“You,” Nero said, his head snapping around to Carver. “You are a witch in a band of shifters. Why are you working with them?”
The witch laughed with the kind of desperate glee that bordered on madness. “What makes you think they’re not working for me?”
“Your days of commanding others are long gone,” Nero said, his eyes merciless. “Now answer my question.”
Carver’s eyes danced between Nero and the shifters. “I want immunity. I know what the Legion does to its prisoners. If I tell you what you want to know, I go free. You don’t kill me, and I don’t end up a permanent resident in the Legion’s prison.”
“Very well.”
“On your honor as an angel.”
“On my honor as an angel, if you tell me what I need to know, I won’t kill you or take you prisoner.”
Carver’s eyes flickered to me. “And you won’t order her to do it either. Or any other member of the Legion. Or anyone outside the Legion acting on your orders.”
“Are you finished?” Nero looked almost amused, which Carver should have known was a bad sign in an angel.
Instead, he appeared relieved. “Yes.”
“All right. Now that you’ve miraculously evaded death’s door, tell me what you and your furry companions have been up to.”
“They hired me to—”
“Pyralis, you tell them, and I’ll kill you!” the pack leader snarled.
“Sorry, Luna,” he said. “I’m more afraid of him than I am of you.”
“Only fools join the Legion of Angels, and only fools make deals with them,” said Mr. Goatee.
“Silence.”
Nero’s voice snapped, and for a brief moment, it was like all the air had been sucked out of the room. The shifters opened their mouths to speak, but no sound came out. Hey, that was a neat trick—and very disturbing. The shifters were shouting their heads off, and I couldn’t hear a single word. Gods, I sure was glad Nero had never performed that spell on me.
“Not you,” Nero said to a gaping Carver. “You need to talk. Now.”
“Luna came to me a couple of weeks ago, right after the Legion put an end to the demons’ army recruitment in New York,” the witch spoke quickly. “The Legion inquisitors’ investigation has hit the city’s supernaturals hard, but especially vampires, witches, and shifters.”
We’d found those three supernatural groups had been infiltrated, so it made sense Nyx’s people were concentrating on weeding out the defectors in their midst.
“Among the shifters, Luna’s pack was hit the hardest. Five of her own turned, and she didn’t even notice.” Carver looked at Luna, who was shouting soundlessly, her voice still held captive by Nero’s spell. “So she decided to take the heat off of the shifters.”
“By putting the heat onto someone else,” I realized. “She set up the witches. That’s why she came to you. Only a witch could use those powerful potions. Luna needed you to make it look like the witch covens were killing all those people.”
“Yes,” said Carver.
“I was at the shifter club earlier today. You almost killed your own people,” I said to Luna, the bitter taste of disgust coating my tongue. “You did kill nearly a hundred vampires. And for what? Because you were too weak to keep control of your own people—and to deal with what they did.”
With her mouth out of order, she resorted to flipping me off.
“She believed an attack on the shifters would draw suspicion away from the shifter community,” said Carver. “And she had attacks planned against all supernaturals in the city except the witches themselves. The Legion would have eventually taken the witches into custody.”
And the inquisitors wouldn’t have listened to their pleas of innocence either. When the witches didn’t break under torture, Nyx’s team would have decided the demons’ spell prevented them from confessing, just like the other witches. Luna had worked everything out. Well, almost everything.
“Your mistake was to attack the Legion,” Nero told her.
“She assumed if you were attacked, you would immediately take the coven leaders into custody,” said Carver.
“You should never venture to make assumptions about the Legion of Angels. Well, except that if you misbehave, we will catch you.” He shot them a hard smile. “You can always assume that.”
Carver cringed.
“The Legion found evidence of a fight between vampires and witches in some tunnels outside the city. The same poison used in the Brick Palace was found there. What was that about?” I asked him.
“That is where Luna had me test the poison to prove it worked.”
“You’re all sick.”
“The world is sick,” Carver told me. “Surely, the Legion has taught you that.”
I frowned. “If you want to frame the witches by attacking all of the other supernaturals, then why are you trying to kill the witches here?”
“This isn’t an attack. It’s a retreat,” said Nero. “They’re here to steal the ship. You are the thief.” He looked at Carver. “You’ve been stealing poisons and explosives from the witches. As a former coven leader, you know your way around the university—and around their wards. But you’re not as clever as you think you are. The witches caught you in the act tonight, and you fled. When we took chase, you realized the game was over.”