by Angie Fox
“What’s wrong?” I asked, shoving my way toward the bedside clock. Usually when someone woke me up at five thirty in the morning, our world had just gone to h-e-double hockey sticks.
I stumbled past the sleeping dragon, unlocked the door and found Talos on the other side, his black hair an unruly mess and his narrow face etched with concern.
“Diana’s Skye stone is missing,” he said, wasting no time on niceties. “Tell me you know something about it.”
“No,” I said, concerned and mildly annoyed as he glowered down at me. “What do you know about it?”
He’d taken it the night the sky had turned green. What was to say he hadn’t stolen it a second time?
He had the nerve to look offended. “It wasn’t me. I gave my word I wouldn’t touch it again.”
Oh, well wasn’t that a comfort? “And your word is…?”
“Everything to a griffin,” he said. “I don’t think you understand the severity of the situation. Diana needs the stone to focus her power and recover her magic.”
Not to mention protect us all.
I didn’t need the hand-puppet version. I knew what was at stake.
“I’ll be ready in one minute.” I left him in the hallway while I changed into black leather pants and my lucky purple bustier. I threw my hair back into a ponytail and slid on my black leather boots.
I’d been trying so hard to be on vacation. Now it almost felt good to get back into my work clothes, like I was no longer in denial. This getaway had been over before it began and I might as well admit it. I hitched my demon slayer utility belt around my waist and fastened the crystal buckle. No telling what we’d have to face today.
“Okay,” I said, pleased at how Talos took a step backward when I opened the door. “Take me to Diana.”
“I can’t,” he said, stiffly. “Diana and Dyonne have gone to their private retreat. We dare not interfere.”
“Fine.” They could handle it their way; we’d hit it from our end. “Come on,” I said, slapping Talos on the shoulder and heading down the hall toward the stairs. “We’ll enlist the witches.”
He gave a slight gurgle. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“Probably not,” I answered truthfully. The Red Skulls tended to complicate things wherever they went, but I’d bet my last switch star they knew more about Skye magic than I did.
“Truly. You’re a demon slayer! What of this internal locator system you have?” he asked as we hurried down the stairs
He said it as if I were a human metal detector. “It’s more like a sixth sense for danger, and it only pings when something is about to attack me.”
“Too bad,” Talos answered. I resisted the urge to shove him down the last two steps. The griffin needed an edit button.
“Answer me this,” I said, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. “What can someone else do with Diana’s Skye stone? You told me yourself you couldn’t use it for anything but to see where their magic had weakened.”
“Yes,” he said, like I was the slow contestant on Jeopardy! “But if our enemies can’t use it to gain power, they can still use it to make Diana lose power. The end result is the same. I’m strong, but I can’t defend this entire estate by myself.”
He saw my shock and it only urged him on. “Make no mistake, we will die for this place. We pledged ourselves and we shall go down fighting.”
“Frankly, I’d like to find another way,” I said, heading for the back hall. I wasn’t optimistic enough to think I’d survive this if Talos didn’t.
“I agree,” he said.
Too bad I still didn’t trust him. I wasn’t about to take his word that he couldn’t do anything with a stolen Skye stone. If only Dimitri were here. He’d know whether Talos was telling the truth.
I thought about calling him and realized my Sprint calling plan didn’t include Greece, much less ultrasecret griffin clan meetings. Maybe Diana or Dyonne would know how to reach their brother.
This was the second break-in since I’d arrived. We had a traitor among us, and I was willing to bet he’d just yanked me out of bed, pretending to help.
I pushed my way out the doors to the patio. The garden looked almost serene in the early-morning light. Birds chirped and hopped over the muddy hole where the sundial fountain had been. The witches had also cleared out a large swath of rosebushes that had blocked the stone house, and installed a barbecue pit made from half a wine barrel. Classy.
Maybe they’d know what to do with Talos. “Where were you last night?” I asked him as we approached the armory.
