by Lisa Edmonds
Novak reached for something at the small of his back and I saw a flash of metal. A gun.
Without hesitation, Garrett punched Novak in the side of the head, his fist wrapped in bright green earth magic that flared when it made contact. Novak went down, his skull caved in.
Apparently, Garrett preferred to use his earth magic as a gauntlet. I supposed it made sense; my whip was an elegant, precise weapon and Garrett was more of a brawler. He’d only used a fraction of the power he’d siphoned from Novak, though—if he’d hit him with all that stolen magic, he’d have turned Novak into paste.
Malcolm flew to my side. “Where’s Sean?”
Ben whined, walking in a circle on the dirt where Sean had been buried. He looked at me and whined again.
Behind me, Ortiz screamed. My grandfather’s fire mage had scored a direct hit with a fireball and Ortiz was burning alive. I didn’t particularly care about Bell’s people, except for Allan, but we might need Ortiz to take out Moses.
“Malcolm, help him,” I said.
“Got it.” The ghost zipped away toward Ortiz and Nora.
I stared at the mountain of dirt in front of me. I didn’t know where to look for Sean. He could have been pulled straight down or in any direction, and he was suffocating with every moment that passed.
Suddenly, I felt myself pulled forward and to the left. The wolf amulet around my neck pulsed frantically. Sean must have shifted back to human and invoked his amulet.
I grabbed my amulet and squeezed it hard. “I hear you,” I whispered. “I’m coming.”
Trees and broken earth.
“I’ll show you broken earth,” I snarled. I stuck my hands into the dirt, grabbed the energy stored in my arm cuffs, and loosed earth magic so powerful the ground didn’t just tremble—it thundered.
The earth shook and split open. I pulled with all my might, bringing up all of the earth beneath where the amulet had brought me.
The chasm grew, splitting the lawn and spewing tons of dirt out of the ground, and still no sign of Sean. Finally, the earth gave him up. Sean appeared, naked and covered with dirt. He must have been buried more than twenty feet down.
He wasn’t moving.
I pulled my hands out of the earth and let go of the power in the cuffs. My heart in my throat, I crawled through the dirt to get to him. Beneath the layer of grime, his skin was gray. His breathing was shallow, but he was alive. I cleaned as much of the dirt from his face as I could.
Finally, he coughed and opened his eyes. “My Alice,” he rasped.
“My Sean.” I kissed him, then rested my forehead on his, inhaling his familiar forest scent. Ben nudged Sean’s hand with his bloody muzzle. Sean put his hand on Ben’s head.
Malcolm appeared at my side. “Ortiz and the other fire mage are dead,” he reported. “I couldn’t save Ortiz. I was able to distract the fire mage long enough for Nora to take him out.” He gestured at the house, where a sizable amount of blood had splashed over the exterior wall. The fire mage’s body—or what was left of it—lay on the ground below it. Nora had apparently done her air-magic blasting thing and splattered the fire mage against the wall while I was trying to save Sean. I tried not to see what was left of Ortiz. It wasn’t much.
Nora strode up to us. Allan Garrett was behind her, Novak’s magic still crackling on his hands. “Let’s go,” Nora snapped. “Our targets are inside.”
Sean slowly got to his feet. I handed him spare clothes from the backpack: a black T-shirt and drawstring pants. He put them on as Arkady and Matthias joined us, on high alert and watching for trouble.
“You okay?” Arkady asked me as Matthias scanned the yard.
“I’m good,” I fibbed. My head throbbed from all the magic I’d used and my arms felt like they might be mildly burned from the cuffs. The runes I’d cut into my abdomen still bled, but my black clothing and jacket hid the blood.
Where Amira and the Hunters were, I wasn’t sure—possibly inside the house already. I’d lost track of them during our fight with Novak. If they were inside, however, things seemed awfully quiet. I would have expected at least a bit of a ruckus, given there were Hunters involved, but I didn’t hear any fighting or screaming.
I spotted movement in the conservatory. I couldn’t see who it was or how many people might be in there because of the heavy condensation on the inside of the glass.
