He buried his head in my shoulder, and I held onto him for a long moment, the same way he’d held me in the spirit realm in the Briar witches’ empty house.
Keir sighed and released me, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“I wasn’t supposed to wind up a fugitive either.” I heaved out a breath. “But just because I'm banned from the city doesn't mean I'm planning to stay away. I will help you fix this.”
He gave a strained smile. “I’ll hold you to that. And if there's any way to prove the mages are crooks, I'll be first on board. I notice none of them are surprised that there's a secret mirror that leads into another dimension. Not to mention the Moonbeam.”
“I got the impression the mages own the mirror,” I said. “Or they think they do. Vance said the mirror’s safe and they got rid of the stones. Speaking of… did you see where the dragon disappeared to?”
“Flew away, I imagine,” he said. “I’ll have to do the same. The mages don’t know where I live—aside from your friends—but if they take my brother, I’ll kill them.”
Oh, damn. A vampire who'd been imprisoned for years and apparently hadn't aged? They'd lock both him and his brother up for illegal magic, the way things were going. “Do you have a plan? Go into hiding?”
“They haven’t come looking for me yet,” he said. “Rumour says they temporarily dropped the registry idea—it’s fairly obvious that the shifters and witches involved weren't in control of their own will. That much, they couldn’t cover up. But that’s not to say they won’t revive their old plan later. I’m ready to run.”
“If you want to come to Lady Harper’s old house, you’re more than welcome to,” I said. “That house can host twenty people, easily.”
“Yeah…” He looked down at his brother, biting his lip. “The mages… maybe they know how to bring him back.”
“Maybe.” They knew how to summon Ancients. Who knew what else they were hiding? “Lord Sutherland will come after me, for what I did to his son. He deserved it, but it drives me mad that the smug bastard is walking around free and I'm stuck in hiding. I still don’t know what they hoped to gain from trapping that witch and forcing her to summon the Whisper.”
“Yes, I did wonder,” said Keir. “She wasn't the strongest Ancient. But…”
“Others might have got out,” I said. “When I tore the spirit line… they broke free, and they can be summoned.”
The Ancients were coming. No denial. No escape.
But I wasn't alone. Far from it.
Evelyn and I spoke at the same time. “Then we’ll kill every last one of them.”
Thank you for reading!
The story continues in Witch’s Secret (Hemlock Chronicles #4), coming soon.
Find out more at http://smarturl.it/HemlockChronicles
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I hope you enjoyed Witch’s Spirit. If you have a minute to spare, then I’d really appreciate a short review. For independent authors, reviews help more readers discover our books, so if you’d like more books about Jas, Ivy, Ilsa and the others, I’d love to know what you thought!
Other books by Emma L. Adams
If you’d like to see how Jas and Ilsa met, you might like Hereditary Magic, Book 1 in the Gatekeeper’s Curse series.
Ilsa Lynn has made it her life’s goal to avoid the curse that binds her family to serve the Summer Court of Faerie, but when she discovers volatile magic inside a family heirloom, she must learn to wield it before her family faces a fate worse than death.
Find out more!
If you’d like to see how Ivy’s adventures started, you might like Faerie Blood, the first book in the Changeling Chronicles series.
When faerie-killer Ivy is hired to find a missing child, replaced with a changeling, she’s forced to team up with the seductively dangerous Mage Lord, at the risk of exposing her own dark history with the faeries—and this time, running won’t save her.
Find out more!
If you’re curious about what happened in the time of the faerie invasion, try Alight, Book 1 in the Legacy of Flames series. Dragon shifter Ember must risk it all to rescue her sister from the supernatural-hunting Orion League, even if it means kidnapping a lethal ex-hunter who'd like nothing better than to add her name to his kill list.
Find out more!
About the Author
Emma is the New York Times and USA Today Bestselling author of the Changeling Chronicles urban fantasy series.
Emma spent her childhood creating imaginary worlds to compensate for a disappointingly average reality, so it was probably inevitable that she ended up writing fantasy novels. When she's not immersed in her own fictional universes, Emma can be found with her head in a book or wandering around the world in search of adventure.
Find out more about Emma’s books at www.emmaladams.com.
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