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He stood up. “Yeah, but thanks for the drink.”
“You haven’t finished it yet!”
“See you around,” he said and hurried out of the bar before she could ask anything else.
The door closed behind him and cut off the noises from the crowd in the bar, and the distant sound of what sounded like Jackson and Julia laughing at Quinn’s exasperation.
***
Chapter 26 - Cara
Cara went home, but there was nobody there, and Jay’s house was empty, too. She tried messaging, calling, but he didn’t reply. Where was he? He must have gone somewhere, but there were too many possibilities. She couldn’t go around knocking on every door of every house belonging to a coven member.
She took the opportunity to get out of her blood-stained clothes, and quickly decided to jump in the shower. She scrubbed herself clean - or as cleaned as she could manage - but it wasn’t a perfect result.
Her hair was a mess, and she decided to use a spell. She didn’t know anything useful, but she had a few old spellbooks in her room, and it didn’t take long to find one.
Her magic was still low, but it was slowly returning, and she managed to scrape together a weak cleaning spell. It took out most of the blood and gore from her hair, and she had to accept the shoddy job until she could repeat the spell later.
Cara went back to the kitchen, but she couldn’t just stand there and wait. Going door-to-door was the only thing she could do. Jay had to be somewhere, and she needed to mitigate the reaction from the other witches. If they were scared enough, they might do something extreme.
She left her house, but she quickly spotted a familiar face in a car passing through the street. They didn’t see her, so she hurried to follow them. They lived in the opposite direction. It was a friend of her father, and she’d been going to their house for years.
She saw the car turn the corner at the end, and she started jogging to the end of the street. She lost the car on the next street, but she kept going, heading for the nearest house that belonged to witches from the coven. The street had several cars parked out front.
Cara knew the family living there, and she heard loud voices inside, so she just let herself in, following the noise into their living room. It was a large room with a lot of space, but right now, it seemed cramped by the number of angry witches filling the room.
Jay saw her from across the room, and he slipped through the crowd.
“I was trying to call you,” she said.
“I haven’t checked my phone, sorry. I was telling them about what happened.”
“How did you get them here so quickly?”
“Most of them just arrived, but they’re up to speed. Turns out, there was a meeting taking place already, so a lot of them were already nearby. They were discussing the void situation. We got lucky.”
“Did we?” she asked, and he gave her a strange look.
“Cara!” Her father called her name, and the conversation stopped all around the room. “Cara, thank god, you’re okay.”
He pushed through the crowd and pulled her into a tight hug.
“I’m okay,” she said, hugging him back. “It sounds worse than it was.”
He pulled back and looked down at her. “What does? The daywalker?” He looked at Jay. “I thought he ran away. Did he hurt any of you?”
Cara glanced at Jay and he shrugged, and she realised he didn’t tell them everything. Her father didn’t know about what happened to her in the vampire den. He didn’t know how badly it could have ended.
“No,” she said, trying to choose her words carefully. “Nevermind. Brett didn’t hurt anyone.”
“Not yet,” her father said, and the other witches chimed in their agreement.
Her mother joined them, hugging her, too, and the rest of the group stayed quiet, waiting for more information.
“Is that blood?” Rose asked, frowning at the dark flecks in her hair.
“It’s not mine,” she said.
