The house looms above me, its brick facade looks suddenly angry, like it's flushed and waiting to rage against me. It doesn’t, of course. It’s still just the impressive home that it was the first time I came here. All the same, I’m nervous, and I’m hoping that Castillo’s civil hosting will be as top notch as it was when we met.

I approach the door and knock, and like before it opens to reveal the old housekeeper. She grumbles about me coming here so early, but leads me into the house. This time we don’t go to the kitchen, instead she slowly makes her way up the grand staircase and I’m reminded again of being in a museum. Oil paintings with ornate frames are on the walls, intricate vases and colorful flowers are artistically arranged to bring a splash of vibrant color without looking too busy.

At the end of the hall is a set of double doors, which the housekeeper opens to reveal a large office. There’s a lot of bookcases in here, as well as a wall that is decorated with monitors, displaying live feeds in various places that I don’t recognize. At the far end of the room is Castillo’s desk, which has a computer that would probably take me years to afford and a rich, leather chair that looks as though it’s hardly used. I suppose he doesn’t do much business at home. Behind the desk is a gorgeous bay window, looking out to the city. The only problem is…Castillo isn't here.

“Where is he?” I ask the housekeeper.

She doesn’t respond to me verbally; she walks to the desk and picks up a piece of paper and waves it at me. Bewildered, I go over to her and take the document, my eyes widening as I read it.

It doesn’t concern you. It never concerned you. It’ll be over soon.

—A. Castillo

“What the fuck?!” I shout. I turn on the housekeeper, seething and clutching the letter in a clenched fist. “What is this? Where the fuck is he?”

“You go,” she admonishes me.

“No! I won’t just go! Not until you tell me where he is!”

“No sé.”

“Fuck!” I shout again, but it doesn’t make me feel any better. The housekeeper is trying to blatantly hint I need to leave, but I ignore her, storming out of the office while tugging Henry’s phone out of my pocket so I can call Brianna, my blood boiling. I don’t know exactly how Castillo fits into things, whether he’s helping Elena or not, but I do think this whole ‘let’s meet tomorrow morning’ was a ploy to put too many hours between us. He has such a big head start, and I don’t know his routine well enough to guess where he might be. Not to mention his strategy keeps Henry from being a viable option for help, unless I want to risk his life again.

“Come on,” I groan when the line keeps ringing.

I think it’s going to go to voicemail and I think I’m going to tear my hair out if it does, but then Brianna answers. “Yeah?”

“More bad news. I’ve been set up; Castillo isn’t fucking here! I don’t know where he went, but it has to do with the mage, with Elena. I need you to help track him down with me!”

“What the fuck are you saying?” she asks harshly. “Why are you investigating the boss?”

“We can talk about it when you’re here!”

Before she can answer, there’s a sudden shudder, like the house shivered. My brows furrow, and I’m about to decide I imagined it when the house shakes instead. I curse and reach out for the desk to steady myself, listening to the chimes of crystal from the chandelier in the hall as they collide, of delicate objects shattering, and the thud of some heavy objects falling over upstairs.

“What the hell? Was that…an earthquake?” I ask as the trembling subsides.

“You felt it too?” Brianna asks.

“Yeah…shit, Boston isn’t exactly known for earthquakes, I think that was the spell! Fuck…I think it’s happening, Brianna! You got to meet me here. As fast as you possibly can, just get here!”

“All right, shit!”

I hang up and leave the study, seeking the housekeeper to make sure she didn’t get hurt in the tremor. I find her in the kitchen, looking somewhat dazed at the mess of broken plates on the floor, but otherwise unharmed. I can’t sit still for the life of me, the huge house feels small suddenly and unable to contain me. So, I wander the halls without really taking the time to observe it. In my ceaseless wandering, my hands twitch slightly, my chest is tight, and I feel cold sweat beading between my shoulder blades. Eventually I make my way back to the kitchen, where I can at least occupy myself with helping the housekeeper clean the mess. Only, the housekeeper isn’t the only one in the kitchen anymore when I get there.

A man is helping her, a man whose face I know well considering he was one of three who attempted to kill me in Margadh Sióg.

“You!” I exclaim.

“Shit!” he gasps, taking up the broom to use as a weapon.

