“You can do it, little wolf,” Desmond whispered.
Audrey and Kandy shuddered as if paying a price for resisting the call of Desmond’s magic. Kandy’s fingers, wolf-clawed, dug into the dirt on either side of her feet.
Lara screamed as if her soul was being ripped from her body. Green finally flooded her eyes and rippled across her body. Then she transformed into a gray wolf.
The wolf, draped in Lara’s shorts and tank top, lay panting over Desmond’s knees. Her fur was matted and bloody in places, but I understood that the change was supposed to help her heal.
Desmond pulled the shorts off the wolf, who whimpered. Then leaving the tank top on, he resettled her in his arms and stood. He turned to stand before Audrey, still kneeling with her head bowed. He gazed down at the stylish werewolf, then glanced up at me.
“I gather the fledglings, my wolf and your necromancer, are not nearby?” he asked. It was an oddly formal question. His magic still whirled around him, shimmering from his eyes as if he was barely holding onto it.
I shook my head. I couldn’t taste Jeremy or Mory’s magic anywhere near … except …
“There’s a glimmer of Jeremy by the SUV,” I said.
“Blood,” Desmond said. So he’d smelled it already. “Kandy. I’d have you on your feet please.”
Kandy straightened but kept her eyes averted from Desmond.
“They hid behind the SUV,” Desmond said. “Then fell back here behind the crypt. Probably after Jeremy was wounded and Lara had to stand alone.”
“Against the spellcurser,” Kandy spat in agreement.
Hoyt. Hoyt had attacked the teenagers and Lara.
“Why not just drive away?” I asked, really, really trying to focus on each moment and not completely freak out that Mory was missing.
“Kandy?” Desmond asked.
Kandy crossed to the SUV and walked around it, looking at the ground. At driver’s side door, she reached through the open window and popped the hood.
“He disabled the SUV, then mounted his attack when they returned.” Desmond murmured. “Then they ran?”
As Kandy nodded, I found myself wondering whether he was psychically connected to all the shapeshifters in his pack somehow.
“Jeremy was hit here.” The green-haired werewolf pointed at the ground where I could see a glimmer of Jeremy’s magic. “There’s blood here, here, and here.” She gestured to three places that all led toward the crypt.
“Lara’s,” I said. It was easy for me to tell whose blood was whose.
I crossed to and hunched over the spot nearest the trashed SUV. “This is Hoyt’s.” His magical signature wasn’t so dull in his blood, though the sour fennel taste that flooded my mouth made me want to spit.
“Also silver,” Kandy said as she circled the SUV a second time.
“He encases his spells in silver somehow,” I said.
“He can make magical items like you?” Desmond asked. I glanced toward Audrey but she hadn’t moved from her crouched position at Desmond’s feet. He waved his hand to indicate I wasn’t to worry about the bowed werewolf.
“No. It’s not the same thing. It’s like someone making bullets. I doubt they have much shelf life, but he might be able to load them up more than he can throw when he typically curses. Like extra ammunition.”
“They have a silversmith,” Desmond said, his gaze on Audrey’s bowed head. I really, really didn’t get what was going on here with the shapeshifters. My fingers itched to grab my phone and text Kett and Scarlett, who’d gone ahead to wherever Blackwell had left the gift —
“Gift,” I said. “Hoyt snatched the kids and told Lara about the gift. Why?”
Desmond didn’t answer me. Instead, he addressed Audrey. “Rise, wolf.”
Audrey rose but kept her head bowed.
“The pack is splintered, disorganized because there is no second.”
Audrey looked up to meet Desmond’s gaze. “I overstepped, my lord.”
“You thought two wolves would be enough protection for the fledgling necromancer, but you had no knowledge of the enemy we were facing.”
“No, my lord,” Audrey whispered.
“A second must be levelheaded, focused, determined, strong.”
“Loyal, diplomatic —”
“Hudson is not easily replaced.”
“I don’t presume —”
“You presume. You sit by my side. You give orders to my wolves. You’re antagonistic with my enforcer and my honored guests. All because you presume your favor with my father will transfer to me.”
Audrey said nothing, but she stood her ground before Desmond. In the face of his barely contained anger, that was impressive.
Desmond stared at her long enough that I began to get anxious to get moving again.
