No more than four or five, he rubbed sleep from his eyes, probably awoken from a nap by all the yelling. Or the bodies crashing into walls. Then he looked up, and his eyes went wide, taking in the sight of two strange men with guns standing in his home, and his grandmother, clearly upset with the lot of them.
But the boy wasn’t the only one affected. Ryerson had gone very still, his gaze riveted to the little boy squeezing a scruffy stuffed bear tucked under his arm for comfort. Even Aduna noticed the shift in him and clamped her mouth shut. Her narrowed eyes darted between them, a frown pinching the corners of her mouth. The boy didn’t seem to recognize Ryerson, but Ryerson definitely recognized him.
Even more strangely, when the boy’s nervous gaze darted around the room and landed on Alec, the nervousness fled and his eyes lit up, right before he launched himself across the room and into Alec’s arms. Alec grinned, all trace of his earlier anger gone as he swept the kid up and tossed him lightly in the air before settling him over his hip. He pointed to Ryerson and said something to the boy in Arabic. The boy’s face split into a grin and he nodded enthusiastically.
Ryerson just stared at them as though he’d seen a ghost.
When nobody offered an explanation, I raised an eyebrow at the both of them. “Friend of yours?”
Alec was in deep conversation with the four(ish) year old, but Ryerson managed to drag his attention away from the boy and said, “We know him.”
“Yes. How do you know him?” I prompted.
“It’s classified,” he said tightly.
“So unclassify it.”
He shook his head. “Just because you’re curious doesn’t mean I can tell you. That’s not how classified information works.”
“It was a hot summer day,” Alec said, breezing past us with the boy still in his arms. He threw himself into the chair by the window, like he was settling in to tell a story.
Ryerson shot him an exasperated look. “You of all people know what classified means.”
“Yes, but I don’t work for the CIA anymore, remember? Besides, they already want to kill me. What else can they do?”
He had a point. From the way Ryerson’s jaw was working, he knew it too. “The CIA doesn’t want to kill you.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Ryerson stayed quiet, which I supposed was all the answer we needed.
“Right then. As I was saying, it was a hot summer day …”
Tiago shook his head and headed for the door. “I’ll be outside.”
He was such a good agent. Refusing to hear what the agency didn’t want him to know. Lucky for me, no one had ever accused me of being a good agent. Actually, no one had ever accused me of being any kind of agent. So I ignored Ryerson’s scowl, plopped myself down on one of the mats, and settled in to listen.
“Two years ago, the CIA tasked our team with a reconnaissance mission. It was a three-man team—Ryerson, myself, and a more seasoned operative named Grant. Our objective was to infiltrate a secret meeting between a few key players in the black-market arms trade.”
“Like Razak Darego,” I said, thinking about the arms dealer whose house we broke into, and Alec nodded.
“Among others, yes. Our job was recon only. Find out their plans and report back to the Company. The meeting took place at Razak’s home. We were on the grounds during the meeting and, well, we messed up. Bilal was working for Razak at the time, and he spotted us. But instead of sounding the alarm, he simply walked back inside and came back a few minutes later with a kid. His son, come to find out. Not more than two or three years old. He stuck that little boy in Ryerson’s arms, gave us directions to get out without alerting the guards, and asked us to take the boy with us. We agreed. We got our information, and then we left the way Bilal had instructed us to.” Alec smiled at the kid on his knee. “Only the boy was smart. He missed his dad, and he knew something was up. So he started to cry. Grant ordered Ryerson to put the baby down. To leave him, so he didn’t give us away.” Alec met my eyes, anger still simmering there, even after all this time. “And I’ll be damned if Ryerson didn’t do just that.”
Ryerson’s jaw clenched, but he stayed silent. Not apologizing but not defending his actions either. He just stared at the little boy on Alec’s knee.
“How did he get away?” Ryerson said softly.
“I went back,” Alec said simply. “Remember that time I told you I was taking a long weekend to go hiking in the Appalachians?”
Ryerson nodded slowly. “It was the only vacation time you ever asked for.”
Alec waved a hand. “Welcome to the Appalachians.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Alec gave him an incredulous look. “Why do you think? If I had told you I was flying back to Africa to finish what we started, what the agency had expressly forbade us from doing, you think you would have come with me?”
A muscle in Ryerson’s jaw ticked, but his eyes reflected the truth of Alec’s words.
“You wouldn’t have backed me up, and you know it,” he went on, high-fiving the teddy bear when the boy on his lap waved the bear’s tattered paw to get his attention. “Hell, you probably would have turned me in for insubordination. That day was the first glimpse I had of what the Company was really like. The lines they were willing to cross. And I owed Bilal for that.”
“What does any of this have to do with the Grimoire?” Ryerson said tightly.
The boy tugged Alec’s sleeve to show him the teddy bear’s ability to do somersaults across their knees, so I explained to Ryerson how Bilal had stolen the book to bring to his grandmother, hoping she’d find a spell to end the drought.
“The Grimoire doesn’t have spells like that,” he said, echoing my protest before the book had proved me wrong.
Alec rolled his eyes. “Just because you’ve only seen people use it for evil doesn’t mean it is incapable of doing good. Some things are complicated like that.”
