Checking in with Gideon, Grayson shrugs, not quite sure what to do.
How can they take Withers out of the mix before he gets to that party? What’s the plan if they can’t?
“Are you sure I couldn’t persuade you?Somehow?”
Grayson lowers his voice to its deepest, most seductive pitch, and Leo shivers behind him. His shiver makes Luca buck and push to get his mate’s peach of an ass off his belly.
Withers groans, too.
Blech.
Grayson will need a boiling-hot hazmat shower and brain bleach after this.
“Tempting as that is, I have been waiting for this for months. Has to be Friday. But afterwards? Yeah. I’ll have lots of energy to burn then, if you know what I mean.”
There’s a pause, and the last of his words are rushed.
“Well, I’ve got to go. People to drain. I’ll be in tou—”
Grayson can’t say another word before the phone disconnects in the woman’s hand.
She pops back to her fully formed, non-transparent self, and Grayson knows through experience that’s a rough landing.
Ignatius steadies her with a hand under her elbow as she grimaces.
“This is Erleuchtete Selinde Varna, the world’s foremost authority on Traveling, and Matilda Paulis, a detective with the Wardens. Did you have any luck, Selinde?” Ignatius asks, nodding toward the phone.
She shakes her head, returning the device to Grayson.
“I had just enough time to get the general location of some residual magic in the area.”
“What if you don’t catch him, and he escapes? He’ll never let us near him, then,” Luca says, as he pushes Leo off so he can adjust his blanket toga.
The ensemble somehow makes him look more regal, not less. Such is the nature of rockstar Luca Wilde.
“From the sound of it, there’s nothing that would make him miss out on Friday night. Nor is there anything that I did today that would lead him back to you. I used the phone to pinpoint his magic signal, but he couldn’t possibly detect that. I hoped he was too busy with your partner and that he would drop his guard. He’ll assume it was his activity on The Plain.”
That’s a thing?
“You used the satellite signal?” Grayson asks, not able to keep the awe from his tone, really wishing he’d taken a moment to see how she was working her strands of The Plain.
“It’s Selinde’s technology Talent.”
“I can’t guarantee he won’t be suspicious, but our priority has to be the civilians,” the detective says. “I agree with your assessment, Erleuchtete Varna: he’s not going to miss what he’s got going on Friday night. I expect he’ll be drawing hard on The Plain then. It won’t take us long to find him,” she adds confidently.
Grayson is more concerned that Winnie and Ansel may not survive until then.
“You have a GPS location, Erleuchtete?”
The Warden takes her phone out, ready to type the coordinates.
“I do. 27.8996° N, 82.7009° W. Good luck.”
Without another word, the Warden heads out the front door, slipping into a black SUV idling in the cobblestone drive.
The coordinates mean little to Grayson, but he can only guess that Withers won’t have gone too far from Clearwater—and his targets.
“Erleuchtete, thank you for helping us,” Jay says.
