Heartache (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 5)

by Annie Bellet

  Something glinted in the hay by the door, too big to be spent casings and too small to be a gun or knife. A cell phone.

  “Is that Mom’s?” Harper said. Her voice was soft, flat, as though she’d shouted herself out.

  I held up the phone. “Yeah,” I said. “They aren’t here. There aren’t any bodies. No blood. Maybe they escaped?”

  “In this snow? Junebug could fly off, but Mom couldn’t get away without leaving a trail. Come on.” She didn’t wait for me as she turned and climbed down the ladder.

  “Blood,” Levi said as we met up with the twins on the side of the barn. “Junebug’s.”

  “How can you tell?” I asked.

  “I know my wife,” he said grimly.

  “No fox tracks?” Harper said, looking around.

  The ground here was a mess from boots tramping it down. I was no tracker, but I could recognize boot tread and that many feet had been here. Samir had brought in help. It figured. He’d used people to abduct my family, too. The bastard seemed to hate getting his hands dirty unless he had to.

  More information about him, but useless unless I could find a way to turn it to my advantage. I sighed and followed Ezee and Levi through the snow. My skin was turning from brown to blue in the cold and I pumped more magic through myself to keep from shivering.

  “Where is your coat?” Ezee asked.

  “I left it in town.”

  The blood droplets ended in the trees, as did the boot tracks. Someone, or maybe two someones had come in here and tried to follow Junebug, but given up quickly.

  “Just drops,” Ezee said to Levi, rubbing his twin’s shoulder reassuringly. “Takes more than a flesh wound to hurt your girl. She’s okay.”

  “Unless they got her,” Levi muttered, shaking Ezee’s hand off.

  “We need to go back, look for where the tracks go.”

  Something rustled above us and I readied magic, pooling purple fire in my hand.

  Junebug, in owl form, dropped gracefully out of the trees and shifted as she hit the snow, effecting a far better landing than I had. She practically jumped into Levi’s arms, tears on her cheeks.

  “No point tracking them. They came in snowmobiles,” she said, then looked at Harper. “Rosie’s gone.”

  “The house is burning. No one is in the barn,” Harper said. “What happened?”

  “She made me fly away. I got hit, just a graze,” she added quickly as Levi growled. “I didn’t want to leave her, but, nobody argues with Rose.” Junebug turned imploring eyes on Harper. “She said she’d be right behind. But they had her pinned. I tried to fly back, but two of the men came after me. They took her. There were too many, Harper. I’m sorry.”

  “No,” Harper said, her voice still deadly quiet, as cold as the snow surrounding us. “Not your fault. Was she still alive?”

  “Yes,” Junebug said. “I heard her swearing at them.”

  “He’ll keep her alive,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. “He’ll use her as bait for the rest of us. This is what he did to me before. Taking people I love and hurting them to hurt me.”

  “So we go get her. And kill him.” Harper turned and strode back through the trees.

  My cell phone rang. I fumbled it from my jean’s pocket. Unknown number. But I knew who it was.

  “You fucking bastard,” I said as I answered. “Is she alive?”

  “Jade, of course she’s alive.” Samir’s slimy, smooth voice was jarring in my ears. I wanted to reach through the phone and rip his heart out from here.

  If only I could figure out that spell. Fucker.

  “What do you want?” I said, playing the game.

  Harper had stopped and turned. Everyone gathered closer, their shifter senses allowing them to hear the phone call just as well as if I’d put him on speaker.

  “I want Clyde’s heart. It’s mine. So nice of you to keep it for me, but I think one life is worth another, no?”

  “I give you the heart, you give back Rose? Unharmed?” I ground the words out, looking at Harper.

  “Well, she’s not entirely unharmed. Put up quite the fight for an old fox. But she’s alive. For now. Bring me the heart, and she can stay that way,” Samir said.

  I didn’t need Alek’s power of truth detection to know he was a lying son of a bitch. Harper growled, her lips curling back in a snarl that looked at odds with her human face.

  “I don’t have the heart,” I said. “I don’t even know where it is.”

