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I spun on my heel and stalked toward the passage. Gabriel caught me with a gentle hand around my wrist.
“Rose,” he said, his voice still low. “If no one comes, he could die down here.”
I didn’t think that was likely. The spell wasn’t infinite, and there was water in that place somewhere. He wasn’t going to have an enjoyable few days, that was all. But my heart was so shattered in that moment all I could say was, “Then he dies.”
“And good riddance,” Damon muttered.
Gabriel was silent as we tramped down the damp passage and back into the gloomy afternoon outside. When we were about halfway up the path to the top of the cliff, he dragged in a breath.
“I might have enough,” he said.
I paused, glancing back at him with my hand braced against the rough rock. “What?”
He gave me half a smile. “I borrowed that phone of Ky’s, the one he lifted off the enforcer, since it has an actual camera. Once I got over being scared shitless, I tried to record that—that thing with it. I don’t know how well that turned out, but… I left it going after your dad started talking. He didn’t admit to a whole lot, but it’ll at least corroborate any other proof we find.”
My spirits leapt. I would have thrown my arms around him if doing that wasn’t likely to topple both of us off the cliff face.
“You’re brilliant,” I said.
He laughed, short and sharp. “Let’s wait until we’re actually out of this mess before you give me any credit.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Kyler
Rose lowered her hands from where she’d been weaving magic in front of my face. A light tingling had penetrated my skin, but otherwise I couldn’t feel any effects. From the way she was looking at me, though, the effects were obviously there. Her expression was an odd mix of satisfied and revolted.
“I think that’s as good as I can make the illusion,” she said. “Considering I only had a few memories and photographs to go on.”
Jin hunkered down on the bench next to her, eyeing me from the other side of the parked tour bus. “A real work of art, Briar Rose. I’d never know it was Ky, that’s for sure. He looks completely like that Frankford guy to me.”
“You’ve only ever seen the pictures.” Rose bit her lip. “I can’t give you the way he moves, Ky, or his voice—I don’t have enough material for that even if I knew how to. But if you stay quiet and act confident, you should be able to fool people at least for a little while.” She paused. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
I heard the love running through her concern, but the question pricked at me a little anyway, even though my own nerves were jittering. I was the computer guy, the one who fought his battles from behind a screen and a keyboard. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for a mission on the ground.
But we didn’t have a whole lot of choice. Someone needed to go into Charles Frankford’s home and find whatever records he’d have stashed there. I was the only one who could crack the security he’d have on his home computing system once we got in. I’d already determined there was no network extending outside the house that I could even try to hack into.
So I’d just have to be cut out for this mission.
“It’s either me or no one,” I said. “And we need any proof he can give us. We’d better get moving, right? We don’t know when your dad might pass on a warning.”
Rose nodded. We’d used her dad’s phone to send a couple of messages to Frankford, confirming he was in Seattle at the moment, not on his country estate a couple hours outside the city. Rose figured he was more likely to keep any sensitive information in his primary estate anyway.
But without any warning, the house shouldn’t be that carefully guarded. He had no reason to expect us to target him. He didn’t even know I’d found those messages between him and Rose’s dad, let alone that Mr. Hallowell had pointed us straight at him.
And to distract the enforcers even more, we were going to send a decoy. Naomi and Greg came over from the old minivan they’d managed to find for our purposes. Except it didn’t look like a minivan anymore—in the time while Rose had been casting her illusion on me, Naomi had magicked the minivan to look like a taxi. We were parked on the side of a country road about halfway between the city and Frankford’s estate.
“We take the bus into the city and get ourselves noticed near the Assembly, right?” Naomi said. “How long do you need us to keep up the distraction?”
“I don’t want you getting caught,” Rose said. “Be subtle about it—they’ll be keeping a close watch for us anyway. And ditch the bus as soon as you can tell they’re onto you. That’ll convince them we’re in the city for sure. If you don’t use any magic after that, they shouldn’t have an easy time tracking you. I’ll get in touch as soon as I know what we’re doing next.” She managed a slight smile. “Maybe I’ll be telling you we’ve already transmitted the damning information to every other witching family in the country.”
That was the end point of our plan. Get some files from Frankford that gave a larger scope and more details on the conspiracy Gabriel’s recording hinted at, then send them to every witching person on Rose and Naomi’s combined Contacts list. All set up and ready to go—the second we had the files, we could send them off.
“Let’s get moving then,” Gabriel said. “They might already be tracking the illusion you just cast on Ky.”
The gravel on the road rattled under our shoes as we hustled to the minivan. Gabriel hopped into the driver’s seat, Rose beside him. I squeezed into the middle seat.
Seth dropped into the seat next to me. His gaze lingered on me. “It is really weird seeing you like that.”
