“I’m not a wraith.” Custo sat on the floor to prove it. If he were a wraith, he’d be moving in for an Adam treat.
“An angel?” Adam’s tone was flat, concealing his true attitude.
Custo scratched his chin like a movie mob boss—an old private joke—and shrugged.
“From God?”
Custo winced slightly and dropped the act.
“Then from whom?” A touch of sarcasm there.
Custo cleared his voice. “I’m…uh…absent without leave.”
Adam frowned slightly, then sat on the floor and crossed his legs, mirroring Custo’s position, his gaze coolly assessing. “Let’s have it then. The story.”
There was too much and too little to tell, but at least he had an obvious place to begin. “Well, Spencer killed me.” Custo left off the torture part.
“I remember,” Adam said. His jaw tensed. Angry. But his mind betrayed nothing.
“What happened to him by the way?” Custo mimicked Adam’s surface composure, but he was angry, too. He had a score to settle.
“You mean you weren’t looking down from your cloud in the sky?” Full, bitter sarcasm now. Very angry.
“Doesn’t work that way.” Custo kept his tone deliberately light. “Did you kill him?” As far as Custo knew, Adam had never killed anybody. Custo didn’t think he could take it.
“Wraith beat me to it.”
Ah. “Fitting. He was colluding with them.” Spencer had been the SPCI liaison to The Segue Institute. SPCI, the Strategic Preternatural Coalition Initiative, was a covert government agency attempting to police the wraiths while Segue studied them, trying to discover the catalyst that changed them from human to monster. SPCI mostly mucked things up.
Custo drew a deep breath. “By the way, Spencer told me that you had another traitor at Segue. Another wraith collaborator. Someone you trust.”
Just like that, his message was delivered. A grasping knot of acute worry released. Adam had been warned.
How could you know that? Adam’s mind asked, but he said, “When did he tell you that?”
So Adam already knew. That was good news.
“Before…you know…he offed me.” It was utterly galling that that Spencer piece of shit had killed him. No pride in that. “Have you had any suspicions about another traitor?” Custo asked, though he knew the answer from Adam’s mind.
Adam shrugged. “We’ve had some intel leaks over the past six months or so and lives lost because of it. Talia killed the demon who created the wraiths soon after you died. The remaining wraiths number in the thousands and are nested all over the world. For a while we were able to aggressively track and…dispatch them, but they’ve become better at hiding and coordinating their attacks. Their target is Segue—me and Talia, specifically.”
“Is that why you’re in these charming new digs?” Custo cast an eye around the unrelenting gray of his cell. “Not your style, Adam.”
“This place isn’t mine. It’s the U.S. Army’s, who has, by the way, become very cooperative with our efforts.”
Custo held up a hand to stop him. “Oh, please not SPCI. If there is one rotten egg, there are sure to be others.”
“SPCI was disbanded. The wraiths’ existence is public knowledge now, and we have full military support.”
Custo glanced down at his now-healed arm, trying to process this new information. Spencer was dead, a personal disappointment. The government had granted full cooperation, which was excellent progress. And the war with the wraiths was status quo. He flexed the muscle of his forearm and the crusted blood cracked.
Adam spoke his thoughts, exactly as they came. “So I have an unknown quantity in you…”
Custo smiled. That was putting it mildly. He brought his gaze back up.
“And a traitor within Segue.”
Custo nodded, his grin widening. “No thanks necessary. I only escaped from Heaven, eluded a piranha mermaid with huge tits, and fell to Earth to save your sorry, purebred bottom.”
Adam gave half a chuckle, then sobered. “You’re not a wraith?”
“An-gel.”
Adam lifted an eyebrow. “Mermaid?”
“With huge tits. Bluish ones.” Custo cupped his hands a foot away from his chest to demonstrate.
Adam laughed outright. “And what was Heaven like?”
“Boring. Clean. Nice.” Custo shrugged. “You’d like it, but it’s not so much for me.”
Adam inclined his head. “Not for me either if Talia can’t go.” Banshee.
“Oh? You’ve been busy.” Seemed Adam had fallen hard for his half-fae, half-human researcher. And yes, the laws of Heaven did bar the fae from entering. Could a banshee, able to rend the boundary between mortality and the Other-world with her scream, enter the gates of Heaven? Custo guessed it depended on which side of her heritage won out. Definitely problematic.
“I’m going to be a father—twins.” There was a deep pool of happiness in the simple statement, and then he sobered, eyes direct. “It’s because of her pregnancy that the wraiths are redoubling their attacks. Hunting us. I can’t afford to take any risks.”