He was a terrible thief.
On one of her shifts to follow him, Amy caught him using a payphone. First, she was shocked that there were payphones anymore. She was surprised that Brent had found one and she was completely stunned that he used it—which meant it was still working.
Leaning nearby, cloaked with a neat little trick Niko had taught her and one from Max that made people disinterested in seeing them, Amy listened to his half of the conversation.
“Liege, the whole place crawls, constantly. No, sir. No. I think that it’s part of it. No, they don’t suspect me. I know that Amy realizes I’m around, but they are preoccupied by the stone. Yes, Liege. They are getting longer and stronger. I am sorry to report that they moved the vampires out of the town. No. No clue. Of course. Yes. You can rely on me, my liege.” He paused and listened for a long moment. “She’s still in prison, sir. I will work on her husband, though, next.”
There were a few more pleasantries, and he hung up. He walked right by her and headed toward Deliah’s shop.
The phone in her pocket rang and she quickly silenced it. She watched him walk in and pulled the phone to her ear. “You almost blew my cover, Max.”
“Mm. Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.” She smiled. “What’s going on?”
“He grabbed something from the Pegasus that he needs back. I think it’s time to think about running him out of town. Niko says Lola will be back tomorrow and we can get that thing out of Raissa’s vault.”
“So you want to play tonight? I have to lure him to the cliffs.”
“Whatever you and Raissa have in mind, tonight would be the night.”
“Okay. You and the others head up there,” Amy said. “I’ll go run into him and make him think I’m willing to talk. And whatever happens, just follow Raissa’s lead. Got it?”
She could almost see him nodding. “Got it. Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”
Amy laughed. “Just follow Raissa’s lead.”
Ending the call, Amy headed for the store she’d seen Brent walk into. She dropped the little magic and immediately had four people wave hello to her. It made her smirk, but she waved back.
There were a couple of different approaches Amy had been playing with, but she opted to go for the straight one. She needed Brent on the top of that hill at sunset and the sun was already past noon in the sky. Walking directly toward him at the display of different kinds of cloths Deliah carried, she tapped him on the shoulder.
He spun around and instantly looked horrified. It was very gratifying.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded.
“What—Amy? What are you doing here?”
“My boyfriend lives here. And I asked first.”
“I was looking for you. I wanted to talk to you. We have a lot of things we need to discuss. I think we ended this the wrong way.”
“Did I not tell you to go and not come back in the dream?”
He stared at her. “That was…a hallucination. I didn’t...I mean there was…”
Amy leaned in close. “I’m a dreamwalker, Brent. Did you forget that? I can yank you into the dreamworld at any instant. Our relationship is done and I have no interest in talking to you about it. Now. What are you doing here?”
“I told you. We need to talk.”
“About what?”
“About this town full of freaks and monsters. You don’t belong here, Amy. You belong with me, in the real world. Away from this.”
“You can’t come into Deliah’s store and just announce that this town is full of freaks.”
“Why not? They care?”
“You really want to talk to me?”
“Of course…”
She folded her arm and stared at him. What the hell did she ever see in this guy? “Fine, you want to talk. Meet me at the cliffs at four, in the state park.”
“Can’t we just get lunch?”
“No,” she snapped. “I won’t discuss a town full of freaks in front of them. Four, the state park or no dice.”
He shook his head. “Fine, all right. Four o’clock.”
Amy stuck her finger in his face. “And listen very, very carefully, Brent. If you breathe a word to any non-magicals in this town about the dual nature of those living here, I will have my boyfriend flambé your ass and feed your cooked carcass to the harpies, get me?”
He swallowed and nodded shallowly. Amy flicked her hand at him to prod him out of the store, and he ran like hell. Deliah walked up next to her, chuckling.
“You didn’t have to make the man want to piss his pants,” she offered.
“Yeah, I did.” She nodded. “Fucker had an affair while we were dating and engaged.”
“Mm, that’s one for the gossip bin.” She laughed. “I keep the old non-magical entertained with stupid bits of gossip. That Professor Czerkanowicz’s new lady friend was previously engaged will have them all atwitter.”
Amy let herself giggle. “Atwitter is better than all over Twitter.”
“True story!” Deliah laughed and headed back to her register. “Hey, could you talk Poppy or Sia into doing a write-up about whatever the hell you have going down later? Some of us can’t leave our day jobs to watch.”
Laughing openly, Amy headed for the doors. “I am sure I don’t even need to tell them.”
Pulling out her phone, she decided that this liege Brent was talking about was important enough to relay to Carl. The Gray Eminence picked up on the second ring.
“Hey, Amy. Are we set?”
“Yes, but that’s not why I’m calling. I caught Brent on the phone. He was—” The full force of what she had actually heard on that call slammed into her. “He was using me, Eminence…”
“What?” Carl’s voice was calm, but worried.
“The call I overheard was to someone he was calling liege, and he was disgusted by the magicals in town.” She leaned against the wall. “Oh my God, Carl. He used me. To get close to the Sectorum.”
The words echoed down the line to him, and everything trembled in her vision.
“Compromised,” Carl whispered. “We have to evacuate North Carolina.”