I touched Malcolm. See if you can find out where Moses is in the house, I told him. Stay clear of him, though.
Got it, Malcolm said in my head. He went invisible and zipped away.
Nora headed for the hole in the back of the house where the back door used to be.
Sean caught my arm and bent his head to put his mouth near my ear. “I don’t smell Haggar and his men in the woods anymore,” he murmured. “We’re downwind. I should be able to smell them if they’re still waiting for us at the rally point.”
“Maybe they fell back when the magic started flying,” I said quietly. “We need another exit strategy just in case.”
He gave me a nod. We headed for the house with Nora in front of us and Ben, Arkady, and Matthias behind us.
Malcolm suddenly appeared at my side and put his hand on my shoulder. Murphy’s in the conservatory with the weapons dealer, he said in my head, his voice urgent. Amira’s in there too, with her Hunters, but they’re staying back. I don’t know why. I’m getting a weird vibe. Something’s going on.
I stopped in my tracks, halting the group just short of the house.
Nora turned around, her eyes flashing. “What’s the problem?”
“Nothing.” I took a black glove from my jacket pocket and tossed it to her. “Hold this for me, would you?”
She didn’t catch it instinctively as most people would have—she was too well-trained for that. But a small knit glove wasn’t any form of magic delivery she was probably familiar with, not to mention it was one of the least threatening items someone could toss at someone else, so she didn’t burn it to ash in midair like she should have. The glove hit her leg and fell to the grass.
Carly’s spell ignited and rolled over us with a puff of parchment scent. Nora blinked at me, dazed. Her mouth moved but nothing came out. She staggered and reached for the side of the house to steady herself. Behind me, I heard two heavy thumps as Matthias and Garrett went down.
“You need to sit down. You don’t look so good,” I told Nora as she sagged to the ground and sat with her legs out in front of her, like a marionette with its strings cut.
It was tempting to knock her out, but until we knew what was going on, I didn’t necessarily want her totally out of commission—just out of the way until I could figure out what Moses was up to and why the hell Amira hadn’t taken him out.
“Carly’s disorientation spell worked like a charm,” Sean said.
Arkady swore. “What the hell did you do?” she asked me.
I turned. Matthias and Garrett both sat in the grass, looking around in confusion. Arkady was still on her feet, a gun in each hand. She eyed me suspiciously.
“Something’s going on,” I told her. I jerked my head toward the conservatory. “Murphy’s in there with Amira and the Hunters and she’s not letting them tear him to shreds. You know anything about this?”
Arkady frowned and shook her head. “No. Why isn’t she killing him? I thought that was what we were here to do.”
“Yeah, I thought so too. Sean says the mercs aren’t waiting for us in the woods anymore. I think we’ve been played, but I don’t know by whom or why.”
“So you magicked the people you don’t trust.” She pulled an amulet on a leather cord out from under her shirt. “Is that why you gave me this and told me not to let anyone see it? Did it keep the spell from getting me too?”
“Yup,” I confirmed.
She tucked the amulet back into her shirt and looked down at Matthias, who blinked up at her with a vacant expression. “Thanks for trusting me,” she said finally. “I’m kinda mad that you spelled my sort-of bo
yfriend, though.”
“He’ll be fine, as long as he’s not part of whatever’s going on here,” I promised. “Let’s go inside and figure out what Amira’s waiting for.”
“We can’t just leave them here like this. They’re defenseless.” She moved so her back was against the side of the house. “I’ll stay and watch them. I’m not much use against mages anyway.”
“Okay,” I said. “Watch yourself. Holler if you need help.”
She gave me a thin smile. “Ditto. Go get ’em, tiger.”
With Sean at my side and Ben and Malcolm right behind us, I stepped over Nora and headed into the house to face the monster waiting for me.
24
The inside of the house was surprisingly well-lit and full of elegant, expensive furniture. There was no one in the first room we entered, which looked like some kind of parlor.
I took two steps inside and suddenly the air around me went ice-cold. My breath hung in the air. The chill was as heavy as thick fog. I’d never felt anything like it.
“Malcolm,” I said carefully, “How many ghosts are in this room?”
