Aw, hell.
“Jo…”
I searched the air above me, but she wasn’t anywhere—
A flicker of movement just out of the corner of my eye had me turning and I saw her drifting around the edge of the bookshelf at my back. I caught her just as she moved into the next aisle, clutching a book in her thin, pale hands. “Jo. I’d like to talk to you.”
She glanced at me and her eyes were awful.
Black, empty and void of…everything.
Swallowing the knot in my throat, I managed to squeeze out, “It’s about the boy you saw.”
Slowly, she drifted down, down, down…then she stood and shook her head. When she looked at me again, there was…sense. I guess. Something of self in her eyes and I sensed…witch. Her power. Earlier there hadn’t been much of anything.
Just cold.
“The boy,” she whispered.
“Yes. You saw him.”
“No.” She shook her head and gestured broadly at nothing. “They saw him.”
“Who are they?”
Her eyes went black. “We are.”
The skin on the nape of my neck crawled and I hoped like hell I didn’t let the fear I felt show. “And who are you?”
“We are we. And we saw him. He’s dying. You can’t save him because you are not looking. He’s no longer the predator…just prey. Just meat. Like we were.”
She blinked and the moment shattered. Jo stood there looking at me with lost, sad eyes. “I’m sorry. Did they talk to you?”
Numbly, I nodded.
“I hope they helped.”
Then she gathered up a stack of books I hadn’t noticed and slid out of the library.
Helped?
Um. No. Not really.
As I left the library, another witch was waiting. She was as lacking in color as Kori had rocked it—hair so blonde, it was practically white, skin so pale I don’t think she ever went out in the sun, and her eyes were so pale a gray they seemed nearly colorless. Her clothes were white. Everything. White.
A polite smile curved her lips as she nodded at me. “I’m Es.”
“S. As in the letter?” Immediately, I winced. “Sorry.”
She chuckled. “Colleen told me you were…well, I’ll be polite. But it’s fine. It’s E-S. But yes, it sounds like S the letter. I’m the mother here.”
Witch houses had a leader. A mother, or if the most powerful was a guy, the father. I hope I managed to keep my astonishment hidden. Nothing about her screamed power—shit, Kori’s strength had made this woman seem like…nothing.
Another one of those polite smiles curved her lips. “I wouldn’t be much of a caretaker if I intimidated the hell out of every witch who came to me, would I?” she said gently. She looked down the hall, gazing in the direction Jo had run. “Many of mine are…broken. They need a quiet hand, Kitasa. I imagine you can appreciate that.”
Blood crept up the back of my neck, up my cheeks until I knew I all but glowed with it.
She was studiously looking the other way. “After all, you deal with many victims in your line of work.”
Nice lifeline to offer there. But I wasn’t buying it. Colleen had sensed the very same thing on me the day she’d met me. And just like Es here, she’d pretended otherwise.
Swallowing the shame and disgust rising inside me, I shouldered around her and headed for the front door. Damon was already at my back when she called out, “There are a few other witches you might want to speak with, aneira. This goes…deeper, I suspect, than you realize.”
I twitched at the sound of the formal title on her lips. Stopping in the middle of the hallway, I jammed my hands into my pockets and stared at the dirty toes of my boots. I wanted to leave. Hell, I wanted to just fade away, lose Damon and take off running. If I ran hard enough, I’d eventually lose them. I could get lost in the world. I’d done it before.
But the problem was sooner or later, one of them would find me.
My grandmother had been happy enough once I was out of her hair and she didn’t have to see me.
But the cat bitch wasn’t going to be so easily satisfied. She’d hired me to do a job.
If it had been any other job, I might have been willing to risk it.
Screw might.
I would have done it.
That kid’s sad, lost eyes haunted me, though.
Pulled me in.
Wearily, I turned around and found myself staring at the wall of Damon’s chest. “Can you move, please?” I said.
He stepped aside. But he didn’t stay there. As I headed down the hall, my ever-present shadow was at my back.
