A gunshot exploded in the hall, closer than the others, and I jumped. “I’ll go get the car.”
I climbed out the window and eased around the side of the house, stretching my fingers until I felt the comforting tingle of magic in them. But not one gangster leapt out of the bushes and tried to kill me, and I reached the car without being noticed or shot at. I felt pretty good about that as I drove to the back of the house in time to watch Alec stride out the back door with Ryerson slung over his shoulder as if he weighed nothing. Show off.
Alec opened the back door and tossed Ryerson onto the bench seat, hard enough that his head bounced off the side door.
“Careful!”
“Sorry.”
He didn’t sound sorry. I glanced back to make sure Ryerson was okay and then turned a glare on Alec as he slid into the front seat. “Where are his pants?”
Alec’s pants, meanwhile, were suddenly a perfect fit.
“He donated them to the cause.”
Sure he did.
Alec directed us out to the main road. I didn’t realize I was flooring it until he murmured, “Slow down a bit, dove.” I did. Moments later, the wail of sirens and a small army of emergency vehicles flew past us.
“Take a left at the next stoplight,” Alec said, frowning distractedly at the rearview mirror. He fished around under the seat until he pulled out a small gray box, which he set on his lap.
“What is that?” I flicked a glance at the box and then at the rearview mirror. Ryerson’s eyelids fluttered, and the knot in my chest eased fractionally.
Alec flipped open the box’s lid and grabbed a syringe. My eyes widened.
“What is that for?” I said suspiciously.
“This is Ryerson’s med kit,” he said, answering my first question and neatly sidestepping the second one as he filled the syringe with some suspicious-looking liquid and capped it with a needle.
“Alec, what—”
“Left.”
“What?”
“Left!”
I forced my attention back to the road long enough to keep us from plowing into the back of a dump truck and make the turn, only clipping the curb a tiny bit.
By the time the car straightened out, Alec was twisted over the seat.
“Hey!” I said as he jammed the needle into Ryerson’s neck. “Stop that!”
Ryerson’s eyelids fluttered closed and stayed that way.
“What did you do?” I demanded.
“Relax, dove. It’s just a sedative. He’ll be fine in a couple of hours. Just long enough for us to drop him somewhere and find Isadora. After we stop her, we’ll grab Captain Underpants and go get the book.”
I shook my head. “He’s going to be so pissed at you.”
He probably wouldn’t be all that happy with me either.
“What else is new?” he muttered.
Hard to argue with that.
“Ryerson could have helped us find Isadora, you know,” I said, sounding grumpy even to my own ears. “He’s a good agent.”
“Yes. He could have helped, but he won’t. You heard him. Ryerson is a company man. Always will be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “It means he’ll always put the mission before everything else.”
“I don’t think that’s true. Maybe he just believes he can save more lives by finding the book than by stopping Isadora.”
“You haven’t known him as long as I have. Trust me. He’ll disappoint you. When it comes to the Company, nothing else matters.”
“I don’t think you’re giving him enough credit.”
My attention was fixed on the road, but I felt his gaze warm the side of my face. I felt his answering silence even more.
Alec directed us to a weary-looking apartment building in a derelict section of the city. The kind of building that looked like it had seen things. Mold festered in the cracks and crevices, thick veins of it stretching threateningly toward the few unbroken windows.
“This looks really unsafe.”
In other words, exactly the kind of place the CIA would put a safe house. Alec confirmed my suspicions. According to him, the CIA had abandoned it years ago when the building was condemned. I parked behind the building, grabbed my bag, and hopped out to help unload Ryerson, but Alec already had him slung over his shoulder. He carried him up five flights of stairs and wasn’t even winded. Show off. As for me, I announced loudly at the fourth-floor landing that my boot lace had come untied, and pretended to retie it while I caught my breath and tried not to look like I was ready to pass out. Maybe hitting the gym once in a while wouldn’t be the worst thing.
Alec led us to an apartment on the fifth floor, pushed open the door—the lock had been broken off long ago—and dumped Ryerson on a dirty mattress just inside the room.
I stepped around him and wrinkled my nose at the smell. The CIA might not use this place anymore, but someone had clearly been sleeping here. Shopping bags bulging with wrinkled clothes were stacked in the corner, and a few needles lay discarded on the floor. The smell was coming from a suspicious-looking yellow stain in the far corner.
Alec glanced at me. “Ready?”
“We can’t just leave him like this.”
“Like what?”
I waved my arms around. “Unconscious and unprotected in a South American crack den!”
“He’s been in worse places.”
Somehow, that didn’t make me feel better.
“Seriously, dove, he’ll be fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“What do you want to do? Find him a nice, two-bedroom townhome and a bodyguard?”
He was being sarcastic. “Yes. That sounds lovely.”
He sighed resignedly. “We passed a few For Sale signs a couple of neighborhoods back. I can smell if they’re being lived in. If one is empty, we’ll leave him there instead, okay?”
It was better. I still didn’t like the idea of leaving him alone and unable to protect himself.
“Dove …”
If he said anything after that, I didn’t hear it. I was too busy staring at the floor near Alec’s boots. More specifically, at the bag I’d dropped there and what had just scrambled out of it.
