“How did you find out about all this?”

His smile was mysterious. “I have my sources.”

“None of this means that The Order is behind the upcoming dragon attack.”

“If Sam and Jared had made enemies of a drove, Andres would have told you and worked with you to prevent a war; that’s the kind of guy he is.”

Okay, but… “Why hire dragons? Why not just bomb the island?”

“That would require them to get close. They’re probably not brave enough for that, considering they hide behind bombs and guns. The result of a dragon shifter attack would be close to the result of a bomb. If they wipe out the most powerful of our kind, it will cause mayhem and panic.”

“Why didn’t you tell us all this sooner?”

“I wasn’t given a chance,” he pointed out, affronted. “The second we got back from our meeting with Andres, I was teleported away from you.” His eyes glittered with fury as he added, “Then you were injected with the serum and I was wrongly imprisoned.”

“Wrongly?”

My doubt strangely didn’t anger him. In fact, he seemed hurt. “You know I didn’t do it.”

“If it wasn’t you, who was it?”

“When I find out, I’ll hurt them so badly they’ll beg for death. Believe that.”

Unsure what to believe, I returned to the matter at hand. “The Order…where is it based?” He had to know, given all the information he possessed.

Marco smiled. “Come back tomorrow, and I’ll tell you more.”

Appearing at my side in a blink, Butch growled. “You get one conversation with her, asshole. Nothing more.”

Smile widening, Marco said to me, “You’ll come back, sweetheart. Do you want to know how I know that? It’s because you’re good. If you can help someone, you will. If someone relies on you, you’ll do your best not to let them down. Right now, people are relying on you to get answers from me, aren’t they?”

“This isn’t a game, Marco, stop playing me.”

His expression softened. “Playing you? I’m not doing that, sweetheart. But if I drag this out long enough for you all to realise I’m not the person you’re looking for, I get to live and I get my freedom. I rather like living. The moment I’m no longer of any use to anyone here, he’ll end me. And we both know it.”

I couldn’t deny that.

Marco turned his back on me and walked to the bed. “Tomorrow, Imani.”

Barely holding back a frustrated growl, I spoke to Jared. We’re done here.

In a matter of moments, he appeared and teleported us to the living area of his beach house, where Sam was waiting. I gave the couple a rundown of everything Marco said.

“Do we think Marco’s spinning us some tales?” I asked, relaxing on the sofa. Butch was combing his fingers through my hair.

“I don’t know,” said Jared.

Sam took a sip of her NST. “I’ll talk to Antonio, find out what he knows about The Order—if it even exists at all. This could be just a case of Marco trying to seem useful so we let him live.”

“He wants Imani to visit him again,” said Butch. “He’ll drip feed us info so that he gets to see her.”

“I’ll talk to him again tomorrow. He might tell us where The Order is based.” Not that I was particularly optimistic about that.

“What did you get from him, Fletch?” Sam asked.

Fletcher put his empty NST bottle on the coffee table. “Given everything he’s done, I expected him to be hollow inside. He’s not. There’s a lot going on in that dark mind. But even though his emotions are intense, they lack any real depth. He despises Butch, which I doubt comes as a surprise to anyone. He probably sees him as an interloper.”

“He sees Imani as a possession,” said Butch.

“He does want to own her, but it’s more than that.” Fletcher turned to me. “He has this nagging sense of boredom, but you stimulate him. Amuse him. Even soften him a bit. You’re important to him. He cares for you about as much as he’s capable of caring for someone; it’s more like he’s formed an attachment to you. What I know is that the bloke wouldn’t cause you physical harm. He sees himself as your protector.”

Well that blew a lot of theories out of the water.

Jared exhaled heavily. “We’re missing something.”

Totally. Hopefully Marco would give us the missing pieces of this shitty puzzle, but having that knowledge gave him power; I very much doubted he’d want to give that up.

“You look tired,” Sam told me.

At dusk, I’d felt great. But my strength had waned as the night went on. The good news was… “I’m not as tired as I was last night.” I’d take that as a win.

“If you want to postpone your conversation with Lazarus and Annalise, it’s totally fine,” she assured me.

Shit, I’d completely forgotten about that. “I want to talk to him.” I had some questions for him, like had Juliet been telling the truth about Marco and had Lazarus lied to me all these years?

Sam, Jared, Butch, and I headed to the Grand High Pair’s office, where Jared set up the teleconference call. Soon enough, the faces of Lazarus and Annalise were on one of the monitor screens.

“Imani, you cannot imagine how relieved I am to see you alive,” said Lazarus.

Annalise nodded. “My beautiful girl, I am so sorry for what happened to you. It grieves me that you were harmed in such a way and right under my roof.”

I shrugged. “What’s done is done.”

“I see that the cure did not work.” Lazarus’ eyes narrowed. “Although your irises lost the amber glow. In what other ways have you changed? How is it that you survived the transition?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Annalise looked at Sam. “Have you questioned Marco, Tait, and Juliet? People came forward to say the three were nowhere near Imani during the concert.”

“We all know that doesn’t mean they weren’t behind what happened to Imani,” said Sam.

“Yes,” sighed Lazarus. “But I’m unable to prove it. As much as I want vengeance for Imani, I cannot brand someone guilty unless I can be certain that they are. My gut tells me it was Tait, but if I punish her based on my gut and it turns out I was wrong, the person who is truly responsible would go unpunished. Imani would then not have the justice she deserves.”