Page 60 of Silver Claw

Joe was quiet, and when I looked at him, I saw the beginnings of a vampire despair that would only deepen over time. I hated it. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it between both of mine. “Joe, Joe. Don’t change. Don’t ever change.”

“I’m sorry, Kaity Bug,” he murmured. “I’m sorry I lost you your blade.”

I sighed. “Look. I’ll miss my blade. I’ll regret that it’s gone. I’ll probably reach for it a dozen times a day. Maybe I won’t fight as well with my tools gone. But none of that is going to hurt me the way losing you would hurt me. Don’t you know that?”

Finally, the guilt and sorrow in his eyes began to lessen. “And it’s not the end of it,” he said. “Aaron knows the ins and outs of the council. Maybe he can help us figure out how to get your blade back.”

The magic was lost forever. The blade? It was still there, somewhere. I nodded. “We’ll get my blade back.”

Then Aaron returned with some bags that made the whole interior of the car smell good, and Joe smiled as he watched me eat.

Aaron drove us on to Shadowfield.

And for a little while, everything was okay.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“You’re still your shapeshifter,” Sam insisted, completely confident. “You’re stronger because of it, even if you’re not actively shifting. When your magic was stolen, it twisted up your wiring. It’ll come back to you, Kait.”

“It’s hobbled,” I realized. I put my hand to my chest, because I could feel it there. Like my wolf had once been, my shapeshifter was in there, but held in a cage, pacing, waiting, hungry. And this time, I was the one who’d hobbled her.

Because of trauma, fear, pain? Maybe all of those. But Sam was right. I was still my shapeshifter. I just needed to free myself.

“I’ve forgotten how to shift,” I murmured.

“You just haven’t been desperate enough yet,” he said. “Or angry enough. The shift will come to your call. It’s not natural to you the way it is to me, because you didn’t start out shifting.” He hesitated. “I’d like to try something.”

We were back at Silverwood, and two days had passed since the demon elder had taken my blade. Jared had barely slept, because he was focused on finding Gavin Voss before Gavin found me.

He hadn’t said that, but I knew it was true. I couldn’t blame him for worrying. I was still strong, still a force that Gavin should have been careful of. But I wasn’t close to the power I’d been.

I needed to figure out my shapeshifter.

No one could figure out why it was so hard to pick up Gavin’s scent or find a trail. It didn’t make sense. He was there, in the city, but he was impossible to find.

Lucy was in the kitchen making breakfast, Joe was asleep in the safe room, and Zach and Remy were outside. They were patrolling the area along with half a dozen wolves Jared had sent over, and Lucy had her hands full cooking enough food for all of us.

Her cheeks were flushed with the heat of the ovens, and she rushed around like a tiny tornado, full of energy and life. Ash sat at my feet, waiting not so patiently for Lucy to toss him another morsel of food.

I put my attention back on Sam. “What do you want to try?”

He got up to pace, pausing once to pat Lucy’s behind as she hurried by him with four cartons of eggs. He winked at her when she blew him a kiss but was surprisingly sober when he returned, restless and jumpy, to sit down beside me.

“You told me how Jared pulled out your wolf,” he said. “How he freed her from her chains.”

I squinted at him. “Jared’s a wolf. Alpha or not, he won’t be able to unhobble my shapeshifter.”

“I’m not talking about Jared.”

“Then what…” I frowned. “You don’t mean you think you can free my shapeshifter?”

“I canfeelit, Kait.” He looked a little embarrassed and a lot hesitant, but his determination was bigger than his lifelong fear of rejection. “I felt it when we were standing in the street and you thought it was dead. If I can feel it, I can touch it. I can’t free you, but I can help you free yourself.” He squared his shoulders and met my stare. “At least I can try, if you’ll let me.”

Lucy left the bacon to cook and came to the table. “Gavin Voss is going to come for you, Kait. You’ll need your shapeshifter. If Sam says you haven’t lost it, you haven’t lost it. It can’t hurt for him to try, can it?”

I wasn’t sure why I was so reluctant. Maybe because I was sure we’d fail, I wouldn’t shift, and then even the small hope I had that my shapeshifter would return to me would be as lost as my magic and my blade. Also, yanking a shifter out of someone was just so damn personal. Finally, though, I stood. “All right. But let’s go out back. I don’t want to traumatize Ash.”

“Yes,” Lucy cried, jumping up and down. “It’s so exciting. I’ll look out the window. I don’t want breakfast to burn while I’m out there watching magic happen.”