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She gave me a sharp but grateful smile.
As the van pulled onto the main road, I took out my own phone and tapped in the number for Investigator Ruiz. This last bit of the plan might have been the riskiest, but I’d gotten a good feeling about that witch—and the more pieces we had in play that ended up being on our side, the more likely we were to come out ahead in what I hoped was going to be our final gambit.
This is Rose Hallowell. You asked me to contact you if I could tell you more. Come out to this address as soon as you can make it, and you’ll find out why those witches were no longer safe at home. Bringing back-up might not be a bad idea of you have people there you trust.
After I’d sent the address, I turned off the phone. She’d either come or she wouldn’t. The mystery would hook her more if I refused to say anything else.
We turned off the paved road onto a bumpier dirt one. A few minutes later, we pulled up beside Jin’s Nissan. He used the car so little we’d figured none of Frankfords’ people was going to recognize it on sight.
We got out for a quick conference. “Okay,” I said. “We should get moving. Do you all have everything you need?”
Damon waggled the stick he was carrying, about the length of his forearm and half as thick. With Lesley’s guidance, I’d cast a spell on it with enough energy that it should be able to stun several people on contact, a lot like the batons the male enforcers carried. He patted his hip too. “And the pistol for back-up. Only if I absolutely have to, I know.”
The other guys held up their own makeshift batons. Both excitement and apprehension shimmered in all their eyes. I dragged in a breath. “Good. Just like we planned, then. Seth and Lesley, you go around the south side in the van. Jin and Naomi, you go north with the car. Start your magicking to draw the guards away in fifteen minutes. The Assembly people should be here not too long after that.”
The rest of us—Thalia, Damon, Ky, and I—were going to head right to the front entrance on foot.
Naomi gave me a quick salute and a determined smile. Seth and Jin kissed me in turn. I wanted to linger in the warmth of their embraces, to hold on to them as if I could hold them away from the danger, but there wasn’t the time, and I couldn’t completely protect them. If this effort was going to work, it needed all of us.
The two pairs drove off in their respective directions. The remaining four of us started toward the front of the property. I checked my watch every few minutes as we ambled along the road. Eight since we’d parted ways with the others. Twelve. Fourteen.
I motioned us to a stop below the last low rise before the driveway would come into view. We didn’t want to be seen too early.
Reddish light flashed toward the south. An unnerving screeching sound carried from the north. I’d left it up to the other witches what spells they cast, but both of those looked like they’d catch a lot of notice. Then they just had to ambush and knock out the guards who came investigating.
We waited a minute, and then I sent out a testing brush of magic. The quivers that returned to me suggested there were still eight guards waiting near the property’s entrance.
I could handle that many in one go.
Thalia and the guys stepped back as I moved into the form I’d first used in a haze of panic when we’d escaped from the Assembly prison. It was my own construction, melded from bits of other spells I’d learned and the readings I’d done on magic to affect the mind. A whip of my arms, a spin of my feet, gathering all the power I could summon to me—and heaving it forward.
The air crackled with that power. I hadn’t needed to throw it quite this far ever before. My heart lurched for a second as I wondered if it wouldn’t be enough, if it would just irritate the guards but not topple them. Even as the worry passed through my head, the questing spell I’d sent out ahead of time wavered. Those conscious presences I’d felt turned blank.
“Come on!” I said, waving the others forward with me. We jogged over the slope and down toward the packed dirt driveway that ran through the Frankfords’ seaside property.
Bodies were slumped beside the sparsely scattered trees on either side of the driveway. “Over there,” I said quickly, pointing to a small wooden building not too deep into the property. “We can shut them up in there. Take any phones or radios off them first.”
Damon and I grabbed the nearest guard and hefted her over to the building. The locked door opened at a twist of my fingers and a flash of my spark. We set her on the floor inside. I was just stepping out when a holler carried from the direction of the old farmhouse closer to the coast.
“Return to position. Boundary breached. I repeat, all units return—”
Snuff my spark. There’d been more guards farther afield than I’d been able to sense who hadn’t gone after either of the diversions.
I didn’t have time to think. I launched myself into the magicking again, putting every bit of force I could into the spell, and flung it toward the house.
The voice cut off. There was a thump somewhere closer by as I’d hit an approaching guard I hadn’t heard at all. I froze, reaching my magic out toward the house and the row of trees beyond it that hid the Cliff.
“That’s all of them,” I said. As long as the others had dealt with the ones who’d come their way.
We hurried to drag the other guards into the building. I sealed the door with a locking spell and a blanket of silence that should last at least a few hours. By then we’d be long gone or it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Even with the intermittent shade of the trees, I’d started to sweat. I wiped at my damp brow. Kyler checked his phone. “The Assembly people could get here in the next few minutes if they left as soon as they said they would. Where do you want to meet them?”
“Let’s wait by the farmhouse,” I said. “The closer they already are to the Cliff, the easier it’ll be for us to convince them to go look.”
We sat ourselves on the chipped paint of the house’s porch steps. The Frankfords really didn’t keep this place up at all. How much time had they even spent in this house, rather than just leaving it up to hide the fact that their real use for the property was something very different?
An engine growled in the distance, but it was Jin’s car that turned down the drive. I watched him and Naomi join us with a mix of relief and nerves. The longer we waited for the Assembly officials, the more chances the Frankfords would have to uncover our real plan and act against us.
