All-too-familiar dread rekindled in my gut. “Meaning what?”

“I suppose you haven’t seen the update.” She tapped on her tablet, then handed it to Kai.

He read something on the screen, his eyes zipping back and forth. A muscle jumped in his cheek, his posture rigid. He held the tablet out to me.

I could feel Zak’s attention as I took the device. An email from [email protected], sent at 1:36 p.m., waited to be read.

Subject: Vancouver Area Bounty Update for “The Ghost”

Following an anonymous tip, a high-priority bounty for the Vancouver-based rogue known as the Ghost has been updated. To view the additional 178 charges, please see the full bounty listing.

The new bounty sum is $1,220,000, payable upon positive identification.

Please note that the Ghost’s mythic class has been added, pending confirmation:

Di-mythic – Spiritalis, druid; Arcana, alchemist.

This rogue is considered highly dangerous and the bounty is classified as Dead or Alive—proceed with utmost caution. See the listing for more information.

Sincerely,

Susan Manley

Administrative Manager – Bounties

Northern West Coast Region

MPD

My mouth hung open. I blinked as though that might change the words.

“The Ghost has always been too evasive for the MPD to link him to many crimes,” Makiko remarked. “But with a bounty of one-point-two million, he’ll be too busy dodging elite bounty hunters to cause us trouble.”

“One-point-two million?” Zak blurted.

Her eyebrows arched. “Rather impressive, isn’t it? It won’t take long before he’s caught or killed.”

I stared at the email, unable to look away from one line. Di-mythic – Spiritalis, druid; Arcana, alchemist.

How? How could MagiPol know that? Who had told them? Who even knew? The Crow and Hammer team from last summer had figured out he was a druid—while he was abducting me—but with my capture and everything else, they’d never reported it to anyone. And they hadn’t known anything about his Arcana gift.

The mystery of Zak’s class was part of what made his reputation so terrifying—and it protected his identity.

My gaze darted to his bare arms, druid tattoos plainly visible. The email had gone out shortly before we broke into the precinct to rescue him, but the timing had to be a coincidence. No one there had a clue who they’d been holding—though that one group of agents had come rushing downstairs all in a tizzy … yet they hadn’t seemed to be expecting intruders. Had they just seen the alert and been on their way to check out their mysterious druid captive?

I hastily handed the tablet back to Makiko, not wanting Zak to glimpse the email. His reaction to the unveiling of his class wouldn’t be pretty.

Makiko’s attention slid between me and the druid in a way that made me distinctly nervous, then she turned back to Kai. “Do you have a preference between a room at my father’s house, or a private apartment in—”

My temper, stretched thin by too much stress and too little sleep, snapped. “Don’t act like you care about what he wants.”

Kai shot me a “be quiet” glare, which I ignored.

“What’s your plan here, Makiko?” I sneered at her. “You were a complete bitch to him back in LA.”

“You have nothing to do with this.” She set her tablet on the seat beside her. “And the moment we land, you’ll have nothing more to do with Kaisuke. Ever.”

I lunged off my seat, but Zak yanked me back down. I almost jumped up again, so strong was my desire to shove her out a tiny airplane window and wave goodbye as she fell thirty thousand feet.

“Tori,” Kai said quietly, “this isn’t the time.”

“Why not? We’ve got nothing else to do.” My hands balled into fists, fingernails cutting into my palms. “Let’s chat about how she thinks she can treat you like her damn servant and—”

“Tori,” he snapped. “Drop it.”

My teeth clacked together. I glowered at him from across the aisle. “How can you expect me to sit here and pretend nothing is wrong?”

“Wrong?” Makiko placed a hand on Kai’s arm. “This is where he belongs.”

My vision went red. I was vaguely aware of Zak gripping my shoulder, holding me in place. “What do you know about where he belongs? You don’t know a damn thing about him!”

“What do you know?” she shot back, her face hardening. “I bet Kaisuke has never told you a thing about his life outside that ridiculous guild. Did he tell you he grew up with my family? That I was his best friend—his only friend—for his entire childhood?”

My fury sputtered like a flame in the wind. Suddenly uncertain, I looked between her and Kai.

“I was one year old when I was betrothed to Kaisuke. My father risked our family’s reputation to unite our bloodline with the oyabun’s hâfu grandson.” She turned to Kai, her lips pressed thin. “We welcomed you and your mother. We shielded you. We built you up and supported you when your relatives tried to tear you down.”