“You’re one of Castillo’s?” I demand, ignoring the way he brandishes the broom. I think he’s seen one too many Kung Fu movies.

Since I’m not making any hostile movements, he seems to relax a bit, though he keeps a wary eye on me. “Yeah.”

“How is he involved?” I ask. “Fuck your loyalty right now, if I don’t get answers all of Boston may be fucked!”

Another smaller tremor shakes the house, and I can see fear in the man’s eyes now. He knows I’m not making anything up to get information out of him. Hell, I wish I was making up the severity of the situation.

“I don’t know the details,” he admits. “But when I came back here to tell him about the market, he just said ‘it’s time’ and left.”

“When did you come back here?” I ask, though I think I already know the answer.

He confirms when he says the night before last. Whether he showed up before or after Henry called Castillo to set up a meeting doesn’t matter. What matters is that Castillo used it to his advantage to keep me away long enough to get that head start. And now tremors rock the city, and time is swiftly running out.

“Are we…good?” the man asks.

“You tried to kill me, so not really. But if you think I’m going to try and arrest you right now, no. I’m not, so in that aspect I guess we’re good.”

I hear the front door open and I rush to the foyer, where Brianna is coming in. She looks scared.

“You felt it?” I ask.

“Yeah, kinda hard not to!” she exclaims. “What the hell are you doing here?”

 “I need you to track down Castillo.”

“Yeah, you said that, Riley. I’m asking why!”

I hand her the highly crumpled letter I had shoved in my pocket earlier. She reads it over and frowns at me. “This doesn’t mean shit,” she grumbles.

“It means he’s involved!” I exclaim.

“You want me to betray my boss?”

“It’s not about betrayal!” I snap. “It’s about saving your pack! It’s about keeping things as they are, and not with humans knowing their neighbor might be a goddamn werewolf!”

“You don’t know him!”

“Castillo? I’ve heard the stories. I know he’s a man at peace with tearing other people apart, literally. But you have to believe the risk of standing against him still doesn’t measure to the consequences of letting this spell go forward!”

“He’s not just bad!” Brianna’s eyes are watery, and I assume it’s the fear of what Castillo would do to her, but that doesn’t match up to what she’s saying. “He saved me! He took me in! My mother was forced into prostitution when she trusted the wrong asshole about ‘steady work.’ She was only looking for work to take care of me! That same asshole wanted to sell me off, he didn’t give a shit I was just a kid. He made the mistake of trying to sell me to Castillo. Castillo killed that motherfucker and took in me and my mom! When she died…he looked after me!”

I really wish I didn’t need to keep putting her in these awful situations. I couldn’t have known what Castillo did for her, but I should have inferred their bond was more than just professional. She told me he took her in at seven, but I figure it was for the simple fact of more numbers for his syndicate. Get them young, keep their loyalty. There were also those cages I saw in Southie…the implications they could carry. Did she know about those? Would she confirm they were only a means to control the pack’s less controlled wolves? I can’t bring it up though, not right now. If it isn’t something so innocent, if I have to tell Brianna that maybe the bastard who tried to sell her when she was young only approached Castillo because he knew he was buying, then I may lose her help. She may be incapable of it, and while I feel like shit being so selfish, I have to keep my mantra going; the mission is what matters. Then again, it’s not as simple as the Order would make it out to be. Castillo earned her loyalty through actions. She’s not chasing a delusion of him being more than the heartless, violent criminal the Order sees him as.

“I’m sorry,” I reply. “I am. But you know what’s at stake here.”

“Fuck you!” she snaps.

“You know I’m not working under the Order’s jurisdiction here!” I argue. “I’m not doing this to fuck over your boss! For fuck’s sake I’m trying to keep this city from falling apart!”

“I know!” she screams. “I know I have to help you! Don’t expect me to feel fucking noble about it though!”