“A lot,” he told me. “Like, a lot a lot.”
“What are they doing?” Sean asked.
“Watching Alice,” Malcolm said.
I’d been around ghosts all my life, but never this many in one place—and never so many wraiths and poltergeists all at once. Their madness was like small, cold fingers stroking my brain and clawing at my skin.
I shivered hard. “What do they want me to do?”
Cold, formless fingers caressed my face. I flinched but held my ground. “Take the gray man away,” a voice murmured in my ear. I couldn’t tell if the spirit was male or female. “The new one says you can.”
I assumed “the new one” referred to Malcolm. Strange that both Carly and the ghosts referred to Moses as “the gray man.”
“That’s what I’m here to do,” I said. “Thank you for your help with the wards.”
A cold hand passed through my shoulder and I fought to keep from shuddering. “Have care. The other one is not who he seems,” the ghost said.
Well, that sounded ominous. “Who is the other one?” I asked.
The icy fingers traced down my back and I bit back a curse. The cold feeling faded into the rest of the chill around me as the spirit moved away.
“Damn cryptic ghosts,” I muttered.
Sean’s eyes were on the French doors to our right. “I don’t hear anything elsewhere in the house. I think the party’s in the conservatory.” His turned to me. “You’re sure you want to go in there? This was supposed to be a joint Court-Bell operation. Instead…I don’t know what this is, but I don’t think we’re going to like what’s on the other side of those doors.”
There were a lot of possibilities for what was happening here and none of them were good. None of that changed the fact Moses was on the other side of those doors and we were here to kill him.
I let go of my Alice Worth persona, of the façade I’d so carefully maintained for the past five years. I let go of the lies, the evasions, the pretending, and even the happiness I’d found with Malcolm and Sean and my ever-growing circle of friends and allies. I stripped it all away. Carly had said the darkness was still there, but it was better hidden these days.
I took a deep breath and let the darkness out.
My skin sizzled with blood magic. My eyes grew warm and I knew they were glowing. Magic spiraled around my arms: white, green, black, purple, and red, with traces of gold and blue. The air crackled and became heavy with power.
The coldness in the room intensified and hundreds of barely audible voices buzzed in my ears.
“Alice, you’re scaring the ghosts,” Malcolm warned me.
“I’m not here for them.” I jerked my chin at the French doors. “I’m here for him.”
“We’re here for him,” Sean said. He met my glowing eyes with his own.
“Yes, we’re here for him,” I agreed. “So let’s get what we came for.”
“Should we knock?” Malcolm asked.
“I think we should.” I spooled earth magic and used it to tamp the floor beneath us. The building trembled once. Twice. Knock, knock, I thought.
From the other side of the French doors came a familiar dry laugh. It was a sound I’d rarely heard, but I would have recognized it anywhere.
The doors swung open. Bodyguards stood on either side of the doorway. Beyond was the enormous conservatory filled with trees, flowers, and other tropical greenery. The air was warm and humid and thick with the scent of plants and rich earth. High above us, a dozen lights hung from the rafters. Only about half of them were on, but there was plenty of light to see the two men sitting at a table on a patio area about fifteen feet away.
One I didn’t recognize; he must be the weapons dealer. He leaned back in his chair, watching us with a surprisingly nonchalant expression.
The other man rose as we walked into the conservatory. He was silver-haired, in his early seventies, wearing a light gray suit with the jacket unbuttoned. His eyes were hard and cold and the color of winter rain.
“So here you are, Alice Worth,” my grandfather said. He took a few steps toward us, his hands at his sides as he studied me. “Storm Girl, come to see me at last. And you have an entourage.”
My eyes went to the man standing behind him: Carter Kade. Tall and blond, Kade had always spent a lot of time in the gym, but he’d added what looked like twenty or thirty pounds more muscle in the past few years. He gave me an appreciative once-over, his eyes raking me from head to foot.
I ignored the blatant leer and glanced to our left, where Amira stood, her Hunters at her side. She was expressionless, her eyes on Moses. I didn’t know what involvement Nora had in whatever was going on, but the fact Amira was holding back and keeping her Hunters on their leashes told me something important was going on—something much bigger than the mission that had brought us here. What it was, I wasn’t sure yet.
