Magic Rises

and strong, who will be a partner and an alpha, instead of a weak half-wit who is only a liability. This is a pointless conversation.” Isabella looked past me at Mahon. “We all know that the human is being replaced. Last night’s dinner was definitive proof of that.”
    What happened last night?
    Mahon leaned forward, his hands on the back of my chair. The wood groaned under the pressure of his fingers. “She’s earned my loyalty. Do not insult her again.”
    The world stood on its ear.
    “Fine,” Isabella said. “You may play this game of pretend, but I’m done. Your human knows it, too. One only has to see the look on her face when Lorelei Wilson walks into the room.” She looked at me. “You are an open book, and you know you are being set aside. Take your pets and leave us.”
    I rose.
    Mahon looked at Gerardo. “You can’t hold on to your mother’s skirt forever.”
    The werewolf bared his teeth.
    “Enough.” Isabella rose and walked away. Her wolves followed. A moment and we were alone.
    “What happened at dinner?” I asked once they were out of earshot.
    “Lorelei sat next to Curran,” Barabas said.
    “In my chair?”
    “Yes.”
    Curran had lied to me. The realization hit me like a punch to the stomach.
    He came into Desandra’s room, lay next to me, held me, and told me I didn’t have to worry about Lorelei, all after she sat in my chair at dinner. He had to know exactly what kind of signal it would send to everyone else. She had literally taken my place and he allowed it.
    The Universe spun out of control. I struggled to hold on to it. I had to finish this. I couldn’t drop everything and search Curran out so I could punch him in the face. No matter how much I wanted to do it. No matter how much it hurt.
    I managed to make some words happen. “And you didn’t think to mention it?”
    Barabas sighed. “I didn’t want to upset you. I didn’t expect them to be so blunt. They don’t want to answer the questions, so they’re trying to exploit any weaknesses.”
    Curran lied to me. I tried to wrap my mind around it and couldn’t. All my life, first Voron, then Greg had taught me to trust no one. Trust, intimacy, complete honesty with another human being wasn’t for me. It was a luxury someone with my blood couldn’t afford. I ignored it all and trusted him. I trusted him so completely, that even now, faced with evidence of his betrayal, I was looking for possible explanations. Maybe it was part of some plan he lied about having. Maybe . . .
    I stomped on that thought and crushed it into pieces. I had a job to do. I would deal with this later. I stuffed those sharp shards into the same dark place where I stuffed everything. They scoured me on their way down. My storage capacity for the problems I couldn’t handle was getting full. Not much more would fit.
    “What’s next?” I asked.
    “The Volkodavi,” Barabas said.
    “Lead on.”
    The Volkodavi met me in their rooms, in a large common area. Vitaliy, the head of the clan and Radomil’s brother, shook my hand. Like Radomil, he was tall and blond. He was handsome but lacked the near perfection of his brother.
    I sat in a chair. Radomil sat across from me.
    “Where is Ivanna?” I asked.
    “She’ll be here,” Vitaliy said.
    I asked them the same set of questions and got much the same responses. Yes, they were in their quarters; no, they couldn’t account for their whereabouts; and they didn’t do anything to help or check on Desandra. Radomil wanted to go but Vitaliy stopped him, because Desandra was a nice girl but she wasn’t worth getting hurt over.
    “Look,” Radomil told me in broken English. “We don’t mind talking to you, but it’s not going to help. You and the Wilson girl, it’s made things complicated. You not married.”
    Like dragging a cheese grater across my soul. Yes, I know, I’m not married. Yes, Lorelei sat next to Curran at dinner. I’m irrelevant, I’m human, I’m being replaced . . . “Can I see Ivanna, please?”
    Vitaliy sighed and called, “Ivanna!”
    A moment later Ivanna walked into the room. She looked exactly how I remembered her—a slender blond woman—except for the left side of her face. Scaly dark patches of damaged skin covered her left temple, disappearing under her hair.
    “What happened to your face?” I asked.
    Ivanna waved her arm. As she moved, her hair shifted, and I caught a better glimpse: the scaly blotches covered the entire left side of her face,