Ellison’s mate, a small human woman named Maria, had stepped between them and calmly asked Jace what he was doing here. Jace had met her before—the woman had been rescued from a feral Shifter in Mexico and brought here, and Ellison had fallen on his ass in love with her.
Once Jace explained about his visit, Dylan, and the fight club, Ellison had backed off a little. Ellison had heard about Dylan’s arrest and conceded that Jace could stay. But the look on his face when he scented Deni on Jace was pure fury.
Deni hadn’t woken up during the altercation, but then, they’d conducted most of it after their initial shout in silence, with only a little growling. Jace decided to take a shower, tired of people sniffing him, and by the time he’d come out, the sun was up. Ellison pointedly walked Jace out of the house and started along the street with him.
“My sister,” Ellison said, “is going through some shit.”
“She told me some of it.” Jace hoisted his backpack on his shoulder, reflecting that he’d probably need to find someplace else to stay tonight.
“She’s scared and still healing. She doesn’t need to be confused.”
The pissed-off feral in Jace started rising again. Why did everyone assume he was ready to take advantage of Deni? They all needed to leave her alone, give her some space.
“I’m not here to confuse her.” Jace stopped, forcing Ellison to face him. Ellison had his cowboy hat and boots on—he liked to play the big, bad Texan. “Deni’s a good woman.”
“I know. I’ve lived with her all my life.” Ellison’s gray eyes held worry behind his anger. “Keep it cool. Don’t let her . . .”
He trailed off, as though unable to find the words to describe his gut-wrenching fears.
Jace dared to close the space between them, dared even more to put his hand on Ellison’s shoulder. “I’d never hurt her,” he said. “I can see she’s special.”
Ellison held Jace’s gaze but softened it. “She is.”
Jace squeezed his shoulder. “Then we’re good.”
Ellison gave him another look, then put his hand on Jace’s shoulder in return. His squeeze was a little harder than necessary, but he was conceding. Two Shifters agreeing not to fight. At least, not right now.
Ellison walked away from Jace after that, and Jace continued on a few blocks to a house that was set back behind another. Behind that, completely hidden from the street, was a brick garage that looked like nothing more than a normal garage. Jace opened the door and walked in, to be greeted by Liam Morrissey and his brother Sean.
“Excellent,” Liam said. “Dad sends his regrets . . . obviously. We’ll get started.”
Chapter Five
“They still have Dylan?” Jace asked.
The garage he stood in had been converted to a workshop. Two long tables ran the length of the room, flanked by a few stools. Bolted to the benches were a scroll saw, a drill press, and what looked like a router in a stand. At the end of one bench was a jeweler’s vise that rotated on a huge ball bearing so the worker could look at a piece from every angle.
The benches also held tools—every style of pliers and vise grips, wire snips, knives, gauges, squares, rulers, and other measuring devices. Boxes holding silver bits and jump links were arranged on the benches, and a soldering iron lay next to a can of flux.
A few half-built pieces of furniture and some trays of jewelry had been set up in the corners of the room, but Jace knew those were for verisimilitude should humans find this workshop. The true projects lay in the boxes of silver pieces. Liam and his family were making fake Collars and also researching how to remove real Collars from Shifters without making said Shifters insane.
Sean nodded to Jace’s question. “Dad’s still in jail. They wanted to keep him overnight. Kim’s working on it.”
“She’s good, is my mate,” Liam said. “She’ll make them see reason, or at least shove legalese at them until they choke.”
Sean and Liam, in spite of their hopeful words, were worried, Jace saw. Both men had deep shadows under their eyes and moved a bit stiffly. They’d probably been up all night.
“Sure you want to be experimenting on my neck when you’ve had no sleep?” he asked, only half joking.
“Don’t worry, lad. We won’t do much today.”
Sean unbuckled the Sword of the Guardian from his back, slid the blade out of its leather sheath, and laid the sword on the table. Runes that looked ancient and powerful were traced all over the sword, blade and hilt alike.
Jace had seen the sword belonging to the Guardian in his own Shiftertown, but this one, he knew, was the original. The first, made by Shifter sword maker Niall O’Connell and woven with spells by the Fae woman Alanna, had been passed down through the generations to Sean—the men of the Morrissey family were O’Connell’s heirs.
Shifters didn’t much go in for magic, but Jace knew the tingle of it when he felt it. There was magic in the sword, and its vibration permeated the air of the room.
“Collars,” Liam said, seating himself on one of the stools. “Fae magic and human technology woven together. Cracking that code is the toughest thing.”
“How’s it going?” Jace asked. “Any progress?”
“Some,” Liam continued while Sean sat down, laid a few pieces of silver together on the jeweler’s anvil, and clicked on the light of the magnifier above it.
“We can get to the Collar’s chip.” Liam tapped the round black-and-silver piece that was a Celtic cross resting on his throat. “It’s in there, wired up and ready to go. The magic part is in the silver that weaves through the Collar—most of the magic is in there, that is. What we haven’t figured out is how the magic and technology tie together. That’s important, because what fuses them is also, we think, what fuses the Collar to the Shifter’s neck. It bites into our nervous system and stays there. That’s why, when the first experimenters simply ripped Collars from necks, the Shifter’s adrenaline system kicked into high gear, sending that Shifter feral. It was as though years of instincts being suppressed by the Collars suddenly sprang out, with twenty years of rage fueling them.”
Jace had heard about the experiments of a few years ago, done by an idiot who hadn’t cared that the Shifters went crazy when the Collars came off. He’d only wanted the Shifters free of Collars and under his thumb. Liam had been caught up in the battle to stop it. Liam, his father, and Sean had taken over the experimenting and were being much more careful about it.