Aunt Daphne clicks her tongue, her eyes wide but her tone still laced with amusement. “Quite the matches you got, Ellie. Quite the matches.”
In the space of a few thuds of my pulse, Cole’s huge wolf form stands poised where he once crouched. His lips draw back from his teeth with a snarl.
He lifts his stormy gaze to glare at the warehouse—and whoever’s inside it?
I don’t know how much he can sense about them. He braces his canine body, perfectly still, the breeze ruffling the thick fur along his back. A shudder passes through his sturdy frame.
Then he pads forward, one step and then another until it’s a full-out prowl. On along the sidewalk, claws tapping against the pavement… past the point that repelled us up until now.
I hesitate for a few seconds before creeping after him. The others stir and trail after me.
We walk through fragmented traces of collectedephemera, the energy nipping at my face but not blocking me. Three steps, four steps, five…
Byron sucks in a breath, and my head jerks up. Lights have glimmered into view in a few of the second-floor windows, dim but obvious.
The magical barrier must have been hiding all signs of occupation too.
Salvatore studies the building with a soft guffaw. “All right. Now all we have to do is take a peek inside, right? I can get us up there.”
Without waiting for our agreement, he holds out his hands toward the pavement at the base of the building. Fragments of the crumbling cement and the earth beneath mingle into bricks, stacking and rising in a steep staircase that leads up the side of the structure to the nearest of the lit windows.
Cole straightens up back in his human form, rolling his shoulders and avoiding all our eyes as if he thinks he’ll see horror there. My gut twists at his discomfort.
I move to his side and twine my fingers with his. I half expect him to pull away. But he only freezes, his stance going stiff, before tugging my hand a little deeper into his hold.
That’s enough of a welcome that I let myself push up on my toes to kiss his cheek.
Cole’s arm comes right around me. He holds me close for one beat of my heart and another, his piney scent wrapping around me with the fraught embrace.
Then, with a flex of his jaw, he pushes himself away. “Let’s see what’s going on in there.”
Salvatore insists on climbing his stairs first, expanding his creation as he goes so there’s a platform just below the level of the window long enough for all six of us to stand. Girding myself, I hurry after him with Cole at my heels. Our concealing spells prickle around us.
As I reach the grimy window, I rest my hands gingerly onthe outer ledge. My gaze roves over the figures gathered beyond the smudged pane.
Uncle Nik stands with his profile to me, but he’s far from alone. Several other men and women stand in a circle with him like they’re having a group discussion.
I don’t recognize any of the others—the maintenance worker from Luminary isn’t in the bunch.
The plain room holds no furnishings, not even chairs or a table. Just a scuffed wooden floor and beige walls.
Various mouths in the group are moving, but I can’t make out any sound through the thick glass. Or maybe it’s not the glass at all.
Cole glares at the scene and speaks under his breath. “There’s more magic shielding that specific room. We’d have to break through it to funnel their voices out… and I think, this close, they’d notice.”
Screw a strigoi. My jaw clenches with my frustration.
I pull out my phone. “We can at least get a visual record of who Nik met with.”
At least, that’s the idea. I snap one picture, take a look at it, and stifle a groan. “The magic is also blurring their features if recorded.”
Salvatore cracks his knuckles. “I say we blast right in there and bust some skulls. I bet we can get one of them talking.”
“I don’t think—” I start to say, and my voice snags in my throat.
Because the people on the other side of the window… don’t look entirely like people anymore.
In the space of a blink, a shimmer has come over their bodies. The edges of their forms no longer look solid but as if they’re blending into the lit space around them.