Ryerson looked far from convinced.
“We found the spell,” I said carefully. “This could work, if you’ll let it.”
For a long moment, he said nothing. Just stood there, his jaw clenched in that stubborn way it usually did when he was about to say something I didn’t like, and for one awful moment I thought he’d say no. Then his dark eyes shifted to the boy. Watched him giggle while Alec pretended to steal his nose, tucking his thumb between two fingers and looking surprised by his catch. Ryerson’s gaze drifted back to mine, and something in his expression softened.
Ryerson turned on his heel and strode to the door. “I’m going to find Tiago,” he said over his shoulder. “We’ll be outside a while. When I come back, I’ll need that book.”
And just like that, he walked out the door, leaving us alone with the Grimoire.
Alec raised an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged. I was just as surprised as he was.
“Right then,” Aduna said. “Let’s get on with it before the cranky one changes his mind, shall we?”
Aduna and I resumed our places across the low table from each other.
“I’m going to borrow some of your magic now, all right?”
I nodded, suddenly feeling uneasy about this. “What do I need to do?”
“Nothing.” She thought about that and added, “Except keep the witch possessing you from interfering.”
Hag, the voice muttered. If I wanted to keep you out, there is nothing this one could do to stop me. Why, I could steal all of your magic and use it to turn you inside out. Then I would bathe in your blood and use your eyeballs as cat toys and your bone splinters to pick my teeth and—
“Got it,” I gritted out.
Aduna closed her eyes and began reciting the spell. Slowly at first then faster. Over and over. And for a long while, nothing happened. In fact, it was all kind of boring. So much so that my eyelids grew heavy, and my limbs felt achy and tired and I wondered how insulted Aduna would be if I lay down, just for a moment, and took a nap.
Wake up, silly witch, sna
pped the voice. She’s doing it.
I startled awake, my eyes flying open in time to watch my magic draining from me in long, smoky blue ribbons toward her outstretched hands. The more magic that drained away, the weaker I felt, until simply sitting upright felt like a herculean effort. I felt myself swaying, the room starting to spin.
That’s enough, snapped the voice, and somewhere in my head a wall slammed down, cutting off the tide of magic. Aduna reeled backward as the flow of magic between us snapped.
She recovered quickly and gave me an apologetic look. “Thank you. That is more than enough.”
“Ainsley?” Alec said, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head to clear it, but that just made the spinning worse. Maybe if I lie down, I thought as the world tipped sideways and I face-planted into the nest of pillows. Just until the spinning stops.
That was the last thought I had until a peal of thunder startled me awake. I tried to scramble upright, but strong arms tightened around me, and I blinked up into Alec’s gold-rimmed eyes. He closed them in relief then smiled softly and brushed an errant curl from my cheek.
“What happened?” I said.
“You passed out.”
Bloody hex. Not again. At least this time nothing was on fire and I didn’t feel like I’d been possessed. I just felt tired.
Don’t blame me, the voice said grumpily. Blame that other witch who drained your magic.
“I’m so sorry, dove,” Alec went on. “If I thought for a second that you’d be hurt I never would have brought you here.”
“I’m not hurt.”
That would probably be more convincing if I wasn’t gathered in his lap like a helpless, swoony maiden. I should get up. Show him how perfectly fine I was and that a little dizziness wasn’t about to best me. But a wave of nausea chose that moment to sweep through me, as if to say “challenge accepted.”
One more minute couldn’t hurt.
I laid my head against his chest, listening to the steady, rapid beat of his heart and waited for the nausea to pass.
“What’s going on here?”
I twisted in Alec’s arms to find Ryerson standing in the doorway, watching us. Something flashed across his face, almost too quickly to identify, before that carefully crafted mask of neutrality slammed back into place. But it was too late. I’d seen through the crack in that mask, and what I found underneath confused me.
Was Ryerson … jealous?
Two days ago, I might have believed it. By the end of our last mission, it had almost seemed like he cared about me as more than a partner, but since then he’d been so hot and cold that I didn’t know what to think.
Since I was too busy sorting out my thoughts to answer, Alec did it for me.
“She passed out,” he said.
Ryerson stiffened, and his gaze found mine. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
I pushed gently away from Alec. His arms tightened briefly before he let me go and helped me to my feet. The room swayed precariously, and the floor seemed to dip beneath my feet, but Alec and Ryerson were both watching me closely, so I swallowed the nausea rising in my throat and straightened all the way.
“See? Totally fine.”
A crack of thunder exploded nearby, and I jumped, reflexively reaching for Alec’s forearm for balance.
Wait.
Thunder?
I faced the window, where Aduna and Amadou stood looking out at the rapidly darkening sky, their faces split with wide grins. It was then I noticed the temperature of the air had dropped at least ten degrees. Lightning split the sky, illuminating the darkness and the first fat drops of rain splashing against the window, soon followed by a downpour that blurred the glass.
I stared out the window, straining to see past the rain that battered the glass.
Because in that moment when lightning lit up the sky, I’d seen something. Someone.
“Dove?” Alec said. “What is it?”