“Tate,” Es said, gesturing to the witch behind the two-way glass. “She’s got a way with fire. One of our younger ones and just so you know…she hates anybody who isn’t a witch. If it hadn’t been a witch child she saw, she wouldn’t have cared. Now, take notice…she would have seen it, but she wouldn’t have cared.”
“She saw a kid being kidnapped?” Damon demanded.
“No. She saw a kid getting into a car.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “Tate notices everything and she’ll notice more about you than you could possibly imagine, including what you had for breakfast, the fact that you’re in rut, and the fact that you hate your Alpha. If you don’t want her seeing anything that I just saw, you might want to lock it down so very tight, even you can’t see it.”
I snorted. “Es, you have to get your eyes, or your witch-whatever checked. He’s slavishly devoted to that woman.”
“Oh, he’s enslaved…to something,” Es murmured. “But that doesn’t mean the same as devotion.”
Then she turned those colorless, powerful eyes on me. “She might go kinder on you, but I don’t know. You’re not human and you smell like magic. She’s young and her parents were mortal…she might think you have some witch blood in you. She won’t know your bloodline.”
“Very few do.”
Es nodded. “True enough. But it may not matter. I’ll be there with you because if she gets angry, I’ll have to be the one to run interference.” She looked at Damon. “You’ll have to get her out if she gets angry.”
“If she’s that dangerous, why is she here?”
“Because we need our warriors,” Es said simply. “I hope to focus that energy. If I can’t, I’ll have to destroy it.”
She opened the door a moment later and a blast of heat licked over my flesh.
“Tate. We have company.”
“Company can get fucked,” the woman said. “I’m working.”
“You work all day.” Es smiled as she gestured at me. I walked into what felt like a smoldering, sweltering hell. “This woman only needs a few moments.”
Tate stopped for about five seconds. Her gaze lit on me. Her hair was buzzed, cut so close I could see her scalp. It was dark, though, very, very dark, and her skin was a warm, mellow gold. She wasn’t even sweating. Thirty seconds in there and I had already soaked my shirt through. Her eyes were bronzed, like melted pools of the metal, and energy crackled, snapped around her.
Damon came up behind me and his energy practically smothered me. I felt like I was drowning in it.
Tate snorted. “If the little dolly can’t talk to me without her boyfriend, screw it. Busy, Es.”
She whirled in a graceful pirouette and I watched as streamers of fire danced around her.
“Pretty light show,” I said. “You boning up for a gig on Broadway or what?”
She stiffened and the fire died away. Her eyes narrowed on my face. “Excuse me?”
I shrugged. “Well, a few minutes ago you were all combative and serious shit. Now you’re dancing. Figured you were showing off and I might as well show my appreciation. It’s very pretty. You should add some music, though.”
“How about I show you pretty and melt your sword?”
Why in the hell did everybody always try that? I wondered. They were going to bend it, break it and now she threatened to melt it. “Think you can?” I asked, glancing down at
the blade.
“Oh, I know I can.”
The arrogance and laughter in her eyes goaded me. “How about this—I have a couple of questions, and they are easy ones. If you can’t melt the sword in thirty seconds, then you answer the questions.”
“Fine.” Then a smug smile curled her lips. “But you have to hold it.”
“Tate…” Es stepped up. “If you harm somebody I’ve invited into my house, I’ll be very displeased.”
Tate didn’t look concerned.
Es rested a hand on my shoulder. I looked over at her and shook my head. Damon swore and grabbed me. I shrugged him off and drew my blade, holding it out in front of me.
I smelled of magic. I knew that.
But there was more magic in the top two inches of my blade than I had in my entire body. It was just a quieter magic. One nobody ever really saw.
“Have at it, firefly,” I said, smiling.
I felt the heated jolt. Three seconds in, the metal heated enough to I was starting to feel it. But the blade held up fine. Ten seconds in, my hand started to burn.
