She knew he was just frustrated, and his chest probably hurt from the run up the stairs, but she couldn’t hold back her angry response.
“I’m doing the best I can, I wasn’t exactly trained for this. I was forced into it, remember? I can fight now, but you’re going to have to be patient while I work out the rest.”
He growled in frustration and stormed off the roof. Who was leaving who alone now, she thought bitterly. She followed him back down the stairs, and the rest of the ride to the wolf shifter’s territory was silent and tense.
Kelly looked at her closely, “What crawled up your ass?”
She snorted, “Damn assassins, stupid witches, take your pick.”
They were in the backyard, she’d lost track of Ed right away, but she thought he may be speaking to Joe, the bear shifter alpha. Kelly and Tina had been trying to drag the story of the last few days out of her, in addition to details about her love life. Needless to say she wasn’t in the mood for that anymore, which sucked, she’d been looking forward to it earlier.
Tina frowned and Lily looked at her thoughtfully.
Tina said lightly, “I’m not saying he didn’t do anything wrong, but your shifter bitchiness is definitely showing.”
She sighed.
“I get that he’s worried, but you know I didn’t have much choice about being an enforcer. He’s expecting perfection from me, when I’ve been on the job a month, and have no training in procedure. I’m going to screw up occasionally.”
Lily frowned and said reasonably, “But this wasn’t the first time was it? I mean, he gave you a lot of slack the first time right? He doesn’t expect you to know everything, but you did know this and ran off anyway in bloodthirsty excitement.”
Crap. She started to feel guilty. It was just the three of them talking right now. Natalie was standing at the grill by her mate, while Jennie and Sarah couldn’t seem to leave the new wolves alone. She guessed they’d been alone too long, and was glad they were taking to them.
It was obvious though that Cody and Don didn’t really care for her presence there, especially since she’d arrived with a witch. She could take the suspicion though, if it meant good things for the pack. She didn’t get a bad vibe from them, quite the opposite actually. They were just short on trust.
She could hardly blame them for that.
She sighed, “It’s the excitement I think, I couldn’t wait… more than that, it didn’t even occur to me even though it should have. Even though it did happen before, I was completely living in that moment, and ready for the challenge of a fight. It was like a rush… it’s hard to explain.”
Lily laughed, “No it isn’t, we’re shifters too, and it’s a common trait. You’ve got to learn to control it, it’s easier for us bears, and much easier for the wolves, the pack bonds help us settle, make us consider the pack before ourselves. That obviously won’t work with you loner cats. Maybe you should talk to Ella, I’m sure she can relate and help you with it.”
“I suppose I should go apologize,” she said softly.
Tina snorted, “Let him wait, right now you need to finish spilling what happened in Albany.”
She shook her head but laughed, she supposed it could wait. Maybe he would cool off a bit in the meantime. She finished telling her story despite all the questions, only about half of which involved her relationship with Ed, before lunch was ready. She felt better by the time they finished, it was good to talk about, and to catch up with her closest shifter friends.
They all gravitated toward the barbeque, her included. This time she didn’t miss the signal, it was obvious, she could smell that the food was almost done. She smiled a little, she supposed she had come a long way over the last month. They’d talk more later, but she mouthed a sorry at Ed, which seemed to relax him a little, but he was still a little tense from all the shifters around him.
She was looking forward to gaining another step on her ladder in regards to Silva’s fear of magic. She knew it would be soon as Silva was starting to hardly even react to a level three anymore. A lot of the spells in the war spell book were at level four on her scale. And her fire and air attacks would become a respectable tool, if still rather average.
That would give her a much greater range of options besides physical violence, distractions, and simple stun spells. She still had a long way to go though, and not just with magic. She’d have to work hard to overcome her instincts and make sure she had her partner’s back.
Running off had been stupid. She decided she would take Lily’s advice and talk to Ella soon. Either way, she’d had enough feeling sorry for herself, it had worked out after all, and no one had been hurt. She dug into the food with a vengeance, she was starving now that her stomach wasn’t so tight with worry and the adrenaline had worn off.
After lunch, she was amused at Ed’s expense. His reaction to the wolf shifters all stripping right there next to the table and shifting before racing into the forest was priceless. Only the bears, she, and Ed were left at the table. That’s when her elemental returned and hit her with the information. The more she reviewed it the more her heart sunk.
The one sending assassins after then was one of her bosses, one of the councilors, and a leader in the Charlotte coven. There was no doubt in her mind, the councilor’s bitchy granddaughter Cinna was a part of it, if only in her shrieking demands to her grandmother that Celia had to die and the need to know why it hadn’t happened yet. There was more proof than that, the emails on her computer were the most damning.
It was Sally of course, the two faced one who was nice all the time, but Celia had never been fooled by the old woman’s lies and her soft matronly appearance. Sally Williams, for some reason, was trying to kill her two enforcers, and Celia had no idea what to do about it. She could easily see the coven splitting over it, with her as the fulcrum that pulled the coven apart, even perhaps to the point of bloodshed.