Kai’s jaw tightened.

“They hated you.” Her fingers bit into his arm. “But I dedicated everything I had to your success. After all we’d been through, after all I’d done—and all my family had done—you still ran away without a single word or even a goodbye.”

Her voice broke on the last word, a tremor vibrating her small frame. Shoving off the sofa, she strode to the cabin partition and stopped.

She didn’t look back, her voice steady but her shoulders quivering. “But you can’t ignore me or your proper place in the family any longer. Say your goodbyes to your friends now, because they don’t belong in your life anymore. They never did.”

She disappeared into the bedroom at the back, and the door thudded shut.

Kai let out a slow breath, the same tremor in his exhalation as Makiko had tried to hide. Pushing off the sofa, I crossed the aisle, dropped down beside him, and curled up against his side, hugging his arm to my body.

“She’s letting me off too easy,” he whispered.

“Because you left your family?”

“Because I ran away like a coward. I didn’t even have the courage to tell her I was leaving, and I’ve been running from her and them and everything ever since.”

I rested my head on his shoulder. “Or maybe it took all you had to leave.”

His fingers tightened around mine.

Zak watched us, his gaze shadowed. Kicking his boots off, he laid across the sofa and pillowed his head on a cushion.

“Sometimes,” he murmured, eyes closing, “the only way to keep moving forward is to never look back.”

Kai breathed deeply to steady himself. I relaxed against his side, exhaustion weighing me down. My stamina had run out several crises ago, and Kai was pale and hollow-eyed. Zak didn’t look much better. He put his arm over his face to block out the light.

I stifled a yawn. “So … what’s the plan when we arrive in Vancouver?”

Kai looked down at our linked fingers. “For now, I do whatever Makiko says.”

My stomach twisted with anxious denial, but I didn’t argue. There’d be time for arguing, after I got in an emergency meeting with Aaron and Ezra.

“You have more urgent concerns,” Kai added, lowering his voice. “As long as Shane Davila is in town, you’ll need to watch your steps carefully.”

Zak lifted his arm enough to peer at us. “Shane Davila? The bounty hunter?”

A rustle from the other side of the archway drew my attention. I glimpsed the sleeve of a uniformed flight attendant peeking out from behind the divider and cleared my throat.

“Did you hear how Shane is in Vancouver because he thinks he has a strong lead on the Ghost?” I asked airily. “He even came to the Crow and Hammer, asking weird questions about last summer. But I was on vacation in the mountains, remember?”

Zak dropped his arm to his side, head turning toward me, scary intensity gathering in his green eyes.

“I remember that,” Kai replied, as casual as me. “You had a nice trip, didn’t you?”

“It was great,” I lied. “Shane mentioned going to the mountains too. He brought back a souvenir from the same place I visited.”

Zak’s eyes widened.

“Now he’s hanging around Vancouver,” Kai murmured. “I bet he’s watching things very closely.”

“Especially with that MPD update. It said …” Swallowing nervously, I shot Zak a warning look. “An anonymous tip identified the Ghost as a di-mythic druid and alchemist.”

I expected him to shoot up in horrified disbelief, but instead, he went eerily still. His eyes lost focus, his expression blanking and his breathing slowing. The only sign of his tension was the abrupt clenching of his fists.

“I don’t know how they found out,” I mumbled. “Who could have told them?”

Zak’s gaze snapped to Kai. He mouthed a silent word: mages.

“No way! They didn’t!”

Kai’s hand squeezed mine and I bit my tongue. Teeth gritted, I glared at Zak. Aaron, Ezra, and Kai knew Zak was a druid alchemist but they would never report that to the MPD—not even anonymously.

Zak met my glower, then closed his eyes, covered his face with his arm, and said nothing more.

Chapter Nine

It was almost eleven p.m. by the time the black sedan parked at the curb, mature trees lining the opposite side of the familiar residential street. The pavement shone from recent rainfall, reflecting the cheery glow from the windows of Aaron’s cute cottage-style house.

Slumped in the backseat between Kai and Zak, I dredged up remnants of energy from a deeply buried reservoir. Between Lallakai’s surprise visit, two flights, a rescue mission, a vine-monster attack, an abduction, a family reunion, and an MPD bombshell, I didn’t have much gas left in the tank. Napping through most of the flight home hadn’t really helped.