I wanted to hug her but I knew she’d get even by shooting me with one of her eraser-loaded rubber bands.
Last night I’d made sure Adam and Olivia were okay by having a couple of other Trackers check in on them. After being shot, I couldn’t do anything until I shifted back into my human form. To say I was relieved when I was told they were okay—well, we’ll just keep it to “that’s an understatement.”
“So tell me why you look like you got chewed up and spit out in little pieces,” she said.
“I’m fine. Just a rough night tracking.” I smiled my way through my aches and pains. It’s much easier to heal when shifting from human to Drow than it is shifting from Drow to human. I’d mostly healed from my wounds, but not totally. What was more important was that Olivia was here and well. “I am so glad you’re okay.”
Olivia gave me one of her looks . “And why wouldn’t I be…?”
That made me feel even better. If she didn’t know, then nothing had happened to her at all. “Nothing.”
Olivia frowned.
I set my handbag on my Dryad-made wooden desk and a pang went through me at the thought of the young Dryad who’d been shot last night. The Healers weren’t sure she was going to survive.
“What happened?” Olivia narrowed her gaze. When I shrugged she grabbed an eraser from the stash on her desk and loaded it into a rubber band. “Tell me now .”
I held up my hands in mock surrender. “Metamorphs. They went a little crazy last night.”
“Metamorphs?” Olivia looked like she was going to laugh. “Since when did one of them grow a backbone?”
“They chose last night to do it.” I drew my phone out of my handbag, and the worry that had been biting at me all morning snapped at me. “I need to call Adam again. I haven’t been able to reach him.”
“Hold on.” Olivia pulled on her loaded rubber band. “Tell me everything first.”
Fae bells tinkled and I cut my attention to the front door. “Adam!” I dropped my phone into my bag, ran to him, and flung my arms around his neck. His leather and coffee scent was so good, so familiar, that I breathed deep before I said, “You’re okay. Olivia’s okay.”
“Hey.” Adam caught me by my waist and I winced when he pressed one of his thumbs into my abdomen, right where the bullet had gone in. “Feeling better this morning?”
“What?” I looked up at him, confused. Adam didn’t know what had happened. Couldn’t have.
“Last night you said you weren’t feeling well so you didn’t want me to come over,” he said. “We were going to watch Body Double before you went tracking.”
I laughed even though it hurt my belly.
An eraser pinged off my backside and I looked at Olivia, who’d loaded another one. “Start talking, Nyx.”
I told them both most of what had happened last night. No matter that they were two of the people I cared most about here or in Otherworld, I was sworn to secrecy about the Paranorm Center—humans were never to know about it.
“Why didn’t you call us?” Olivia asked when I finished massaging my story to the part about getting shot. She put her hand on her own handgun. “I don’t like it when you leave me out of things, and you know it.”
“That’s right, Nyx.” Adam’s voice was calmer than Olivia’s, but it held disapproval, too.
“It all happened so fast that I didn’t have time to call you,” I said, looking from Olivia to Adam. “That’s the truth.” More or less.
Another eraser pinged off of me, this time off the back of my head.
“No wonder you were worried something happened to me and Olivia.” Adam took me by my arms and ran his hands up and down them, causing a pleasant shiver to skim my body. “What happened to the real council members?”
“Two other Trackers—Ice and Joshua—located them,” I said as I rubbed my scalp. “Wiped out the Metamorphs who’d kidnapped the council members, and saved the hostages.”