My eyes widened.

He glanced at my expression, tightened his jaw, then faced the horse. “I wanted to … deal with some things. She wanted me to disappear into the wilderness where bounty hunters could never find me.” He tugged his fingers through the stallion’s tangled mane. “When I wouldn’t do what she wanted, she … left.”

“So you replaced her with Tilliag?”

The stallion’s head came up, ears pinned angrily, a poisonous green eye fixed on me.

Er … “no,” I was guessing.

“Tilliag owes me.” Zak leaned against the stallion’s side and looked between me and Ezra. “What happened?”

I drew in a deep breath. With Ezra flanking me in supportive silence, I pushed my shoulders back. “Zak, I appreciate that you got us away from the Pandora Knights, but you’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t do charity. Helping us—there’s nothing in it for you.”

He gazed at me for a long moment, and I couldn’t decipher the intensity in his sharp eyes.

“You asked me if it was worth it.” He exhaled roughly. “It wasn’t, and I’m sorry for taking advantage of your trust, for lying to you, and for putting the lives of people you care about in danger.”

It was the first time I’d ever heard Zak apologize—and it wasn’t nearly enough. “You betrayed me. Being nice now doesn’t change that.”

“I know.”

“Do you? This isn’t a fae exchange. You can’t just throw helpfulness dollars at me until I sell you my forgiveness.”

“I know.”

“Even if you save us, I’ll probably go right on hating your guts.”

His mouth thinned unhappily. “I can get you both out of the city—out of the country, if you need it. I know how to keep you under the radar, and I can help you start again with a new identity.”

Zak was a rogue who’d lived on the wrong side of the law his whole life. He knew how to evade the MPD, how to slip through the clutches of bounty hunters, and how to escape our seemingly inevitable fates. If anyone could get us out of this, it was the Ghost.

But that wasn’t the future I wanted.

I pinned him with a stare. “If you’re going to help us, Zak, then you better commit. No half measures, no bailing when it gets tough, no saving your own skin first.”

He frowned. “I’m here to help you, not sacrifice myself—but yes, I’ll do whatever I can.”

“Not good enough.”

I started in surprise. Ezra had been so quiet that I hadn’t expected him to speak at all.

His mismatched eyes were cold as ice. “You don’t need to sacrifice yourself, but how much are you willing to risk? Time, money, inconvenience, injury? What about everything? Will you risk that? Because that’s what Tori risked for you.”

Zak’s expression darkened. “I’ve already risked—and lost—plenty.”

“For your own ambitions.” Ezra folded his arms. “We’ve seen what your ‘help’ looks like. It stops the moment you decide the potential gains aren’t worth it anymore.”

“What do you think I plan to gain from this?”

“From what I can see, nothing—which is why I’m wondering if that’s what your help will be worth. When the next guild comes down on us, will you bail? Will you throw me to the hunters to save yourself?”

“If the situation were different, I’d put you down myself.”

“Oh my god, Zak!” I snapped. “If that’s how you feel, then—”

“He’s unstable. You may not trust me, but I’m not one wrong word from flying off the handle and killing you or your allies.”

My hands clenched into fists. “Ezra wouldn’t—”

“He killed three of my vargs.” Zak’s jaw flexed. “They’d been with me for ten years.”

A moment of silence.

“I’m sorry,” Ezra said quietly. “You created the circumstances that caused it, but I’m sorry it happened and that I was part of their deaths.”

Zak made a dismissive gesture, brushing the topic away. “I won’t die on anyone’s altar, especially not yours. But”—he turned to me—“I’m offering my help, whatever you think it’s worth. If that’s not good enough, then we’re done here.”

Tension vibrated between the three of us.

“I don’t want your help running away,” I told the druid. “What I need won’t be as easy as smuggling us out of the country, but if you’re still willing, then I have one question for you.”

“What’s that?”

I smiled—a grim, humorless smile. “Have you ever summoned a demon before?”

Zak, as it turned out, had not summoned a demon before. But he was about to learn how.

I greedily stuffed a burger in my mouth as I watched the druid. He stood at a plastic folding table pushed against a water-streaked concrete wall, its surface spread with everything from Robin’s backpack—the case of demon blood, the cult grimoire, and her notes and diagrams. He pored over them, shoulders stiff with concentration.