There was no sound from Carl. Amy knew he had to be overwhelmed by what had been implicated, and how they had never put in place an evacuation plan.
Looking around, Amy spotted Niko’s jewelry store and booked it across the street. “I’m going to spell everything in North Carolina, Carl. Everything. I’ll be out of commission for about three hours.” Slamming through the door, she startled Aaron and Niko. “I need your office. Carl?”
“Still here,” he mumbled.
“Niko is going to find and send the witches. They are going to help you start moving everything out of there. Aaron and Max are going to arrange a storeroom at the U-Haul in Forrest Grove, and we’ll use that for now.”
“Your mom…” he whispered. “She’s still there.”
She froze. Holy crap, her mother…
“We’ll get her out,” Niko snapped. “I’ll have a car there as soon as I can to get her to the airport.”
Nodding, Amy swallowed. “Thank you. Carl?”
“Go do what you need to.”
“Got it.”
She ended the call. “Office?” Niko pointed to the back while Aaron was already on the phone with Max.
Middle of class, Aims. Aaron’s going to handle the reservations and we’ll be there as soon as I’m done teaching.
Max—
Just keeping up appearances. Can’t let everyone know I’m a fire breathing dragon, for real.
I’m going to be down for a while.
I’ll be there when you get back. And through their link, Amy could feel him sending his love to her.
Damn. She’d been stupid. In more ways than one.
“Niko, can you get the witches to your house? Carl needs help moving everything.”
He snickered. “Don’t ever let them hear you call them witches. But yes. I can get them th
ere. What are you doing to do?”
“Spell everything through the dreamworld. I have to. Brent is working with someone and they are going to try and steal everything the Sectorum has. Everything. We haven’t gotten all the records on to the servers yet. There are thousands of books scattered around western North Carolina in different strongholds and secret vaults. Even with the Coven helping, it’s going to take weeks to move everything.”
“So you can just spell it all through the dreamworld and keep it from prying eyes.” Niko nodded, pushing the door to his office open.
“Yes, and I can find out if Brent and this liege person have taken anything already.” She paused. “I hadn’t told him much about locations when I was trying to get him to accept me.”
Niko chuckled as she sat in the chair. “He’s an ass for cheating on you and making it obvious. Bad spy.”
Amy looked at her hands and picked at a nail. “I’ll be forever glad he sucked at what he did. I could have handed him Sectorum Esse.”
“You didn’t,” Niko reassured me. “Now go. Get all that information. No one will bother you in here.” The door clicked closed behind him.
She moved to her mother’s living room. It was easy to see the shadow of her mother moving through the kitchen and heading to the back porch for a drink of iced tea.
Waiting until Patricia sat, Amy pulled her mother into sleep and into the dreamworld.
“Amy!” Patricia gasped.
“Sorry, Mom.” She grinned without real apology. “I had to talk to you. Brent’s a bigger asshole than we thought. I’m going to be protecting the whole house with spells, and you have to leave.”
“Leave?” She gasped.
“Niko is going to have a limo here in about an hour. So you have an hour to pack. Poppy, Sia, and Keni may be here before that—we have to get all of the Sectorum information out of here.”
Patricia grabbed her daughter’s arm. “Carl?”
“He’s fine, he’s safe,” she answered. “It’s you we’re all worried about. Please pack something quickly. You can’t stay here. Not when these people know about Sectorum and that you’re my mother.”
She nodded. “Of course. Get going. Let me get some things together.” After an awkward pause, she cocked her head. “Will…will you tell Carl I’m okay and I’m on the way?”
“He knows,” Amy answered. “Go, quick. And, Mom, don’t take any of the Sectorum stuff. That’s for us to handle. Not you.”
Giving a quick nod, Patricia agreed and Amy let her fall back in the seat.
Rushing through her own dreamscape house, she started to recite some of the spells Keni and Sia had taught her. Protection spells, distraction spells, locking spells. She painted the door to the Sectorum room with everything she could think of and knew Keni would figure it out.
Quickly moving her dreamworld to the office she and Carl shared, she bespelled his bookcase that had contained some of the old volumes.
Next was Carl and Betsy’s house, and into the basement—where the door had been ripped open and the contents spilled everywhere. The decoy door. Amy smirked and reached inside the open bookcase and watched the wall swing in. Lights off, untouched, no sign of anyone having been there in weeks. She backed out, closed it, and painted the wall with more spells.
She sighed. Ten more strongholds and five safety deposit boxes, and she had to get to the cliffs that night.
The dreamworld moved again, and Amy found herself at the next location.
“Max?”
He perked up from the book he was reading and realized that Amy was fully awake.
Max had been able feel his mate in the dreamworld. It was a strange and not so terrible feeling. It felt good that he could keep a tab on her while he pretended to be a normal human. Now he could feel her again in the real world.
He had wanted to run out the instant she had realized what was going on with Brent and Carl, but he had to maintain a façade at the university. So, he plowed through the lecture. It was one of the three-days-a-week classes, so Max wasn’t trapped in a four-hour lecture—but even the forty-five minutes seemed interminable.
