Page 16 of Panther in the Shadows
Tomorrow, the docks. Find Rafe Vega in his warehouse full of secrets. Demand answers about what he knows, what he's done, who's performing necromancy in his territory.
The panther won't want to talk. Men like him never do. But he'll understand that this is bigger than his criminal empire, bigger than pack politics, bigger than anything he's prepared to face.
Because if that woman succeeds in raising Elspeth, if my sister comes back wrong, there won't be anything left to save.
The ocean surges against the harbor wall, spray reaching higher than it should. And in the distance, a sound that isn't waves. Isn't wind.
A child's laughter, carried on the salt breeze.
My palm presses against the window glass. My magic flows toward the water. Just a whisper. Just enough to tell the ocean I'm listening.
The water responds. Not with words, but with feeling.
It's afraid.
And so am I.
CHAPTER 4
RAFE
The inn is dark when I arrive, but I can smell her inside.
Salt and storm and the ocean at midnight. The scent draws me across the cobblestones like a hook through flesh, pulling me toward Flynn's Inn even though every tactical instinct says this is a mistake. Confronting a sea witch in her own territory. Pressing a woman who's spent years hiding what she is.
But I'm done waiting. Done watching from the shadows while people go missing or are found dead and my name gets dragged through accusations I can't refute without revealing what I know.
The back door is locked, but locks mean nothing to someone who walks through darkness like water. Slipping between the hinges and the frame, becoming shadow, becoming nothing. Then I'm inside. The kitchen smells like baking bread and herbs I can't identify. Protection wards hum in the walls, old magic woven by hands that knew what they were doing.
Moira's grandmother was no fool. She built defenses that would stop most threats.
Most. Not all.
Through the kitchen, footsteps silent on worn floorboards. The main room of the inn stretches before me, tables and chairs arranged with the kind of precision that speaks to decades of routine. A fire burns low in the hearth, casting flickering shadows across bottles behind the bar.
And there, standing at the bar with her back to me, is Moira Flynn.
She's changed since this morning when she served coffee and scones to fishermen and lied to Declan MacRae. Now she wears dark jeans and a sweater the color of storm clouds, her hair loose around her shoulders. Washing glasses that look clean already, her movements precise and controlled.
But fear clings to her like perfume. Sharp and metallic beneath the salt.
"The inn's closed," she says without turning around. "You'll have to come back tomorrow."
"I'm not here for a drink."
She goes still. The glass in her hands freezes mid-wash, water running over her fingers. Then slowly, carefully, she sets it down and turns to face me.
Her eyes are the color of the sea before a storm with depths I can't measure. Right now they're wide, pupils dilated, tracking me the way prey tracks a predator.
"Rafael Vega." My name sounds different in her mouth. Cautious. Wary. "Breaking and entering is illegal, even for a shadow-walker."
"So is hiding evidence of murder." Letting the firelight catch my eyes. Letting her see the gold. "We need to talk, Moira."
"We have nothing to talk about." She angles toward the kitchen door. Looking for an exit. "Whatever you think I can do?—"
"When you healed Eliza, you used salt-water magic in front of the entire brotherhood." Another step forward. She retreats one. "You can’t deny it to those of us who saw who you are."
The color drains from her face. "That was an emergency. One time. It doesn't change anything."