By twenty seconds, Tate was no longer smiling. I could smell my own flesh scorching. I dealt with the pain the same way I’d always dealt with it—I blocked it out. I’d blocked it out to survive, to get through whatever in the hell I had to get through. I am aneira—my heart is strong—
“Enough,” Es said after the thirty seconds ended. Tate kept going.
“I said enough!”
Power ripped through the air, icy and white, cutting off the stream of Tate’s power and I gasped as the backlash travelled up the blade. She was glowing—white hot. And pleased. She liked magic. Loved it.
Before any of them could notice, I banished the blade and had to clench back a scream as the hilt all but ripped away from my burnt flesh.
Black dots danced in front of me.
A hard, brutal palm gripped my arm, fingers digging into my flesh. Damon shook me a little. “Okay, witch. She won. Questions now.”
“Fucking cheat,” Tate spat out. “That was an enchanted blade.”
“I never said it wasn’t. And you never asked.”
My palm throbbed. Screamed.
Think past it—have to think past it—
“The witch,” I said, falling back on instinct. Shock was trying to settle in and I knew if I wasn’t careful, I’d pass out right there. Not good, not good. “The kid who disappeared. The car. What can you tell me about them?”
A frown darkened her face. “What do you care about them? She was unaffiliated, alone. Her dad was an asshole and wouldn’t let her come here, even when he was told it wouldn’t cost him anything.”
Green Road operated on a tuition and tithe basis. But kids who couldn’t pay to attend the schooling could still come on a scholarship basis. Many of the witches were very, very wealthy, and most of them believed in taking care of their own.
“The kid. The car,” I said again. “Anything you can remember?”
“No car. SUV. Florida plates.” She rattled off a number, one I couldn’t recall for the life of me, but it didn’t dawn on me to ask her to repeat it. “Humans with her. I figured she was whoring for money. Some of us have to.”
“She was just a kid,” Damon said, his voice full of disgust.
“So was I,” she said. “Didn’t stop me.”
“Anything about the humans?” I asked, cutting in.
“Snakes. The whole lot of them. The kind you just want to see die.” She smiled and leaned toward me with a conspiratorial wink. “They were the kind I used to burn in the backyard, up until my dad found out what I was doing. Then he tried to beat the fire out of me. Literally. So…I burned him.”
“Bully for you.”
Chapter Twelve
Es was speaking.
I barely heard her.
I was cold. All over cold.
A hand came over the back of my neck and shoved my head down between my knees. “Breathe, kitten,” somebody rumbled, a familiar voice.
It tickled something in my memory. Kitten. Didn’t like that.
“…something for her hand…”
Voices roared around me, echoing in my ears.
A softer one, that didn’t make much sense. Then his. Damon. Demonic Damon. Pain in my ass.
“I don’t care. You’re going to either heal her hand yourself, or you’re going to get somebody in here to do it for you, or I’ll take it personally.”
A soft laugh tinkled through the room. Dimly, I realized this wasn’t good. I needed to think past the pain that seemed to be snaking up my entire arm. It was a burn. I’d been burned before. Granted, never this bad. And shit, I had to get it healed, but I could call Colleen and she’d help me. Somehow. She’d help.
I made myself sit up, staring at the black and red meat that made up my hand.
“Calm down, Damon,” I said. The thin, high sound of my voice didn’t sound very reassuring. Clearing my voice, I tried again. “I’m fine.”
“Your hand looks like a Texas barbecue gone bad. You’re not fine.”
“No. No, you’re not,” Es murmured. “Child, you suffer from an excess of great stupidity or great bravery. I’m not sure which.”
She came around to me and nudged Damon aside. “Move over, cat. I’ll fix her.”
He glared at the back of her head but fell silent.
She settled in the chair next to me. “You know, we’ve measured her ability to generate heat…for short periods of time, she can put out over fifteen hundred degrees. You understand how dangerous that was?”
