Roughly, Harper yanked out the metal sticks and took a step back, mostly because being so close to the scent of burning flesh was not fun. Sherryl sagged slightly in her chair, fists clenched, tears dripping down her face, flesh still sizzling. “Why would you help Alethea?” Harper asked, but Sherryl was busy gaping at the blood seeping out of her charred jeans. “Why did you help her?”

Sherryl swallowed. “All she wanted was some info on what the Wallis imps did with their time. Said she was worried they intended to attack her at some point so she wanted to monitor their movements and habits. It seemed harmless to tell her stuff.”

Harmless? Harper’s demon hissed, tempted to lunge to the surface. For now, it was content to let Harper lead. “And just what did you get out of it? Don’t tell me you were just being nice like Alethea.”

Sherryl hesitated, gaze darting to the side. Would she never learn?

Harper thrust one of the sticks into the familiar’s shoulder, and the air was filled with the sound of yet more skin sizzling. She waited for Sherryl’s horrific scream to die down before she spoke. “I believe my mate warned you that I was very short on patience. Now, answer my damn question.”

Taking a shuddering breath, Sherryl squeezed her eyes shut. “She paid me for the info, and she said she’d arrange for me to transfer to her lair.”

Knox arched a brow. “You don’t like having Thatcher for a Prime?”

“It’s not that,” replied Sherryl, opening her eyes. “My ex is part of Thatcher’s Force. He’s making things difficult for me. I just want out.”

“Hmm.” Knox twisted his mouth. “Where did she go when she left her home?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. She just said it was someplace safe.”

“But you stayed in communication with her?” asked Knox.

“Only through telepathy.”

Tipping his head to the side, Knox said, “You must have known that Alethea was working with someone.”

“She never mentioned anyone else.” Sherryl’s brow puckered as something seemed to occur to her. “Though she did once say that she had it ‘on good authority’ that the Wallis imps would target her.”

Harper narrowed her eyes. “What else did she ask you to do?” When the familiar hesitated, Harper twisted the stick that was still stuck in her shoulder. Sherryl cried out through her teeth. “What else did she ask you to do?” Harper demanded.

Sherryl’s pained gaze cut to Knox. “She wanted to know what you are. She thought the imps might know; that you might have told them.”

“So you asked Ciaran,” prompted Harper.

Sherryl nodded. “He said that my guess was as good as his. I knew he was telling the truth. I can smell lies. They have a distinct scent. Like smoke.” She swallowed. “I got the feeling he wouldn’t have told me, even if he did know.”

She was right to have that “feeling”. Harper knew her cousin wouldn’t have told an outsider jack shit. “What else did Alethea ask of you?”

“She wanted to know about your kid. Said if I heard anything at all about him, I should tell her. But no one ever spoke of him in front of me. I asked Ciaran about him, said I’d love to meet him, but Ciaran blew me off without even being rude. He’s good at that.”

Evasiveness was a trait that every imp possessed, so Harper didn’t see why the familiar would be so surprised. “Just what info did you pass to Alethea?”

“I didn’t know anything to pass on.”

“But she kept in touch with you. She wouldn’t have done that unless you were being useful. So, what did you tell her?”

“I kept her updated on the imps’ movements. And, okay, I lied to her a few times.”

“And just what lies did you tell her?” asked Knox, voice a lethal purr.

Sweat beading on her forehead, Sherryl flexed her bony fingers. “I told her I’d met your kid and that he didn’t seem powerful. I said he didn’t use any abilities in front of me.”

“And?” Knox pushed.

“And I told her I overheard imps say you were a hybrid, but that I didn’t know what breeds your parents were.”

Knox arched a disbelieving brow. “She bought that I was a hybrid?”

“No, she thought you’d lied to the imps about what you were. That pissed her off. When I asked why she cared so much about what breed you were, she said that she suspected you were the fourth Horseman and that you would come for her; she wanted to be prepared. I said I didn’t think you were the Horseman; that if you wanted to overtake the Primes, you could do it easily and you wouldn’t need any help. She seemed to think about that for a minute, but then she said she’d heard from a ‘reliable source’ that you could be him.”

Knox exchanged a brief look with Harper. Either Alethea had been feeding Sherryl excuses or the Horseman had worked to convince Alethea that she’d soon be a target. It could even have been a bit of both. “I’m guessing you asked who that source was.” He would have done, in her position. “What did she tell you?”

“Only that it was someone whose word she trusted.”

Trusted? Knox’s brows knitted. Alethea had never been the trusting type. “When was the last time you heard from her?”

“I contacted her telepathically a few days before the imps’ tea party to tell her about it,” said Sherryl. “She thanked me for the info, asked how I was doing, and how things were going with Ciaran. You know, girl stuff.”

Keeping up the best friend act while also checking that Sherryl and Ciaran were still an item, Knox thought. “Did she ever talk to you about her own boyfriend?”

“She said she didn’t have one. But one time, when I went to her home, she acted weird and wouldn’t let me inside—told me she was tired. I saw a man’s long, navy blue cashmere coat hanging on her hallway coatrack. Cirque du Soleil tickets were sticking out of the pocket—they only caught my attention because my friend is going to the show and she’d showed me her own tickets. And I smelled tobacco coming from inside.”

Knox licked over his front teeth, trying to remember if he’d ever seen Jonas, Thatcher, or Dario either smoking or wearing a cashmere coat. “When exactly was this?”

“I don’t know. A month before she moved out, maybe.”

“Does Thatcher know you were passing on info to Alethea?”

“If he does, I didn’t tell him.” Sherryl’s eyes filled with yet more tears. “When I saw the clip on YouTube, I was hoping to God that it wasn’t real. But when I tried to contact her telepathically, there was nothing. And I knew she was really dead.”

“I wouldn’t grieve too hard,” said Harper, yanking the stick out of the familiar’s shoulder. “She used you. But, if it’s any consolation, you’ll be joining her soon enough.”

“What?” Sherryl sounded genuinely baffled.

Harper leaned forward. “Your self-centered actions made my family vulnerable. They led to an attack on my son and the attempting kidnapping of my cousin. Don’t play dumb. Heidi is Ciaran’s little sister. You would have heard that someone attempted to snatch her and—since it’s highly likely that you passed on info about how Heidi often went to the playground after school—it must have clicked in your head that Alethea had something to do with it.”

Sherryl shook her head madly. “I went to her home and asked her! She promised it was just a coincidence!”

“And you can smell lies, so you would have known if she was telling the truth. She wasn’t, was she?”

Sherryl looked away.

“Yeah, you knew she was involved. But you hadn’t cared. It didn’t matter to you that a little girl was almost kidnapped. Didn’t matter that what lay in store for her wouldn’t have been good. Hell, you even risked it happening again when you did nothing. You could have told Ciaran. Jolene. Me. Any number of people. Instead, you kept on feeding her info, didn’t you?”

“I fed her lies, sure. That’s all.”

Harper shook her head. “I don’t believe that. You told her about the tea party.”