like she’s constantly holding back a wicked punchline or something far more dangerous.
The monitor outside the cell shows that Ares is still out cold. I hate seeing him so damn still, almost like he’s dead. But I guess it’s better than the alternative of him raging so violently to escape that he injures himself. His chest rises and falls in a slow, shallow rhythm. My throat tightens.
“Home sweet dungeon,” Juliet murmurs behind me, and I glance over my shoulder to see her already stepping toward the second vault. She tosses me a look. “You mind if I chat with your girl? See what’s ticking in that morally gray mind of hers?”
I nod for her to go ahead, barely trusting myself to speak.
As Juliet’s footsteps echo throughout the warehouse, I fold my arms and study the screen. Ares looks like a shadow of the man I love. Paler than he should be, smears of dried blood all over him, dark circles beneath his eyes. There’s a gash above his brow, half-healed. Bruising on his arms. All self-inflicted. He’d been clawing to get out of here, and he hadn’t even felt the damage he was doing to himself.
It's hard not to let the what-ifs take over my brain. What if Ophelia can’t fix him? What if I’d been too late finding him? What if Ares had gotten to Sysco? What if, what if, what if.
I press my forehead against the monitor and close my eyes.
What does a future look like for him like this? He’ll wake up and feel the weight of everything. Every life lost at his hands. The guilt will bury him alive. I can feel it—like a storm cloud waiting to crack open. Ares has always carried more weight than is his burden to carry. This might be too damn much.