  “But you know who does,” Samir said. It was not a question.

  “I do,” I said, thinking of Alek. I had no idea where Alek was, however. “It will take some time.” I needed to buy us time. Buy Rose time. We had to have a plan, and maybe I could get ahead of Samir, use this to lure him into a trap of my own. Something, anything. I hadn’t saved Rose from that evil warlock Barnes just to let her die like this.

  “Call this number in two hours. I don’t hear from you, it’s only her body you’ll find.” Samir hung up.

  I shivered, nearly dropping the phone. Harper wrapped an arm around me and we leaned into each other for a long moment. She was warm and solid and I wanted to hug her forever. To keep her safe, to wipe the anger and sadness from her unhappy face.

  “He’s not going to release her, is he?” Harper said, pulling away so she could look me in the eye.

  I swallowed the giant lump in my throat. “No,” I said softly. “He’ll find a way to screw up the trade, turn it into a trap.”

  “It’s freezing out here,” Ezee said. “The barn still stands. Come on. We can talk and form a plan. We will figure this out.”

  Glad for someone else taking charge, I followed them back to the barn. Junebug started crying again as she saw the horses. Then she punched a wall so hard the entire barn shuddered and groaned. Levi wrapped an arm around her and spoke in soft tones until she looked like she wasn’t about to murder someone, guiding her up the ladder to the loft.

  I dragged a sleeping bag around me, glad for the warmth.

  “Should we call the fire department? Can they even get out here?” Levi asked.

  “No,” Harper said. “Let it burn itself out. We can’t save the house. The snow will keep it contained.”

  “At least Max isn’t here,” I said, trying to find a silver lining.

  “Max,” Harper said. She reached into her coat and started to pull out her phone, but stopped. “No. He’s safe where he is. If I tell him anything, the idiot might try to come back and help.”

  “So what do we do now?” Ezee asked.

  “Is Steve really dead?” Levi asked at the same time.

  “And they thought you did it?” Harper added.

  Everyone looked at me. I drew the sleeping bag closer, as though it could shield me from their questioning gazes, from their expectation that somehow I could fix all this.

  I had to find a way. This was all my fault.

  “Yes,” I said. “Samir killed Steve. He also killed Peggy Olsen.”

  That brought on more questions. I gave them the very rough sketch of what had happened and what I knew.

  “Witches were spying on you the whole time and they didn’t think that was really fucking creepy?” Harper’s voice was almost back to normal, a slow burning anger warming it again.

  “Guess not,” I muttered. “We have to come up with a new plan, though. Only Alek knows where the heart is. And Samir won’t let Rosie go alive anyway. We can’t make the trade.”

  “Yeah, it sounded like Trap Here all over it, just from the tone in his evil fucking voice,” Harper said. Relief flooded through me. I had been worried she wouldn’t understand why we couldn’t just obey the ransom demand.

  Alek didn’t answer his phone. Straight to voicemail. Ezee started to look worried as I jammed my phone back into my pocket.

  “Yosemite isn’t around, is he?” I asked him.

  Ezee shook his head. “He doesn’t exactly carry a phone, but he said he had something to do this week. Related
to Brie and Ciaran being out of town, I guess.”

  “What now?” Levi said. He chewed on his lower lip as he looked over at his twin. “It looks like it is just us.”

  “Junebug, how many were here? Did you see Samir? He’s got dark hair, gold eyes, and is tall, but not as tall as Alek or Yosemite.” I turned to Junebug.

  “Nobody is as tall as Yosemite,” Harper said with a snort. There was color in her cheeks and I hoped that meant she was coming out of shock.

  “No,” Junebug said. “Nobody like that. There were men, maybe fifteen? Some were shifters. I smelled wolf and bear. The men who came into the woods looking for me were wolves, for sure.” She ran a hand through her tangled hair and winced.

  Why hadn’t Samir even been with them? He’d been confident they could handle the shifters? Had he known that only two were here? It bothered me, but I couldn’t work out why it should. He was playing a game, and I didn’t have the rulebook. I had two hours to figure out what to do, and time was slipping away as we sat here. Looking around the loft again, my gaze rested on the broken mug. It was earthenware, glazed blue with a green handle.

