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That uneasiness I’d felt earlier sprang back into being full force. “You don’t think he is?”
“Oh, there’s no doubt the witch on the slab is dead. The question that needs to be asked is, does that body belong to our dark witch or is it someone else?”
“Why would you think it’s someone else?”
He shrugged. “It’s nothing more than a gut feeling that none of this is what it seems.”
I frowned. “What do you know about Jonathan?”
“Very little—we were at the uni the same time but I was a few years ahead of him. I only remember the name because of the hullabaloo that happened when he went bad.”
“So he’d be what? Fifty or so?” I knew Ashworth was in his midfifties. “I didn’t really spend a whole lot of time looking at his face, but I did get the impression he was far older than that.”
“That’s because dark magic prematurely ages a body.”
“If that isn’t Jonathan lying in the morgue, who do you think it is?”
“That is the million-dollar question.” Ashworth’s expression was grim. “But believe me, lassie, it’s un-fucking-likely this has all ended.”
Amusement ran through me. My grandfather used to say the same damn thing. If not for the fact Ashworth would have been born well before my grandfather had died, I would have suspected a soul rebirth. “Does Chester have the same sort of doubts?”
“Who knows? That bastard is as closed-mouthed as your ranger.”
My lips twitched. I’d thought the two men were getting along, but that very obviously was not the case.
I glanced ahead again. At the top of a slow rise in the road, was a car. A parked car.
The wild magic stirred, its message clear.
Whatever I was meant to find, it was in that vehicle.
“Slow down,” I said.
Ashworth instantly did. “The vehicle ahead the target?”
“Yes. I’m getting no indication as to why, though.”
“I’m guessing it’s not going to be something good, lassie.”
That was certainly a given. Once he’d parked a little back from the car—an old blue Holden sedan that had certainly seen better days—I climbed out. The wild magic continued to stir around me, but its urgency was once again increasing. This car might have been our first stopping point, but we were here to find far more. Ashworth grabbed his kit out of the car then caught up with me. “There’s magic here, but it’s not strong.”
“I’m not feeling anything other than the wild magic.”
“Maybe it’s dulling your senses to anything else.”
“And maybe my senses aren’t strong enough to pick up anything else. Underpowered witch, remember?”
He snorted and ran his hands just above the flanks of the car. I crossed my arms and watched from a safe distance. If he triggered something, I wanted room to run.
“There’s no spell attached to the vehicle, and no one inside.” He peered in the driver-side window and swore softly. “There is, however, a neat pile of clothes and personal items sitting on the front seat.”
“Meaning we’ve got another possible skinning victim.”
“Yes.” He opened the door, reached in, and then tossed me what looked to be a gold chain.
It had barely touched my fingers when I felt the heartbeat within the metal and the growing sense of the wolf’s confusion and fear. I glanced back to Ashworth. “He’s still alive.”
“Then let’s try and keep it that way—where is he?”
