by Sarra Cannon
He paced the room, making points on his fingertips.
“Well, for one, I’m ninety-nine percent sure we’re looking at a powerful demon who has sacrificed many other humans before. What are we going to do if we rush in there and encounter this guy?” he asked. “Did you think about that?”
I bit my lip. “No.”
“Second, if Ms. Greer has been watching you, it’s possible the Council is watching you, too. Independent of her ravens,” he said. “If they’ve just warned you not to get involved, how lenient do you think they’ll be if they catch you spying on one of their Keepers?”
I took a deep breath. He was right.
I hadn’t really thought through all the possibilities. I was just looking one step ahead and assuming Ms. Greer would never know we were there.
“Okay, so what’s the solution, then?” I asked. “Since you’ve obviously already given this some thought.”
Kai studied me for a second, and then he looked around my bedroom. A warm blush blossomed on my cheeks. Thankfully, I didn’t have any dirty clothes or candy wrappers on the floor, but still. What was he looking for?
His eyes landed on the mahogany spell cabinet. To anyone else, it would just look like a worn, antique cabinet, but I could tell he recognized it right away.
“Do you have any blackberry vines in there? Amaranth?”
“What kind of witch do you think I am?” I asked, tilting my head to the side.
He smiled.
“Okay, what about ashes from a cedar tree?”
I had to think about that one.
“I think so,” I said.
I had a faint memory of burning several different types of wood and leaves with my mother one winter afternoon a few years ago.
“Then you can just cloak your movements,” he said. “The Council won’t be able to see where you go tonight, if you don’t want them to.”
“The Council can see through all our cloaking spells as young witches,” I said. “There are several in my spell books, but I’ve been told they don’t work against the Council.”
It was his turn to look at me like I was crazy.
“You won’t find this particular spell in any of your books,” he said. “The Council might not teach spells that work against them to their witches, but I don’t belong to your Council.”
I wanted to laugh at my own stupidity.
I hadn’t even thought of using magic to keep the Council out of my business. I’d always considered them a part of my magical process, and it just hadn’t occurred to me that I could use magic to hide something from them.
It was still very dangerous territory, but at least it would keep them out of my hair for a little while. I hoped.
“What about Martin? I imagine he’s already upset with me for ditching school,” I said. “Should I tell him where we’re going.”
“Do you think he’d let you go?”
I closed my eyes and sighed. I didn’t like hiding anything from Uncle Martin, but no. I didn’t think he’d let me go spy on Blythe Greer tonight. I was putting my life and my possible future career at risk just going over there
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Kai asked. “I could just go alone.”
My heart beat a little faster at the thought of going against the Council’s direct orders. What if someone found out?
I didn’t want Martin to be angry with me, but at the same time, he was keeping secrets from me, too.
Besides, all I could think about was Peyton’s smile. What kind of horror was she going through right now? What nightmare was she trapped in?
“I’m up for it,” I said. “Do you have the incantation and everything I’ll need? I’ve never used cedar ash in a cloaking spell before.”
“I can show you how,” he said. “If you don’t mind me watching you cast.”
I swallowed. Why did that suddenly feel like such an intimate thing?
I guess because witches usually only cast in front of their most trusted allies.
Or their worst enemies.
I still didn’t even know what this guy was. I should have asked him last time we were together, but I was scared to ask.
I had the feeling he wouldn’t tell me, anyway. Not until he was ready.
“I don’t mind,” I said.
I placed a fingertip on the key hanging from my necklace and imagined the cabinet opening. It obeyed me, and the doors swung open, revealing some of the most important items I owned.
Was I crazy to trust Kai like this?
Ms. Greer had said he was breaking the rules of his own sect. What did that mean, exactly? That he’d gone rogue? Were they looking for him, whoever they were? And what had happened to his father?
I pushed back all my questions and focused, instead, on the task at hand. It was already getting to be later in the evening, and we only had a few days to investigate before Peyton and the others would die. I didn’t have time to be worried about Kai’s ancestry or whether he was going to be in trouble for this.
When the dust settled, we were both going to be in a lot of trouble.
If we could save Peyton and the others, though, it would be worth it.
I located all the ingredients he’d asked me to gather, but when I went to clean out my little cauldron to mix them, Kai shook his head.
“Not in there,” he said. “Here, sit with me.”
He grabbed a blanket from the end of the bed and stretched it across the floor.
He motioned for me to sit down across from him, but I hesitated. If he wasn’t a witch of some kind, how did he know what to do?
“Trust me,” he said, warmth in his dark eyes.
I sat down across from him and set the three ingredients on the blanket between us.
“Give me your hand,” he said.
I stretched my hand toward him, and he took it, turning my palm upward. His hands were twice as big as my own, and his skin was warm against mine.
He pinched off a small piece of blackberry vine and set it in the palm of my hand. Then, he sprinkled it with a tiny bit of cedar ash. Finally. He broke off a small tip from the amaranth plant and rolled it between his fingertips until the dust of it fell onto the other ingredients.