  “Harper,” I said as an idea took nebulous shape in my brain. “Did Rose make that mug?”

  “What? Oh, yeah, that’s one of her oldest ones. Why?” Harper looked at the mug and then back at me.

  I left the warmth of the sleeping bag and picked up the biggest intact chunk. Closing my eyes, I focused and pushed my magic into the cup. Harper’s mother had thrown the clay, worked it with her hands, given this object form and purpose. Part of her would be infused it in, bonded forever to it through intention and the power of creation. Every cup of coffee she’d drunk from it, every moment it had lived on her shelf and been a part of her day-to-day life would have reinforced the bond.

  A bond I could track.

  The spell snapped into place and I felt a strong pull to the west. Rose. Alive.

  “I can track her,” I said. I met four grim faces. “I don’t know what we’ll find, but she’s alive and this mug can take us to her. Maybe we can rescue her.”

  “You’ve got my axe,” Ezee said.

  “And my sword,” Levi added.

  “That would be a lot more comforting if either of you had weapons, or knew how to use them,” I said, my heart lifting at their unquestioning decision that they were in this with me. I didn’t want to get them hurt or killed, but I couldn’t face down fifteen shifters on my own, rescue the lady, and fight Samir. I needed help. I’d made the decision to stay in Wylde and stop running.

  Now it was time to fight.

  “We have teeth and claws,” Levi said.

  “And a rifle,” Junebug added. “With the Idaho State Fair sharpshooting champion to fire it.” Her expression was stubborn and stopped any objection Levi might have made. “If I shift, I’ll still be injured, so I’m more use in this form. My human isn’t bleeding.” Her eyes dared Levi to object. He was smarter than that and just nodded and kissed her fiercely on the lips.

  “And my magic,” I said, feeling the pull of Rose’s location. “Once we know where they are keeping Rose, we can form a better plan than ‘think positive and get lucky,’ all right? So let’s drive out of here before someone shows up and tries to arrest me for arson.”

  With the kind of week I was having, it was totally possible that could happen.

  “Think we can win?” Ezee said to me softly as we left the barn and tromped through the dirty, churned-up snow toward Levi’s car.

  “We’re gamers,” Harper answered before I could. “We always win.”

  I prayed to the universe that she was right and clung to the locating spell with every ounce of hope I had left.

  The spell led us away from town. Levi found ways to keep us heading more or less straight at it, but we had to drive over roads still clogged with snow, lumbering our way toward an unknown destination.

  Nobody talked much. We were alone in our thoughts. I sat up front, focusing on the spell, trying to pinpoint where they might be holding Rose.

  “I know where we are going,” Ezee said suddenly.

  “Old church?” Levi asked.

  “I think so. What else is out here? Turn around, go back to Red Rock.”

  “Old church?” I looked at Levi’s profile as he jammed on the brakes and executed a three-point turn in the middle of the road.

  “There’s an old church, sometimes used as a grange, rented to groups, that kind of thing, just out Red Rock Road. You keep pointing in its direction, more or less. Don’t know why I didn’t see that.”

  “Cause I’m prettier and smarter,” Ezee said with forced joviality.

  “Don’t get too close,” I said. “They’ll probably watch the road.”

  When we pulled up after following the new road for a mile or so, I couldn’t see a church, just a lot of trees lining the roadway. The spell tugged hard, and the road here had been used recently, tire tracks and snow treads were all over it. Levi turned the car around, facing it outward. He looked back at Junebug.

  “You are staying here,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument. “You keep that rifle ready, because if we come out of there in a hurry, I want you ready to get us out of here.”

  She made a face but nodded. “I’ll set up in the back, and cover your asses,” she said.

  I shivered in the chill air as we climbed out, the weak winter sun doing nothing to warm up the day. At least Rachel had brought me my hiking boots and wool socks, so my feet weren’t as miserable as the rest of me. Jeans and a long-sleeve shirt with no coat was shitty winter wear.

