No. I couldn’t get freaked out. Claude said it would get better, and I believed him.

“It seems like we were right. Nic’s been building power. The brands that the giant told us were for torture—well, not quite. He bent the truth. An OWEA-hired shaman, with Natalie’s help, was able to figure that out. They did connect Nic to the selkie prince and others. But it didn’t allow for torture, it was to control them. Get them to do things at key times. Others he had blackmail material on, and I’m sure he had a couple of otherworlder leaders he was going to bribe. He had planned to take over his father’s territory. And given Nic’s narcissism and his stash of power, I’m sure that was just the first step.”

It was as I’d thought, as I’d lain there on the floor, waiting to die. “I wonder why he marked my brother.”

“Several of the vamps were marked. Just enough to ensure that Nic had some loyal to him when the coup came. Crazy though. The amount of power he would have had to harness to be able to control that many people would have been tremendous. I don’t know if he planned on only activating the brand on one or two at a time when he needed them, or if he planned something really horrible to drum up enough power to be able to control more.”

“Anything on the shaman who helped him?”

“Nothing yet. But with the resources the OWEA and Chicago PD are putting behind this, they’ll find him.” He took a haggard breath. “I’m still shocked that Luc knew—really knew. That he was sending me away as much as he could to try to bring Nic to heel. But all he did was give Nic more opportunity to build his resources.”

“He loved his son.” And the whole family was off their rockers. But I didn’t say that. Out of respect for Claude. And out of a weird understanding for Luc. Even given everything he’d done—and perhaps more important, the things he hadn’t—the man hadn’t wanted to see people hurt.

“He was desperate. And selfish,” Claude said.

Truth. Not the whole of it, but it was true enough.

Claude nuzzled my neck. “Let’s talk of more pleasant things.”

I couldn’t help smiling again. I was doing a lot of that lately—smiling. Far too much for a person who had been near death a week ago, and who was still nursing wounds from the experience. But maybe that was the trick. The threat of everything being taken away gave me a new appreciation for it all.

“What would you like to talk about?”

“Us.”

I smiled. That was fine by me. There was an “us” now. And it was something we could have for a very long time. Forever.