Normally Ezra’s gentle smile warmed my cranky heart, but this time … the expression was gentle, but in a way that sent frightened shivers through my bones.
Picking up on it too, Martha gasped. Then gasped again. Her mouth gaped, her throat working frantically and lungs heaving, but no sound escaped her—no breath entered or left her airways.
“Ezra,” Aaron said nervously.
The aeromage glanced at his friend, and the moment his attention shifted, Martha inhaled noisily. Tears slid down her cheeks.
Watching her, I tried to summon sympathy. Or pity. Or something. But nope, I didn’t care that she was terrified. I didn’t care if she suffered. She was a selfish bitch who’d betrayed her family, aided a murderous sorceress, and abused Nadine.
Summoning my own sleek smile, I stepped up to Ezra’s side. “Want to talk now, Martha?”
Gulping loudly, she said nothing.
“Hmm, too bad. Ezra?”
He flicked his fingers. Martha wheezed as he pulled the air from her lungs—and this time, Albert gasped too. They convulsed for thirty seconds, their faces purpling, then Ezra let them breathe again.
Albert panted, his face shining with sweat. “Varvara called us an hour ago.”
“Don’t tell—” Martha cut off, gaping again as Ezra stole her air.
“We’re leaving the country,” Albert blurted. “She instructed us to meet her at her house—her real one—at ten o’clock.”
“Where’s her house?” I asked.
“I—I wrote the address on a piece of paper. It’s in the front pocket of my suitcase.”
Kai strode out of the room. As Martha’s face purpled, I poked Ezra in the arm. He tilted his head and she gasped in air, too winded to speak.
“Got it,” Kai said, returning to the room.
“When is Varvara leaving?” I asked Albert.
“Tonight—I don’t know when. But she told us not to be late.”
Tonight. Shit. We were out of time. I turned to the guys. “What do we do with them?”
“I texted Girard,” Kai answered. “He’s sending a team to pick them up. They’ll be handed over to the MPD.”
“I see criminal charges in your future,” I told the couple cheerfully. “Accessory to murder and kidnapping, just to start. Hey Kai, is there a statute of limitations for magical crimes?”
“Nope.”
Martha glared furiously. With a wave over my shoulder, I sauntered out of the house and down the front walk, the guys following. Once we were outside, Aaron groaned.
“You ruined it, Tori,” he complained. “Ezra and I have the ‘good cop, bad cop’ thing down to an art. He bursts in all scarred and terrifying and starts suffocating people, and I act all worried, and they spill their guts within three minutes.”
“Maybe you should’ve told me that.”
“Actually, I’m glad we didn’t.” He widened his eyes emphatically. “What was that? How’d you know the tea was poisoned? And whipping out your artifact as fast as a combat sorcerer—it was freakin’ hot.”
“Don’t forget her expert use of a black-magic artifact,” Kai added, his tone lacking Aaron’s admiration.
I winced. “Um. Am I in trouble for that?”
“Of course not.” Ezra linked his arm through mine. “Do we look like tattletales to you?”
Stopping beside the car, I peered up at him. “What next?”
“We’re going to save Nadine from the sorceress.” He smiled crookedly. “Right now.”
A frown tugged at Kai’s lips. “We need a larger team, but we can’t wait around for people to join us.” He pulled out his phone. “I’ll coordinate on the drive. Let’s hope we can get backup in time to make a difference.”
“So we’re doing this?” I asked, my voice hushed with a mix of hope and fear. “We’re going after Varvara? For real?”
Aaron unlocked the trunk of his car. From inside, he pulled out a huge sword, its leather baldric wrapped around the dark sheath. Shaking the straps out, he flashed me a dangerous grin.
“Good thing we came prepared.”
Chapter Twenty
My thumbs flew across the keyboard on my phone, half my attention on the words I was typing and half on Aaron as he drove. His eyes were fixed on the dark, winding road, bordered by huge trees that formed a leafy tunnel over the street.
“How much farther, Tori?” he asked.
I hit send then hastily switched back to the navigation app. “Looks like a block and a half.”
