Maybe by then I’d have found the werewolf counter-curse too.
“Tiago?” I asked.
“Fine, I think.”
My eyes widened. “You think?”
“We were separated. It’s a long story,” he added at my expectant look, repeating my words back to me. He nodded at Agent Smith’s sedan. “Is this your car?”
“Sort of.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Did you steal it?” He sounded impressed.
Was it possible to steal from a dead guy? “Sort of.”
“You can explain on the way,” he said as he slid into the driver’s seat.
“Hey! I should drive. It’s my car.”
“Sort of,” he corrected, and I swear his lip quirked in the third smile of the day. That must be some kind of record.
I crossed my arms and tapped my foot.
“Do you know where we’re going?” he asked.
“Do you?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
I waited, but he didn’t explain. I gave up, circled the car, and slid into the passenger seat.
“Where’s the book?” he asked.
I hauled it out from under the seat. He nodded then turned on the car and drove out of the park.
“I need to check in with Dahlia,” he said.
“Okay, but then you’re going to explain what happened to you after the firefight,” I said. “And why you’re still covered in sand.”
“Sure. Just as soon as you explain the blood smears on this headrest.”
I grimaced. I had wiped most of it off when we got to the park—that was not stuff I wanted in my hair while I drove—but I must have missed some. I’d been a little distracted.
“It’s way better than the brain matter and bits of skull that were there before,” I muttered.
Ryerson’s eyes widened, and he braked for a stoplight a little too hard, snapping me forward against the seatbelt. He turned in his seat to look at me.
“Explain. Now.”
“What about Dahl—” My protest died at the determined look in his eyes. “Fine.”
And so Ryerson drove, and I told him everything that had happened since I left Mauritania. Excluding the part where the evil witch living in my head confiscated my body while I slept to page through the Grimoire. That didn’t seem relevant. When I got to the part about Agent Smith’s demise and the team that had killed him and tried to steal the book, his knuckles turned white over the wheel, and a muscle in his jaw ticked, but he didn’t interrupt.
When I was finished, he said, “Would you recognize them if you saw them again?”
I didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. He didn’t ask if I knew the names of anyone on the rogue CIA team—why would he?—and I was grateful for that. It wasn’t that I was hiding Zoe’s involvement; I’d already told Dahlia, after all. But I wanted time to think about the best way to get Zoe out of this mess without Ryerson going all Company Man on me.
“I think so.”
He nodded, lost in thought.
“Shouldn’t we call Dahlia now?” I said.
“No. This rogue team identified and killed one of our own and found our safe house. To access that kind of information while they’re traveling, they’d have to be working with someone back at headquarters. Hell, maybe multiple people. Until we know who is involved and how deep this goes, we’re on our own.”
My eyes widened. “You think Dahlia is involved?”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t. But until we know for sure, you trust no one except me, got it?”
I nodded. “What about the Grimoire?”
“The mission hasn’t changed, except that we won’t notify headquarters of our progress or whereabouts until we walk through the front door and deliver the book straight into Director Abrams’s hands. We can’t risk this group finding us before that. Not again.”
Fine by me. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”
“Find someplace to lie low while I get us new passports under assumed names the CIA has no record of. Then we fly home.”
I waited, but apparently that was the whole plan.
“We don’t know which safe houses are compromised,” I reminded him.
“Which is why we won’t be staying at a safe house.”
“Where are we staying then? Oh! I saw a Four Seasons back in the city.” Complete with spa. And the CIA definitely owed me a massage.
But instead of answering, Ryerson fished Smith’s cell phone out of the center console. With one hand, he punched in a phone number with a ridiculous number of digits and then spoke in Arabic to whoever answered the call. Less than a minute later, he ended the call.
“We’re staying at a friend’s house. He isn’t connected with the CIA, and he’s in Europe on business for the next few weeks. He says we can use his place for as long as we need, but it should be just the one night.”
“You have a friend in Morocco whose number you know by heart?” I had to look up my own number half the time.
“I know a lot of numbers by heart. Operatives don’t write much down. And his place is not in Morocco. It’s in Algeria.”
Ryerson fell back into silence, but I wasn’t done with this conversation. After all, this was way more interesting than mission specs.
Ryerson had a friend.
“Why is this friend letting us stay at his house?”
“He owes me a favor.”
“What kind of favor?”
“I saved his daughter from sex traffickers once.”
I stared at him. “Holy hexballs, my partner is Bryan Mills.”
Ryerson flicked me a confused look. “Who?”
“You know, Liam Neeson’s character from Taken? He rescues his daughter from sex traffickers?”
“Never seen it. But it sounds completely different.”
“How so?”
“I don’t have a daughter.”
I blinked at him as he merged onto the highway. “Right. Totally different. So how do we get new passports?”
“I know a guy.”
“Let me guess: the mob killed the dog gifted to him by his dead wife, and you took retribution, so now he owes you a favor?”
“What?”
I shook my head. “Never mind. So you know a guy in Algeria who makes fake American passports?”
