As they walked down the stairs, I overheard Charlie say in an awed voice, “You have to take two naps? Wow. I haven’t had to do that since I was a baby.”
Chapter 20
By the time Opal went back downstairs, it was nearly two p.m., time for me to leave for Wyoming. I said goodbye to John and Charlie and drove to a café to pick up a massive coffee and a vegetarian burrito. Then I began the drive north to Wyoming.
Boulder to Wyoming isn’t a particularly interesting drive, but at least it was daytime, when I didn’t have to worry about ghosts distracting me from the road. The glare of sunlight off the snow was a little blinding, so I put on sunglasses and a podcast and let my thoughts drift. I wondered if I should come up with some sort of backstory, in case I was questioned, but in the end I tried to put the undercover mission out of my mind. I was still nervous enough that the burrito felt like a rock in my stomach.
I drove through Fort Collins, where I’d spent plenty of time in my youth, and crossed the state line just after three. This part of the country was known as the high plains, and it was easy to see why: snow-powdered hills rolled along on either side of the road, interrupted by the occasional ranch building or gas station covered in Christmas lights. The elevation here was even greater than in Boulder, and I hoped it wouldn’t affect my breathing if I needed to run. Then I just hoped I wouldn’t need to run.
As I got closer I began to worry the “rustic barn” would be too rural for the burner phone’s GPS, but to my relief it guided me down several long country roads surrounded by clumps of forest, and right to the parking lot for the Meadowlark Ranch Barn. I drove by slowly once, and found the location was exactly as advertised: the biggest barn I’d ever seen, sitting next to an enormous parking lot that was already more than half-full.
I did a three-point turn and went back, deciding to leave the car on the edge of the road instead of parking in the lot. I knew it was paranoid, but I wanted to be able to make a quick exit if necessary.
It took a while to walk through the parking lot and to the front entrance, and as I joined the stream of witches—mostly women, but a handful of men, too—heading inside, I snuck glances at them, trying to look casual while simultaneously not tripping on the long hem of my skirt. Opal had been spot-on in her wardrobe choices: long skirts and delicate sweaters were everywhere, and I blended right in—as long as I didn’t fidget with my hair too much. I knew from the car mirrors that it appeared fine, but it felt, and probably sounded, crunchy to the touch.
When we approached the cluster of people at the front entrance, I noticed that they were grouped in loose lines. A buffet-style table had been set up on either side of the double doors, with two women sitting behind each one. As each person reached the head of the line, they bent and spoke to one of the women, who waved them toward the barn entrance. Two more people, a man and a woman dressed in generic private security uniforms, stood on either side of the double doors. As I watched, a black-haired witch approached the female guard, who waved a portable metal detector over her. When it didn’t go off, she glanced at something in the witch’s hand and waved her on.
Well, it was good that I’d left my weapons in the car. But what had the witch shown the guard? For a second, I imagined her flashing some sort of witch ID card, and I pressed my lips tight to keep in a nervous laugh. I assumed they must have set a humans-go-away spell on the building itself, and the sun was still up, which excluded vampires . . . but there must be some sort of final screening process to keep werewolves out, and I had no idea what that could be.
Not knowing what else to do, I joined the back of a line, my stomach in knots. I didn’t like crowds under the best of circumstances, and this was a crowd of potentially hostile witches. What if they figured out I was a boundary witch? I didn’t know of anything that could detect my boundary witchblood, but that wasn’t really comforting, given how little I knew about trades magic. I wished I could just call Simon and ask him. The unfamiliar braids felt tight and itchy, and I fought the urge to fuss with my hair, not wanting the color to come off on my hands.
Antsy, I took out my new phone, intending to make sure I remembered how to use the functions—but the screen was dark. I frowned and pushed the power button. Nothing happened.
“Ooh, did they kill your phone?” said a witch right behind me. She was a red-haired woman in her late fifties, with an enormous purse the size of a duffel bag. She dug her own phone out and glanced at it, then pulled out a Kindle and looked at that too. “Yep. They’ve shut down the electronics.” She shook her head with a little whistle. “I’d heard there’s a hex for phones now, but I don’t know anybody who’s used it.”
“Is it like an EMP?” I asked without thinking. “The phone is destroyed?”
“Oh no, honey, they wouldn’t do that. It’ll work again once you get outside the wards.”
Great. That was assuming I made it outside the wards.
The woman patted me gently on the shoulder, and I had to work hard to suppress a flinch. The crowd was making me nervous, and not having a weapon made it worse. She pointed toward the table. “Look, honey, it’s your turn.”
I stepped up to the table. There were two women sitting behind it, each wearing surgical gloves and a professional-grade smile. They were dressed in street clothes, but something about them immediately made me think of nurses. “Hand?” the woman in front of me asked.