The cute duplexes and bungalows of the Rivers’ neighborhood were long gone. I couldn’t see any houses outside the car windows, only mature trees and manicured bushes that formed impenetrable privacy screens. At irregular intervals, gated driveways interrupted the walls of greenery.
According to my map, somewhere on the other side of those trees was the ocean. Yep, these were waterfront properties. Expensive waterfront properties. Not, like, million-dollar houses. Oh no. Twenty million? Fifty million? I wasn’t sure. I honestly didn’t want to know.
The important thing to note was, assuming Varvara didn’t intend to take Nadine through an international airport, the easiest way to leave the country was by sea. Varvara’s escape route was literally a stone’s throw away from her house. Damn clever of her, though I hated to admit it.
Slowing the car, Aaron drove another block, then pulled off the road and onto the strip of grass beside a dense twelve-foot hedge—neatly trimmed, of course.
“We’re not there yet,” I told him.
“We need to finish gearing up. Plus, sneaking is easier when you don’t drive straight to the front door.”
I grunted in reluctant agreement.
He shut off the car and twisted in his seat, his blue eyes unusually serious. “I know I said we’d do this—and we will—but I need to ask you something first.”
Nervousness fluttered through me—extra anxiety on top of my nerves about taking on a notoriously lethal rogue sorceress without proper backup, which wouldn’t arrive for at least forty-five minutes.
Aaron braced his forearm against the steering wheel. “I’m aware that the three of us aren’t known for caution, but there’s a difference between taking calculated risks and throwing your safety right out the window.”
“When we were going after the Ghost,” Kai said from the backseat, “you put yourself in more danger than I know how to quantify. And though you can’t explain how you escaped, I suspect it was mostly luck and circumstance.”
I winced. Yeah, he’d pegged that one right.
“You came this close”—Aaron held up his finger and thumb, an inch apart—“to imprisonment or death.”
Fighting another flinch, I tried to think of something to say in my defense, but even in my head, all my excuses sounded idiotic.
“You knew how dangerous it was. You knew no one had ever returned after he took them.” Aaron leaned toward me. “Why did you go with him?”
I looked from his face, harshly lit by the car’s overhead light, to Kai in the backseat. Ezra was sitting directly behind me, out of my line of sight, so I was spared his guilt-inducing, puppy-eyed, “you worried us” expression.
“It seemed like the only option.” I squeezed my phone between my palms, unable to meet their eyes. “If the Ghost had left, we would’ve lost our only chance to save Nadine.”
“We?” Kai asked. “Or you? Why are you so hell-bent on saving this girl?”
My head jerked up. “Why shouldn’t I be? She’s sixteen, all alone, trapped with parents who don’t love her, abandoned by everyone, completely helpless, and—”
Aaron’s hand closed over mine, cutting off my shrill rant.
“Tori,” he murmured, “are you sure you’re talking about Nadine?”
“Wh-what?”
“When you went with the Ghost, we didn’t know Nadine’s parents were giant douchebags. No one had abandoned her. She wasn’t unloved—as far as we knew. She was helpless, but that’s because she ran away.”
“But now we do know that—”
He squeezed my hand. “Tori.”
My throat constricted. He was right. I’d gone with the Ghost thinking Nadine was alone and abandoned and unloved. But I’d assumed all those details, filling in the blanks based not on her life—but on mine.
At sixteen, I had been alone. I had been abandoned and unloved.
I’d been desperate to save Nadine from that fate, as though changing her future would somehow change my past. If I rescued her, I would also rescue sixteen-year-old me. If I rescued her, the ghost of my teenage self would forgive me for being so weak.
And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Nadine wasn’t me. Faced with abusive parents and horrifying truths about her origins, she’d left it all behind. She’d found her way to Zak, who took her under his wing.
But me? I hadn’t had the guts to run away. My brother had, but I stayed with my father, letting him destroy me piece by piece. When Justin ditched me for the police academy, I went right back into the cycle of dependency by living with my father’s relatives. Even after relocating across the country, I was still clinging to the familiar—moving in with Justin, relying on him again.
Aaron’s warm hand slid up my arm, his brows pulling together in concern, and I realized tears were leaking down my face. Gasping in embarrassment, I twisted away from him as I fought for composure.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered thickly.