Me, I just kept eating my burger, too exhausted to worry about anything for a few minutes.

For Ezra, Aaron, Kai, and me, finding a safe, private location for conducting illegal activities had seemed like an insurmountable challenge. For Zak, it was just a day in the life of a career criminal. In a matter of hours, he’d found a location, moved us into it, and stocked it with everything we needed, including food, water, and cots to sleep on.

The faintest spark of hope burned in my chest. We had a location for the ritual. One obstacle down.

But we still needed an Arcana mythic to prepare and perform it, and I didn’t know yet if Zak could do it. And we didn’t know if the ritual would even work. And if it did, we didn’t know if Ezra would survive it. And if he did, we didn’t know if we could convince the MPD to let him live.

And even if we somehow, impossibly, accomplished all that, we still had to survive—and destroy—an insidious cult that had its invisible tentacles snaking all throughout Vancouver.

Crumpling his burger wrapper into a ball, Ezra stuffed it into the paper bag. “I’m going to scout around a bit.”

I nodded. “I’ll keep an eye on Zak.” As he began to stand, I caught his wrist and tugged him back toward me. “Wait. Actually … maybe you shouldn’t.”

The painfully fresh memory of Aaron being overwhelmed by Pandora Knights bounty hunters made my dinner churn in my stomach. Ezra had demonic magic, but he couldn’t use it. He didn’t even have a switch.

He smiled faintly. “I’ll be fine.”

Probably, but considering the way things had gone so far …

Still holding his hand, I rose to my feet and crossed the concrete floor, our footsteps echoing through the large room. A warehouse, really. Zak had rented the storage facility for us—or rather, he’d used a fake identity to pay a man to rent the facility under another fake name.

“Zak,” I said as we joined him at the table. “Do you have a weapon Ezra can borrow? He’s got nothing.”

The druid looked up, his gaze skimming across Ezra. “I only have knives.”

“That’s fine,” Ezra replied. “A larger blade would be closer to my usual switch, if you can spare it.”

Zak flipped open a buckle that ran around his upper thigh. It came free and he held the leather belt out, a sheathed blade hanging from it.

Taking the weapon, Ezra pulled the handle. A twelve-inch blade, wickedly serrated, slid from the sheath. I wasn’t sure if the serrated edge had a purpose—did it double as a utility knife?—but it certainly added to the terror factor.

With raised eyebrows, Ezra sheathed it and buckled the belt around his thigh.

“Thanks,” he murmured, then touched my elbow. “I’ll be back soon.”

I nodded. His fingers ran down my arm and across my hand as he turned away. He headed toward the door, but I kept my attention on Zak, whose eyes had followed the trail of Ezra’s touch.

He returned my silent stare as the aeromage’s footsteps grew distant and the door clacked shut.

Zak faced the table and resumed studying the myriad of papers. He’d shed his long coat, and his black t-shirt was clean but wrinkled. A tangle of artifacts hung around his neck, the colorful crystals resting on his chest.

My gaze ran down his sculpted left arm, free of Lallakai’s feather markings, to the tattoos on his inner forearm. Four of the five circles contained fae runes, and I craned my neck to peek at his right arm, curious to see how many more he’d replaced since his battle with Varvara.

My breath caught. I snatched his right wrist and pulled his arm up. White scars, edged in pink, raked through his druid tattoos.

“Why didn’t you get that healed properly?” I demanded.

He tugged his wrist free. “I was busy.”

“What’s more important than permanent damage to your arm?”

“The entire city knows who I am now. There’s no healer, rogue or otherwise, who wouldn’t see my tattoos, realize I’m the Ghost, and betray me in an instant.”

I clenched my jaw. “What about a fae healer? They have healing magic, don’t they? Could they fix your arm?”

“Probably, but I can’t leave the city to find one.” He set a diagram down. “Without Lallakai, I’m stuck here. Powerful fae rarely enter cities. They hate all the pollution and concrete and human filth. If I still had my farm … but I don’t, so I can’t venture anywhere I might run into a fae I can’t fight.”

“But you can fight most fae, can’t you?”

“I used up or lost almost all my fae magic. What I have left isn’t very powerful.” He slid his hand into his pocket and pulled out a square of purple. “Except this, but it isn’t particularly useful.”