You’re a witch, dummy. Use what you’ve got.
“That’s not helpful, Samantha,” I said out loud, but my sister had a point. I closed my eyes and forced myself to relax into what Simon called my boundary mindset.
Most witches had a way to see magic. Lily envisioned a third eye she could switch on and off. Simon perceived magic as a sort of density in the air. As a boundary witch, I didn’t get that useful set of skills: I could only see a creature’s life essence—or their death-essence. That was Simon’s term for it, anyway. Lily called it the soul, and I sometimes thought of it as human-being extract. Whatever you wanted to call it, I could look at the world as though I were wearing thermal-imaging goggles, and living or dead things would light up.
I was hoping to see signs of lots of tiny life nearby: a forested area or deep ravine where the car could disappear. Instead, I lucked out. My eyes popped open again, and I got inside the car and turned on the headlights.
The side of the road had a lot of tall yellowed grass, partially flattened by a dusting of snow, but a few hundred feet ahead, I could just make out a flat area with no grass. A driveway.
I started the engine, creeping forward so I could take the turn. It led into a patch of trees, and just past the tree line I could see the blackened, charred bones of what had probably once been a pretty nice summer cabin. Parts of the structure still stood, like a bunch of broken spider legs, but they didn’t keep me from seeing the three separate ghosts hovering inside. I was too far away to make out the details, but two of them were large and one very small, maybe a child of three or four. I had no way of knowing how long they’d been haunting the cabin’s remains.
The owners had dug out a single, car-sized turnout, directly on my left, and I parked Opal’s sedan there and quickly wiped it down with one of the gloves she’d put in my jacket pocket. I checked the clock before I got out of the car: it had been about five minutes since Katia had shot the werewolf.
I wanted to lay the ghosts, but there just wasn’t time. Regretfully, I left the sedan and jogged clumsily back to the road, past the line of parked cars, and through the parking lot to Katia’s car. By the time I got there, the alarm was just beginning to blare, and a swarm of witches burst through the doors.
Katia had thoughtfully unlocked the Equinox as she’d gone back inside, so I was able to open the door and climb onto the running board, watching the stampede of witches. They came out in a hurry, but most looked wary, as if they half expected a trap of some kind. Good. I wanted to get everyone out in case Heather’s friends decided to show up after all, but sowing seeds of mistrust against Morgan was a nice side benefit.
In the confusion, Katia had been able to disappear into the crowd, and with her disguise I wasn’t able to pick her out until she was nearly at the driver’s-side door. I didn’t drop down from my perch right away, though, because as the crowd fled into the parking lot, Morgan Pellar appeared in the doorway, wringing her hands. “Everyone stay calm!” she called, her microphone still booming through the interior speakers. She looked genuinely pissed at the turn of events, which made me happy. “I’m sure it’s a false alarm. We can continue this here in the parking lot!”
Nearly all the witches ignored her. Only a handful of them clustered around her to talk, and those were probably the ones she’d already won over.
I stepped down and got myself buckled into the Equinox. Katia arched an eyebrow at me as she started the ignition. “Where to?” she asked.
“Back to Boulder,” I told my aunt. “Fast as you can.”
Chapter 24
Katia followed the line of other cars back toward the highway. I turned to watch as we went by, but none of the other drivers seemed the least bit interested in the turnout where I’d left Opal’s car.
I settled back in my seat. “Can I use your phone?”
She dug her cell out of her pocket and held it out to me, saying, “I trust you will explain what’s happening?”
“Promise. But I need to warn some people first.”
The road was currently empty, but I automatically took my usual ghost precautions, flipping the sun visor down as far as it would go and scooting myself up in the seat to block out as much of the windshield as possible. Katia didn’t comment. This wasn’t the first time she’d driven me after dark.
I called Quinn first, but there was no answer. At this hour, I realized, he was probably out feeding. Vampires turned their phones off or left them behind while they fed, mostly because it was really annoying to fully hypnotize someone, then have it break down when your pocket started playing ringtones. I left a message for him to call Katia’s phone and tried the coffee shop.
“Hello, Magic Beans, this is Sharona,” came a bored-sounding voice. She was one of the human baristas Maven employed until about eleven p.m., when the shift became mainly vampires.
“Sharona, it’s Lex. Is Maven around?”
My ear filled with the sound of gum snapping. “Nuh-uh, she’s not in yet. She said six, though, and it’s only quarter to.”
Right. Quinn and Maven usually fed right after they woke. It was rare for them to be gone at the same time, but they probably thought I was still in the witch meeting—and that there might be trouble later tonight. “You wanna leave a message?” Sharona asked, in a voice that betrayed her lack of enthusiasm.
“No, I’ll call back. Thanks.”
