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I
knew he’d killed her and walked away.”
    For serial killers, a change in their pattern often
indicated an unraveling mind. Raul, though, wasn’t crazy or sick, not in the
same sense as normal human repeat offenders. He needed to kill. Without his
victim’s fear-laced blood to soak his gauze cap, he’d die.
    “Shit, Sis. That’s not good.” He released her and crossed
his arms over his chest. “Until we figure out why, I’m postponing the wedding
and you’re going to the bunker for a while. I’m not taking—”
    “No.” She raised a trembling hand. The thought of being
locked underground in an iron prison chilled her. The metal acted as a buffer
and made it harder for the redcaps and sluaghs to find her, but the last time
Ian had insisted she go there, she’d had a breakdown. She feared closed-in
places. She’d spent too much of her childhood locked inside her house. Going
outside had been a rare treat. “I can’t, Ian. I can’t. Please don’t bring it up
again.”
    He reached for her and let his hand drop. “If you take those
tranqs—”
    “No!” Rough pants heaved her chest. She squeezed her eyelids
shut and pulled up the image of blue eyes to chase away the rage. A few more
heartbeats later, she groaned and dropped onto the couch. “Medicine doesn’t
work quite right for me. I’m not human, don’t forget.”
    They’d always known she had a different father, but growing
up, nothing had ever been said about him. After her mother’s death, Harley had
found out why she’d never met her real dad. He was a monster and a rapist.
    Ian shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Okay.” He dropped
onto the seat next to her. “But I’m worried. Their patterns have been slowly
changing over the past year.” He squeezed her hand. “It’s almost as if they’ve
changed their goals from killing you to watching you. It makes me wonder why.”
    She worried about the same thing and the implications scared
her. The temptation to embrace her rage had grown over the past few months, so
had her awareness of the fairies’ creatures, Raul especially. At times she
wanted to get closer to him and take his taint into herself. It’d make her
powerful…unstoppable. It’d also destroy the good part of herself she’d been
trying desperately to hold onto.
    Calan had hit it on the mark. She did have to work hard at
remaining honorable.
    “It doesn’t matter. We both know I’m living on borrowed
time.” She slumped against the cushions. “Hell, I don’t know why I’m still
fighting. I can’t escape what I am. All I do is kill the people around me.”
    He tugged her limp body up and captured her gaze. “No,
Harley. Don’t fucking go there. You understand?” He shook her and she bit her
tongue. Tangy and bitter blood filled her mouth. She swallowed the reminder of
her nonhuman status down. “You didn’t ask for any of this, nor did you ever
cause a single death.”
    “But I—”
    “No. Raul and those other hideous bastards would still be
killing people whether you lived or not. You can’t blame yourself for their
actions.”
    She dropped back onto the sofa. “True, but they usually pick
people who live close to me.”
    He turned his back on her and paced. “That’s not true
either, you just focus on those. Less than ten percent of their victims have
been your neighbors.” He stopped his prowling and faced her with glinting hazel
eyes. “Do you want me to recite the damn statistics again?”
    Ian had dedicated his life to studying the redcap and sluaghs’
crimes. Obsessed over them might be a better term, actually. She shook her
head. She couldn’t bear to hear the worry in his voice over the rate at which
the associated murders and disappearances had grown in the past couple of
years.
    She wanted to stop them too but didn’t know how. Actually,
that wasn’t quite true. If she believed what Calan had told her, she could’ve
prevented hundreds of deaths by keeping her promise to him and freeing