McGrowly then held the gray wolf in his arms out to Audrey. “I place this wolf in your care.”
Audrey nodded and reached out to gather Lara into her arms. She accepted the weight of the hundred-and-twenty-pound werewolf without effort.
“Kandy, the dowser, and I will join the scion and the vampire. Then we will hunt the sorcerer and the black witch.”
Audrey opened her mouth but Desmond cut her off. “You will provisionally step in as my beta, pending the trials. You will see this wolf healed and you will gather the shapeshifters of Portland. If we have not returned by nightfall, the pack will rise.”
Audrey shuddered but nodded. “Sunset. Yes, my lord.”
I had no freaking idea what all that meant. Except that if their alpha didn’t return, Blackwell was going to have a butt-load of pissed off shapeshifters up his ass.
“Kandy, can you get Lara’s vehicle moving?” Desmond asked.
Kandy shook her head. “Looks like he poured acid all over the engine.”
Desmond growled and started back toward our SUV.
“Wait,” I cried. “Can’t you track them?”
“No,” Desmond answered. He held the back door open for Audrey, who climbed in with the gray wolf still in her arms.
“The trail ends right here,” Kandy murmured in my ear as she stepped by me.
“But all that alpha magic,” I said. I had a hard time believing that Desmond could exert so much control over the shifters and not track them magically.
“Jeremy hasn’t been with us long. He’s pack by birth, but he isn’t bound to Desmond like some of us are. That comes later, by choice. Jeremy’s going away for school in the fall.”
Oh, shit.
“Desmond or I, or any of the werewolves with good tracking abilities, could eventually find them. But the quicker the better, right?”
“The gift,” I muttered.
“Yeah. Let’s go see what the sorcerer left you.”
That didn’t sound like so much fun anymore. The only thing I could cling to, so that I didn’t drown in my fear for Mory, was that I couldn’t taste any of her magic in the area. Dead or alive I should be able to feel her magic if it was near. So whatever hurt Jeremy and Lara hadn’t hurt the fledgling necromancer … yet.
∞
A small gold-plated, hinged box sat on an antique mahogany plant stand in the middle of what appeared to be a very dusty, neglected barbershop.
We had dropped Audrey and Lara back at Desmond’s house. The gray wolf was still conscious but panting in pain. Desmond was actually twisting the steering wheel in his hands. I wasn’t sure how much the steering column could take and still function. But it had at least lasted until we pulled up to an abandoned strip mall somewhere outside of West Portland. Even the ‘For Lease’ sign had fallen, neglected, half off its posts.
Kandy stood outside waiting by the SUV. She’d done a patrol around the entire complex before I’d been allowed to step out of the vehicle. Even though I could clearly feel only Scarlett and Kett inside.
My mother, her face as serious as I’d ever seen it, was holding some sort of spell over the box when we entered the barbershop.
Footsteps leading to and from the door stood out in the thick dust on the linoleum floor. A few massively sized ones with claws tracked around the inner perimeter of the walls as well. McGrowly investigating, I guessed.
“It’s spelled,” Scarlett said. “But not necessarily maliciously. Did you try to remove it from the stand or simply open it?”
“Remove it,” Kett answered. The disdain in his cool smooth voice was completely obvious to me. His expressions and moods were as subtle as Desmond’s were wild. I’d really been spending too much time with the vampire.
“Blackwell’s magic,” I said. I could taste that much even without touching the box.
“Yes?” Scarlett asked as she dropped her spell.
I instantly missed the comforting taste of her magic. It still lingered, of course, wherever my mother was, but was so much more intense when she was casting. I could remember her using a similar spell occasionally on me the few times I’d been sick as a child.
“Not Sienna?” my mother prodded.
I shook my head. No. My sister’s magic was so distinctive now that I would have tasted it from the car even with the doors and windows closed.
“Is Lara all right?” Scarlett asked Desmond over my shoulder as I crossed the room to look at the box.
“She will be, scion. Thank you for your concern,” Desmond answered as he followed on my heels.
Scarlett inclined her head and returned to her examination of the box. Though Desmond had answered her with a formal tone, her question was not that of a diplomat. She actually cared about Lara. The realization startled me. Scarlett had always seemed frivolous and fun. Free with her friends and relationships. Maybe she cared so deeply that maintaining close ties to many people was difficult for her? Was that why she’d come and gone from my childhood? There for all the good times and the bad, but absent in between?