I hung up the phone and Katia looked over at me, a tiny worry-crease between her eyebrows. “One more,” I promised. I knew John’s number by heart, but Katia had it in her contacts too.
My brother-in-law answered on the second ring. “Let me guess,” he said good-naturedly. “You’re in the middle of a crisis, and you’d like me to let your dogs out.”
“No—well actually, yes, but it’s bigger than that. John, Morgan is making some kind of play.”
There was a long moment of silence.
Two years ago, with Maven’s permission, I’d told John about the Old World, and filled him in on some of the problems I’d been dealing with since Charlie’s first kidnapping—including the fact that the woman he’d dated for months was a witch who’d wanted to use Charlie to kill my boss. It had been . . . awkward.
“Is she here?” John asked. His voice was hard with anger. “In Boulder?”
“Not yet. So far she’s staying out of Colorado, but to make a long story short, she’s planning something, and she knows what Charlie can do. This would be a really great week to take Charlie to Disneyland.” John and Sam had lived in LA for a few years, and he had plenty of friends they could stay with there.
John sighed. “I’ve already taken so much time off this year . . .”
“I know.” John worked in the graphic design department at Luther Shoes, my dad’s company. He wasn’t really arguing with me—we both knew Charlie’s safety took priority over his job. He was just worried.
“Okay,” he said after a moment, sounding resigned. “Do we need to go right now?”
“No, I think you’re fine tonight. First thing tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
He sounded unhappy, and I had an idea. “If you want, I could put you in touch with Scarlett while you’re there. I know you had more questions for her.” Scarlett Bernard was an adult null, and there was a lot John wanted to ask her about her life. She’d spent a few hours in Colorado this spring, but he hadn’t gotten a proper chance to talk to her.
His voice brightened immediately. “Do you think she’d be okay with that?”
“Probably.” I did some mental calculations. “She’s something like eight months pregnant right now. She’s probably bored out of her skull.”
Beside me, Katia started, and I realized I’d forgotten to tell her about Scarlett’s baby. Whoops.
John and I talked about the details for a few minutes—his vehicle had been outfitted so he could travel with Clara, who would continue to play bodyguard at night. She could also help with driving, which was a bonus.
Then I had to ask, “Are you good for money?”
Just the briefest hesitation. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll make it work.”
We said goodbye, and as I placed Katia’s phone in the cup holder, she glanced my way. “Scarlett is having a baby?”
“Yep. Apparently if it’s two nulls, it’s a thing.”
“Hmm.” Katia nodded to herself, processing that, then moved on. “So that woman tonight, Morgan, she is Lily’s older sister, yes?” Katia didn’t have an accent, but she had picked up the occasional strange syntax, the result of being born in the Ukraine and more or less owned by an evil vampire who traveled a lot.
“Her oldest sister, yes. Morgan was supposed to be the heir to Clan Pellar, but she disagreed with her mother’s policies and decided she couldn’t wait around for Hazel to retire.”
“And John?”
I sighed. “He dated her, before I was allowed to tell him about the Old World. She almost used Charlie to kill Maven.”
“Which is why you’re getting them out of town,” Katia said, nodding again.
But John and Charlie weren’t the only ones in danger from Morgan, I realized, checking the dashboard clock. Hazel was planning her witch town hall for tomorrow morning, and she had no idea that half her clan had just met to discuss a possible mutiny. More importantly, she wouldn’t know who was behind it.
“Hang on a second.” I stared blankly out the windshield for a moment, weighing the risks, then picked up the cell again. “I need to warn Simon and Lily.”
“Are you sure that is wise?” Katia asked. “If Morgan has people monitoring their phones, they could recognize your voice.”
“She’ll have someone watching them, but it won’t be anyone from Clan Pellar,” I insisted. “Morgan wouldn’t risk sending anyone who might be even a little bit sympathetic to Hazel. And the Clan Pellar witches are the only ones who know what I look and sound like.”
Just to be on the safe side, I searched for the number for Pellar Farm, and dialed the landline. I didn’t think it had caller ID.
“Hello?” The voice was wary, female, and completely unfamiliar.
Drawing on years of working retail, where I’d waited on CU’s finest, I channeled my best uncertain college girl. “Hi, um, I’m looking for Professor Pellar? I’m Emily, one of his TAs?” Beside me, Katia’s lips twitched with amusement.
A beat, then the voice said, “Simon Pellar isn’t available to talk right now, Emily. You can leave a message for him at his office.”
“Wait!” I said quickly, before she could hang up. “This is like, super important. I have this emergency family issue and I can’t proctor his exam, and if he doesn’t find someone else in a hurry it’s going to screw up the whole semester of grades. Then he’s gonna get in trouble, and I’ll be in trouble, and I just don’t know what to do!” I did my best to wail, hoping it wasn’t too much.