The coven she was sworn to protect.
Chapter 21
She’d apologized for running off, but now they were arguing again as they drove from the pack lands to the Charlotte coven.
“No, we need to tell them privately. Just talk to Bria and Damon. If we bring it out in public, it could turn ugly too quickly, plus there is no real solid evidence, just what my elemental saw. In essence it’s my word against Sally’s… I’m also worried about how Damon and Bria will react to my elemental, will they worry that I’d spy on them too?”
Ed’s jaw ticked, “No, we need to confront her. They’ll get her laptop and then it will all be indisputable.”
She sighed, “They may prefer it not be in the open. There are more subtle options they may prefer to try, to hold the coven together. I’m not well liked by a number of them, they may flock to Sally’s support if the word gets out. I’d really like to know why though, I’m not a threat to her position, I’m not even part of the coven.”
Ed snorted, “Of course you are, you just don’t live there, or show up to meetings.”
She frowned, “What do you mean?”
Ed shrugged, “You’re on the rolls honey, because you have to be. An enforcer has to be part of the coven, even if you’re scratching up trees by yourself on the full moon you are still coven.”
She grimaced, “That wasn’t funny.”
Ed sighed, “I didn’t mean…”
“Never mind, just… what’s your plan then? Just march in and accuse her and see what happens. How is that protecting the coven? I want to get her for it, but if we can avoid an internal fight, we should.”
Ed thought about it, “I don’t like that, you’re talking about deceiving the coven to keep it together, that’s not how things should be done.”
She shook her head in denial, “No, we tell them later, after it’s already done. Sally can’t gather support if she’s already dead from betraying the coven. I guess what I’m saying, is since it’s a councilor on the hot seat, we should let the other two decide what’s to be done and in what order. It wouldn’t be a
secret in the long term, just… in the short term, to prevent people from overreacting.”
Ed shook his head, “Alright, but only Damon is available. Bria is still out of town in Albany helping to straighten out that mess and make sure we aren’t leaving enemies behind from our actions.”
She sighed, “Alright, so explain to me why I’m a threat?”
Ed snorted, “Your mother was a legend during the war. Sally is older and has a good grasp of politics, otherwise she’d never have gotten onto the council. She sees your power as a threat to that. Eventually it could happen, half shifter or not. After what I saw in Albany, I’m pretty sure only Bria can come close to your power, and I’m not even positive about that.”
Yeah, great, if she could access it all.
She shook her head, “I don’t want to…”
He interrupted, “It doesn’t matter. People see others through their own motivations. Sally is concerned about power, so sees everyone around her as a possible usurper. They all do to a certain extent except they aren’t trying to kill you. Still, it’s hard to believe she’s behind the assassinations.”
She reached over and squeezed his leg, “You’re as strong as her as well, so… do you think it was my nature that made her act a sandwich short of a picnic?”
“Maybe, wolf shifters are driven to challenge their leaders if they sense weakness, so the strongest always reach the top. It’s possible she… doesn’t know better, that as a cat you don’t give a crap about that stuff. I don’t know, assuming she made a mistake like that might be a stretch. It could just be prejudice.”
She nodded gloomily, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to know or not. She was just glad she seemed to have won the argument.
Ed got out his phone and called Damon, so they could meet privately instead of in the council room where Sally and others would most likely hear.
She was quietly thoughtful the rest of the drive there, which thankfully was free of incident.
When they arrived, they were shown to a door closer to the front entrance, which looked like a conference room you’d expect to see at a company, not a home. The large oval table was made of red oak, and there was even a large screen television against the wall. They sat in silence as they cooled their heels a good ten minutes before Damon swept in the room and closed the door.
Damon studied the both of them for a moment before he sat, and let the silence build a bit before he spoke, as if building anticipation for an audience.
She recognized it as a manipulation tactic, and for some reason felt disappointment, she was hoping he’d be above that sort of thing based on their past interactions. This would be… interesting regardless.
Damon tapped the table softly and said, “So, you wanted to see me alone for some reason?”
She and Ed looked at each other, and she took his queue and started.
“I’m afraid we found out who wants us dead. Sally Williams. I thought you might appreciate a heads up before that information became… public. Plus, we weren’t sure how exactly to handle it, if it were anyone else we’d just kill them… but a councilor? We need backing for that, or at least approval, right?”
Damon’s face soured, as if she’d told a bad joke.
Ed added, “It’s true sir, but we don’t have any solid evidence for you, we just know.”
Damon raised an eyebrow and leaned forward slightly, “How do you know?”
She swallowed, “I suspected her when Ed mentioned it may be a person that pretended to be nice, but was really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Sally has always… struck me as that way. So I had an elemental watch her for a day and report what she saw and heard. Her granddaughter is involved, though all she did was talk, Sally is the one that contacted and hired the assassins. I saw her e-mails as well. The only problem is it’s just my memories and my word, no solid proof.”
Damon asked, “What was the email address?”
She told him, it was a generic account from a free service.