He walked with me through the remains of the rose garden as if he expected to step on dog poop. “Believe it or not,” he said, with no small amount of disgust, “I spent the night with your biker witches.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I wish I were. A woman named Ant Eater shoved homemade whiskey under my nose. Being hospitable, I tried it.” He winced at the memory. “The next thing I remember was a man named Bob rolling his wheelchair past my head this morning, asking if I’d like bacon.”
“So they know what’s going on?” I asked. Good.
“No, I’d returned to my room when Diana sounded the alarm. I came straight to you.”
Lucky me.
Frieda threw back the wooden front door so hard it bounced against the wall. “Talos! How ya doing?” she waved. “Your head feeling any better?”
“No,” Talos said.
She wore lime green leather pants and a zebra-print halter top. “Would you like a hangover spell?” she asked, chomping on gum. “We got plenty brewed up in the house.”
“No,” he repeated.
There was no time for Talos’s headache anyway. “We need to talk to Grandma and Ant Eater. We have a situation.”
Good thing the biker witches were used to things going wrong. Grandma and Ant Eater rushed right out, along with the half dozen or so other witches who liked to eavesdrop. They munched on bacon while Talos and I explained the situation.
“Who did it?” Grandma demanded, tossing the last of her breakfast to Pirate. Sneaky dog. I thought I’d locked him in the room.
Ant Eater shook her head. “Talos was with us, Dimitri and Amara are gone, our witches are clean, the sisters are clean.” She tapped a finger against her gold front tooth. “Nothing from the outside came in through the wards last night.”
“How do you know?”
She gave me a look that could tan leather. “I know.”
“Fine.” I believed her. “So we don’t know who took the stone or where it is now.” It was completely unacceptable. We needed a plan.
Frieda patted her stack of blonde hair. “We could work up some magic traps, and unlike the time in Little Rock—”
The witches glared at her.
“What happened in Little Rock?” I asked.
Scarlet, the red-haired witch, winced. “Frieda got eaten.”
Frieda shook her head, remembering. “Lost a perfectly good pair of hot-pink platform shoes, rhinestone buckles and all.” She sighed wistfully. “But never you mind. This time, we’ll make sure our magic is immune.”
“You’re forgetting about the wards around this place,” Grandma said. “Traps would pull them down.”
We were interrupted by a wide-eyed Diana rushing out onto the patio, followed closely by Dyonne.
“It’s gone!” Diana announced, tears in her eyes. She sank into a wrought-iron patio chair. “I thought if we did some meditations, focused our remaining strength, we could sense where it is. But…” She gestured helplessly.
“This won’t do,” Talos said. “Diana, you must try to track your magic.”
“I can’t,” she wailed. “One minute it was on my dresser and the next minute—poof!”
Grandma shook her head. “It can’t just disappear.”
“It did!” Diana insisted, clutching at her pink silk nightgown.
Grandma inspected Diana’s pupils, then started looking under Diana’s fingernail
s for who knew what.
In the meantime, I tried to think of something, anything, that would help us look. The Skye stone was no bigger than a billiard ball. I could see it disappearing to a safe place. It glowed with an inner magic from the moment Diana touched it during training. It shone even brighter in my dream. I remembered it now. It had been so real.
The facts clicked into place in my mind.
I had a logic teacher who always said you should never discount an answer simply because you didn’t expect the data to lead you there. And boy, did I love logic.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, backing away from the group.
“Lizzie, are you on to something?” Grandma asked.
“Maybe—just give me a minute,” I said, heading down the stone path and into the garden. “Alone,” I added, before I had a herd of witches and griffins following me.
I didn’t want to try to explain where I was going. I didn’t even know if the hazy place in my mind existed in real life. Pirate’s nails clicked on the slate path behind me as I made my way toward a spot at the very edge of the gardens. Subtle he was not.
“I’d rather do this alone, Pirate,” I said, searching for the overgrown trail leading into the thick of the garden.