I was fascinated by what he was doing. This was a very different process from any I’d followed in the past. When he was finished, he rolled my fingertips toward me, closing my palm tightly against the ingredients.
“Bring your fist to your mouth and whisper the following incantation,” he said. “Hūnā iaʻu.”
My eyes widened. This was definitely not a normal witch’s incantation, but there was an energy that radiated from him as he said it. Not only could I feel it, I could see it shimmer in the air.
“What is that?” I whispered.
Our eyes locked, and I realized that even though I’d been worried about whether I could trust him around my things, trusting him with magic was an entirely different beast. For all I knew, he could be making me cast a spell on myself that would send me into another dimension.
“You can trust me,” he said softly. “I promise I will never hurt you.”
I searched his eyes and leaned in toward the energy around us. I felt for any sign of negative intention or manipulation, but all I could sense from him was goodness.
But did I trust myself to know better?
Butterflies danced in my stomach. Peyton didn’t have time for me to sit here and try to figure it out.
“Hūnā iaʻu,” I whispered, not sure if I was saying it exactly right.
But Kai nodded.
“Now, open your hand.”
Unsure what to expect, I uncurled my fingers and gasped as sparkling particles burst from my palm, surrounding my body for a brief, shimmering moment before disappearing.
“What just happened?” I asked.
“You just cloaked yourself from the Council’s view,” he said. “Good job.”
“How did you know to do that?” I asked. “I’ve never seen that kind of magic
before.”
“My mother was a witch.” He stood and offered his hand to me. “Come on, I’ll tell you more about her when we’re on our way. It’s getting late.”
His mother? I certainly hadn’t expected that answer.
If she was a witch, she wasn’t from the same coven as my family. But now I had half the answer to the Kai puzzle. He was at least half witch of some kind. What was the other half?
“It looks like we’ll be going somewhere other than that hotel, after all,” he said, glancing at the map again as we both stood.
“What do you mean?” I asked, grabbing my backpack and slinging it over my shoulders.
But I could see for myself.
Ms. Greer was on the move, and if we left now, we might just be able to catch up with her before she did anything too important.
“Let’s go,” I said. “But not the window. We’ll take the stairs, like normal people.”
Kai laughed and followed me into the hallway, carefully and quietly down the steps, and out into the night.
Unprepared
A few minutes later, we were driving west toward the outskirts of town.
This was the opposite of the way Martin and I had gone to get to the lake, and I quickly realized we were in unfamiliar territory.
“Do you know where she’s going?” I asked.
Kai had been here most of the year. He definitely seemed to know the town better than I did at this point, considering I’d barely left Martin’s house since I moved in.
“I’m not sure,” he said, glancing at the map that I’d spread out in my lap. “There isn’t much on this road for the next ten or fifteen miles. It’s just a lot of woods and nothing. A few warehouses here and there.”
A warehouse in the woods? That sounded promising.
The perfect kind of place to have a secret meeting. Or to hold five innocent girls hostage.
I shuddered.
What if we did find out the girls were out here? That Blythe was involved, somehow?
One step at a time, Lenny. Deep breaths.
I quickly pulled up Martin’s number on my phone and checked the speed dial. If something happened, I wanted to be able to reach him fast. He’d be pissed, but I had no doubt he’d come to help me if I needed him.
What he did after that, though, was not going to be much fun.
With any luck, we’d discover a few clues and end up right back at Martin’s house in an hour or so. Martin none the wiser.
I swallowed back fear and excitement as the tiny dot on the map turned left and stopped. I’d been on a lot of hunts with my parents, but I’d never had to do an investigation like this or walk into danger on my own. I was scared, but I was also hoping this would lead to a good clue.
Maybe if I went to Martin with the truth, he could reach out to the Council on Peyton’s behalf. Ask for them to intervene.
I needed a place to tell them to look, though, first.
“She stopped,” I said. “Turn here.”
He turned down the dirt road just before the one Blythe had taken.
“Let’s go,” he said. “We should be able to sneak up on her through here and just watch. Maybe we’ll get lucky and see a glimpse of the person she’s coming out here to visit.”
I situated my backpack on my shoulders and followed him into the woods, having to jog a few steps in order to keep up. Music thumped in the distance, like someone was having a party out here.
A twig snapped under my boot, and he put a finger up to his lips.
“Looks like there’s a building just through these woods, but we don’t want to alert anyone that we’re here. We just want to look around for now,” he said.
I leaned down and touched my boots.
“Tacitus,” I whispered to silence my footsteps.
I noticed Kai didn’t need to do anything like that for his footsteps to be light as air. He didn’t make a sound as he walked.
Neither of us spoke as we approached the lights of the building ahead. When we got to the edge of the trees, we both crouched down and crawled forward until we had a good look at the large warehouse.
The music was obviously coming from inside, and I cringed as I realized this could be a way to hide the screams of any young women trapped inside. Had we found them?