  Pushing aside my discomfort, I let the anticipation of getting to do something, anything, to strike back at Samir warm me.

  “Here,” Harper said. “Take my coat. It’s not great for this, but better than just your shirt.” She slipped out of her quilted leather jacket and handed it over.

  “But won’t you be cold?” I asked, taking it anyway.

  “I have fur,” she said. “That spell say Mom is in there?”

  I refocused on the chunk of mug in my hands. “Yes, definitely close,” I said.

  Levi, Ezee, and Harper all shifted to their animal forms as we headed into the woods. It was easier going beneath the trees. The thick canopy had stopped a lot of the snow, and as long as I avoided the tree wells, I never sank more than ankle deep. We reached the edge of the trees without hearing or seeing anyone.

  The church had probably been built sometime around the turn of the nineteenth century and not updated much since. It was a squat, grey rectangular building with narrow windows and heavy wooden doors. I saw no movement around the building. Coyote-Ezee, his brown body low to the snowy ground, crept along the edge of the parking lot the rest of us waited hidden in the tree line. No one fired at him. Snowmobiles, four of them, were pulled up under a carport that was definitely a late add-on to the church. Those were the only vehicles, which bothered me. Coyote-Ezee made his way to them, running low and fast over the ground. He crouched for what felt like eternity next to the door, so still I could barely make him out.

  Finally, he slipped away from the church, made a quick circuit of the clearing, and came back around to us. We pulled back quietly into the trees and everyone shifted back to human. I let go of the locating spell and tucked the ceramic fragment into Harper’s coat.

  “Anything?” Levi asked.

  “At least three inside, I could hear them talking. I don’t think they are expecting anything. There’s definitely a bear in there.” Ezee took a deep breath and looked at me.

  “Have you guys been inside this place?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” Levi answered. “It’s pretty much a big room up top, with a side office space. Then it has a basement, which is where the kitchen is, with a couple bathrooms in back.”

  “Windows or doors downstairs?” Harper asked.

  “Some narrow windows near the ground, but they’ll be pretty well snowed under if they aren’t boarded up for the winter. There’s a storm door
in back, leads down to the hall by the bathrooms, if I remember right. No windows in the bathrooms.”

  I nodded. “Rose isn’t going to stay in there easily. I bet they’ve got her downstairs.”

  “Makes sense. Locked in a bathroom. That’s where I would put someone. Only one door, no windows, mostly underground. She won’t be able to get out easily.” Harper nodded along with me.

  “Is your evil ex-boyfriend here?” Ezee asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “This feels weird to me, like we’re missing something. Only four snowmobiles? Where are the rest of the people who attacked the Henhouse?”

  “It’s a trap?” Levi said.

  “What time is it?” I asked, even as I pulled out my phone and checked. We had less than an hour until Samir’s deadline. “He’s had an hour since we talked, bit more, to go elsewhere, or send people to try to find me? I don’t know.”

  “Your spell said Mom is here. I’m going in, trap or not.” Harper folded her arms over her sweater, glaring at me.

  “We’re not warriors,” I said. “You are shifters, sure, but we aren’t exactly equipped for battle. These guys could be mercenaries or something.”

  “What did we do when that warlock guy tried to kill Mom and Ezee?”

  “Fought him,” I said. “Well, I saved your asses, anyway.” I tried to grin, but my face didn’t want to obey.

  “And the undead guy who tried to wipe out your people? What happened to him?”

  “He’s dead,” I said, “But I didn’t kill him. I just freed the spirit that did it.”

  “And when the ninja assassin came to take you out?”

  “I killed him,” I said, my voice softer now.

  “And that corrupt Justice who tried to blow up all the wolves?” Harper raised her chin and stared me down. “Or those two sorcerers who showed up to take us all out and summon a super-evil Irish badass with slavering hell-beasties?”

  “Okay,” I said, seeing her point. “You’re right. We should be glad that there are fewer people here, I guess, and that they are just shifters, eh? We’ll worry about Samir later. Let’s go get Rosie.”