“I know a guy in Algeria who can point me to a guy who makes fake American passports,” he corrected and then added, “with a little persuasion.”
“Of course you do.”
30
It was a long drive to Algeria.
Which was lucky for me, because with nothing but highway and time stretching out ahead of us, even Ryerson couldn’t think of anything better to do than explain what happened to him after we were separated in Mauritania.
It went something like this: after the last of the attackers had fled or been defeated, Ryerson and Tiago set off for the city. Unfortunately, the only cars in the tiny village belonged to Alec and Ryerson, and both vehicles had been used as cover during the fight. Needless to say, by the end of the shootout they were both un-driveable.
So they walked.
But the city was miles away, and Ryerson had been injured during the fight and lost a decent amount of blood, so he didn’t make it far before he collapsed alongside the desert road. Tiago must have gone ahead for help or to find an uncompromised line, but in the meantime someone must have stumbled across Ryerson and called the police. When he came to, he was lying on a jail cell cot. Apparently the Mauritanian police found a bloody, unconscious, heavily armed American somewhat suspicious.
Anyway, while he waited around for the Mauritanian cops to figure out what to do with him, he had a few visitors. First, Balphegor—the hellhound, not the sloth demon—finally showed up, with Golem riding his back like the world’s strangest horse. Once Balphegor decided he’d already missed the fight, he disappeared again, probably to go sun himself on a lava rock or something. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Golem day-tripping it
through hell, but Ryerson had pointed out that right now, he was probably safer there than he would be here. Hard to argue with that.
Anyway, his second visitor was Balphagor—the sloth demon, not the hellhound—who had introduced himself, complained about how hard the benches in jail looked, and then snapped his fingers. The next thing Ryerson knew, he was standing in the parking lot of a rainy park in Morocco.
By the time Ryerson pulled up to the curb in front of an apartment building in Algeria, I was up to speed and feeling even guiltier than I had before.
“I’m sorry I left you,” I said. Again.
Ryerson’s hand was on the door, but he twisted in the seat to face me. “You did the right thing. We have the Grimoire. And if you apologize one more time, you’re walking back to Virginia.” Then he got out of the car.
An elevator took us to a cozy one-bedroom apartment overlooking downtown. While Ryerson methodically checked every room for assassins and bogeymen, I wandered over to the living room windows that scraped the floor and ceiling. The city beyond them was beautiful, especially now, bathed in the orange-and-pink glow of the late afternoon sunlight. Light-colored buildings and thick palm trees surrounded by desert and scrub land.
“What city is that?” I asked.
“Béchar,” he said as he rejoined me in the living room. He set a pair of women’s pants and a dark-blue T-shirt on the table. “My friend’s daughter is about your size. I found these in the closet. I’m going to take a shower. You can have the bedroom tonight, and I’ll take the couch.”
That hardly seemed fair, given that this was his friend’s house and he was hurt worse than me, but I knew him well enough to know that arguing about it would be useless, and besides, I liked to reserve our arguments for things that would benefit me.
“Okay.”
Ten minutes later, I had changed out of my mud-caked sweatpants, and Ryerson was showered and dressed in a white button-down shirt and khaki pants. He didn’t bring any clothes with him, so he must have borrowed them from the apartment’s owner.
“I’m going out to work out our passports,” he said, rubbing a towel over his damp hair as he walked into the living room. “I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“Okay.”
The towel stilled, and his eyebrow lifted. “That’s it? You’re not going to argue that you should come with me?”
I dropped onto the couch and grabbed the remote control. “I’m sure you can handle it without me.”
He narrowed his eyes.
“What?” I said. “You have people to threaten and illegal passports to obtain. I have TV shows to catch up on. It’s a busy afternoon for both of us.”
“The shows here are not the same as the ones in the US. And they’re in Arabic.”
“All the more reason for me to spend my time here expanding my cinematic horizons.”
He opened his mouth to argue, closed it, and strode to the door. Maybe he had the same thought about starting arguments that didn’t benefit him. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Try to stay out of trouble until then, okay?”
Geez, so suspicious. To show him he had nothing to worry about, I powered on the TV and gave him a finger wag.
He frowned then turned on his heel and left.
I waited until the echo of his footsteps disappeared down the hall. Then I waited another fifteen minutes, just for good measure. When I was confident he wasn’t waiting outside the door, or something equally untrusting, I flipped off the TV and hauled the Grimoire onto the coffee table in front of me.
I thought you refused to look at the book because you’re afraid of what I’ll find? the voice said.
I was. Then you stole my body while I slept and spent who knows how many hours reading through it. I think it’s safe to say that ship has sailed.
True. So what do you think you’ll find?
The counter-spell for the werewolf curse.
Ah. For your canine friend. The excellent kisser.
Er, yes.
You know, the book always gives witches the spell they desire the most, but it isn’t always the spell you’re expecting.
I don’t desire any other spells.
Let’s find out, shall we?
Right. On that ominous note, here went nothing. With a deep breath, I opened the Grimoire. As they had for Aduna, once the book’s cover was lifted the pages flipped on their own, eventually settling on a spell toward the back of the book.
