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“I don’t,” Monty said, then held up his hands when Aiden glared at him. “Joke.”
“One I suspect Belle wouldnotappreciate.” He pushed to his feet. “I’ll be fifteen minutes at most.”
He raced away without waiting for an answer, his form shifting mid stride, his coat gleaming silver in the late afternoon sun.
When he’d disappeared into the trees, I returned my gaze to the surrounding mess. Though magic still lingered, it was fading fast, and wouldn’t be of much use now when it came to tracing, though the fact it still lingered so longafterthe explosion spoke to just how powerful the spell had truly been. In fact, maybe that was why there’d been so many vampires present—they’d needed to craft not only the explosion,but also atrap strong enough to snare Roger.
Had Jaqueline had a hand in either of those? None of the threads here had the same feel as the magic I’d sensed near the wellspring, but in truth, most were too far gone to be certain.
“You’d better call Maelle back,” Monty said. “The last thing we need right now is to get her offside.”
“If Roger gets dead, then it won’t matter which side of her we’re on. Everyone will pay.”
“Well, there’s a cheerful thought.”
“More a reality we might yet have to face.” I dragged my phone out again. “What are you going to do?”
“See if I can figure out how they trapped Roger. Might be useful knowledge in the future.”
I nodded and once again called Maelle.
“What happened?” she immediately asked, her tone surprisingly even considering I’d unceremoniously hung up on her. But maybe it had simply given her time to control herself.
“We discovered their escape route—it was via a shaft into an old mine tunnel. We’re still trying to ascertain how they snared Roger.” I paused. “Is it possible he was simply knocked out?”
“No.”
She didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t ask her to. She might well seem calm right now, but I suspected it would disintegrate if we pushed her too much. Besides, the answer would undoubtedly lie in their deep connection.
“We’re going to head into the tunnel in an attempt to find them, but if that fails, I’ll need something of Roger’s to track—”
“You will not be able to do so. He walks the path between life and death, and that makes him invisible to psi talents such as yours.”
Demons weren’t invisible, nor were ghouls, so what made Roger so special? Or was it more the fact that, having shared her flesh, he’d read more as her than himself?
“Will Marie kill him? Or use him to draw you out?”
“She will attempt the latter. She will fail.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’d let him die?”
“I would prefer he did not, but…”
I had a vision of her casually shrugging, though there’d be nothing casual in her response if hewasmurdered.
Would Marie really be that stupid? Would she really risk destroying the restraints that currently bound the woman who’d decimated their entire coven?
That, Belle said,will probably depend on whether she believes she has the upper hand or not.
Roger’s death might well give her that.
It is nevertheless a risk, as none of us—not even Marie, I suspect—know just how much Maelle relies on Roger’s presence to keep her baser instincts in line.
If whatmyinstincts were saying was correct, the answer was “quite a lot.” To Maelle, I added, “I take it you still have no sense of Marie’s location?”
“When I severed the ties between us, I severed our ability to ‘perceive’ each other.”
“And yet she must be able to sense you, or she would not be here.”