“Um-hum,” he said, his nose tickling my heels. “I saw how you looked when you took off, like you’re about to go get the mail without me.”
I dug around one of the pink flowering bushes invading the walkway. Yeah, well getting the mail with Pirate took twenty minutes. He had to sniff every rock, tree and blade of grass within twenty feet of the curb.
“Stick close,” I said. “This could be nothing or…” I didn’t know what, but I wasn’t about to ignore anything that could help me find Diana’s stone.
“Um-hum.” Pirate huffed, his hot breath tickling my leg. “You need a watchdog.”
We made our way down the tangled path together. Pirate kept his nose to the ground while I searched the thick garden foliage for anything out of the ordinary.
“You know I asked Ant Eater about the ASPCC,” Pirate said, leaping over a prickly branch like it was a track-and-field hurdle.
Sweat trickled down my back. “Pirate, buddy. We don’t have time.”
“She said dragons are wild animals and they don’t take wild animals. So see? That dragon needs me.”
This trail, overgrown as it was, seemed so familiar. Yet I knew I’d never been here before. “If dragons are wild,” I said to my dog, trying to make sense of this place, “then you can let him go. He’ll be fine.”
We, on the other hand…
I stopped dead when I ducked around the branches of a prickly, flowering bush and spotted an ancient oak like the one I’d seen last night. To the right of it, I found a narrow path, almost invisible among the crush of bougainvillea bushes and overgrown olive trees.
“This is it!”
Pirate danced in place. “Oh, Lizzie. You think so?”
The branches scratched at my arms as I followed the besieged trail from my dream. Pirate dug his nose into the ground as he launched into full protective mode. His body stiffened and his stubby tail quivered. Lucky for me, he took his job as a guard dog seriously.
“You okay, buddy?” I asked as I swatted gnats away from my face.
“Are you kidding? I am on duty. Hole!” he hollered.
I looked down and saw a crater in the ground, deep enough to turn an ankle. “Nice watch-dogging.”
Pirate puffed out his chest. “I know you need me.”
I was about to reach down and pat him on the head when I saw a wooden bridge around the bend—exactly where I expected it to be. This was no longer a coincidence.
“Come on,” I said, clearing the hole in a single leap. “Let’s move.”
We crossed the bridge and came to a secluded spot where the knapweed and wild orchids buzzed heavily with insects. The strangest sense of déjà vu overtook me, although I knew it wasn’t just a feeling. I had been here before.
Straight ahead, at the base of a wild pomegranate tree growing crooked against a rock, I’d find Diana’s stone.
I found a broken tree branch and started digging.
Pirate slipped in at my elbow. “Oh, no, no. Allow me.”
His front paws went to work like a mini–trench digger, the volcanic soil flying out behind him. I knelt to the side, watching, until his paws hit pay dirt. “It’s slippery!”
“It’s the stone!” I lifted Pirate out of his hole with one hand and used the other to pull the brilliant blue Skye stone from its hiding place. Even caked in grime, it was majestic. I wiped it against my pants and it shone even brighter.
Amazing.
“Now how’d you know to look here?” Pirate asked with a tilt of his head.
“You’re not the only one who’s going to ask me that,” I said grimly.
Right then, a chill slid up my back as I spotted the dark-haired woman watching us from the trees. “You!” I struggled to see her face through the leaves.
She turned and fled.
“Wait!” I shouted, charging after her.
She must have been some kind of Amazon, because she moved through the dense foliage like water. I, on the other hand, tripped in the tangled underbrush, banged against every trunk and tree branch and even managed to catch a spiderweb in the face.
“Hold up!” I called, yanking the gooey mess from my mouth. I hate spiders. “I just want to talk.”
Which was a lie. I was pretty sure she’d stolen my magic, which meant she deserved a switch star up the butt.
I slowed and came to a stop in a puddle of goo. She was long gone.
Pirate charged ahead of me. “Whee! What are we looking for?”
