"Run," I gasped, shoving Ivy toward the door. "Get the list out."
"Lina, no!" Ivy screamed.
"GO!" I shouted, and I did the only thing I could think of.
I didn't pull. Ipushed.
I took all that ash, all that static I had absorbed from the wards, and I shoved it back at him.
It was dirty magic. Used magic.
Marrow violently flinched, his concentration breaking for a split second.
"NOW!" I screamed.
Jax grabbed Ivy. Stone grabbed the file. And they ran.
I turned to follow, but a hand—cold, dry, impossible strong—clamped onto my wrist.
"Leaving so soon?" Marrow whispered in my ear.
I looked at the open door. My friends were gone. They had the list.
I smiled, even as terrified tears pricked my eyes.
"Operation Starvation," I whispered. "Phase One complete."
Marrow frowned. "What?"
I stomped on his foot—hard—and used the momentary distraction to fling myself out the window.
Lucien was waiting in the shadows below. He caught me before I hit the pavement.
"Did you get it?" he demanded, his arms crushing me to his chest.
"We got it," I gasped, burying my face in his neck. "And he knows we're coming."
15
We reconvened in the "War Room" (aka the Penthouse living room), but the pillow fort was gone. It felt too childish now. Too soft for what we were facing.
Instead, we sat around the dining table—a slab of dark mahogany that Rhett had salvaged from a haunted estate sale—staring at the folder Stone had thrown down.
"Open it," Jax said. He was pacing by the window, his usual relaxed demeanor gone. Vampires didn't like being hunted. It messed with the food chain.
Lina reached out, her hand bandaged from where she'd scraped it climbing out the window. "Who wants to read the names?"
"I will," Stone said, his voice grim. He opened the folder.
The first page rustled in the silence.
"Target One," Stone read. "The Triad: Rhett, Kai, Lucien. Bond Type: Primordial. Status: High Priority. Note: The Anchor is the weakness. Break the girl, break the bond."
Rhett growled, a low, tectonic rumble in his chest. "Let him try."
"Target Two," Stone continued. "Ivy of the Night Court. Status: High Priority. Note: Chaos Agent. Suspected collusion with Campus Security (Stone) and Local Vampire Coven (Jax)."
Ivy let out a shrill laugh. "Collusion? I call it 'aggressive networking.'"
