“How much of this got out? Did anyone see?”
Merry nodded. “People saw quite a bit of it, but all the videos are being taken down. The posts we’ve all been sharing are being deleted. The news is being erased.”
That couldn’t happen. If they went that far, then…
If people weren’t reminded of this, of the atrocities that were happening—
Would they care? Even with the reminders?
Some would.
But would enough of them?
It was time for her to face the reality. There wasn’t going to be a peaceful situation that would come from any of this. The President didn’t want one. She was doing everything in her power to lie to the public and to hide and the abductions and killing them when they tried to flee or defend themselves.
She wasn’t protecting the American people anymore.
But, at least, Paige didn’t have to worry about the fallout from people seeing she might be the monster the President claimed they all were.
She just needed to figure out what kind of monster she was becoming.
Elder Yad brought out two ancient books. He tapped one of them. “These might help.”
Paige was really over the really cool, ancient books in dead languages that would give her the answers to the universe if she just had a year’s worth of downtime to read them. “Cliff notes?”
Elder Yad shrugged with a smile. “No one’s been able to read them.”
So, they were paper weights. “I’m really glad you brought them over, then. This lamp’s been a little low. I can use them to raise it up.”
Merry gave her a dry look and pulled one of them toward her, opening it. “There’s a spell.”
“But he just said that—”
“It’s a spell that gives the person the information can help the ability to read it,” Elder Yad said carefully. “We haven’t had anyone who needed the information who could also use it.”
“And you believe that’s me?”
“I do,” Merry said firmly.
Elder Yad gave her a frumpled look that said he didn’t.
Merry closed the book on her lap with a loud thump and looked at Paige hard. “There’s a reason we’ve been trying to hone our three bloodlines.”
Which was the reason Paige had married her brother. Step-brother, but still. When she’d discovered that, she’d felt a little like Leia Skywalker after kissing Luke and then discovering they were twins. Even though Paige and Mark-the-Leah-Daddy didn’t share any blood relations.
But the family trees really didn’t wind around each other a little close for comfort. “And what reason is that?”
Merry bowed her head for a moment and looked her in the eye.
“Back before the old witch families departed the old world, there were two different types of magick: wild magick of the witches and the war magick of the mages. Wild magick came from the elements. War magick came from earth’s veins, the ley lines.
But as the families intermarried, those magicks became tainted and blended.
Then a witch was born with the ability to tap into the ley lines. She called her abilities life magick.”
Had Alma known this? She kept a lot to herself, and explained a lot of it away as trying to protect Paige. She loved the old woman deeply, but damn. She could have shared more.
“But shortly after she rose to her power, she and the other witch families were pushed out of the old world and into the new. That one witch created the divided family they now had: the Whiskeys, Eastwoods, and Blackmans. Life magick, blood magick, and door magick.”
“Oh fuck me. Really?” Why did she have to be related to Merry Eastwood?
Merr raised a brow. “You’re the closest we’ve been able to come to having a witch who could tap into the same magicks as the mages.” Merry shook her head with a dry expression on her face. “You’re our only real defense against DoDO.”
Paige just stared at her for a long, withering moment.
Merry handed over the book. “If you don’t believe me, open the book.” She handed her a piece of paper with an incantation and a very sharp, very slim knife. “I want that knife back.”
Paige muttered the spell Merry gave her, pricking her finger to bleed on the first page.
And the scribbles turned to words.
A chill swept down Paige’s spine. “No,” she whispered. “This is too much.”
Elder Yad set his book down on the table beside her. “Be that as it may, it is what it is. And you can either choose to wail about it or stand up to the tide.”
Paige just stared up at him like he was a crazy person. What the hell did that even mean? Like she would stand around and wail.
For longer than fifteen minutes. Every once in a while, that’s exactly what the situation called for. Wailing.
In private.
In teh shower.
Where no one could hear her or see her cry.
The front door slammed open and Leah stumbled through. “Mom,” she said, collapsing onto the green couch. “They have the Blackmans.”
“What do you mean?” They who? How? When?
Leah took in a deep breath. “DoDO. They came and grabbed the Blackmans.” She swallowed, her blue eyes wide. “They’re gone.”
As if on cue, the electricity went out.
Right. No communication. Power was gone.
And now they had no way to open doors to get supplies.
This was a new form of Hell.
22
Merry and Elder Yad rose to leave. “I’ll have a location for you shortly.” Merry held her hand out for the knife.
For her? What was she supposed to do? She wanted to stab the knife in the blood witch’s heart.
Of course. She had to find a way to open a door.
Now, she had herself and Leah, but neither of them were exceptionally good at that magick yet. Granted, she knew they were still Plan A, but she needed to find a good Plan B.
Just as soon as she wrangled the kids.
Cyn and her portal to the spirit animal plane might be the Plan B they needed, but Paige was going to have to talk to her about how possible it was to use it this way. The portal Cyn had led to one location; the Library and the museum of magickally dangerous objects. Kind of like their own Warehouse 13, only less cool because the entrance was a closet door and they didn’t have a magick football.