Damon frowned, “That makes it harder, though I’d have hardly expected her to be stupid enough to use the coven email system. Alright, so you need me to…”
She said confidently while leaning forward, “We need her laptop, and for both you and Ed to witness when I open up her e-mail.”
Damon asked, “You have her passwords?”
She blushed, “The memories of her day are quite… complete sir.”
Damon nodded, “We don’t need her computer then, we can bring it up in here if it’s webmail.”
Damon turned on the screen and got a keyboard from a drawer in the credenza and handed it to her.
She brought up the website and put in the username and password, the emails popped up. She opened a few of the incriminating ones. Of course, it wouldn’t be that easy.
Damon said speculatively, “She’ll probably deny it, and say she’s been set up. That even seems reasonable since you can get in so easily, she’ll say you set up the account.”
She shrugged, “Nothing I can do about that sir, except, all the other emails in here to her family and other witches in the coven. They’ll be able to verify she sent them. It would be a little much for me to fake it, especially since it goes back a few years. I hadn’t even met this coven until last month; much less know enough about her family and friends to fake this level of correspondence.”
Damon nodded slowly, “That would do it.”
It was silent for a while.
Ed asked, “So what should we do. Accuse her in the open, take her out, or…”
Damon sighed and glared at them, as if it were somehow their fault, and then fished his phone out of his pocket. He had Bria on the phone in moments, and they talked fast, in a completely different language she didn’t understand. It wasn’t one of the major ones… it was… she really had no idea.
When he hung up a minute later he looked grim.
“This isn’t great news, but Bria agrees if we move quickly it will minimize the impact on the rest of the coven, but it will still be far reaching. Regardless, Sally obviously went too far, we fire our enforcers if we have to, we don’t kill them, much less hire assassins to do the job. Let’s go, I think she’s still in the council room.”
They stood up and she followed Damon and Ed out and down the hallway, she gritted her teeth at the anti-shifter ward, but she was getting used to it. They entered the room, and there were a couple of witches there, but no Sally.
“Where is Sally?” Damon barked at one of them.
They both startled, but one of them answered, “She left about five minutes ago. Said she’d be back in ten minutes…”
The woman looked unsure, and Ed asked, “What is it?”
The woman shrugged, “She seemed a little… off. Worried about something.”
Celia frowned, “Could she have heard our conversation?”
Damon shook his head, “No, that room is shielded from that kind of magic. We use it for business deals. Unless…”
He turned back to the woman, “What was she doing right before she left.”
The other one answered, “She was in here, I think she was talking to someone on the intercom.”
Celia and Ed looked at each other grimly, Sally must have been listening somehow.
Damon growled, “Let’s go, we’ll find something in her rooms to track her.”
The three of them moved toward the door when Celia felt the wards drop, like a set of dominos, and then there was a loud explosion that shook the entire house. She rolled her eyes to the ceiling nervously, there was a little dust, but it seemed to be holding… for now anyway.
Damon took off at a run and they kept on his heels as they raced up the stairs, down a hallway and then Damon stopped dead and stared into a room. His face was thunderous. The door to that room was blown into splinters, and when Celia peaked inside, she could see everything was destroyed, burned.
“She must have set up the wards to fail, and then set off a series of small fire spells to burn her rooms witho
ut damaging the rest of the house.”
She stared at Ed with a raised eyebrow.
“Good deduction Watson, what do you suggest now?”
He actually looked a little sheepish, “Well, a normal finding spell is out. As long as I’m stating the obvious, she’s probably already out of Charlotte and running for it.”
She growled and Silva echoed the sentiment in her mind. She brought up the tracking spell from her battle spell book, the one that would search for her essence directly, and didn’t need any components or ingredients. This time, she barely had to slow the spell at all as she spit out the incantation one careful syllable at a time. It rolled off her tongue and the spell built around her until she was finished chanting and released it. Her magic spread out in all directions, like a huge net, looking for Sally’s particular energy.
It spread out for miles, but ultimately failed. Sally was out of range.
She shook her head, “She’s out of range, we need something with her essence if we’re going to find her.”
Unless… could her elemental find her? She wasn’t sure, if she asked and it couldn’t… Then she had a crazy idea, why not just ask it? She focused her mind on their bond and connection.
“Can you find someone, if I don’t know where she is?”
The elemental replied, “If I have seen them before and they still reside on this plane, yes.”
She frowned. So if she asked it to find Sally, and she was in an accident a minute ago and died, Celia would be screwed. Sure, it was a small chance, like playing the lottery. But it was still more than possible. It would be spinning the dice. Maybe she could get around that in the wording, a do this or that kind of thing.
“Discover if you can locate Sally, if yes, please do so and inform me of the location.”
Would that work as a safety net? She didn’t know, but better trying it than ending up dead... or worse.
The elemental showed her a close up of Sally behind the wheel of a car.
She started to break down in laughter, drawing concerned looks from Damon and Ed.
Demon's Moon: A Celia Winters Novel Book 2 Page 12