Unraveled Read Online Free PDF Page A

“You make that happen, and I’ll tell you everything I know about Hugh Tucker and the Circle.”
    He sat back against the couch and crossed his arms over his chest, giving me a smug, toothy smile, absolutely sure that I would give in to his demands.
    For a moment, I was tempted—so damn tempted . Because the Circle already knew every single thing about me, and I was scrambling to play catch-up. I didn’t even know who any of them were, besides Tucker, and my friends and I hadn’t been able to find a trace of the vampire since the night that Deirdre Shaw had died. If I could at least identify the members of the Circle, then I could study them—kill them—before they lashed out at me again or, worse, my friends.
    And I could finally get the answers to all my questions about my mother.
    I opened my mouth, ready to give in to McAllister’s ridiculous demands, but then I glanced over at Phillip, who was still standing by the patio doors, his gun clutched in his hand, keeping watch. And I remembered how pale he’d looked, lying on the marble floor at the Briartop museum, slowly bleeding out after being shot by one of the giants that McAllister had hired to rob the museum and steal Mab’s will from the vault. I remembered how much pain Phillip had been in. I remembered how Eva had cried over him and how worried Owen had been about his best friend.
    And just like that, I shut my mouth. Nobody fucked with my friends and got a free pass, not even to satisfy my burning curiosity about my mother and the Circle. I might be an assassin, but there were some lines that I wouldn’t cross.
    Besides, Jonah McAllister was not the least bit trustworthy. As badly as I’d screwed him over by revealing his involvement in the Briartop heist to all of Ashland, I had no doubt that he would be more than happy to feed me a passel of lies and scamper out of town, secretly laughing at me the whole time. Even if I threatened him, even if I tortured him, even if I cut him to ribbons with my knives, he was stubborn enough and hated me enough to hold out and not tell me a damn thing.
    No, I couldn’t risk him lying, spinning some story, and sending me on some wild-goose chase. I wouldn’t risk it. And I especially wouldn’t insult Phillip and his suffering like that.
    â€œWell, Blanco?” McAllister crowed, still so confident that I was going to give in to his demands. “What do you say?”
    I shook my head. “Never going to happen, Jonah. Never going to happen.” I got to my feet and headed toward the patio doors. “Come on, Phillip. Let’s go. We’ve wasted enough time here.”
    Phillip followed me, although we hadn’t taken three steps out onto the lawn before McAllister hurried after us.
    â€œWait! Wait!” he called out, scrambling to catch up to us.
    I whipped around and snapped up my knife, and McAllister had to pull up short to keep from ramming reindeer-first into the blade.
    â€œNo, Jonah,” I growled. “I don’t have time to wait, and I especially don’t have the time, patience, or energy for you to try to work your weaselly wiles on me. You might know some dirty little details about Tucker from seeing him with Mab, but you drew a complete blank when I first mentioned the Circle, which means that you don’t know anything about them at all.”
    He opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off before he could get started.
    â€œI’ll admit that torturing you for what little information you might have would be fun, a nice diversion after the shitty couple of weeks that I’ve had, but I couldn’t trust anything you would scream out. And frankly, I have better things to do than getting your blood on my clothes tonight.”
    He wet his lips again, his eyes darting left and right, as if he expected more assassins to suddenly appear out of the icy drizzle. “And what about me? What do I do