The big question was if they were they going to use it the way she wanted? She really didn’t know.
Leah wasn’t leaving her side, and neither were the other kids.
Roxxie had disappeared somewhere, hopefully looking for a reason for Bobby’s rapid growth, so Paige decided to just keep Bobby with her.
Leslie and Nick and Mark and the entire pack were busy doing their things, so Paige’s kids were with her. She couldn’t just shirk them off on someone else this time.
She’d make it work. It was just going to take longer because everything with kids seemed to take longer.
Ember and Rai were awake finally and shifting into as many animals as they could as if sleeping had cheated them on all their fun and they were making up for it. It was almost like a contest between them now.
They’d both grown considerably and alarmingly, though. They were gaining on Bobby.
And Bobby had grown more just since earlier that morning.
That couldn’t be good, right?
She piled all the kids into her car, telling the twins they needed to be human while she drove. No shifting in the car. They both gave her sad baby faces in every shape they could. They even managed to make a sad baby snake face, which she hadn’t thought was possible.
However, Rai and Ember were now to the point where she had to readjust the belts on their car seats. Like, she had to take them out of the slots in the back and raise them up. They’d grown hella fast in a short time.
This was taking forever, but Leah helped it go a bit faster.
&nb
sp; But she’d finally managed to wrangle everyone into their respective seats, and Leah was getting her own self buckled.
Paige really appreciated older kids who could take care of themselves.
Roxxie appeared beside her just as she was about to slide into the driver’s seat of the car, glad she was still in the habit of carrying keys she never seemed to need.
Roxxie didn’t look great. “What’s wrong?” Paige closed the door and caught Roxxie.
The angel closed her eyes and staggered a little. “The—it’s just really hard to travel.”
“Okay. Then maybe rethink that. Like, walk like a human for a bit.” Which… Paige looked in the car. There was no way she could squish one more human into her car. Well, she could. But it would be like riding in a sardine can on wheels.
Roxxie leaned against the car, looking beyond exhausted. Her eyes were sunk in as were her cheeks.
Yeah. Okay. Paige needed to hear what Roxxie had to say, but she also needed to talk to Cyn and she might also need to talk to Merry. She just didn’t know. So, Paige opened the car door, assessing the kid situation. “Okay. We need to get rid of one car seat. So, Rai or Ember, I need you to shift into something small.”
Rai responded first, shifting into a leopard kitten. That seemed to be her favorite.
But Ember wasn’t to be outdone. He shifted into a baby bird.
“No birds!” Paige opened the back door and took out Ember’s car seat, popping the trunk to shove it inside.
Roxxie raised one hand and nearly fell over. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.” With Ember’s seat in the trunk—that had been a lot of time wasted on readjusting their belts if she wasn’t even going to use them—Paige went to the other passenger door. “Leah, you and Bobby in the back.”
Leah grumbled, but got out of the front passenger seat.
Rai had shifted into a ferret.
Ember shifted into a rat.
Rai then shifted into a small mouse.
Ember just disappeared.
Paige rolled her eyes and took the other car seat out, undoing the belt that held Bobby. “Move that over.”
Bobby glowered but did as he was told.
Her toddler wasn’t a toddler anymore. He was a small kid now. Geez. That should scare the crap out of her, and it did. A little. But not nearly as much as it made her feel relieved. She was going to be fighting yet another battle, a war, really. She didn’t need to be saddled with tiny tots.
Leah helped Bobby with his seat belt as Roxxie maneuvered around the hood of the car to get herself into the front passenger seat.
With everyone belted in except for her two wild children who were now both insects of some kind, Paige put the car in motion, heading toward Cyn’s house. “You’ve gotta change the way you live and interact, Rox. You’re not a full fledged angel anymore.”
“I know. I just…” She trailed off, gripping the dashboard, her fingertips going white. “I sometimes forget.”
Paige sighed deeply. “Tell me you at least put yourself through this for a reason?”
Roxxie glanced over her shoulder. “Honestly, no. There’s no precedent.”
“Do you think it has something to do with the gates?”
Roxxie nodded. “But how? I don’t know. I had gone to our library—”
“I’m taking you to another one.”
The angel grunted. “—thinking that there might be some connection to the gates, but there’s no information on them. At all.”
Hmm. Because it wasn’t something that needed to be shared or written down? Or because someone was hiding it? “You’re losing power.”
“And he’s gaining it.” Roxxie looked over her shoulder. “His height isn’t the only thing he’s getting.”
“What?”
Roxxie nodded. “I don’t know why. Prophets aren’t usually powerful. They don’t usually need it, but there were a few who did. Those eras did not end well.”
“What do you mean? Like Biblical bad?”
“Like so bad it wasn’t recorded.”
Wasn’t recorded—“Does this have anything to do with the twins?” Paige didn’t meet with a lot of traffic as she crossed town to get to Cyn’s house. Most people understood that without gas, driving was a bad idea. There were, however, a lot of people on bicycles. “The reason the angels wanted them dead? Because of something that happened in non-recorded history?”
