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It was a diversion. A ploy. Please, dear Lord, let it be a ploy.
I’d managed to get those names to her, to point to that meeting place where the Frankfords had hauled me and had me retell my story about how unstable and aggressive Rose was becoming, how I was worried about what she might do next in her vendetta against her father and his colleagues. A story Icouldtell where the Frankfords couldn’t speak against her because of the oath. I’d made myself useful enough to get what I needed.
I hoped I hadn’t done too good a job of convincing the other Assembly people. They hadn’t looked as if they thought much of what some unsparked former employee had to say. Honestly, they’d seemed a little fed up with the Frankfords’ dramatics. And the Frankfords had been nervous. They saw that bunch of witching people as a threat. So I’d taken the opening I’d seen. I’d been waiting too long already.
The landscape outside the window started to look familiar. I caught a glimpse of the blue stretch of the ocean, and my stomach lurched.
We weren’t heading to Seattle to see some horror Rose had visited on a seven-year-old boy. We were heading to the Cliff, to something even more horrible.
Had she come out here to try to destroy the cave after all? Had his guards caught her and whoever she’d brought with her? Why had Frankford wantedmehere?
He might have suspected Rose was about to strike here. I’d heard him and his wife talking about a trip he’d made out here just last night. Helen Frankford had left for Seattle as soon as they’d heard of the threat. I guessed I should be glad for that. Of the two of them, she was the one with the magic. But there was an unnerving energy that radiated off of Charles sometimes, when he was angry or particularly happy, that took me back to that moment in the cave when the demonic face had loomed through the glowing portal and I’d been a hair’s breadth from pissing my pants.
Frankford muttered something to the driver. The engine thrummed with an erratic rhythm that meant it was being pushed to its limits. Somehow I didn’t think the witching man was going to appreciate me piping up with mechanical advice.
I leaned back in the seat, keeping my breath as steady as I could, considering my options. It was difficult to prepare when I didn’t know what was waiting for us or what Frankford planned to do with me. All I knew for sure was that I had to be ready to make a move in an instant. If he tried to hurt Rose, I had to stop him. That was all there was to it.
“There, there, let’s go!” Frankford snapped. The driver hauled on the wheel. As the SUV swayed around a bend, Frankford sent his window whirring down. Warm salty air flooded into the air-conditioned space. Frankford leaned out the window, his shoulders so tense you’d have thought a stiff wind like that could snap them.
“Stop right there! Stop this, all of you!”
The middle seat, where two more guards were sitting, blocked my view of the windshield. Who was he shouting at like that? I braced myself in my seat. I couldn’t do much with the guards on either side of me, but they’d get up as soon as the car stopped, right? Then I might have a chance, if there was anything at all I could do.
The SUV jolted to a halt. Frankford was throwing open his door before the engine had even fallen silent. He motioned for the guards with a jerking motion of his arm. The women on either side of me did get up—but not before the one at my right had clamped her well-muscled hand around my forearm. She yanked me up with her.
I scrambled after her, the metallic taste of adrenaline sharp in my mouth. What the hell was going on? The guards up front heaved open the back door and spilled out ahead of us. My guard dragged me out into the hot mid-day sun to face a cluster of startled-looking figures.
My gaze went straight to Rose. God, it wasn’t much more than a week since I’d last been in her presence, but every part of me ached at the sight of her, as if I’d been deprived of a substance as vital as water that was now in reach. Her dark hair lifted in the breeze as her head jerked around. When our eyes met, pain flashed across her face. An echo of it jabbed into me like a knife.
I’d been afraid from the first moment I’d come back into town that I’d cause her pain like that, but I’d never thought I’d end up doing it purposely.
I opened my mouth—and the guard who’d dragged me out shoved her hand against my throat. She wasn’t carrying a weapon, but she didn’t need to. I’d watched witches call forth incredible forces with just a twitch of their fingers. The threat couldn’t be more clear.
This was why Frankford had brought me. I wasn’t a resource to him anymore. I was a hostage. My life for Rose’s compliance.
Rose’s mouth tightened further as she caught the gesture and the guard’s glower. I tried to move, and the woman’s hand clamped down harder. She might crush my windpipe without any help from her magic at all.
“What by the Spark is going on here, Charles?” a woman I’d met briefly at the Den of Spades—Gwen Remington—was saying. “This young woman is saying—”
“I’m sure she’s making up all kinds of stories,” Frankford said. His voice came out smooth, only a hint of a tremor in it. I hoped the others would hear it. “Clearly Lady Hallowell’s animosity has carried even farther than I imagined.”
“I haven’t made up anything,” Rose said. “They can see for their own eyes what I saw here a month ago. If there’s nothing there, you shouldn’t care if they take a look.”
Another woman stepped forward, the middle-aged witch I’d met briefly when she’d arrived at Rose’s estate just before I’d left it. Frankford’s stance tensed at the sight of her. “Lady Ainsworth,” he said quickly, before she could speak. “Has she roped you into her delusions too? My colleagues, you really must—”
“You can’t dismiss me just like that,” the older witch said in a taut voice. “Don’t you dare stop this. Your time is up. Maybe I can’t talk, but I can fight.”
“Now, then, this doesn’t need to come to blows,” one of the other Assembly officials—Justin Brimsey—said, holding up his hands.
“It won’t if these criminal intruders are removed from my home.” Frankford turned to Rose and shook his head with a disbelieving laugh. “You threaten my grandson, break onto my property, and you’re still making demands? You belong tied up in a cell where you can’t hurt anyone else. Keep in mind what’s at stake here for you too.”
He made a subtle gesture, and the guard holding me shifted her other hand in what must have been a threatening gesture, the beginnings of a spell. Rose’s whole body stiffened. He was counting on her still caring about me, regardless of how I’d betrayed her, and she did. Fucking hell, I didn’t deserve all the anguish that was etched on her face.
She’d fought so hard to get this far. Given so much of herself. I’d thrown myself into the fray to save her, not to be the one who brought her down.
“Do whatever you have to do,” I said. “I don’t matter.”
The guard’s hand jammed on my throat. But even as I choked, I caught a glimpse of the only thing I needed to see if I was going to die. Rose’s eyes held pain and fear, but a shimmer of understanding had crept into them.
