“No. I am not.”
Silence filled the car as he refused to continue.
Paige wasn’t going to let that happen though. She had him. He was going to answer some of her questions. Finally. She pushed a little with her alpha will. “What are you?”
He smiled and flicked his eyebrows at her. But then he did something that surprised her.
He pushed back.
Okay. So, did that mean that he had an alpha spirit too? Was he a shifter witch? If so, then why hadn’t he shifted to fight her and Leslie back in Alaska? Why did he allow them to win?
He let her think about that for quite some time but then he finally answered. “Mage.”
Paige had heard the term many times. She just didn’t know what that meant. “So, what is it that you do?”
He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You know of ley lines?”
Of course she did. Every witch did. Some felt the rivers of magic some resonated with them, but none of them really connected with. “Sure.”
“Well, we use them. We tap into the network and that’s the energy we use in our spells.”
That would explain why their magick was different and sometimes more powerful in limiting ways. The exits leading into town were blocked. He drove past the roadblocks, waving to the highway patrols.
It was time to bait him. “The wards have been released to allow you and your people in.” But she was going to figure out a way to disrupt their surveillance. Somehow.
“I heard.”
“So, that means the blockade can come down.”
“No. We need full, unfettered access.”
She smiled at his acknowledgement that he knew the traps. “Paint a picture for me. What’s it going to look like if I do? What is your plan? Collar us? Collect us? Take us to restricted locations that aren’t even on the map?”
He pulled to the side of the road and put the SUV in park. He took off his seatbelt so that he could twist around to face her. “We are going to register every single paranormal in that town. Man, woman, child. No matter how young. We are going to document what each person is capable of doing. And then you are going to be chipped.”
Oh, hell no. “Are you chipped?”
“Of course not. The nature of our magic would simply fry the device. If you will notice, there’s nothing electronic inside the scar. The reason for that is because we simply ruin all things electrical.”
Oh, how very Harry Dresden of him.
“Also, most of us aren’t citizens of the United States of America and therefore we do not have to abide by its most stringent laws.”
“Except this isn’t a law.”
Leslie’s car pulled up on the other side of road. She put the car in park and got out.
Someone must have told her they were on the way.
“Not yet. But soon.” He gave her a smug look. “Very soon.”
She wanted to wipe it off his face with the pavement. “And then? Are you going to enforce this around the world?”
He chuckled. “There are very few places like the United States. So very few people who are contagiously fearful the way you lot are. So, no. It is highly likely that no one else will follow in your lead. Well, a few places, I’m sure. But not the first world countries.”
Which meant that if she could find someone in some other country, someone with political pull, she might be able to… She didn’t even know what. But maybe she could get some help or some guidance or some political pull or push or the political fist. Anything. Something. “It’s a good thing you’ve got doors.”
He went still and glanced at her. “What do you mean?”
She smiled at him, not really interested in playing cat and mouse. “I know you have Dexx and I know you used a door to breach the wards.”
He narrowed his eyes bright blue eyes. “I had wondered how long this would take. Can I expect retaliation, then?”
Paige chuckled. “You’d be silly not to.”
“Oh, Ms. Whiskey,” Mario said, turning his gaze to the ceiling. “This won’t—”
“But not from me.”
He stopped, on high alert, listening.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to Dexx—” But she really wanted to punch him in his smug-ass fucking face for it. “—but he’s going to tear you up from the inside. And I’m—well, frankly, I’m just really pleased you took him and brought him in.” Anger raged inside her, and she fought to keep it in check. “Because now my man is inside.”
Mario made an uncomfortable sound while smiling. “He will never break though.”
Paige smiled, keeping it calm and cold. Oh, he’d break through. And if he didn’t, then, yes, Mario could expect retaliation. “Okey-dokey.”
Mario got out and opened the passenger door, pulling Ember out of his car seat. He tucked the baby close to his chest.
Paige collected Rai, watching him, confused. This man gave her so many different mixed signals. It was kind of infuriating a little bit.
Leslie walked up to them and took Rai from her. “You good?”
Paige nodded and shook Leah awake. She came to, but her eyes were droopy, and her personality was not fully charged.
She went to the back and grabbed all of their bags, allowing Leah to just stumble her way to the car like a zombie.
Leslie put Rai in the car seat, but before Rai could get buckled in, she shifted into a bird and flew to the top of the car.
Paige got a sense that she was antsy and needed to burn off excess energy. Paige could understand that. “Rai and I will fly home.”
Leslie nodded, her eyes only on Mario who had safely installed Ember in the car seat.
Paige put the bags in the trunk and then closed it. “See you at home?”
Leslie nodded and then disappeared into the car.
