Page 90

Smart people, shifters.

River was waiting beside the truck. He watched me cross the yard with an expression that remained admirably controlled until I got close enough for him to see exactly what I had done to myself.

"Do you want to explain that?"

"No, but I would like you to appreciate it." I caught the handle and hauled myself into the cab, a maneuver made considerably more complicated by the fact that my legs were temporarily different lengths. "That boot has survived a hex, a demon, a lake, and Hell. It's the only thing I own that's still mine. If I'm walking into my grandmother's building today, I'm doing it wearing one thing she didn't buy me."

River got in beside me and started the engine without another word. He made it almost a mile before he glanced toward my feet and then returned his attention to the road.

"It's a very nice boot."

"Thank you."

That was the entire conversation before he went back to acting like I wasn't an idiot, which was one of the reasons I liked him.

The closer we got to Cleveland, the less either of us spoke. I'd spent two days turning Alex's question over until I'd worn every edge off it, and I still didn't know what waited for me at the other end. Danika had sealed my magic before I could speak, controlled what I learned, decided what I knew about my parents, and carried a contract whose payment could apparently be measured in pieces of me.

Yet here I was, going to her.

That was the part I couldn't get around. If my grandmother truly intended to use my soul to save herself, she had never needed my permission and she had certainly never needed my cooperation. Reaching twenty-six with my soul still attached had started to feel less like luck and more like evidence.

I wanted to know what it proved.

The twin flames on the coven steps were burning seven feet high when we arrived, and neither so much as flickered when I passed between them. I took that personally. There are few things more insulting than being ignored by fire that has known you since birth.

The doors bothered me more.

They were unlocked.

I stood with my hand against the old wood for a moment before pushing. On an ordinary Sunday those doors would have been warded, and with a sanctioned witch standing on the steps they should have been sealed with enough magic to take my hands off at the wrists.

Instead, the door opened beneath my palm like somebody had been expecting me. River came closer behind me. He didn't tell me not to go in, but the air around him cooled enough for me to know he'd noticed the same thing I had.

Inside, the entry hall was empty. No clerk behind the desk, no apprentices hurrying through with books tucked under their arms, nobody pretending to be busy because Danika might appear and discover they weren't. The coat rack where my grandmother had been standing Thursday held two coats and somebody's umbrella, and the whole building had that peculiar weekend hush I'd known since childhood.

Except this wasn't quiet. It felt abandoned.

I didn't understand the difference until we reached the long corridor leading toward Danika's office.

The blue candle flames were out.

I slowed without meaning to. Those flames had burned for more than two hundred years without fuel and without heat. I'd walked beneath them as a child holding my grandmother's hand, as an apprentice carrying books too heavy for me.

I had never seen one go dark.

Now every candle in the corridor was dead, leaving behind thin trails of hardened blue wax and the faint smell of a struck match.

River's hand closed around my arm. "Hazel, stop."

"I see them."

"Then perhaps you could explain why we aren't leaving."

"Because Danika's office is at the other end, and unless she suddenly discovered vacations, she's in there." I took another step before the wax caught my attention. "Wait."

River followed my gaze. The nearest candle had melted down one side, its wax frozen in a narrow stream pointing toward the entrance. The next had done the same. So had the one beyond it.

All of them had run in the same direction.