My pulse sped up as I leaned over the book and read the title out loud.
A Banishment Spell
I frowned. “What does that have to do with werewolves?”
Not a damn thing, unless you want to keep them away, the voice said.
But I don’t want to banish anyone.
We’ll see.
This wasn’t right. The Grimoire had obviously made a mistake. I tried to flip the page—the book was old, maybe some of the pages were stuck together?—but a bolt of magic leapt from the page and zapped my hand, and I yelped.
You can’t force it, the voice said exasperatedly. You know that.
But you read the book for hours, and it never zapped you!
I helped to create the book. The rules for our coven were different.
Great. So you can take over my body and flip to the counter-curse.
As tempting as that offer is, that’s not how it works. The Grimoire will show me all of the spells I desire, not just one, but I have no desire to cure your canine friend.
Disappointment settled in my stomach, and I sagged back into the couch.
So much for the counter-curse.
The Grimoire gives us spells we desperately want, the voice warned, even though we may not realize it yet.
Meaning?
Meaning it would be wise of you to memorize the spell if you’re planning to give the book away.
I supposed so. It wasn’t like I had anything to do until Ryerson returned, anyway. This turned out to be a good thing because it was a complicated spell, with a few ingredients even I’d never heard of before. Part of me wondered if I’d need the spell for Balphagor. If he’d decide the recliner I’d offered him did not suit him after all and try to kill me. And if I’d have time to cast the spell before it was too late. Just to be safe, I spent some time online shopping for spell ingredients. Luckily for me, while some of the ingredients were unusual, they weren’t particularly rare, and I still had Agent Smith’s credit card. I had everything overnighted to Andersen’s lab. Packages that arrived at my apartment when I wasn’t home tended to go missing. Something told me package thieves didn’t frequent CIA headquarters too often.
Once that was done, I tucked the book away and binged on a reality show in search of Algeria’s best baker until Ryerson returned, carrying a brown paper bag.
“How did the threats and torture go?” I asked.
“I didn’t torture anyone.” He didn’t say anything about threats. “The passports should be done by morning.”
I clicked off the TV. “Peachy. What do we do until then?”
“We eat.”
I perked up. “Really? But you hate eating.”
He looked offended as he began to empty the contents of the paper bag onto the counter. Chicken breasts, red and green peppers, rice, hot chili paste, and more. My mouth watered. “No guy hates eating. I just don’t enjoy eating the junk you seem to survive on. Food should be savored. Enjoyed.”
I frowned. “What’s more enjoyable than Cheetos?”
He rolled his eyes and pointed a pair of tongs at a stool at the island separating the kitchen from the living room. “Sit and observe. I’m going to cook you dinner.”
“You can cook?” I said, sliding onto the stool and trying not to sound surprised, and failing miserably.
“I can do a lot of things,” he said, rolling up his sleeves to reveal muscular forearms. “How does kung pao chicken sound?”
I gripped the countertop to keep from swooning. “From scratch?”
He smiled. A gen
uine, dimple-revealing smile, and my stomach fluttered. How was it fair that he was somehow hotter with rolled sleeves and a cheek dimple, chopping peppers, than he was fighting bad guys?
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, sweeping the peppers onto a plate. He set the plate aside and began mixing eggs, milk, salt, and pepper into a bowl.
I pulled two stalks of green onions toward me and motioned for a knife, which Ryerson handed over. “Just wondering if this is what you’re like when you’re off the clock.”
He raised an eyebrow. “If you mean do I spend my time off cooking for women, then no.” And then he winked. Actually winked.
I concentrated on chopping the onions in front of me so he wouldn’t see the blush that rose to my cheeks. “No, I just mean that you seem, I don’t know, more relaxed. Less intense.”
He shrugged. “I don’t get a lot of time off, but when I do, I like to cook. It calms me.”
“What else do you like to do?”
He glanced up from the piece of chicken he was dunking in the egg mixture. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I really don’t know anything about you, outside of your job. What do you do for fun? What’s your family like? What’s your favorite TV show?”
He tossed the chicken in a bowl of flour and some spices and then repeated the process with the rest of the chicken. He was quiet for so long I figured he wasn’t going to answer at all, so I was surprised when he said, “My parents own a farm outside the city. It’s a small farm—a few milk cows, chickens, that sort of thing. They used to grow corn and soybeans, but Dad’s arthritis has kept him out of the fields for the last few years. These days they lease most of their acreage to wheat farmers. Mom keeps a quarter acre near the house for her vegetable garden, though. It’s her pride. Especially her tomatoes. They can grow to the size of your head.” He looked up from tossing a few chicken pieces into the flour and grinned. “You should try her lasagna with her homemade tomato sauce. Best thing you’ll ever taste.”
Ryerson’s grin was infectious, and I found myself smiling back. “Did she teach you to cook?”
“Yeah. I have two brothers, but they were never much interested in the kitchen, so cooking was kind of our thing.”
You Only Spell Twic Page 23
