Her First Mistake

Chapter Forty-Eight: How is This Any Different?

   The room was circular. Besides that, the room was much less formal than I would have expected. A table wrapped around the other side of the room, taken up by about twenty people. Papers, binders, pencils, and laptops were scattered across the surface.

  My eyes roamed the people, almost surprised. The majority of them had staffs strapped across their backs. The elves and fae had their ears exposed. Shifters looked too large for their seat. Though I didn't see any dusks sitting at the table. My eyebrow lifted slightly.

   One of the members rose to his feet, alarmed. "What is this? We don't have another hearing for ten minutes." The other members of the Council began to realize that something was going on. Eyes peered my direction.

   "I'm afraid this could not wait for your next opening." said the elf. She lifted her chin and pushed her shoulders back. Her jaw sharpened. "These two need to speak with you."

   One of the women looked at us with sharp eyes. Pointed ears dug into her bun. "You're Albers' apprentice." 

   "Yup." I slid my hands into my pockets. 

   A third person criticized the elf, "This is completely out of order. You know this. You are an Enforcer, aren't you?"

   "If you're going to blame someone for my being here," I said over the elf as she tried to speak. "Then blame me. This Enforcer just prevented a lot of drama by letting me in here. You should be thanking her, not blaming her. Besides, I won't take more than five minutes of your time."

   A shifter sat upright. "I could have sworn you just issued a threat, Reilly."

   My lip curled up in a dark smile. "You're not wrong."

   Tate looked back at the elf. She nodded and slipped from the room. Tate returned his focus to the Council. One was studying him with a strange look. "Are you a species shifter or shapeshifter?"

   "Shapeshifter, sir."

   "You wouldn't happen to be the shapeshifter that went missing during Dani Darhk's exile, would you?"

   Tate nodded. "That's me. I'm Tate Leon."

   "Well," muttered a woman with bright yellow eyes, "this just got more interesting. Albers' apprentice and the shapeshifter that was blackmailed by Dani Darhk? What are you two doing here?"

   Tate blanched and his lips parted. I glanced his way, puzzled at his confusion, until he asked, "You knew? You knew that Dani had escaped exile?"

   A different Council member nodded. "We knew the moment that we got the report of a missing shapeshifter trainee that had been present at the sentencing. Our Enforcer Informants had told us that something was amiss, because Darhk had not behaved properly when she was being exiled. The real Darhk would have been smug or uplifted. The Darhk that was exiled was worried. The missing report just confirmed the story."

   "What do you want?" interrupted a fae. "You two are clearly here for something you think is important."

   I leaned onto one foot and blew a strand of hair from my face. It was still tangled with a bit of dried blood and mud. If a shifter's sense of smell was as good that Tate was saying, then I had to smell terrible to every shifter in the room. Meh. "You've got a team investigating Dani's whereabouts. I want in."

   A new man cleared his throat. "That's a brazen way of asking for our permission, Ms. Reilly. How do you know about this team?"

   I shifted my gaze to him and my eyes found caramel ones. My eyebrows furrowed slightly as I realized I recognized him from somewhere. His face . . . I'd seen it before. The way that he held his head up and his calm gaze rang some bells in my head. I had the feeling that I hadn't seen this man in a decade, but I'd seen him before.