“My blade can take it.”
“Humph. The blade, yes.” She caught my hand and turned it, forcing the cooked meat of my palm upright. “But look at what it did to you.”
“Hey, it got me the information I wanted.”
“Silly child…I could have gotten you that, if you’d given me time,” she murmured. Her fingers were cool on my wrist.
“But Doyle might not have time. And the next time I need to ask her something, maybe she’ll be a little more likely to give it to me if she views me as more than just dirt on her boots.” I groaned as I felt the first brush of her magic. “I may not be her equal, but she knows I won’t roll over like a dog for her, either. Her kind respects strength.”
“True enough. But you took pain…and Tate isn’t capable of that. I don’t know if she’ll respect you for that, or hate you.” She deepened her hold and then looked at Damon. “You might want to hold her shoulders.”
My breath started to come in harsh, heavy pants. “This is going to hurt, isn’t it?”
“Yes. You may scream. Nobody will hear you but us.”
“No.” I scrambled at my waist for my belt but pain and panic made me clumsy.
“Child, we need to hurry. The longer we delay, the more risk there is for permanent damage.”
I nodded jerkily, still clawing at my belt.
“Shit,” Damon muttered, hauling me back from the table.
He crouched in front of me, trying to see what I was doing. “Why are you messing with your belt, Kit?”
“Knife.” My teeth were chattering now. Shock? The pain? I didn’t know.
“Bad time to decide to stab me,” he said. “You couldn’t fight off a puppy right now.”
“Knife…”
“Okay, okay…” He worked the knife sheath off my belt and pulled out the knife, but I knocked it aside and reached for the sheath.
His face tightened in a scowl and he held it for a second. Finally, though, he let it go.
As he eased me back to the table, I shoved the leather between my teeth.
In the back of my mind, I could hear the echo of a laugh. Scream for me, granddaughter. It’s the only time I enjoy hearing your voice. Scream…let me know how easily you break.
As the bright edge of pain broke through me, I bit the leather and struggled to hold back the screams.
Scream…you useless waste.
I woke to darkness.
Cool, complete darkness.
My body felt too heavy to move and I groaned, struggling to lift a hand to my face, but even that took too much energy.
Groaning, I muttered, “Great. Just great.”
“Tell me about it.”
Gurgling out a yelp, I tried to scramble out of the bed, but I couldn’t even move. A full-fledged healing wasn’t much different than coming off a bad case of the flu. It was short-lived, and after I had a meal and a few hours of rest, I’d be okay.
Oh, and I needed to get the hell away from the bastard lying in the bed next to me.
Damon leaned over and snapped on the lamp on the bedside table. It brought him entirely too close to me. If I could have shrunk into the bed, pulled away, jabbed him with a hot poker, any of those things, I would have.
As it was, I couldn’t even find the strength to reach for the damn blankets. And I was cold.
He stayed where he was, on his elbow, peering down into my face. “How do you feel?”
I closed my eyes.
A soft laugh drifted from him. “That good, huh?”
I flexed my hand, rotated it.
“You go ahead and call your sword, baby girl, if it will make you feel better, but you’ll just drop it. You can’t hold it right now and you know it.”
I opened my eyes to glare at him. “Fu…”
Well. That went well. Clearing my throat, I managed to rasp out, “Fuck off.”
“Nice manners.” He reached over and caught my wrist, dragging it in front of my face. “She fixed it, completely. Don’t worry, once you can drag your pretty tail out of this bed, you’ll be good as new.”
I closed my eyes again.
“You know, I had no idea a full healing would hit you so hard. The quiet is nice.”
I kept my eyes closed.
After a few minutes, the pervasive weakness took over and I retreated back into sleep.
Let me in, darling…
I felt Jude whispering at the edges of my mind.
Grunting, I turned away and tried to block him out. The chill of his presence was something I just didn’t want right then, although if he pushed, I didn’t know if I could fight him off.
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