Paige stared at Mario for a long moment. She wanted to punch him, to demand he release Dexx, to release the town, to pull his head out of his ass.
But she knew that she and her children and the people of this town were not going to be chipped.
Without another thought, she shifted into an owl and took off.
Rai took to the air as Leslie pulled back into the street. She wasn’t nearly as fast. She was a baby bird. But she was doing pretty good for being a little over a week old.
As they got further away from Mario, her nerves unknotted a little. She hated so much about that man. She wanted to take him down and kick him out of her country.
As she expected, Rai tired out about halfway. She did pretty good and better than expected really. They landed and then Paige shifted into a gorilla. Rai followed suit and climbed up on her back, holding tight to Paige’s long fur as they traveled along the roads and through the wooded areas and farmland.
However, when she and Rai got home, Paige’s phone buzzed almost as soon as she’d shifted. Michelle had texted her a message.
Dexx took Tarik and Frey.
What… the actual fuck?
15
Paige was, to put it lightly, done.
But she was in a bit of a tough place. It wasn’t like she could just walk into a DoDO facility and demand her not-quite-husband back. Mostly because she had no idea where they were headquartered.
She had to hope that Dexx could figure this out. Yes, she wanted to go in there hands blazing and take her man back. She didn’t care if she had to give him a cognitive recalibration. He’d given her plenty of reasons to want to hit him really hard on the head.
Yeah. She could definitely go Black Widow on him.
Except… that she didn’t have time to be upset about her husband when there were hundreds and thousands of other people out there looking to her to fix something else.
Damn it nine hells. If she didn’t have Dexx, she could take his phrase.
What she could do was to bring Mario in and physically show him how the wards protected the people of the town, then figure out how to install them everywhere
else once she had them calibrated correctly here.
But first, she needed to figure out how to get rid of the surveillance devices or whatever was installed around the town.
So, for the next day, she put Michelle and Ethel—the only two remaining members of the Red Star team—on lockdown, and then deployed her rather large team of local witches to locating all the surveillance devices around the town.
She hadn’t even realized just how powerful an asset that really was, an army of witches. She’d spent the past two years virtually ignoring them, only working with her own family—who wasn’t even a real coven. Not really. They were a group of solitary witches. Kinda. They didn’t perform magick together very often. She sometimes forgot how powerful coven witches were.
In her defense, the Whiskey’s did have other things to deal with.
Also, she had access to the greatest library anywhere. She couldn’t even say it was anywhere on this world because it was a dimension where the spirit animals hid, or lived.
Together with the librarians and the witches, she figured they’d located most—if not all—the devices around the town.
And there were a lot.
They were a mix of electrical devices and magical ones. After what she discovered about the mages, she was a little surprised.
Merry reminded her that she shouldn’t be. It was the best way to evade detection. So, they did one more sweep and discovered a completely different set of devices that had been installed around the town. This set was old school, almost mechanical in nature with touches of magick applied to them.
After the second set of surveillance devices was rounded up, she contacted Danny Miller. She needed to know if there was a way to shield their recording devices against electrical surges.
She had an idea to pull a media stunt and didn’t want Mario to short circuit the equipment, thereby cutting them off. She worked to ensure that what was about to happen would actually get out to the people.
Paige called for a press conference through Danny’s contacts. It was time to get in front of the media again. She’d talked to everyone on the paranormal committee who was still in the area.
The elves had left, as had two of the elementals. The rest had agreed it was time for the news to get an in-depth view of what they were doing in Troutdale. She’d set up for outside news crews to be there for a week, if anyone wanted to take them up on the offer.
A few had returned a hearty yes, and then had called to let her know they’d been denied access.
That was okay, actually. The first bit of news they could report.
The mayor took matters into her own hands. She and several of the other people in the community decided to make a different stand. They were shooting video of just about everything. And they still had access to social media.
So, they took that access and shared their stories with friends, and through them, the world.
There were stories from the schools and the social dinners and the distributing of their supplies.
The mayor had even hired her own videographer. It was her son. She hired her son. But he and his team followed Paige through just about everything for the next two days. Not the secret meetings. But through most of her days.
Including home life.
It felt invasive. She didn’t appreciate it. But she had to get the story out.
Lovejoy contacted her on the burner phone and told her to keep doing what she was doing. It was helping, and the number of people being abducted had significantly reduced.
That was all good. Very good.
But this wasn’t a solution.
Paige called Mario and personally invited him to Troutdale and asked him to bring the media.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Ms. Whiskey.”
“Why?” Paige was feeling good about herself. She’d seen the media coverage. They were trending and doing it while sending out a positive message. We can work together. “Because the President is running scared?”
“You baited her and you continue to do so every time you mention the media.”