How the hex …
“I do it!” Golem shouted. “I po’tect!”
Alec jerked back, nearly flattening the golem, and frowned down at him. “Where the hell did you come from?”
Good question.
“Ainley’s bag. I hide. Wait in car. Most’y. I po’tect!”
Well that explained the weird shape on the x-ray scan and the oddly thorough pat down by airport security.
Alec crouched down. “That’s a nice offer. But I think Ainsley had someone a little bigger in mind.”
“Actually, he—”
Golem vibrated and then disappeared in a poof of clay dust. In his place stood a towering, toothless golem. Alec rolled slowly to his feet and stepped between me and Golem.
“—does that sometimes,” I finished.
“I po’tect,” Golem boomed, just as excitedly.
Alec glanced back at me, and I nodded.
“Yeah,” Alec said slowly. “I guess you do.” He didn’t take his eyes off Golem when he said, “Ready now?”
I cast Ryerson a reluctant glance. I didn’t like the idea of leaving him like this, but there was nothing more I could do for him.
I turned back to Alec. “After we do this, you’ll help us get the Grimoire?”
“Of course.”
“You said that thief is your friend. Do you know where he’s taking the Grimoire?”
“No,” he admitted, “but I am a werewolf.” He tapped his nose. “We have an excellent sense of smell. I can track him from the mansion.”
That was better than nothing. “And you won’t drug Ryerson anymore?”
“Fine.”
Okay then. “Let’s go.”
“Isadora is here?”
I eyed the decrepit bu
ilding dubiously. It resembled an old factory, except for the dingy, faded curtains masking most of the windows. Plants sat on a few narrow sills and wood poles with laundry hanging from them extended from a few open windows near the top floors.
“No idea.”
I whipped my head around to stare at Alec. “You said you knew where she was going!”
“I said I think I know where she’s going,” he corrected.
Awesome. “What is this place anyway?”
“A cortico. It’s an old factory that’s been converted into tenement housing. They’re pretty common around this part of the city. Come on.”
Chipped, gravelly pavement crunched under our boots as we crossed the street to the building’s closest side door. Well, under my boots and the ones Alec had borrowed from Ryerson. The door led straight into a dimly lit stairwell covered in graffiti. Alec read one of the lines and smirked.
The stairs crumbled at the edges, and I stuck close to Alec as we climbed to the first landing and stepped into a long, narrow hallway lined with doors.
I glanced at Alec. “Which one is hers?”
“No idea.”
“You were really playing fast and loose with the whole ‘I know where she’s going’ thing, weren’t you?” I grumbled.
“I think I know where she’s going,” he corrected again, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “She’s a witch. I figured if I narrowed the field, you could find her faster than I could.”
“So that’s why you brought me? To be your supernatural bloodhound?” I supposed that made sense, but it still stung. For a minute there I thought Alec had wanted me with him for more than just supernatural GPS.
Alec winced. “It’s not like that.”
I shook my head and reached for my magic. It came sluggishly, tired from what I’d already put it through today. I was not looking forward to the hangover I’d have tomorrow morning. I pushed my magic out, through the walls, searching for the witch—or more accurately, for her magic—as we moved slowly down the hall. At one point a roach scampered across my boot, and I yelped and grabbed Alec’s forearm. He glanced down at me, concern etched into his features. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” No way was I admitting to being creeped out by a bug when we were hunting an evil witch. I reluctantly let go of his arm and refocused my magic on the rooms we passed.
“So why would Isadora come here, anyway?” I asked.
“She used to live here.”
I glanced at him in surprise, trying to picture the poised and polished gangster princess living here. Nope. Couldn’t do it.
“She lived here with her brother until she met Eduardo Alvarez. My research is a few months old, but I think her brother still lives here. He should be at work now, which means the apartment they used to share should be empty.”
We reached the end of the hall. Alec sent me a questioning look, and I shook my head. No magic signatures on this floor. There was another stairwell at this end of the building, and we moved on to the next floor.
“So why come back here?” I said. “Why not just rent a random motel room under a fake name and do the spell there, where no one would find her?”
“Because the spell is a difficult one and her magic works best when she’s relaxed, which means she needs a familiar environment.”
I could relate to that. My magic doesn’t work right—or at all—when I’m afraid. Or at least it didn’t used to. The events of the last week had gone a long way toward fixing that.
“Somewhere she feels comfortable,” I said.
“Exactly. The Sousa Cartel will find her connection to this place eventually, but she’ll be long gone by then.”
“How do you know so much about her?”
“Ever since I became a werewolf and parted ways with the CIA, I’ve been tracking that Grimoire. Four months ago, I thought I finally had it. I’d tracked it to a mage in Austria. He was crazy paranoid, though, and cloaked himself in some spell that made it impossible to find him.”
Probably a strong ward, I thought.
“He lined up buyers for the Grimoire, and I thought for sure he’d sell it to Isadora. She was tenacious and had the funds to back it up. Plus she’d made several trips to Austria in the weeks before the sale. So I did my homework, and then I got close to her.” He shrugged. “He sold the book to Merrick instead.”