I remembered the ghost’s words of warning: The other one is not what he seems. I looked again at the weapons dealer. I didn’t know him. He didn’t look familiar at all. No point paying any attention to him. My eyes slid past him.
My breath caught slightly. The insistence with which my brain kept telling me that I didn’t recognize the weapons dealer was strange—and familiar.
Understanding dawned: a disguise spell combined with a form of aversion spell that demanded I ignore him. If I wasn’t an air mage and hadn’t used such spells so much in the past, especially during my run from Baltimore to Chicago, I might not have recognized the signs.
With that single realization, dominoes fell one after the other in my brain, forming a chain of events at the speed of light. There was no weapons deal here tonight. We’d been lured into a carefully laid trap—a trap that began with the first abductions of nulls weeks ago and culminated with this meeting.
It was a masterful piece of work—I had to give them that.
“You can break the spell, Bell,” I told the so-called weapons dealer. “Didn’t I tell you last night the time for games was over?”
The weapons dealer laughed. Several air magic spells broke and suddenly Darius Bell was sitting at the table. “Well done,” he chuckled. “I owe you ten grand, Murphy. She figured it out, all right.”
Beside me, Ben put his ears back and showed his teeth. Sean growled softly. “It was all a ruse.”
Moses smiled thinly. “Of course it was, wolf. Did you think I would ever walk into such an obvious trap?”
I didn’t look at Amira, but I was suddenly quite certain she’d known about the ruse—which meant Valas had known as well.
My stomach lurched. Had Charles known? He was the one who’d tipped me off about Bell’s supposed plan to use the kidnapped nulls to attack Moses during a weapons deal. He’d tried multiple times to talk me out of joining the attack. Was it simply because he’d worried for my safety, or had he known it was all an elaborate ruse to reel me in? I
f Valas had forbidden him from telling me and ordered him to play along, maybe his repeated warnings were the closest he could come to telling me the truth without violating Valas’s orders.
For that matter, Ezekiel Monroe had warned me off too, or tried to, but in his case I was fairly certain if the vamps had known Bell and Moses were in cahoots, Monroe hadn’t been in on the secret. Not that I didn’t give him credit for being a good actor, but his anger at my interference had been genuine—as was his smug satisfaction at throwing me under the bus at last night’s meeting.
Whether the vamps had known all along or had only been tipped off in recent days, I didn’t know, but the question was: what, if anything, were they going to do about it?
I’d figure out who knew what and when later; for the moment, it didn’t matter. What mattered was Bell had gone to a lot of trouble to get me here—and had apparently made a deal with my grandfather. He probably thought he and Moses were partners or allies and this deal was going to protect him. Idiot.
“So here we all are,” I said finally. “Darius Bell, Moses Murphy, the Vampire Court, the Tomb Mountain Pack, and Storm Girl. Now what?”
“Surely it’s obvious,” Moses said, in a condescending tone that set my teeth on edge. “I’m here to collect on a debt. Mr. Bell has been so kind as to facilitate this meeting as a first step in establishing a long and profitable partnership. He recognized that continuing along the same course would inevitably end in the loss of property, personnel, and his own life, and wisely chose to become an ally rather than a rival.” He studied me. “All I asked in return was his assistance in locating those responsible for the injuries to my daughter Catherine.”
“And what did you promise him?” I asked, looking at Bell. “Partnership? An alliance between your organization and his? That you’d let him continue to run things here while you just stayed in Baltimore?” I chuckled. “Barnum was right: there is a sucker born every minute.”
Bell’s eyes narrowed. “I’d be more concerned about your own hide right now. You have no one to blame for this but yourself. I repeatedly offered you a place in my organization and you stubbornly turned me down. You thought the vamps would protect you, but they’re clearly not willing to lift a finger to come to your defense. You’ve got a couple of wolves here backing you up, but I’m hearing the Were Ruling Council won’t shed very many tears if you disappear, since you’re not exactly what they’d call consort material. For a woman with such a short list of friends, you’re much too proud for your own good.”