“The woman. Can you follow her?”
My dog spun twice, his tongue lolling out. “What woman? I thought you saw a rabbit!”
“You chase rabbits. I chase people who want to kill us.”
He shoved his nose into the underbrush. “Yep. We sure do have fun. Now what is that smell?”
“Evil,” I said.
“More like dead bird with a hint of mouse. Mmm…odiferous.”
“Odiferous?”
Pirate nodded. “Thirteen-point Scrabble word.”
“Right,” I said, wishing the ghost who taught Pirate Scrabble was handy right now. I couldn’t believe the dark-haired woman could just disappear. Again.
It creeped me out to no end that she’d been watching me.
At least I had the stone.
We filled in the hole because, well, I like to leave things how I find them. Then we headed back for the house.
If I were in a soul-searching mood, which I was not, I would have realized I was avoiding going back. I let Pirate sniff his way to bliss on the trail ahead. We stopped to inspect the bridge and I kept an eye out for our dark-haired spy. We didn’t see her again—not that day, at least.
Diana cried and the biker witches whooped and cheered when I returned the stone. Talos watched me with barely contained fury. I didn’t blame him. I couldn’t explain how I’d known the stone would be under a remote tree, or how I’d known where to dig.
A chill slid up my spine. I’d tapped into something evil. Or worse yet, it had sunk its claws into me.
I’d have given anything to talk to Dimitri, or simply to hug the man. But he was doing what needed to be done and so was I.
At least he had Amara there to support him. My stomach hollowed at the thought. I wished it could have been me.
But facts were facts. I couldn’t begrudge him the space he needed to rebuild his family. After all, the Dominos clan and Amara seemed to be a better fit than me and the biker witches. Perhaps they’d return soon, flags flying. In the meantime, I’d do my best to fight our battle on the ground.
Grandma handed me a Pabst Blue Ribbon. Don’t ask me where she found it on Santorini. Knowing the witches, they’d brought their own stash.
“That was weird,” she said.
“Understatement of the yea
r,” I replied, holding the welcome cold of the can against my forehead, actually considering a swig. I’d never had beer before breakfast, but this whole thing was wigging me out.
“You going to be able to do your job?” she asked, taking a sip of her own can, more serious than I would have liked her to be.
“Of course,” I said too quickly, lowering the can. An unholy being had stolen part of me. This time, it had helped us. But that’s usually how evil got a foothold, by posing as something you could control.
I refused to be fooled. I’d keep my eyes and ears open—and my dreams closed.
“You gonna drink that?” Ant Eater asked. I hadn’t even seen her walk up. She cocked her head at a puff of smoke beyond the stone house. “’Cause Rachmort just popped in. Literally.”
“Good,” I said, handing her the beer and heading for the educational equivalent of ground zero.
Maybe he’d have some answers. I was more than ready to meet my destiny.
Chapter Fourteen
The legendary demon slayer instructor Zebediah Rachmort, who was also a cursed-creatures consultant for the Department of Intramagical Matters’ Lost Souls Outreach program, stood under an apple tree and dusted off his black top hat. He wore a burgundy waistcoat and brown pants with pinstripes. When he was satisfied with the state of his hat, which was still billowing modest clouds of white dust, he spun it once in his fingers before planting it squarely atop his head.
“Lizzie Brown,” he said, greeting me with all the pleasure and familiarity of a long-lost friend.
The wrinkles around his eyes and the angle of his cheekbones gave him an air of jocular authority. His white hair reminded me of Einstein’s, while his Victorian-era clothes, neatly clipped sideburns and large gold watch fob looked like something out of a Dickens novel.
It was impossible to tell how old he was. The man seemed almost timeless.
He gestured me over with no small amount of glee. On his middle finger, he wore a humongous gold and copper ring that looked more like a compass than a piece of jewelry.
“You’re taller than your Great-aunt Evie,” he said, leaning way too far into my personal space. “But you have her eyes.”