Merrick was the dark mage we’d defeated last week. The one whom Isadora had apparently gotten the Grimoire from. Something about the way he concentrated on the apartment doors we passed told me that wasn’t the end of the story.
“And then?” I prompted. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear about how close Alec and Isadora had gotten, and I was pretty sure that’s where this was going. But Ryerson would want to know as much information as possible before he walked into a potentially dangerous situation, and so I would too.
He shrugged. “Back then, I didn’t have control over the wolf. It was one of many reasons I left home last year. Anyway, one night I shifted unexpectedly. If Isadora hadn’t been a witch, she wouldn’t have been able to defend herself against me.” His voice didn’t change, but I’d spent enough time watching him over the years that I could tell from the pinch of his eyes that it bothered him. “After that, Isadora crafted a spell to force my shift.”
My eyebrows rose. Crafting even a simple spell from scratch is hard, complicated, and time-consuming work. A lot of trial and error, which sometimes goes terribly wrong. For that reason, not many witches do it.
“It hurts like hell and drains my energy for a couple hours, but I stuck around because it was a relief knowing that if I changed unexpectedly again, someone was around to change me back. A leash for the monster.”
“You’re not a monster,” I said, but that line from his file floated through my mind: The remaining five members of the special operations team were found shredded. Preliminary review of the scene suggests wild animal attack. I shoved the thought away.
Alec shrugged. “Eventually I gained more control over the wolf. I didn’t need the leash anymore, and she was obviously dating Eduardo, too, so I left.”
“She’s really mad at you.”
“Yeah.”
“How long were you together?”
He gave me a sideways look. “Are you jealous, dove?”
“What? No, of course not.”
He grinned.
We’d reached the other end of the hall with no luck. This was taking too long. Alec moved toward the stairwell, but I put a hand on his arm.
“Wait.”
He did. I pulled on my magic, wincing when it sparked a headache behind my eyes. Yeah, tomorrow morning was definitely not going to be fun. I turned my attention to the ceiling and pushed my magic into it, into the rooms above us, and the ones above that. My magic touched something on the third floor, but it was faint, its magic signature too weak to be Isadora. Probably an object imbued with some sort of charm or curse. I pushed on, exploring, until finally, I found her.
“She’s upstairs.”
We jogged up the steps and down the hall, stopping outside the door where I’d felt magic. Light leaked from under the doorjamb. Someone was home.
Alec gestured me toward the right of the door. He took the left and pulled a gun from the small of his back. I didn’t have a gun, so I readied my magic. I pushed it out toward the door to confirm we had the right room and hit a wall. Doors don’t stop my magic, which meant one thing.
A ward.
Oh, hex it.
I opened my mouth to warn him, but it was too late.
Alec’s boot struck the door. The door flew inward, and gray swirls of magic swept out. They wound themselves around Alec’s leg and yanked him inside, pinning him to the far wall in a web of pulsing grayish magic, a wolf stuck in the spider’s web.
9
Strangely enough, Alec stuck to the wall in a web of magic was only the third most alarming thing in that room. And Isadora brewing a potion over the stove didn’t even crack the top thr
ee.
Number two went to the miniature dragon, about the size of a Pomeranian, guarding a mountain of what looked an awful lot like cellophane-wrapped bricks of cocaine stacked against the wall opposite Alec. A rope leash looped under the leg of the studio room’s only twin bed tethered the dragon (mostly) in place. He spotted me and sat back on his haunches, iridescent wings wrapped close to his body, and loosed a tiny, smoky roar.
That caught the ghost’s attention.
I’d never seen a ghost before. If it weren’t for what I’d seen at Aunt Belinda’s coven meeting, I would have sworn they didn’t exist, but there was no other word to describe the translucent woman floating in the air next to the stove. Her hair was swept back into a bun, and she wore a blouse with a square knot at the collar tucked seamlessly into a high-waisted skirt. She hovered over Isadora’s shoulder, supervising her potion-brewing skills while muttering things like, “A little heavy-handed with the bladderwort, aren’t we?” and “You call that wormwood finely chopped? I could go sledding on that leaf.”
That is, until the dragon roared, and the ghost’s eyes snapped to mine. It was impossible to tell what color her eyes had once been, but death lent them a silvery, reflective sheen. She drifted toward me, hair floating around her face in a non-existent breeze, and ice slid down my spine.
“Ainsley, run!” Alec said. The web sparked and stretched, covering his mouth in threads of silvery magic.
The ghost paused and cocked her head at him, like it was the first time she’d noticed there was a guy dangling from the wall. She looked back at me, put a finger to her lips as if we shared a secret, and then winked out of existence.
Ooookay.
“You should listen to Alexander, bruxa,” Isadora said, dragging my attention back to the reason we were here. She was bent over a pot simmering on the stove, sprinkling herbs and dropping something that looked suspiciously like a tail into the concoction. Her hair had come undone from its updo, trailing down her back and frizzing around her face from the steam. She dipped a ladle into the pot and filled a bowl with the potion. Finally, she looked up. The smile curling her lips raised the hair along my arms. “You’re too late.”
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