She storms off upstairs and I follow her, not daring to say anything. She goes to Castillo’s bedroom, which is a picture of luxury that’s so impressive I can’t help but notice it even with everything going on. She storms over to the bed and grabs one of his pillows, bringing it up to her face and inhaling. Capturing the scent, she tosses the pillow back to its place and brushes roughly past me. “Keep up,” she orders, heading back down the stairs.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

I can feel the gathering of magic when we get outside. Centurions typically can’t do that on their own, our pendants are what tip us off to the presence of various supernatural types. So the fact I can feel it so easily means we’re close to failure. It’s dense, like a fog pressing in around me. It’s warm too, and slightly electrifying, like ripples of a current caressing the skin. As Brianna leads, I observe the faces of the mundanes going about their normal day. Even they can feel it. I see it in the expressions on their features, that sense that something is wrong, but they’ve no idea what.

I almost envy them, they could chalk it up to ‘one of those days’, instead of knowing that time’s almost out. I feel jittery, like I want to sprint to wherever Castillo is, but we aren’t even moving that quickly. I know Brianna needs to pay attention to whatever trail she can find, and Boston is full of smells that have to be interfering, but I’m getting more and more antsy with each passing second.

“So…Castillo is kind of a father figure to you?” I ask after we’re a couple miles from the house.

“Yeah,” Brianna replies tersely.

“I didn’t realize there was…that sort of thing going on here,” I say, fumbling slightly because it’s a highly personal subject and I probably shouldn’t be bringing it up. Fucking nerves, they always make me put my foot in my mouth.

“Human trafficking?” Brianna asks, looking over her shoulder at me. Her expression is cold. “It’s everywhere, dumbass. Even here, even if the state won’t ever make noise about it…anyway, it was back in LA though. I think he’d just recently come up from Mexico. California didn’t suit him and when he started going east, I went with him.”

“Did he…turn you into a werewolf?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

“Was it…on purpose?”

“I asked him to,” she says. “Quit grilling me, I’m trying to fucking concentrate.”

I force myself to shut up, but I’m more curious than ever about her story now. I don’t think we’ll ever be friendly enough for her to continue it though, or fill in the multitude of gaps left behind. We continue walking until we get to the nearest set of stairs that lead underground. Brianna lets out an annoyed sound, more wolf than human, and turns to face me. “I can’t track him through that! He got on a train, he must’ve, but I won’t be able to pick out which one or where he got off or anything like that! Too many scents…”

“Shit,” I groan.

“Yeah, shit,” she agrees.

There’s another tremor that shakes the street. It’s not as strong as the first one, but people around us gasp and shout in surprise. A few duck down, others grab onto street lamps or guardrails. A building chorus of confusion sounds, the mingled notes of frightened people becoming higher than the sound of traffic.

“Is there any special place you can think of that he might go to?” I ask Brianna desperately. “Somewhere…I don’t know, he conducts illegal business? Executions? Drug deals?”

Her eyes widen and she takes off down the stairs towards the subway station. I run after her and I’m glad to see she’s not moving fast enough to try and lose me, and when I catch up to her, we run together through the turnstiles and to the platform. Brianna takes a quick look at the map and hurries to the side where the train we need is set to pull in in a minute. “We’re going to switch to the red line at Park Street Station, ride that over to South Station, then haul ass on the bus line to South End,” Brianna explains as one of the trains comes roaring in.

“Back to Southie,” I murmur.

“Just make sure you get on a bus going on the silver line, okay? In case this crowd or something else separates us. Look for Freight Forward in the Semis Loading Docks.”

“Got it.”

The train ride is agony. The T zips along at a fair speed, but today it seems sluggish. I imagine its precautionary on the MBTA’s side, after those quakes. Reduce speed, prepare for station-wide shut down if needs be. The last thing we need right now is for the train to automatically stop in one of these dark, dark tunnels on account of an earthquake that isn’t an earthquake.

It doesn’t, and we’re able to switch lines and continue towards South Station without too much hassle.

“Are you remembering to breathe?” Brianna asks me, voice strained, as the train lumbers onwards.

“No,” I admit. My chest feels too tight to take in air, and my mind is whirling so much I must have resigned myself to ignoring that important task.

“You won’t help anyone if you pass out and get carted to the hospital, dumbass.”

“True enough.”

She looks as wound up as I feel. There’s another layer to this for her, and that layer is her bond with Castillo. I have no doubt that whatever his involvement in this is, Brianna will be prepared to defend him. Which means we may have a problem in the very near future, because I want to bring down anyone who would risk the entire city’s populace. I can’t think about whether I’m going to have a violent confrontation with Brianna or not, I have to focus on the priority. Stop the spell.