Stomach rolling with nerves, I began to extend my hand. She made an impatient noise and grabbed it. “Come on now, it’s just a quick poke.” She was holding a tiny plastic box that looked familiar, but before I could remember where I’d seen it before, she was jamming it onto my right index finger. I felt a quick, sharp stick; then she released me, revealing a drop of bright red blood on my finger. The little box was a disposable needle poke, the kind diabetics used to draw enough blood to test their blood sugar.
“See? Nothing to worry about.” Clearly impatient, she waved me off with one hand while the other reached down to toss the little box in a plastic garbage pail. “Next!”
Shuffling to the side, out of the way, I almost laughed. Werewolves could heal very quickly from non-silver wounds, but witches didn’t have that ability. That was how you made sure only witches got in: a simple humans-go-away ward and a finger poke. I’d been lucky she was in a hurry. If she had seen the calluses on my fingers from laying ghosts, the conversation could have gone very differently.
Keeping the rest of my fingers curled up, I joined the throng of witches filing into the huge building. The male guard waved the metal detector over me and checked my finger to make sure the little needle mark was still fresh, and I was in.
In Colorado, and probably Wyoming, too, the word “rustic” is thrown around a lot, and it can mean anything from “cheap and shitty” to “handmade and priceless.” In this case, however, the word actually felt right for the space. The inside of the barn was a massive single room filled with oak pillars and natural light that pooled down from skylights in the barn ceiling. I suspected there was some sort of electrical lighting hidden in the shadows of the rafters, but it wasn’t necessary yet. Other than some discreet outlets, exit signs, and a thermostat, the whole place felt like it could have been made at the turn of the last century. Except I doubted they’d ever made barns this big. Or with skylights.
You had to go down a few steps to get to the main floor, but I paused for a moment to survey the massive room. Most of it was packed with rows and rows of what looked to be Amish-made wooden chairs. They were pointed at a rectangular stage, maybe twenty feet long, at the far end of the barn, partially hidden by ivory-colored lace curtains. Presumably, there was another exit somewhere behind them.
As soon as I’d taken in the building’s layout and exits, I was struck by the size of the crowd: there had to be hundreds and hundreds of witches already settling into their seats. I’d arrived a few minutes early, but the neat rows of wooden chairs had already been filled, and the extra chairs someone had haphazardly added were nearly filled too. Even more people were standing around behind the chairs, sometimes four or five deep, and I suspected we were violating at least a few different fire codes.
I went down the steps and moved to one side, where I spent a few minutes scanning the crowd as if I were trying to find my friends. I couldn’t have looked through the entire room without being obvious, but I managed to spot four different members of Clan Pellar just in my line of vision, which was troubling. I’d assumed most of Simon and Lily’s clan would be loyal to Hazel, or at least to the family overall, but apparently they were interested enough to have shown up.
I didn’t see any open seats, which was fine—I’d much rather stand if it meant I could be near an exit, both for strategic and claustrophobic reasons. I took a position at the very back of the room, a few feet from one of the fire exits, and settled against the wall to wait.
Four o’clock came and went, and although the room buzzed with anticipation, the small stage at the front of the hall remained empty. Finally, at twenty after four, a single spotlight blazed down from the rafters, illuminating the stage and making me realize how dark the room had gotten while we waited.
A witch in her midtwenties emerged from behind the ivory curtain, pushing a podium in front of her. She was wearing a headset, her eyes lowered and shoulders hunched. She practically projected the words “don’t look at me.” When the podium was centered onstage, she immediately hurried back through the curtain, passing another woman on her way out. The newcomer was short, attractive, and maternal-looking, and as she stepped into the spotlight she smiled, throwing out her arms in a welcoming gesture.
And then my heart stopped, because it was Morgan fucking Pellar.
Chapter 21
The last time I’d seen Simon and Lily’s eldest sister, she had knocked John unconscious and threatened Charlie with a Sig Sauer.
I used to lose sleep wondering what Morgan was up to and whether she’d come back, but eventually I figured she’d settled down to be an asshole somewhere else. But nope, the bitch was back—and smart enough to stay out of Maven’s territory.
Maybe you’re wrong, I told myself in a daze. I hadn’t seen Morgan in nearly three years and I was in the back of an enormous hall. I was tired. Maybe this was someone else, who just looked a little like a Pellar. This woman was muscular where Morgan had been plump, and she had short, natural hair where Morgan had had long, straightened locks. She wasn’t wearing one of the feminine dresses Morgan used to favor, but brown corduroy pants and a cream-colored sweater that looked like it had been knit on a Scottish moor.
Before I could lie to myself any further, the woman leaned into the microphone. “Witches of Colorado,” she began, smiling demurely. “My name is Morgan Pellar, and I thank you for coming.”
An anxious murmur went through the crowd, and my composure snapped. My vision narrowed to a pinprick of rage, and I was already stepping forward when I felt a hand on my upper arm. “Steady,” a familiar voice whispered.