Free Edie Spence (Book 5): Bloodshifted by Cassie Alexander Page B

forbid something does happen to her, and all of them are set free from their bonds—what then?”
    “I’m not hurting her.”
    “I’m not putting a stake in your hand. I just want you to start to think. Please don’t make me regret talking to you like this.” He looked so earnest—I knew he believed what he was telling me.
    I just hoped I wouldn’t start believing it too. Anna was my friend. She’d saved me. She had to have her reasons for grabbing power back home—and hopefully she’d thought out all the repercussions of her actions. “I won’t.”
    “Good.”
    I bit my lip. “Is Wolf Grey too?”
    “Not in the least. He’s Raven’s lapdog, hook, line, and sinker.”
    “Then why are you?”
    “I got into one hell of a bar fight back in the day. Wolf saw me brawl and decided to ‘save’ me.” Jackson said the word as sarcastically as possible. “Never mind the fact that I had a wife and kid. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to get out.” He saw the look of horror on my face and shook his head. “What, you think you’re the first daytimer who wasn’t happy about all this?”
    “No,” I lied. I’d actually never, ever considered that before. “When was that?”
    “’Seventy-three.” My guess about his age was right. Was I going to be trapped now, too, like he was, always thinking that the best of my life was behind me?
    Maybe it was. I pushed that thought away. “What happened then?”
    “House Grey said they could free me. Although it turns out their timetable’s a lot longer than mine.” His hands tightened around the steering wheel, and he turned the car back on.
    *   *   *
    We drove for five more minutes before I broke our silence. “You know you talk as if you’re already one of them, even though you haven’t changed.”
    “I’m close enough,” he said, pulling us onto an expressway. “We have to get back. If I take any longer they’ll notice, and I still have work to do tonight.”
    “Getting test subjects,” I said with a frown.
    “Right.”
    “What happens to them?” As much as I hoped Natasha’s research was fruitless, I didn’t want her to kill anyone to prove it.
    “I don’t rightly know. So far they’ve all died—but I’m not sure what goes on before that. It’s why none of our Masters is allowed to kill anyone without permission—and why we don’t have many donors anymore. Raven went through them first. Easier to keep things quiet.”
    “But you don’t know what she does with them?”
    “I’m not allowed to help in the lab. I don’t know how.” He shrugged. “I could learn, but she’s not willing to teach me—and I was turned into a daytimer before science got so hard. I go in there to empty her trash cans, and deliver boxes of glassware, but that’s it.”
    “So why did you rat me out to Raven?” I asked, but as I said it I realized I already knew. “Because you also want me to spy on her for you and House Grey. Great.”
    A sly smile lifted his lips, and he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Anna’s not the only one who worries them—and up close you’ll have opportunities I won’t.”
    “Even if I do, it won’t mean I’m on your side.”
    “Fair enough.” There was another long stretch of silence. “Besides, wouldn’t you prefer working in the lab to being a janitor?”
    Yes, if I didn’t have a sinking feeling that she was carrying on her demented father’s research. Nathaniel had been trying to create a synthetic blood replacement so that vampires would no longer need humans to survive. “Maybe,” I admitted. I did need to know what she was up to.
    “And she probably won’t kill you if Raven tells her not to. Which is more than I can say for Lars.”
    The more I thought about Natasha and Raven, the more wrong it became. Her father’d been willing to kill thousands of people to save her—and she’d been playing house. “She’s in love with him, isn’t she?” I didn’t know why it was so hard to