My fingers were digging into his forearm. “There’s someone out there.”
Alec tensed. “Tiago?”
“I don’t think so.”
I’m not sure why I was so certain of that, but I was.
Then a gunshot rang out, too quick and sharp to be thunder, and erased all doubt.
Ryerson was out the door in an instant, Alec right behind him.
Heart racing, I called my magic to me and … nothing happened.
I couldn’t feel it.
Alarm shot through me, but there was no time to panic. I tried to go after them, but my legs wobbled and I stumbled into the wall. The sounds of shouts and more gunfire rent the air, only to be swallowed up by the storm raging outside. I pushed off the wall and made it to the door, only to reel backward when Alec burst through it. His T-shirt and pants were soaked through and clung to bronzed skin slick with rain.
He jerked his head at Amadou and Aduna, huddling around the boy in the far corner of the living room. “Go. Out the back. Hurry.”
They didn’t need telling twice. Amadou swung the boy up in his arms and hurried his grandmother toward the bedroom, but Aduna grabbed my arm as they passed.
“Don’t let her overtake you again. Each time, her power grows,” she said. And on that ominous note, Amadou tugged her hard enough to break her grip and swept them both out of the room.
Alec grabbed the Grimoire and shoved it in my arms. Magic pulsed from the book then faded. I tried not to think about the cover made from human skin. “Take this. Get out of here.”
“Who is it?” I asked, wracking my brain to figure out who was after us this time. I mean, sure, most of the criminal underworld wanted the book, but who besides us knew it was in Mauritania? “Isadora? The Ninth Command?”
“The G.R.U., I think.”
“Who?”
“Russian military intelligence,” he said, like that cleared things up.
I blinked at him. I’d almost forgotten about them. “The Russian military is here? How did they find the Grimoire?”
“I don’t think they’re after the book,” he said grimly. “Or at least, I don’t think that’s what they came here for. But trust me when I say if they find it, that would be bad.”
I was so confused. “What are they here for, then?”
Alec opened his mouth to answer, and then the window exploded in a spray of glass, and a bullet lodged itself in the wall.
Alec cursed and pressed an earpiece into my hand. “That’s from Ryerson. Get out of here. Ryerson and Tiago are keeping them away from the back of the house to give you guys time to escape, but they won’t be able to hold them for long. Call Dahlia when you’re safe, and she’ll tell you where to go. We’ll meet up with you later. And remember what I told you about the shadow organization within the CIA. They want the book. Be careful who you trust.”
“But—”
“Go!”
I wanted to argue, but who was I kidding? Without my magic, there wasn’t much I could do. I’d be more of a liability than anything. And someone needed to protect the book.
Still, I hesitated. The feeling that I was abandoning them soured my stomach and rooted my feet to the floor. But it wasn’t just that. It was the look in Alec’s eyes. They looked … haunted.
He blinked, and it was gone. There was no time, I knew that, but goddess help us, something was very wrong. Something besides the mini-battle raging outside the tiny hut. We’d faced down plenty of bad guys together before this, and he’d never so much as batted an eye.
Seeing Alec so shaken sent a frisson of fear through me.
I grabbed his hand as he turned toward the door, torn between wanting to make him tell me what was wrong and knowing this was most definitely not the time. He stilled, and it felt like he was already locked in battle, this one internal. Then he cursed under his breath and spun back around to face me. Before I knew what was happening, his hand found the back of my neck and dragged me against him, or as close as we could get with the book squashed between us.
Surprised, I looked up into eyes swallowed by gold. Then his lips crashed down on mine, and for one split moment, the rest of the world fell away. No gunfire, no mysterious bad guys waiting in the darkness, nothing but us and the storm raging outside.
His hands tangled in my hair, pulling me closer, and my lips parted for him. It was all the invitation he needed. He made a sound deep in his throat, a growl that was more wolf than man—urgent, possessive, hungry—and it was a very good thing he held on so tightly, or my legs might have turned to jelly and dumped me on the floor. The kiss was everything I’d ever imagined it to be and so much more. Too soon he broke away, his breathing ragged. “I wanted to do that at least once,” he said, and that nagging feeling that I was missing something pushed past the heady rush that had turned my thoughts into slush.
Then he grinned that lopsided grin, and the next moment he was gone, leaving me staring after him, the feel of his lips still tingling on my skin.
What the hex just happened?
Bullets sprayed through the window, peppering the wall next to my head, snapping me out of my daze.
I ran.
23
I ran through the bedroom, tripping over the sleeping pallets on the floor, and then out the small window behind the house. Adrenaline and the cold slap of rain drove out the dizziness, at least for now. Amadou and his family were long gone, which was a relief except that I had no idea which way to go. Left or right? Or straight ahead? It was too dark to see more than a few feet in any direction, and the rain fell in sheets, making visibility even worse. Gunfire sounded from the front of the house, and a bullet pinged off a stone to my right.
Left it was.
With the book clutched tightly to my chest, I ran left, only to skid to a stop when a man dressed in tactical gear rounded the corner. He saw me and blinked. Then he spotted the book, and his eyes widened. He shouted something in a language with short, hard syllables. Russian.
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