Roxxie just lifted two tired shoulders. “I just know they were scared. And I’m afraid this might be another thing that would scare them.”
“Great. But there aren’t a lot of angels here.”
“No. Most of the angels who had been here are gone. They’re in heaven. Staying here is a drain to our systems.”
That didn’t seem to be the case for the demons. “That’s good for us.” Except—Paige just had another thing whack her in her head. A thought. A memory. A fact she shouldn’t have misplaced. “You’re the anchor to the heaven gate. Is that draining you?”
“If anything, it’s making me better, I think?” Roxxie gave her a pained smile. “You should see the other angels.”
“Okay. Well, um.” If angels weren’t hunting Bobby, then the threat level was down. “Do you think Bobby will be okay?”
“I hope so? We just have to watch.”
Paige pulled up in front of Cyn’s house. “Well, then, Bobby isn’t the main priority for you now. You are. So, take care of you.”
“I’ll take care of me and keep looking for information on him.”
Paige smiled her thanks and shut off the car. “Be something big enough that I can see you.”
Ember and Rai shifted into baby elephants, which would have been cute except they were not big enough to not fit in the back seat as baby elephants and they’d squished Leah and Bobby.
Bobby zapped them both with some golden angel light.
Ember released an elephant trumpet that turned into a bear roar.
Rai screeched as an owl and flew out.
Being a bear was still a bad idea because the kid was getting big.
Leah scolded him and she shoved Bobby out of the car to save his life from suffocation by baby brat fur.
Paige just got out and let them deal with themselves.
Cyn’s family home was less of a house and more of a small mansion.
Cyn stepped out of the door one hand on her hip, her blue eyes narrowed. Her streak of blue hair was brighter than it had been the last time Paige had seen it. Which was good. Someone had to have time for that.
As much as Paige wanted to do the fantasy hair colors because they really did look neat, they were a lot of work, too. She’d be boring brown for a while longer. “Hey. I’d love to small talk with you, but, first, I suck at it and, second, I just don’t have time.”
Cyn clamped her teeth shut and crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you need?”
Paige glanced over at the rather large tree that dominated the front lawn. Cyn’s parents had become the grounding stone for the base of that tree, their bodies permanently entwined in the tree’s heart. They apparently were on the other side of the portal, their souls inhabiting the Library or whatever was on the other side. Paige didn’t understand all the particulars, but they weren’t dead. That’s what she really understood. “We need to see if we can use the Vada Bhoomi to get people from one town to another.”
“The Vaada Bhoomi,” Cyn corrected with a shake of her head. “It doesn’t work like that.”
She’d been afraid of that. “Well, I need to see if maybe there’s something in your museum of fantastical things that might be able to help.” She held up a hand to stall whatever was about to come out of Cyn’s mouth. That woman could put up more roadblocks of what-if’s and why-nots Paige had ever seen. “We’ve got para’s trapped all over the damned U.S. and we need to get them relocated to somewhere else that’s safe.”
Lynx stepped out, looking good.
He’d been a cat just a few weeks earlier. He’d been trapped in the Vaada Bhoomi as Bastet’s temple cat for over two hundred years. Or two thousand. Something like that. A really long time. He’d been trapped as a temple cat for a really long time, but he was back to human and mated to Cyn and it looked good. Even with his cat ears. “We’ll do what we can.”
“Great. Thank you.” Paige should probably stay and talk a little more. She got the feeling that Cyn was a person who appreciated being talked to. An extrovert. Paige didn’t have time for that. One day, hopefully, the two of them could sit down and get to know one another. Now wasn’t that time.
She really had to get the Blackmans back. Without them, Troutdale, and everyone else, were doomed.
She got back in the car and shouted, “Let me know what you find out.”
Cyn glared.
Lynx waved.
The kids piled in with screams and screeches.
Paige didn’t wait for the seatbelt check this time. Next stop, Merry’s.
The Eastwood “house” was even more of a mansion than Cyn’s family home. But she was becoming a frequent flyer now, kinda. She rang the doorbell and opened the door, letting herself in. Rai and Ember were now puppies ruckusing about.
Bobby chased after them, but not in a toddler way. It was more of a younger Tyler way—a young older person, if that made any sense. He was trying to get them to calm down.
“Guys,” Paige barked in her best Mom voice, letting her alpha will slip through a little. “Cut it out.” There were things more valuable than Paige and all of her kids together, even if they were sold on the slave market.
Ollie appeared from one of the rooms to Paige’s right with a warm smile. “Hey, sis.”
This family line stuff was for the birds. They shared the same father, a Blackman, while Paige had married Ollie’s brother. Ollie was only related to Leah through Merry. Weirdest family tree ever and it made Paige feel more than a little redneck, but…Paige liked Ollie. For an Eastwood blood witch, he was pretty decent.
Wait. He was an Eastwood blood witch with Blackman door magick. She might be able to use him too. “Hey, brother.”
He frowned at her, pulling back a little as he came in for a hug. “You’re planning to use me.”
Whiskey Storm Page 19
