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A bolt of white-hot agony shot down my spine, turning my legs to jelly, and my knees buckled on me.
“Rue.” Asa gripped my arms to hold me upright. “What’s?—?”
Flames engulfed him, and Blay emerged with a snarl that raised the hairs down my nape.
“Witch,” I panted, my limbs shaking.
“Blay smell.” He eased me to a seated position with the SUV’s wheel at my back. “Rue stay.”
Before I could fight through the trembling to reach for him, he was gone, and I was left a sitting duck.
As it hit me how thoroughly screwed I was, how helpless I was in a magical firefight, a kernel of searing light ignited in the center of my chest. The rising tide of heat spread through me, burning like pure sunlight injected into my veins.
A pounding noise on the glass drew my attention to the windows, but I couldn’t see through them.
I couldn’t seeanything.
“I don’t understand.” I clutched my head in my hands. “What’s happening to me?”
Another round of knocks, this time in a familiar cadence, told me Colby was the one behind this.
As I turned my vision inward, I could sense a tendril of pure magic lighting me up from the inside out.
A loud pop rang out beside me, and metal screamed in my ears. I wobbled to my feet to find a grenade coated in spikes and putrid magic stuck in the door panel. I didn’t think. I grabbed it, shredding my hand, and yanked until I fell back in the dirt on my back with the explosive skewering my palm.
“I’m sorry for this,” Dad rasped from above my head, his wings stirring my hair.
Tipping back my head, I found him hovering with his hand outstretched toward me. I lifted my arm, let him rip out the grenade—along with copious amounts of my skin and blood—and vanish into the night sky. I sat there, crimson dripping through my fingers, lost in a haze where my eyes didn’t quite focus.
An explosion rang out from the direction Dad had flown, and I hoped he had escaped the blast radius.
Ribbons of magic filled my vision in darting patterns as I tried to focus, and I understood with a gasp.
I was seeing magic.Spells.How was this possible? I had no access to my magic.
Colby.
She was reversing our familiar bond, sending me a torrent of her power for my use. Had I been less terrified as I realized that Dad’s spell had frayed enough to allow it, I might have been more grateful.
A woman with dark-green hair slipped from behind the building, her gaze fixed on me.
“Luca was right.” Her stride was confident as she ate up the ground between us. Meanwhile, I struggled with reacclimatingto having magic that was both foreign and familiar. “She said you would come.”
Goddess bless, what a mess.
We hadn’t located Clay, as far as I knew. No word on the director either. Now Luca was here?
Had we actually been right? She was hunting the director? Okay. Fine. Then why had the director chosen a distillery manned with black witches under Luca’s control? One had led the other here, but which?
“Who are you supposed to be?” I rubbed my eyes until my vision cleared enough to let me watch her stalk me. “Her lackeys all blend together after a while. Kind of hard to tell you apart, know what I mean?”
“I’m Fain.” Her lips pinched until they turned white. “Hertzog witches aren’t lackeys.”
“And yet, here you are, doing Luca’s bidding.” I shrugged. “Kind of feels like what a lackey would do.”
A blur of motion behind her kicked my heart into high gear, but as pale fingers closed around Fain’s neck with punishing force, ripping her away from me, I recognized my savior.
“I apologize for my tardiness.” Fergal wrestled her arms down by her sides. “I shouldn’t have ordered an appetizer.” He caught my look and chuckled. “Vampire humor.”
