Elise frowned, in a mildly insulted way. “Of course I can.” She opened her arms, and I handed Charlie over carefully. It was a relief to give up the weight—I had been getting overheated, still in my winter coat in the foyer—but I immediately felt less grounded.
“Jesus, the two of you get in more accidents,” Elise grumbled, hoisting Charlie higher on her hip. Then she paused. “Wait—Quinn has a bandsaw?”
“He just got it. Where’s Natalie?” I asked, mainly just to change the subject. Elise’s soon-to-be wife was a medical examiner in Denver.
“Sleeping like a log. She just got off a double shift.”
“Okay. I gotta go. I’ll call you first thing in the morning, promise. Maybe we can take Charlie to breakfast, then visit John.” It seemed absurd as soon as I said it—how could this mess possibly be over by then?—but as I’d hoped, the words seemed to normalize the situation for Elise. “Okay.” She took a step back, already starting to turn toward the stairs. “When we get up, I’ll call the hospital and check in too.”
“Night,” I said, and hurried back out the way I’d come.
When we were a couple of miles away from Elise’s place, Maven texted—she was already at the farmhouse, and there was no sign of Lily or Katia. Hazel and Simon both seemed fine. She would wait around for an hour or so to make sure nothing happened.
I took the ski cap off Sybil, who immediately started shaking her head and rubbing her bound hands against her face. “Goddess, that was itchy.” To me, she added in a subdued voice, “Is your niece okay?”
“She’s fine. Now we need to get to Simon’s.” Beside me, Quinn pressed down hard on the accelerator. With Charlie out of the car, he was willing to use Maven’s arrangement with Boulder PD to do some serious speeding. I approved.
We were only a minute away from the apartment building when Sybil said, “I’m going in with you.”
Quinn and I exchanged a look. “It’s safer if you stay out here,” I told her.
“Safer for whom?” she shot back. “And isn’t that exactly what you’d say if you were responsible for Lily disappearing?”
I sighed.
“I’m coming in,” Sybil insisted. “Are you going to make me hop?”
We didn’t have time for this. I nodded at Quinn, who got out his pocketknife, leaned between the seats, and sliced along the duct tape binding her legs. I knew he’d be careful, but Sybil complained the whole time anyway. Typical. “It’s gonna look awfully weird if I walk in with my arms covered in duct tape,” Sybil pointed out when he was done.
“Don’t push it,” Quinn told her.
“There’s a blanket in the back,” I told him. “We can throw it over her hands.”
That’s exactly what we did. I parked in the lot—Maven owned this building, and kept a few spots reserved for Old World business—and the three of us hurried inside.
I expected Sybil to complain the whole way about her legs going to sleep or her wrists being tied, but she looked as grim and worried as I felt. Inside the main doors, we took the stairs down to the basement, and Sybil was moving so fast that I had to put a hand on her elbow to keep her from pitching down the steps. That was when I realized she believed me about Lily—or at least about something being very wrong.
At Simon’s door, Quinn jerked Sybil’s arm so they were standing to one side of the doorframe. He held a finger to his lips. I went to the other side, turning my body just enough to fit my key in the lock. I turned the key as quietly as I could, checked Quinn to make sure he was ready, and kicked in the door, rushing in with the revolver in one hand and a shredder in the other.
The main room, a combination dining-kitchen area, was empty—but it looked like there had been a hell of a fight. The kitchen floor was strewn with cast-iron frying pans and playing cards, and the floor-length cupboard where Simon kept the trash was dented inward. I nodded at Quinn, who planted Sybil against the wall and indicated that she should stay there. He and I moved down the hall then, checking the rooms. He disappeared into Simon’s bedroom while I went on to clear the bathroom, the closet, and the spare room. Quinn hadn’t come out, so I rushed back to the bedroom to check on him.
He was kneeling next to Simon’s bed, gently shaking the covers. A person-sized lump was huddled under the blankets. “We’re clear,” I said, moving closer. “Who is that?”
In answer, he said loudly, “Lily. Lily!”
I ran forward, dropping to my knees beside him. Lily looked asleep, but even when he shook her hard, she didn’t move, didn’t make a sound.
My heart plummeted, and I made myself say the words. “Is she—”
“She’s breathing,” he said shortly. I could hear Sybil’s footsteps in the hall. Quinn looked around, saw a glass of water on the nightstand, and upended it on Lily’s face. Nothing happened.
“Get out of the way,” Sybil snapped, hurrying to her sister’s bedside. Quinn backed up so Sybil could check Lily’s pulse, then lift her eyelids.
Sybil looked up at me. “She’s been drugged.”
“I thought your little potions didn’t work on people with witchblood,” I countered, feeling inexplicably angry at her.
