I finally opened my eyes and glanced over at Rourke, my mate and partner in all things. His expression was grim. We were seated next to each other on the private jet en route to Florida to aid my father and my Pack against a fracture pack of wolves who were wreaking havoc on a small town after soliciting the help of a powerful priestess who was turning humans into rabid wolves.
Rourke grabbed my hand, sensing my distress, and gave it a squeeze. “I heard every word she said, and Juanita wasn’t talking about your life being in danger because of the fracture pack. She was talking about what happened with Lili in the Underworld.”
I nodded in agreement. “I know. She was giving me a warning, and it makes me believe the Hags will strike sooner rather than later.” Before we’d left the Underworld, Eudoxia, the Vampire Queen, had speculated that the Hags might take years to follow up on their retribution. Her reasoning? We were supernatural and there was really no need to hurry. We’d all be around for a good long time. But I didn’t buy it. Why wait when you could strike me down today? “My guess is Juanita is involved with Fate somehow. Either she’s an oracle or she is a Hag herself.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe I didn’t know she was a supe. It was a rookie mistake.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” Rourke said. “A supernatural that old, with that much magic, could’ve fooled anyone—even me. Powerful supes, especially the ancient ones, can keep their magic cloaked, no problem. If she didn’t want you to know what she was, you didn’t stand a chance of finding out.”
Marcy sat up straighter in her seat across from me. “Did I just hear you say you think your neighbor might be a Hag? Like, as in a Hag Hag or a hag, as in she’s ugly and awful and smelly?” I hadn’t had any time to fill Marcy in on everything that had transpired in the Underworld. She’d arrived with Ray just before we all boarded the plane. Before I had a chance to answer, she continued, “Listen, Hags are pretty badass. They run the clock—so to speak. You don’t want to mess with them unless you want to be royally screwed over. They will scramble your brains and smile like fiends while they do it.”
I grinned at my friend. I’d truly missed her. It’d been three months since I’d seen her and I had so much to tell her. “Well, that’s comforting news. And, yes, she might be a Hag—as in the all-powerful brain-scrambling kind. It makes sense, but I have no idea for sure. It’s only a suspicion.”
Marcy whistled low. “That’s crazy. So what else do I need to know? Have you pissed off any gremlins? They do serious destruction on a very large scale. What about any serpentines? They’re these creepy half snake, half man—”
I held up my hand. “Okay, I get it, I get it. I will share the details of my trip to the Underworld with you. Rourke and Ray were there for some of it, so they know a bit.” Ray grunted from his seat across from Rourke. “But Naomi hasn’t been debriefed yet either.” Naomi had her arms braced over the top of my seat, likely eager to hear the details as well. I moved in closer to Marcy. “But before I start, you have to promise me you’re not going to interrupt this recap or it will take more time than we’ve got on this plane. Understood?” Marcy nodded, running a finger and thumb over her lips to show me they were zipped, and then she mimed throwing away the key. “What are you, four?” I laughed.
“Hey”—she shrugged—“that’s the timeless international signal for ‘you have my undivided attention.’ ” She faked looking at her wrist with a wry expression on her face. “You just wasted seven seconds of story time asking if I was a four-year-old child. Now, get talking, you.”
“All right. Here it goes…” Rourke kept a solid grip on my hand as I recounted what had happened to me in the Underworld, starting from the time I’d landed there to running through the tunnels, dodging the beasts and the demons who were dressed like janitors, meeting and then killing Lili, and reviving the Princess of Hell. His touch helped keep me calm. Reliving ordeals was never fun. Naomi listened quietly behind me, and surprisingly, so did Marcy. Every so often there was a garbled agreement from Ray, and I finished with “So all we can do now is wait. There aren’t many options, since we don’t know how the Hags operate. Juanita’s call is the first thing that’s happened since we rode the portal back. So by my reasoning, if she’s involved with Fate, she either has to be a Hag or she’s an oracle who works for them—I don’t know for sure. It’s only speculation at this point.”
“Good grief.” Marcy collapsed back into her seat like she’d just run a marathon, arms out to her sides. “That was a killer story—literally. So let me get this straight.” She moved forward. “You killed this evil Lili character and now you think you’ve thrown Fate off its true course? And now Juanita is calling you to warn you—”
The plane took a sharp nosedive, tossing us around in our seats.