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“Raphael’s fine.” Relief made my legs weak. I reached back, finding the edge of the bed, and collapsed as I tried to get control of my breathing. “Your cousin is a total badass. She came in with a bag of tricks—I have no idea how she got from Peru to Costa Rica in basically five minutes flat—but dude, she’s awesome.”
I swallowed. “And Shane and Beth… Their oaths—”
“Broken. The three with me are all sworn to Claudia now, although I’m not sure she wanted any part of that.”
A broken laugh slipped free. “Thank God.”
I finally looked up at Dastien, who’d followed me the whole way here. He sat next to me, wrapping me in his arms. “It’s going to be okay,” he murmured.
I nodded as a tear slipped free. They were okay. It was going to be okay.
“What’s going on?” Adrian said. “I hear Dastien. What happened?”
I told him in as few words as I could.
He cursed when I was finished. “How am I supposed to tell them…”
“Don’t. Just don’t. They’re going to come back to one big nightmare and a whole lot of heartbreak. Let them relax for a little bit and enjoy this victory. They deserve it.” I let out a breath. “Get back here on the first flight you can get tomorrow. I’ll take care of breaking the news.”
“So what do I tell them in the meantime?”
“Just say Luciana’s up to something, which is sort of true and expected.”
He agreed, promising to send me flight details when he had them, and then hung up. Some of my anxiety melted, but one giant question nagged at the back of my mind. I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to put an end to the night’s craziness, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep if I didn’t follow the thought.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Dastien asked, breaking the silence.
“I’m…” God, I was tired. I just wanted to curl up in my bed. I rubbed my fingers along my temples dreading where this would go once it was out of my mouth. “I’m just wondering how far she went with this spell.”
I stood and started to pace. The problem was that I kept coming to the same conclusion. Unless I went to the coven’s compound, there was no way to know what Luciana had done, or how far she’d gone with the power drain.
I stopped pacing as a horrifying thought crossed my mind. “Do you think…” No. She couldn’t possibly be that awful.
She wouldn’t kill her entire coven? Would she?
But she could’ve. That was something she was totally capable of. Especially if it got her more power.
The answer had to be yes. To open her gateway to hell, Luciana was going to need a royal fuckload of power that she didn’t have. Since she’d lost access to both Claudia and me, she’d have to get that power somewhere else. Her coven was an easy target. They were there—linked to her by blood—practically begging to be drained.
I had to go check it out. “Don’t freak, but I don’t think there’s a way around it. We have to go to the compound.”
“What? Why?” Dastien half shouted.
“Because we need to know how far she went. If she drained her entire coven of magic, we’re going to have to a bigger fight on our hands than we thought.” Just thinking that scared the crap out of me. We hadn’t been prepared before, and if she’d really just done what I feared, then we
were screwed.
“Even if she did drain the coven, why risk going there? We’re not ready to fight her.”
“So we sneak onto their land. If she didn’t drain anyone, then we get out fast. If she did…” I had a feeling Luciana wouldn’t stick around with the bodies. “I just need to know. We need to know.” I grabbed my cross-body purse, jammed in all my potion vials, and headed for the door.
“Fine.” He stepped in front of me, his eyes glowing orbs of amber. “But the second we’re in danger, we run.”
“Of course.” We were definitely on the same page. “Let’s get the others.”
We’d barely made it to the middle of campus before Mr. Dawson, Donovan, Meredith, Chris, and Dr. Gonzales strode toward us.
“We need to check out the compound,” Mr. Dawson said. “See if anyone’s still alive out there.”