Finally, the time was up and the kid in the leather jacket with chains stood up. He was utterly reliable. There was never a day when he wasn’t acutely aware of the time, and then the lecture ended.
The rest of the class stood, but Max had already packed up. He snatched his briefcase and made a beeline for the door. Several of the students chuckled as he took off at breakneck speed down the hall. He’d get them back with a nasty assignment.
It took everything he had to forgo the new ability to shift at will and fly to Niko’s store. Instead, he climbed into his car and drove like the devil himself was on his ass.
He jammed the car into a parking spot in front and dashed inside, making Aaron jump.
“You crazy assed dragons have got to stop busting in here and freaking me out. I don’t want to use magic against you. Jesus, it would hurt in human form.”
“Sorry, I’m here to pick up my mate.”
Aaron shook his head. “Niko’s office. Sound asleep for an hour. She said it was going to be a while.”
Settling her in the car, it was amazing how much his dragon calmed. It was just better with her there. How the hell had Niko been managing being away from his mate this long?
Once he got to Niko’s house, Max carefully placed Amy on the living room couch and covered her with a blanket. That had been two hours before.
“Max?”
Grabbing the mug off the counter, he walked into the living room. Amy was sitting up, wrapped in the blanket, looking more tired than he had seen her in a long time.
“Hey.”
“Two hours?”
He nodded. “Yup. Almost on the nose.” He held out the mug and was rewarded with a blinding grin.
“Oh, yes,” she whispered, taking a sip. A moment later she spluttered and gasped. “What’s in this?”
“Keni made it. She said she thought you would need more than just coffee as a wake up.” He grinned. “I’m not quite sure what she put in it…”
“Whiskey!” Carl yelled from the kitchen.
“That would do it.” Amy giggled. “Where’s Mom?”
Max stood up and offered a hand. “Her plane leaves from Charlotte in an hour. She’s all checked in, and I have a flight from Minneapolis to county booked too. Not interested in a ten-hour round trip to get her here.”
“Thank you.” She smiled. “Thank you, Niko!”
Niko snorted from the kitchen. “Make me one of your famous apple cakes and we’ll call it even.”
“Betsy told you about those?”
He poked his head around the corner. “She never shuts up about them.”
“Where is everyone?” Amy glanced between him and Niko.
“Sia and Poppy are packing boxes at Carl’s house,” Max answered. “Keni is setting up a storage bin for us at Tamany.”
“Is she warding it?”
“As best as she can.” Niko nodded.
She took a deep breath. “Where to do we stand?”
“Carl is off with Henry looking at houses,” Max said. “We should be able to get all the books and records and servers out and secure by today. I feel bad because we could have brought Patricia here magically, but we need those books.”
“I am quite sure that Patricia understands,” Niko said. “She knows what the Sectorum is.”
Amy blew out a breath. “Do we have anyone trying to track down who this liege is?”
Niko jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m looking, and we have Brindy and Raissa on it as well.”
Max saw Amy’s confusion. “Brindy is an information scientist by trade and Raissa works for information technology. The two of them will be able to dig up anything that’s out there.”
“Librarian and IT genius,” Niko clarified.
“Never ever doubt a librarian.” Amy giggled. She gasped and looked at her watch. “One hour. I still want to pull this
Mother of Dragons shit on Brent, but…now I want to talk to him and see what he has to say. I need details out of him.”
Max nodded. “Got it. We should hang back a bit before making our appearance.”
“God, I hope I can make that miserable shit give us some information.”
Max pulled her in close. “Me too.”
Amy stood with her gloved hands in her pockets and a wool hat pulled down over her ears. It wasn’t even really cold yet up in Northern Minnesota, several people had assured her, but she was Southern born and bred.
Even in the mountains of North Carolina, the wind didn’t whip this bitterly.
This time, even though she knew it was cold, and the wind should have chilled her to the very bone, she didn’t feel it. Not like she had.
Dragonfire, Aims, Max offered. It will keep you warm always. You could fly with me naked now.
Does dragonfire prevent chafing?
Um…
Then I’ll stay clothed, thank you. A full body chap isn’t sexy or comfortable.
You’re too practical. He pouted.
Amy smiled to herself. She liked this mating thing way more than she thought she would.
She would have kept going on that line of thought, but she heard what probably had to be an elephant trying to sneak up on her. The hearing she had gained since she and Max mated was also stunning. She could hear a flea scratching on a dog at one hundred paces.
Brent coming up through the scrub was easy to hear, and he may as well have been shouting his name through a megaphone. Pushing her hands deeper in her pockets, she waited for him.
It was abundantly clear that he was trying to be mysterious and sneaky. He would have sucked at that even if she hadn’t had a dragon’s senses. She heard the safety on the gun click off and the whisper of fabric over carbon steel.
“Gonna shoot me, Brent?” she called.
“Not if you give me what I want,” he answered.
Turning slowly, refusing to be baited, Amy stared at him. “Give you what? I don’t have anything for you.”
“You are in a town full of freaks,” Brent said, casually holding the gun at his hip. “You’re not part of this shitshow. Come with me. Help me get what I need.”
Skydance Page 22