“Being unable to come in and cover this news story that will affect people all over the nation? You’re right. That’s very irresponsible of me. I should remember that when tyrants want me to be silent, I should surrender my voice and do as I’m told.”
He didn’t respond.
“Bring the news.?” She disconnected.
She’d put together a dog and pony show to let the world and Mario know that there were things that couldn’t be allowed. She’d already let the world know that there were plans to get them all collared and chipped. They’d already talked about how there were hundreds of missing persons—well, almost a hundred—cases and more trickling in. Paranormals who were disappearing off the street every day.
It was time to show the people who they were fighting and give the power back to the paranormals.
Paige made sure the videos recorded her keeping the twins close.
Leah had to get back to school. She couldn’t stay out any longer, even though Paige could really use the help. Her education was more important.
She and the twins were making it work.
They were growing so fast. And, frankly, so was Bobby.
She still didn’t want to bring Bobby out into the spotlight. He was a prophet and wanted by heaven and Hell. So, she wasn’t going to put a neon sign over his head and invite that trouble. They already had enough.
Leslie was no help on the twin front. She had her hands full with a mystery of new people showing up? It was—Paige really didn’t know what was going on, only that she didn’t want to get involved and Leslie didn’t want her help. Great. Excellent. Moving on.
The upcoming news conference was giving her the hives.
Literally.
Chuck took her by the arms as the main street filled with people from the surrounding areas.
DoDO had done more than just let the media in. They’d let everyone in.
Which meant they were planning something.
That… was only going to help Paige.
Chuck exerted his alpha will on her, his blue eyes framed by his black lashes. “Calm down.”
“I am calm.” On the outside. She was freaking the freak out on the inside. She needed someone to help her, who actually knew what the hell they were doing. She felt like a kindergartner on the backlines of a major war proclaiming to be a general.
He tipped his head to the side and gave her a frank look. “You are not. And why isn’t your pack helping you with the twins?”
Because she kept forgetting about her pack? She was a witch. “They’re busy. We’ve got security issues and I’m not saddling any of them with babysitting duty.”
He sighed, giving her a look that said he knew the real reason.
That man always did, which was probably why he was the regional high alpha.
“Fine. I’ll ask.”
He nodded and stepped away. “Do you know what you’re going to say?”
This time, she did. Kinda. She’d practiced this speech for the last two days, and she was on a version of it now that had absolutely nothing to do with how it’d started. Her head was so scrambled, she wasn’t even sure if she remembered it. “Yeah.”
Chuck licked his lips, looked down, and then grabbed her arm, bringing her back around to face him.
She really just needed someone bigger and smarter and wiser than her to tell her she could do this.
He looked her in the eye. “There is a reason,” he said, his slight accent softening his words, “that we put you in this position.”
“Because I’m the only one without a job?”
He gave her a look that told her to shut up.
Right.
“You’re the most powerful witch in this region.”
Well, no. She was powerful. She knew that, but—
“You surpassed Merry a long while ago. And you house a very powerful shift
er spirit.”
Cawli growled low in the back of Paige’s head in appreciation.
“We haven’t had a person like you in our worlds in a very long time, and you are the only one who can bridge our gap right now.”
She realized he wasn’t just talking about the gap between witches and shifters, which… was wide. Or the gap between the other paranormals and witches and shifters.
She’d invested a large portion of her career—nearly twenty years, which made her feel old—working with and protecting humans.
He nodded slowly, sucking in his bottom lip as he saw that understanding somewhere in her expression. At least, that’s what she assumed.
Right. Right.
She turned to the podium on the flatbed trailer.
Right.
Wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans she stepped up to the podium and raised her hands for the crowd to quiet.
Which version of this speech was she going with?
“Ladies and gentlemen, media, and all outlets to the world.” She worked her feet getting her speech legs under her. She wasn’t going to focus on the fact that all these people were looking up to her, relying on her, waiting for her to mess up.
She focused on all these people who were searching for answers.
“We’ve had some pretty interesting days, haven’t we?” She knew they wouldn’t answer her, but they did respond. Some nodded. Others looked at each other.
She’d learned a lot over the course of the last week. It wasn’t just about getting the message out there. She had to engage.
But this wasn’t the museum. This was a speech.
“Many of you have come to Troutdale for your own reasons.” She had no idea what any of those even were. “But you need to understand one thing. Being here and has put you in danger.”
A few people muttered around the crowd.
“What you don’t know is that Department of Delicate Operations, DoDO for short, let you in. For a reason. But what is that reason? They also allowed in the media. For a reason. But for what reason?” She had a guess. “I believe they plan on attacking us. Or inviting an attack.”
Whiskey Storm Page 13