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We parked on the main street of the little town that was home to the newspaper with the article on the Frankford family’s property, and within fifteen minutes Gabriel had managed to chat the exact location of that property out of someone. He tipped his head to the elderly lady he’d struck up a conversation with outside a cheese shop and ambled back to me.
“It’s about five miles north up the coast,” he said. “‘Not much to look at,’ according to her.”
“If there’s something important up that way, I’m sure there’s some kind of protection on the property,” I said. “Presumably at least partly magical.”
“Which is why it’s a good thing we’ve got two witches on our side now, huh?” he said with his usual smile, but then his gaze flicked away from me to scan our surroundings warily.
“We’ve better get going,” I said. I waved to Naomi, who’d gone with a few of the guys to grab some food at the local café. “If that enforcer Damon questioned mentions we were asking about The Cliff, they’ll be coming out here after us with guns blazing. Metaphorically.”
“I’d rather deal with guns than some of the magic they’ve got at their disposal,” Gabriel said.
We all piled back into the bus where Jin was adding a few more glyphs by the windows and Kyler was tapping away on his laptop. “I still haven’t found any way to get deeper into the network from a remote link,” Ky said.
“Maybe we won’t even need that,” Damon said, dropping onto the bench beside him. “Maybe we’ll find everything we need to shut those assholes down at this cliff.” He didn’t sound all that optimistic.
Gabriel took the driver’s seat and revved the engine. I sat down next to Naomi.
“Anyone guarding the place, any enforcers that come after us, we use the same spell we did on the freeway,” I said. “Knock ‘em out. All we need is to get in there, see what we can find, and get right back out.”
My cousin nodded. “It worked back there.” She raised one eyebrow at me. “I can understand why they’re worried about you being on the loose, Rose. I’ve never seen any witch who can wield magic with as much force as you do. I don’t know if it’s the mixing of the Levesque and Hallowell genes or having five consorts supporting you or what, but they picked the wrong witch to mess with when they took you on.”
I laughed haltingly. “I think that’swhythey took me on. Why they wanted control over my magic.” At least, that was what Celestine had said. I leaned my head back against the hard surface of the window behind me. “I don’t know why Dad wanted to marry a Levesque in the first place if he was going to be so scared of how powerful their kids might be.”
“Maybe they really were in love for a little while,” Naomi said. “Like in one of those romance books. If those are even remotely accurate, people do some pretty stupid things when they’re caught up in that initial rush of emotion. And then sometimes they do even stupider things if they wake up and realize their actions had more consequences than they considered.”
“This should be the place up here,” Gabriel said with a motion toward the windshield. “That driveway will take us—no, better not to go down there.”
My head jerked around at his last words, the abrupt change in tone. At the same moment, magic tingled over my skin.
“There are wards,” I said. “To divert anyone who considers coming to visit. Slow down before you reach the driveway.”
I focused my attention inward, to the bonds that thrummed between me and each of my consorts. With a few twitches of my hands, I directed some of my strength through those connections into them, bolstering the defenses I’d already built around them. Adding an extra tread to dispel the compulsion of that ward more directly.
Gabriel shook his head. “That felt… really odd,” he said. “We do want to go down there, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Just keep taking it slow. I doubt those wards are the only layer of protection.”
Naomi and I moved to stand next to him, peering through the windshield as we turned west toward the Frankford property. A stretch of trees hid the actual coastline, but the air the fan was pulling in from outside carried a hint of salt and wet rock. I gripped the railing by the steps. A faint quiver touched my skin.
“Stop!” I shouted. Gabriel hit the brakes. The second I had solid footing, I was whipping up the spell I’d used before, the one that seemed to smack the consciousness right out of our enemies’ heads. Naomi whirled her hands beside me, propelling her magic to me to add to the heft of my casting.
A spell from outside hit the windshield, sending a crack down the middle of it. The whole thing probably would have shattered if not for Jin’s painted reinforcements. A few more blasts of magic rattled the metal shell around the engine.
Before the unseen guards could throw anything at us strong enough to break down the whole bus, I hurled my spell forward. I felt rather than saw several minds go dark. A breath stuttered out of me.
“It’s done,” I said. “We can keep going. Let’s hurry now. I’ll keep watching in case there are more guards.”
How many enforcers did this faction of the Assembly have at their disposal? I couldn’t imagine they’d ever had to deal with a situation quite like this before. It might be the same ones coming after us over and over. Weren’t they getting worn down?
Maybe they were. If they’d known exactly what they were dealing with when they’d first imprisoned us, if they’d shored up their defenses enough then, we might not ever have escaped. And from that moment, in some ways I’d had the upper hand. That was the only reason we’d made it this far.
But if we didn’t end this conflict soon,Iwas going to get worn out. And no matter how powerful I was, there were a lot more of them than of me.
We passed a tall but graying clapboard house that hardly looked like high witch society style. I wondered if the Frankfords had ever spent much time out here. If it was a place they’d rather no one asked about or tried to see, it was probably better not to put too much work into it.
The driveway skirted the line of trees and then looped around them to a small parking lot. The span of packed earth was empty—I didn’t know where the guards had left the vehicles they’d come on. The edge of the cliff was visible now: a ragged line of slate-gray rock jutting beyond the sparse grass toward the foamy blue expanse of the ocean.
The sky overhead was gray as the rocks, clouds dimming the afternoon sunlight. As I stepped out, cool droplets flecked my face. I wasn’t totally sure whether they were spit from above or spray the breeze had swept off the far-below waves. The crash of the surf hissed at the base of the cliff.
