My heart drummed against my ribs as the witches started to walk away, and I felt the chance to find Smith and free the djinn slip away. We didn’t have any other options, and unless Nick had some other fairytale creatures hidden in his sleeves, we were screwed. Fuck.

So I did something I normally wouldn’t have done, and pointed out the favors we would owe the witches if they assisted us. The hyena didn’t like them—the witches smelled wrong and made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Something about their serenity unnerved the wild side of me. Anything with that much control would be disastrous if shaken from their calm.

The young one, Deirdre, worried me more than the others. The other two just saw things on the surface, dismissing Nick and me as animals, but the young one with the dark hair... She searched below the surface. She looked a few moves down the chessboard; I could tell as she asked the other two to wait and reconsider. The hyena didn’t like the idea of her around us, around the cackle, or around Nick. Not with the way she weighed and measured. The air crackled around her.

The senior witch hesitated, eyeing the young one, then shook her head. “You may ask the others if they want to assist you, Deirdre, but I will not ask my coven to embark on such a foolhardy scheme, even if it means having debts with the ErlKing. Having him know we are here is too dangerous, even with favors.”

“He’s changed,” Nick said abruptly, shoving his hands in his pockets. “He’s not like he used to be, like the stories. He’s mellowed with age and family. He has a niece now, other people he cares about. If it makes a difference.”

“It does not,” the older one said. She barely glanced at me, instead talking only to the wolf. “Deirdre may help you, but do not call us again.”

They walked away, leaving Nick and me watching the one who remained. She folded her hands calmly at her middle, unblinking as she studied us. “Well?”

“Well what?” I asked. “Start doing your witch thing. Find Smith.”

“My witch thing?” The corner of her mouth quirked up and she glanced at Nick. “I like her.” Then she turned her attention back to me. “I can’t just snap my fingers. I need something to help me find him. The Betwixt can be difficult to navigate even with magic and knowing where one is going, and it can be deadly even on good days. So. Get me something of his, preferably something with a great deal of his aura or something he used in the Betwixt, and I will do my best to locate him.”

“Once you locate him, you can get him out, right?” I had no idea how the hell we would find something with aura on it. Maybe Nick would, although I wasn’t keen on spending more time around him. He was like a band-aid—I just needed to rip it off and be done with him.

The witch shrugged, still looking far too calm about the whole thing. “Maybe. It depends on what I find over there. The sooner you get me the item so I can track the ErlKing down, the sooner I can answer that question.”

“Will you need more witches to help you?” Nick frowned as he studied her, as if realizing she was the youngest and potentially least experienced. I had a few of the same doubts, myself.

“We will find that out as well,” she said. Deirdre inclined her head a tiny smidge, then handed me a business card. “My number. Call me when you have the item.”

She turned to go, and I cleared my throat. “Wait. If we can arrange to get into his house, will you go with us to make sure we get the right item? I don’t know about aura shit.”

Her dark eyebrows rose a touch as she faced us once more, and she glanced over her shoulder at where the other two witches had disappeared. “We do not want to be seen with your kind. The least amount of time we interact is the only acceptable option. But I suppose... I am already breaking the rules.”

“Good,” Nick said, his cell phone already in his hand. “I’ll make some calls. Stay here.”

He strode away, and I heard a hint of Rafe O’Shea’s voice as he answered Nick’s call. I held my breath, not certain it was a good idea for Nick to ask the wolf alpha for his mate’s help. Meadow O’Shea, Rafe’s mate, was also Smith’s niece or goddaughter or something. She was part fae and knew more about Smith’s habits than anyone else, but Nick had been part of BadCreek when that pack kidnapped her and tried to trick her into staying in the compound outside the city. Meadow still got jumpy when Nick was around, even knowing his true purpose in having been at the BadCreek compound. He helped her escape, apparently, at no small cost to his own standing in the pack, but still. I’d have a hard time forgiving and forgetting something like what BadCreek had done to Meadow.

And he left me facing the witch without an idea of what to do or say.

She broke the silence first, unblinking under the moonlight. “So you are the hyena queen. We noticed some of the unpleasantness of the last few weeks and wondered at the outcome. Congratulations are in order, I suppose.”

