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“‘Send blood. Tired of old-ass vampire biting me. Also livers. Chicken. Cow. Human. Not picky.’”
“That…sounds like something Kelly would say.”
Thirty years into their service, the Kellies had slipped their leashes, fled to a small town in Pennsylvania, and slaughtered a human family in their beds. Arthur drained each one down until he was too gorged to flee the scene then climbed in bed with a corpse and waited for the agents to collect him. Kelly hadn’t fared much better. She glutted on organs, crawled out the front door, and passed out like a drunk on the lawn where the dawn turned her to stone.
Neither of them had been allowed to leave the compound, for any reason, since.
Until now.
“Medics are with them.” Isiforos stood in a puddle of his own making. “Where do you want them after they’ve been cleared for duty?”
“Boston.” I swallowed past the lump rising in my throat. “Clay has a decent setup there.”
The thrill of building a new database from scratch had made Colby giddy.
So had the black card I entrusted to her sans parental controls.
“Rue…”
“I don’t hold what happened against you.” I had trouble shaping the words. “It wasn’t your fault.”
It was mine.
For allowing the others to forget Clay wasn’t always a friend. That he wasn’t always safe. But I loved him too much to ostracizehim during the stretches when he was free to be himself. His authentic self. It gutted me to erase the person they knew so I could draw them a clearer picture of who he was when his autonomy was stripped away to expose the shell controlled by his current master.
The real question was—how had the director gotten Clay on the phone? Who let him place that call?
We had to track down the missing agent, but he was just one item on a to-do list that stretched to infinity and beyond.
“Agree to disagree.” He stepped back. “I’ll begin preparations to contain the Kellies at The Spinnaker.”
“Send our best witches ahead to secure a ballroom for their use. Ward it top to bottom. Keep fresh guards in rotation in case the Kellies get any ideas about reliving Pennsylvania.” I entrusted him with a kernel of rare knowledge. “The Kellies are magically bound together. They can’t get more than fifty feet from one another. If they escape, they’ll go together. That makes them easier to track.” I clenched my fingers until the cord bit into my skin. “Keep them happy. They can order whatever they need to get our operation up and running. They can request foods or drinks, but nothing with a pulse. Actually…” I bit the inside of my cheek until it stung. “Maybe email me their requests, and I’ll approve them myself until you get the hang of it.”
“Okay. Yeah. Sure.” He lingered in the entrance of the tent. “I’ll do that.”
The pruned fingers of his right hand toyed with the ties on the canvas tent flap. He sucked in a lungful of air, parted his lips, then left without another word as Arden joined me, raising her eyebrows at the map.
“I’m new to the whole magic thing, but are those splotches where we should search or Isiforos’s tears?”
“Too soon,” I chided when I couldn’t find the humor in our circumstances.
“Sorry.” Using the hem of her tee, she blotted the soggy paper. “No luck?”
“None.” I glowered at my palms, willing the skin to tingle with power, begging my fingers to prickle with an uncast spell. “I have no magic.” I choked on a laugh that made my ribs ache. “I can’t even dowse.”
Humans armed with forked sticks and a prayer for water were more accurate than my pendulum swings.
Annoyed with myself, with the whole situation, I dropped the quartz and stomped it into the sandy soil.
“You have magic.” She pocketed the trash then gathered my hands. “You just can’t access it right now.”
“What good am I to anyone like this?” I searched her face. “I’m basically?—”
“—human,” she finished for me without bitterness. “You were human when I met you.”
“Technically,” I interrupted, “I have always been a witch.”
“For argument’s sake, we’re calling you human for the duration of this pep talk since you lived like one.”