Aaron curled his fingers around the back of my neck, his thumb gently rubbing my cheek. “You scared us really bad, Tori. We don’t want to lose you.”
“I know. I won’t be stupid this time.”
“Just this time? I was hoping you wouldn’t be that stupid ever again.”
I sniffed. “You’re one to talk. You do stupid shit all the time.”
“Hey, I’ve never—”
“No, no,” Kai interrupted. “She’s got a point.”
I shot Aaron a triumphant smirk. He rolled his eyes, and with no more discussion than that, he threw his door open. Following suit, I hopped out of the car. The guys piled out and opened the trunk.
They’d partly geared up back at the Rivers’ place, but now they got their weapons out. Aaron strapped his big-ass sword Sharpie onto his back. Kai, already wearing a black garment that resembled a bullet-proof vest with small pockets and sheaths, checked that his tiny throwing knives and ninja stars were in place. If the small triangular blades had a real name, I didn’t know it and I didn’t want to. I was calling them ninja stars, because hell yeah. Kai, the lightning ninja.
Ezra wore fingerless gloves that ran all the way to his biceps, the knuckles and elbows reinforced with shining steel. A baldric was strapped over his chest, waiting for his weapon—his Twin Terrors, a two-foot pole arm that split into dual blades, which could then be attached end to end to make a four-foot double-bladed pole arm. It was freaking badass. He swung the pole over his shoulder and stuck it onto the magnetic baldric.
And me? I just stood there, having no gear to don. It kind of sucked.
Aaron slammed the trunk shut, adjusted the strap over his chest, and gave me a sharp grin. “Ready?”
“What’s the plan?” I asked.
“For now, we’re winging it,” Kai said. “Sneak in, check out the property, break into the house.”
“Rescue the girl, defeat the evil sorceress, celebrate victory,” Ezra concluded.
I pumped my fist, pretending I was as confident as they sounded. “Let’s do this!”
As Kai and Ezra approached the twelve-foot hedge, Aaron caught my hand, pulling me to a stop. I squinted at his face in the darkness.
He brushed his fingers along my jaw, the touch gentle and questioning. “Are you okay, Tori?”
“Yeah.”
Leaning down to bring our faces closer, he studied me. “Is there any way I can convince you to wait here?”
“What? No!”
He sighed. “Stick close to us, don’t go anywhere by yourself, and don’t take risks.”
I opened my mouth to retort with something pithy and sarcastic, but the words died on my tongue. Fear tightened his eyes—fear for my safety. However difficult the last two weeks had been on me, they’d been worse for him.
His warm hand cupped my cheek. Fluttering heat uncoiled in my core, spreading through my limbs, and I didn’t need the soft pressure of his hand to guide my head back. His lips brushed over mine, then he kissed me hard. I gasped against his mouth, my arms curling around his neck.
“Uhhhmm,” Ezra drawled. “Maybe you two could save that for later?”
Tearing myself away from Aaron, I turned. Ezra stood at the bottom of the hedge, and Kai was perched awkwardly on top, irritation written all over his face even in the darkness.
With a laugh, Aaron stepped into Ezra’s cupped hands and the aeromage threw him upward with an assistive gust of wind. Aaron scrambled onto the stupidly high hedge, then he and Kai jumped off, disappearing on the other side.
Ezra cupped his hands again. “Your turn, Tori.”
“Uh.” I was pretty sure Aaron had made that maneuver look much easier than it was. Doubt flitted through me. If the first obstacle—a goddamn hedge—was intimidating me, maybe I should wait in the car.
No, I could do this. I’d smashed poison over a darkfae, flown with a dragon, and discovered the secret identity of the most notorious rogue in the city. I was a badass.
Tugging my shirt straight, I marched up to him and put one running shoe in his gloved hands. He crouched, dropping lower so I could bend my knee for the jump, then together we launched up. I leaped as he threw me upward, a helpful blast of wind sweeping me into the air. I caught the dense branches at the top—and pitched backward off the bush, clutching useless handfuls of leaves.
