"I know but – "

"But now every time I ask you in for coffee, you're going to wonder if I'm really asking you, or I'm asking the guy who keeps me connected to my dead husband." She sighed and cupped her mug between her hands. "I guess, then, maybe this isn't such a good idea, us trying to..." She shrugged. "Stay in contact, whatever. Of course I wouldn't mind keeping that connection with Damon. But to invite you along on our trip, just to – "

"You wouldn't do that. I know. Sure, ask Hope about the meeting. If it's okay with everyone, I'll come along."

He took his mug, lifted it to his lips, then frowned, as if just realizing it was empty.

"Got time for another?" she asked. When he hesitated, she took his mug. "I'll refill it anyway."

HOPE

Hope had returned to work at True News on Monday morning as if the last few days had never happened. That wasn't easy. She'd dropped Karl at the airport that morning, wanting to run after him like a scared little girl, screaming

"Don't go! Don't go!"

She reminded herself of how many other times she'd dropped him at an airport... and picked him up again when he came home. In two months, she'd do the same and she'd have booked that promised cabin in the woods for them, and everything would be as it was. Better than it was. But still she worried. They both did.

On the weekend, Hope was supposed to appear before the council and explain what had happened with Adele and the kumpania. With Irving alive and the Cabal not making any complaints, there was little threat of a full inquiry, but that worry had forced her to consider whether it was time to move on.

She'd never abandon the council. Whatever path she chose, she was keeping her job at True News, and if she caught a whiff of an exposure threat, it would go to the council. But maybe, for her, working for the council was like taking regular-strength Tylenol for migraines, and it was time to admit the remedy was no longer strong enough.

Today she was meeting Rhys. He was flying in to have lunch and pitch his proposal. She wanted to tell him about Neala's last thoughts, her final, unspoken apology. Maybe it would help. Maybe it wouldn't. But he should know she'd wanted to say it. Hope had news for him, too. News she hoped he'd already heard, because she hated to be the one to break it.

Adele Morrissey was still alive.

In the aftermath at the kumpania, no one had questioned her death. Hope had blown a hole through her head. It hadn't occurred to her to check for a pulse.

Sean Nast had called last night with the news. Adele was brain dead, but being kept alive in a Cabal hospital until her baby reached full term.

Sean said rumors of it were already flying through the Cabal world. Whispers of a clairvoyant of unsurpassed power, gestating in a Nast laboratory. Another story to add to the others, omens and portents that already had supernaturals whispering and eyeing the skies uneasily. Even those who scoffed at such superstitious nonsense had begun to admit the recent rate of "unnatural" occurrences in their world was... discomfiting.

Twins born to two werewolf parents, the first known full-blooded werewolves.

Humans cracking the code of magic, conducting horrible experiments with child sacrifice.

A previously unknown supernatural race fully evolving in a few generations.

Coincidences easily dismissed, all of them. Nervous minds seeing correlations where none existed, viewing the world through the limits of time and experience, and mistaking rare events for unprecedented ones.

There had been female werewolves before, so surely there had been full-blooded werewolves. The cases just weren't documented or preserved.

Humans had experimented with magic for centuries and small breakthroughs had been documented. This greater success only suggested latent supernatural blood in the caster.

Supernatural races did evolve and die out – they already knew that. Jaz and his brother had been genetic anomalies, not signs of an accelerated evolutionary pace.

Adele Morrissey's child might not be a functioning clairvoyant, much less an über-powerful one. And even if he was, his conception was the result of twisted ambition and adolescent hormones, not divine – or demonic –

intervention.

And yet...

Hope knew it might just be her overly active imagination. Maybe exhaustion and stress were making her see connections where none existed. Or maybe her demon blood knew – just knew – that all this meant something, that change was coming, that she would have a role to play.

A role for the good? She hoped so. But she couldn't shake the feeling that when the time came, the choice might not be hers to make. And that scared her more than anything.