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“We need more information,” Fey insisted. “This is all just us guessing at this point. We need some evidence that Phillip was working with Alice on this, or that he was actively involved with PFTC, or… anything.”
“Can’t you just… you know, ask?” Willow suggested. “If Dameon sent her to gather information from Phillip, you could just ask him?—”
“It’s treason,” Joy interrupted. She sighed. “Sorry, little sister, but there are rules to what we can and can’t do, and questioning an assignation? Especially one we weren’t even told about? That’s treason against the Crown. It’s questioning the Queen herself, and Dameon… Dameon doesn’t react well to any threats against the Queen, even from us.”
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
“What did you do with Alice’s stuff after…” Willow’s voice trailed off.
It was hard to speak around the lump in her throat, but Fey managed. “We put everything together into boxes… everything that wasn’t?—”
Burned. She couldn’t say it. The sentence hung in the air and died without another word.
“I’d like to look through it all if that’s okay,” Willow offered in a small voice. “I think you could use some fresh eyes on this, and I could?—”
A knock on the door was the only warning they had before it opened, and Dameon walked in.
Fey sighed. Playing detective with Alice’s death would have to wait.
Dameon was holding a black envelope.
Chapter 20
Devil dust had been a thorn in the Crown’s side for years, and its quick popularity was making it almost impossible to keep in check. As a club drug, it was innocent enough. A little mixed in a drink, and you were euphoric, alert. Able to dance and fuck all night, and perfectly content to do either.
A little more? Pain no longer bothered you, exhaustion no longer seemed to slow you down. You were untouchable, a veritable god.
And a touch too much?
Fey had seen firsthand what the aggression from too much devil dust could do. Months ago, a group of Demons had gotten their hands on some, using it to help fuel an attack on one of the aristocratic Witch families in the third octant. It had been a bloodbath. And when they’d torn through the family, leaving no one behind, the Demons had turned on each other. Two had survived the night.
Like so many things, devil dust was fine in small doses, but oh so dangerous in the wrong hands and the wrong amounts.
“This is the place,” Joy said, pointing out the building to them. She’d come the night before, after Dameon had delivered the address, to stake out the location and prepare for tonight.
The real issue with devil dust was it was impossible to stop it from flowing into the city, impossible to stop it from circulating among the population. It was relatively easy to make and even easier to sell. There was a lively, growing market for it, and the Queen was terrified about large doses of it ending up in the wrong hands.
Like Prey for the Crown, Fey thought. The group was, historically, non-violent. They wanted change, not bloody revolution. But the idea of so many Shifters, even the non-predators, ingesting enough of the drug to make them as deadly and bloodthirsty as those Demons had been? Yeah, that was scary enough to keep Fey up at night.
So, when Dameon had located a manufacturer right here in the city, when he had found an entire building’s worth of devil dust?
That was something that demanded their attention.
Willow stared down at the warehouse below them. They were stationed on an adjacent rooftop, and from here they had a clear view of the single-story building below. And the guards that patrolled the perimeter.
The other side of the building faced a drop-off into the Western River. It was an almost certainly fatal drop, and even at this distance, Fey could hear the sounds of the river churning from where it hugged the edges of the Demon district.
“It doesn’t look much like a drug den to me,” Willow said. “It looks like a shoe factory.”
Lilith snorted. “What does a drug den look like, little sister?” she asked in a mocking voice.
Willow shrugged. “I don’t know. More… shabby? Dirty? Maybe some rave music and strobe lights?”
Joy giggled, but Lilith rolled her eyes.
“I’ll be sure to tell Dameon the drug den wasn’t sufficiently shabby enough for you. Maybe the next one he sends us to destroy will be better, huh?”
“How many guards?” Fey asked, and Joy frowned down from their vantage point to confirm.