Ezra dove to catch me, his arms clamping around my waist. Heaving me up before I hit the ground, he staggered back a step, lost his balance, and landed on his butt with a grunt. I sprawled in his lap, stunned by my own incompetence.
“Sorry!” Flinging the torn leaves away, I twisted around—and found myself face to face with him, our noses almost touching.
I reeled back, then scrambled up and nonchalantly brushed shredded foliage off my pants.
Climbing to his feet, Ezra gave me a funny look, a crinkle between his dark eyebrows. “Shall we try again?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
My second attempt went much better. I dropped off the hedge on the correct side and Aaron caught me. Phase one, complete.
Varvara Nikolaev’s estate was even more opulent than I had expected. The sprawling lawn, interrupted by a winding brick driveway, was impeccably manicured and included towering trees, artistically clustered shrubbery, several statues, and a marble fountain. The three-story house lay on the land like a plump, lounging baroness, her limbs and bulges adorned with tall windows and white columns.
“Be careful,” Kai warned. “Varvara is expecting the River couple to arrive within the hour, and I don’t think she’s planning a friendly welcome.”
“What do you mean?” I whispered as we crouched behind a red bush trimmed into a perfect sphere. I plucked off several leaves. Bushes weren’t supposed to be perfect spheres. It was unnatural.
“The Rivers are a liability,” he explained. “They’re the only ones who can tie Nadine to Varvara, and I doubt that’s a loose end she wants to drag around with her. Tolerance and mercy aren’t common traits for dark sorcerers.”
“You think Varvara is planning to kill them?”
“I would bet money on it. You probably saved their lives.”
Hmm. Could I get karmic points for unintentional good deeds?
“Ezra and Tori,” Kai whispered. “You two stay here and watch the front. I’ll scout the east side of the property and Aaron, you can scout the west side. Ten minutes.”
I almost protested, but he and Aaron were already zipping away, moving swiftly from shadow to shadow in a way I knew I couldn’t duplicate. Well, I felt useless.
; “Don’t worry,” Ezra murmured, noting the dejected slump to my shoulders. “I’m not great at sneaking around either. I usually get door-watching duty.”
That actually made me feel better. Then again, Ezra sucked at stealth operations because he was literally half blind. I didn’t have that excuse.
Kai and Aaron returned right on time, reporting signs of sorcery hidden around the property but no clues about Varvara’s or Nadine’s whereabouts. There was, however, a sleek white yacht anchored at the end of a long floating dock that extended into the ocean waters at the north end of the property. Varvara hadn’t made her escape yet. She must be waiting for the Rivers to show up first.
Not wanting to waltz in the front door, Kai led us around back. I craned my neck. The main level extended to almost twice the square footage of the upper levels, and its rooftop formed a wide terrace accessible from the second floor. We crept to the ground-level garden doors and Kai produced a zippered pouch from his vest, pulled out two small tools, and picked the lock in about ten seconds. Color me impressed.
He opened the door and we slipped into a huge pool room. The water shimmered in the faint glow of decorative lights set around the ceiling. As adrenaline buzzed in my veins, we tiptoed down a luxuriously carpeted hall and into a large … parlor room? I didn’t know the proper names for fancy rich-people rooms.
Whatever it was called, my first impression was red. So red. Textured crimson wallpaper, rich cherry fabric on the furniture, scarlet- and amber-patterned carpet. Massive oil paintings in heavy gold frames covered the walls. The architecture, with domed ceiling cutouts and hugely elaborate trim, was very Victorian England, but the décor was giving me serious Winter Palace vibes. Varvara had added touches of home to the interior design.
As we slunk through the room, a crash sent me leaping into the air. Kai, Aaron, and I whirled around. Ezra stood beside a delicate curio table, surrounded by the shattered pieces of a vase. None of us moved as we listened, but no suspicious sorceresses appeared to investigate the noise.
Ezra cringed sheepishly. “Sorry.”
He hadn’t been kidding about his lack of sneaking abilities. He’d told me before that moving targets weren’t a problem for him—they disturbed the air, which he could sense with his air magic—but he was easily defeated by stationary furniture.
Dark Arts and a Daiquiri (The Guild Codex: Spellbound Book 2) Page 19