We watched in silence as Blythe emerged from her dark car and walked toward the building.
Kai glanced at me, and we shared a look. This could be it. What if Blythe really did have something to do with the missing girls? My whole body buzzed with the possibilities.
I didn’t want to believe she was crooked, though, and part of me hoped I was wrong about this place. About her.
My parents had trusted her with their lives.
I shuddered at that thought.
My parents also lost their lives, didn’t they? Had Ms. Greer betrayed them? Was she evil?
Anger flared, and I tensed every muscle in my body.
“Maybe she’s here to investigate this whole thing,” I said as softly as I could, almost talking to myself. “Maybe the Council really is looking into this, and they just don’t want to tell me. Why would they? I mean, I haven’t even decided to take my test yet.”
“Let’s just see what happens,” Kai said, leaning closer to me.
I tried to hold judgment until I’d figured out for sure what she was doing here.
Maybe she really was investigating the disappearances. Blythe was a Keeper, after all.
Unlike Slayers, who did most of the fighting on the front lines, Keepers did all the research, training, and made a lot of the judgment calls.
Still, they were usually very hands-off. They tended to do a lot of their research from the shadows. This wasn’t like Blythe at all.
She knocked on the metal door of the building and waited, her arms crossed in front of her as she glanced around. She was nervous. Afraid she was being watched. That wasn’t like Blythe, either. At least not the Blythe Greer I’d come to know.
“Here we go,” Kai whispered as the door swung open.
The man standing on the inside of the building was smiling at first, but the second he saw Ms. Greer, the smile vanished.
I know the feeling, man.
“Do you recognize him?” I asked. It was hard to make out his features at this distance, but he didn’t look familiar to me.
They were also too far away for us to hear what they were saying, but it was obvious they were arguing about something.
The guy looked behind him, said something to someone standing inside that I couldn’t see, and then stepped out into the warm night air with Ms. Greer. He shut the door behind him, and if I saw correctly, he also quickly sealed it shut.
Very interesting. My heart pounded.
Was Peyton inside? Maybe Ms. Greer was here to rescue them. That didn’t fully make sense, but this guy didn’t act like they were friendly. I couldn’t piece it together yet.
Kai gasped and shifted his weight, pulling something from his pocket.
“I know this guy,” he said. “Hold on a second.”
“You know him?”
Kai shuffled through the pages of a small notebook. He’d nearly filled the entire thing with very neat, precise handwriting.
“Yeah, so after the first girl went missing, I got a job at the coffee shop. I knew it was the main place the students were hanging out, so I was hoping it would be a good way to listen in on gossip and read people’s energy,” he said. “And there’s this one guy in particular who’s been coming in almost every day to get a coffee that I’ve just never been able to read. His energy has been cloaked or hidden, but there have been a few instances where he leaned dark to me.”
“And that’s bad?” I asked.
“It can be,” he said. “Like I explained to you before, I can sometimes read someone’s intentions if they’re pure of heart. I can’t always tell what they’re thinking or what they’re going to do, like I did with you, but I can usually at least get a feel for their energy and whether
they have good intentions or bad ones.”
“Okay, so this guy has bad intentions? Or something dark about him. What does that mean?”
“Sometimes, it might mean nothing,” Kai said in a whisper. “It could be that he’s got his energy cloaked the way you do now. Or it could mean that’s he’s into something shady that isn’t exactly pure or good-hearted but also isn’t murder or kidnapping.”
I nodded.
“No one is ever all good or all evil,” he said. “There are shades of light and darkness within all of us. This guy, Bates, though, has some dark tendencies. The truth is, he hasn’t been high on my radar, because there have also been a lot of times he was just middle of the road. Nothing particularly dark about him. Just blank. I’ve seen people like that before, and they’re usually harmless.”
I wished I could actually see energy the way he did, because it might have made more sense to me, but I did my best to follow his explanation.
“To keep track of the people in town that sometimes read dark, though, I started keeping notes in a journal.”
He flipped a few more pages and pointed to an entry.
“Here it is,” he said. “Read this from the day before yesterday.”
I glanced through his notes, surprised to see that he’d mentioned me. He said I’d come into Sir Bean with Brandy and Peyton, and I blushed when I read that he’d barely been able to keep his eyes off me. That could mean anything, right?
“I think this might be from last week,” I said.
“Oh, uh, just ignore that part,” he said, turning the page. “This is what I wanted you to see.”
Bates: 3:45PM. Sat in the corner by the window. Watched the crowd for ten minutes, then left. Dark energy today.
“Okay, so he was there the other day with dark energy. Couldn’t that just be a coincidence?” I asked.
“Sure, but turn to July 26th,” he said. “Three weeks ago.”
Bates: 3:45PM. Stood near the counter watching the students for fifteen minutes. His intentions are dark today.
“Do you know what happened the next day?” he asked, and I shook my head. “Marcia Valentine went missing.”
Chills ran down my spine.
“Let me check something,” he said.