We’re belched from the underground with the surge of people also getting off at South Station. I’m momentarily separated from Brianna due to the crowd and think, for that fleeting moment, that she intentionally meant to lose me. Then I see her a few feet away, waving at me to catch my attention. I hurry to her, and we follow the signs for the bus stations. The bus terminal is about a two minute walk down Atlantic Avenue, and when we leave the train station, we’re met with darkening skies. It looks like a storm rolling in, but I know this is no natural weather event. This is more signs that we’re dangerously low on time. Brianna and I glance at each other, and pick up the pace, jogging the rest of the way to the bus terminal and ignoring the indignant huffs and curses from the people we rush past.

I’m not worried about people thinking I’m an asshole as I push past them to get to the bus first. Brianna is right there with me, so at least I’ll have backup if anyone gets too confrontational about it. No one does, and I can see that everyone still has that sense that something isn’t right. Eyes continually drift up towards the sky, which is now full of clouds that are too dark to be normal. I can hear people muttering to one another, asking if there’s supposed to be rain today, mentioning the earthquakes, joking but not joking about wishing they stayed home today. I wish I could tell them that I’m trying to settle things, to ease their obvious discomfort, but I don’t think I can formulate words right now, and I’m not sure if I could live up to that reassurance.

Brianna’s cell trills as the bus we’re on pulls away from the station to head to South End. “It’s Henry,” she tells me when she pulls it from her pocket. She accepts the call and brings the phone up to her ear. “Hey. Yeah…what is with you and Riley asking the obvious? Of course I see the fucking sky. Just like I felt those tremors…We’re going to South End, to the Semis Loading Docks, past all the cruise ports. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I’ll let him know.” She hangs up and looks at me. “He’s going to come too, it’s dark enough for him.”

I nod, both reluctant to have him join us and relieved that he is.

“What makes you think Castillo is going to be here?” I ask as the bus nears our destination.

“You said think of a place where he conducts business,” Brianna replies.

“And what kind of business does he do here?”

“None of yours.”

“Fine.”

We exit the bus when it reaches the stop between the intersection of Drydrock Ave and Black Falcon Ave. Breaking free of the small crowd of other transit travelers, we head towards the large pier that runs parallel to a commercial channel. There’s no giant cruise ships in port at the moment, so the area is less busy than it would have been otherwise. It smells like the ocean; briny, seaweedy, that sulfuric kind of smell of low tide. It also smells like gasoline on account of the ships and the large number of 18 wheelers that load up the freight from ships to then transport through their distribution routes.

The sky is even darker here, roiling clouds of black with a tint of purplish-green, making me think of a bruise. As if the spell was causing physical damage to the sky. I think about Vasilisa’s story and think that may be what’s actually happening. Not good.

The buildings here aren’t so tall, but they are long. It’s a weird mix, mostly warehouses for shipping, but there’s the occasional office and cafe thrown in there too. Brianna heads straight for one of the many nondescript businesses and as we near the door, I feel that thrum of magic more clearly. I pause and Brianna does too, looking askance at me over her shoulder. There’s an intensity to her eyes that I’ve never seen before, and I once again prepare myself for clashing with her in the very near future.

“I’m going to do whatever I have to do here,” I warn her. “Nothing is more important than stopping this spell from being completed. Right now…I suspect Elena is pulling in all the power she’s been keeping in her conduits, the blood of your wolves. She’s going to use that to force the change, and in the resulting bloodshed, get enough power to open Paradise. I get that Castillo is important to you, but if he’s helping her…”

“He wouldn’t sacrifice his pack,” Brianna snaps. “He wouldn’t risk destroying everything he’s built by having his wolves forced to change in front of a city of mundanes!”

I feel my jaw tighten and look at her severely. “If he’s helping her, I will stop him.” She has to know, she has to be aware of how far I’m going to go. She has to trust that in the end…it’s for the better. Despite her scowl, I think the message gets through. And I have to trust her too, that she won’t turn on me to defend Castillo if it comes down to it. Judging by the hatred in her eyes…that won’t be an issue. She’ll side with saving the pack over saving the boss, but I doubt she’ll ever speak to me again afterwards if things go the way I’m dreading.