I shook off my self-absorbed thoughts and focused on the box. I hovered my fingers over it but nothing leaped out to bite me, which was always a good first sign. I could see the tinge of Blackwell’s magic coating the box. It didn’t feel like it was trying to repel me. But then, I couldn’t see or taste my own magic in the way I saw others’, so I couldn’t be completely sure.
I touched the lid.
Desmond snarled behind me.
Nothing else happened. “Spelled to me, I think.”
“Blackwell shouldn’t be able to be so specific,” Scarlett said. “Without something of yours … blood, hair. I sensed none of those foundations here.”
I shrugged, losing patience with the not-immediately-tracking-Mory aspect of the afternoon. I didn’t want to sit around analyzing everything to death. Kett on his own could spend weeks just looking at the box. This was totally why I made cupcakes and not wedding cakes. An aspect of my personality I accepted years and years ago. If a customer ever wanted a fancy custom order, Bryn did the decorating.
I flipped open the lid. A gold ball the diameter of a quarter sat nestled in a purple velvet cushion within the box.
“Expensive,” I muttered. Even not knowing the weight of it, I could tell this wasn’t just some pretty gold-plated ball bearing.
“Spelled?” Kett asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “See the solder join? It holds some sort of spell like those silver balls Hoyt uses for his curses.”
This spell ball was twice the size of Hoyt’s ball bearings and made out of gold, so a hasty guess placed it way higher on the power scale as well.
Scarlett raised her hands — probably to cast her diagnosis spell — but I simply plucked the gold ball out of its nest.
My mother gasped. Yeah, I was tired of talking.
The ball rolled in my open palm, then settled in the center. The spell contained within it tried to attach itself to me. I pushed it back into the sphere. It resisted, but then settled back.
“It’s a compulsion spell. Like Blackwell placed on his invitation letter to force Hoyt to deliver it only to me. It’s supposed to force me to ... I don’t know. Follow it?”
“You have it under control, Jade?” Scarlett asked. I saw worry lines on her forehead that I’d never noticed before. They looked permanent. I seriously hoped I wasn’t putting them there, but who was I kidding?
I rolled the gold sphere in my fingers, tasting Blackwell’s magic like the fine wine it reminded me of. “Do you think Mory’s at the other end?” I asked no one in particular.
“He clearly wants something from you,” Kett answered.
“Yeah. Sienna mentioned something she wanted me to do for her.”
Scarlett sighed. “I thought you were speaking metaphorically.”
“I wasn’t.”
Scarlett sighed again.
Geez. It’s not like I’d had hours to dissect my torturous conversation with my sister with her.
“Can you follow the spell or not, dowser?” Desmond asked.
I lifted my hand and pointed a finger.
“Due west,” Kett said.
Desmond dug his phone out of his pocket as he crossed out of the barbershop. At least someone else wanted to be moving as badly as I did.
“Blackwell would make a good vampire,” Kett said.
“Find him clever, do you?” Scarlett was clearly not impressed.
Kett reached over and flipped the lid shut on the small box. The spell on it had disappeared once I’d retrieved the gold sphere. “No,” he said. “Overly convoluted, heavy handed, and obvious.”
“That makes him good vamp material?” I asked as I crossed out of the shop. Kett slipped the gold-plated box into his pocket and didn’t answer me.
Scarlett hung back, texting.
“Mom, let’s go. Who could you possibly be texting?”
“Pearl,” Scarlett answered. She slipped her phone into the outside pocket of her purse and followed me out of the shop.
“Gran is texting?” The world was indeed coming to an end. Gran was a traditional witch. Technology wasn’t her friend. I had always thought her magic fundamentally rejected cell phones and whatnot. If she spent too much time near electronics, her magic eventually fried it.
“I bought her the phone before we left. I found a spell to protect it from her magic, though I’m not sure how long it will last. I had to be careful how I phrased things yesterday, as she was getting Todd to answer for her, but then she figured it out.”
My phone pinged as I climbed into the SUV. I pulled it out. It was a text message from my grandmother.
Jade.
Be careful.
Take care of Scarlett.
I love you.