“I wouldn’t be so quick to congratulate me,” I said under my breath, uneasy with the sudden feeling that I should confide in her. She wasn’t one of the shifters or the fae. She was something else entirely. Maybe she could understand. I shook myself and tried to remember what it was like to be my mother’s daughter, with ice in my veins and an iron shell around my heart. “Hyena queens don’t tend to live long or happy lives.”

“Then my condolences.” Deirdre frowned as she studied me, her head tilted a little. “Why do you fight for it, then? It can’t have been easy to wrest power away from the others, and harder still to hold it. What makes it worth the effort?”

Maybe she’d been talking to Nick. My mouth twisted in a wry smile, and I folded my arms over my chest to try and protect what remained of my heart. “I don’t know anymore. Why don’t you want to be the head of the coven? Sometimes the juice isn’t worth the squeeze.”

“Who’s to say I’m not head of the coven?” Deirdre’s smile grew more mysterious, as if she was laughing at an inside joke with someone else. “But witches don’t tend to kill each other in transfers of power, so there’s somewhat less risk in my challenging the head witch.”

My hyena side practically howled with the need to get away from her and the creepy-crawly feeling of her magic. I shivered, standing there in the cemetery under a near-full moon. “You’ll have to excuse my lack of knowledge about witches.”

“There aren’t many who know we’re here, and that’s the way we like it.” She played with the ends of her long hair, frowning as she stared past me into the cemetery. “If Nikolai hadn’t known Estelle from before, we would not have answered the call.”

“If you can help people, why keep yourselves hidden?” I watched Nick pace back and forth in the near distance, now and then gesturing wildly, and the fear that neither Meadow nor Rafe would want to help us settled in an icy ball in my stomach. “You could have most of the shifters in this city in your debt, including the alphas. Especially the alphas. Why not capitalize on that?”

“Because then we would have to pick sides, would we not?” Deirdre shrugged, and for a second she looked even younger, and a little lost. I wondered if witch politics were half as cutthroat as shifter politics. Maybe their dealings were backhanded and subtle, filled with curses and charms instead of outright fighting. She glanced back at me, then waved her hand in Nick’s direction. “I did not realize the species were allowed to mate between them.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Her eyebrows rose. “You and the wolf. You’re mated, are you not?”

My heart jumped to my throat. It wasn’t possible. Cal had been my mate. Nick was just a fling, a distraction. “What makes you think that?”

“You’re connected.” Her hand waved again, as if along a cord stretching between Nick and I. “There’s a connection between your auras. I didn’t think you brother and sister, not with the different animals, but there is most certainly a bond.”

“We’ve slept together, that’s all.” I said it carelessly, like it didn’t matter, and shoved my hands in my pockets. “I don’t think it’s any more than that.”

Deirdre smiled faintly once more, inclining her head. “I’m sure that’s it.”

Before I could snap at her, maybe put some fear into her, Nick returned. He didn’t look particularly happy. “Rafe and Ruby insist on being there if Meadow is going to be placed in any sort of danger. That’s two more wolves knowing your face, Deirdre, and your magic. Is that a problem?”

“You tell me,” the witch said. “Do you trust them?”

“Yes,” Nick said without hesitation. I envied his certainty. I still believed the O’Sheas would do the best for their pack and family, regardless of what outsiders promised. But Nick apparently didn’t share those concerns. “And Meadow might be a good person for you to know. She’s got contacts in the fae community.”

“If you say so.” Deirdre frowned, rubbing her jaw. “The more people who know about me, the more risk you’re taking, Nikolai. I have secrets of yours that I can trade. If this business leads to anything negative for myself or the coven, there will be hell to pay. If you are willing to risk it, then...” She shrugged, though her dark eyes held a hard edge that I hadn’t seen before in someone so young.

“I understand.” Nick’s jaw jumped as he ground his teeth, and I wondered what secrets the witches knew. “They’ll meet us at Smith’s townhouse. It’s not far from here. Lacey, are you coming with us?”

“Of course.” I checked my watch but knew I would go regardless of the time. I just needed a second to think. I had to untangle myself from Nick as quickly as possible. Hopefully once we got Smith back, he would move along. A guy like Nick didn’t stick around in one place very long. Or so I hoped.