“They don’t. This isn’t magic. It’s regular, nonmagical belladonna,” she snapped. “Someone used a precision dose to knock her out without killing her. That’s very difficult. She’ll be out for . . .” She narrowed her eyes speculatively. “Maybe twelve to eighteen hours.”
Long enough to miss the witch congress. If Sybil said Lily would live, though, I believed her. “Where’s Katia?” I demanded.
“I don’t know!”
“Okay,” Quinn broke in, holding up his hands. “Who would know how to dose Lily like this?”
“Me.” Sybil thought for a moment. “Other than that, I can only think of Morgan and my mother. And Ardie Atwood, but nobody’s heard from her for a couple of years.”
I very carefully did not look at Quinn when she said that last part. Ardie, her husband, and their kids had disappeared from Colorado shortly after Ardie had participated in an attempt to kill Maven. I was certain my boss wouldn’t have hurt the children, so I figured their father had moved them out of state. I had no idea if Ardie had been alive to go with them. I didn’t really care.
“Morgan could do this?” I repeated.
“Yes, but not in person. She can’t come into Colorado, unless . . .” Sybil trailed off, thinking.
“Unless what?” I asked.
“Unless the witch congress decides to take away my mother’s magic,” Sybil said, looking up at me. One hand was still on her sister, like she was afraid someone would steal Lily away. “That would destroy any of her active spells. But they don’t meet until tomorrow.” She shrugged, looking at her sister with a miserable expression. “Morgan could have sent the dose with someone else.”
I looked at Quinn. “I don’t like this. Whoever came here must have arrived at almost the same time as Sybil and the werewolves hit John’s house. She’s attacking on multiple fronts at once.” God, I hated her.
“A blitzkrieg,” Quinn muttered under his breath.
Anyone who deals with military tactics learns the concept of blitzkrieg: a series of fast, concentrated attacks using more than one channel. The idea was to unbalance the enemy and make it impossible for them to adjust quickly enough to save themselves.
“And it’s working,” I said. We weren’t adjusting fast enough. We were too busy reacting.
Quinn nodded, looking grim . . . and a little pissed. I rarely saw Quinn actually get angry—he was usually the cool one, the detached investigator. But Morgan had attacked Katia and Lily, people who were important to me. That was enough to make even Quinn mad.
He turned narrowed eyes onto Sybil. “Where is Morgan hiding?”
“I don’t know,” she whined. “Somewhere in Wyoming. I haven’t visited her in person.”
“Who would know?” I asked. “Who else is working for her?”
Sybil’s lower lip trembled, but she was thinking. “There’s a whole pack of werewolves,” she said slowly. “I don’t know any of them, though. The ones I was with . . . I just met them tonight.”
“That’s not all of you,” I said. “She has other witches, doesn’t she?”
Sybil swallowed hard. “I only know of two. Marissa Shaw is from Clan Shaw, down in Pueblo. She was at the farmhouse keeping an eye on us. And Joanna Green used to be in Clan Pellar, but she left when Morgan did.”
“What do they look like?”
Sybil did her best to describe them. I didn’t think I’d met Shaw, but I was pretty sure Joanna Green was the timid woman who’d brought out the podium at Morgan’s big meeting. That didn’t really get us anywhere, though.
Sybil stroked Lily’s hair.
“You’re sure she’s going to be okay?” I heard myself asking.
“Mostly sure. In the Middle Ages belladonna was used as anesthetic during surgery; in theory it shouldn’t do any lasting harm.” She was frowning. “But there’s always the possibility of complications.”
“Is there an antidote?” Quinn asked.
“Yes, but I don’t have it with me. It’s at the farmhouse.”
I looked at Quinn. “We should—”
The trilling brrrrrrrrring of an old-fashioned telephone erupted from the kitchen, cutting me off. I went out there, the other two at my heels, and found a small black burner phone on the counter, tucked against the fridge. “Is it Katia’s?” Quinn said, frowning.
“No.” I went over to the counter and looked at the screen. The caller ID had been blocked.
“Should you answer it?” Sybil said.
“I think I have to.” I picked up the phone and hit the “Talk” button. “Hello?”
“Lex?” Katia’s voice was raw and weak.
My stomach contracted. I’d never heard her sound like that. “I’m here, Aunt Katia. What’s going on?”
“I need . . . I need you to get somewhere you can’t be overheard. By anyone.”
Quinn and I locked eyes. He gave a tiny headshake—don’t do it—but I couldn’t take the risk. “Hold on.”
I walked briskly out of the apartment, the phone pressed to my ear, and closed the door behind me. I put twenty more feet of hallway between me and the door, then said, “Okay. I’m alone.”
“Excellent,” a new voice purred. Fear erupted inside me like an explosion of adrenaline.
“Hello, Morgan.”
Chapter 34
“Did you find Lily yet?” she asked, as though I had lost a shoe.