Chapter 36

Thirty-Six

It's quicker to get to the guys house on the four-wheeler. Once I cross over the slough and the highway, it's all back roads and straight lines, cutting through woods and pastures until I hit the town pavement again.

The wolves broke off half way to town, but I couldn't follow them. Not without getting answers.

It's late and I should have taken the time to spell the machine to silence, but there's nothing I can do until I'm stopped.

And even then, I put it off.

I don't drive the four-wheeler up onto their lawn.

The vampire might have said she's gone, but I don't and won't trust him. I need to see the house for myself.

With the engine dead and the night broken only by the sound of cats fighting somewhere, I make my way through the trees that reach into the neighborhood and carefully up to Mrs. Miller's side door.

The lock warms under my palm as I whisper, " Deschi, " and clicks open.

I step silently inside, closing the door behind me as I breathe in the faint magic in the air. There's a broken spell. One used to conceal and made of someone else's magic. Aphrodite isn't the one who hid the guys from me. One of her acolytes is more powerful than I thought.

I follow that faint and jagged spell to an innocent-looking door, and when I ease it open, there's a light filtering up from the basement below.

Familiar stairs lead me down to a place I've seen in Aphrodite's memories. The basement looks like a movie depiction of a sorority house. But the woman on her knees in the middle of the room draws my attention away from the rest of it.

Mrs. Miller scrubs at a stain on the floor that looks like it's as old as the house.

She's alone and she doesn't seem to know I'm here.

"Mrs. Miller?" I say her name quietly, no idea how she'll react to seeing me this time.

But when she looks up, it's with a contented smile. "Hello dear."

Something is most definitely wrong.

She dusts off her hands and sits back on her heels. "Are you here for the boys?"

"I'd like to know where they are, yes."

"Not here. They've gone off to play with my girls and the other one…" Her brows pinch. "There was another one, wasn't there?"

"Where did they go?"

"Why, the woods, dear. Over to Deer Tree Lodge."

At least the vampire didn't lie about that.

Mrs. Miller seems to forget I'm there and goes back to scrubbing at the floor. It's better that she stays here instead of trying to run off after her granddaughters. Better that she doesn't know what Aphrodite likely has planned for them.

I scan the room, briefly touching on each of the beds. The space is clearly laid out in sections. There might be no physical division, but the women who have been living here have their own "space."

And Aphrodite's isn't difficult to differentiate.

Stepping around Mrs. Miller, I go to it.

There are a stack of spells, many scribbled in a spiral notebook with ten different colors of pen.

Spells to ensnare, spells to control another's locomotion. There's even a spell written down to make someone fall out of love. But when I read it, I know it won't actually work.

Beneath the notebook are pages torn from an older book. Spells someone else wrote, that Aphrodite has bent and molded to her needs.

Spells the coven would expel her for using, if she hadn't already been kicked out.

The one on top is the one I expect to see. It's written in French, so I can only assume she stole this from Renée grimoire. The woman refuses to write anything down in English.

Why Renée would have created a spell to control other witches…

I read it once before I pick up the sheaf to look at everything that is beneath it and the whole stack turns to ash.

That is a sloppy tactic, one I hadn't even expected her to use. A single white sheet flutters from the remains.

The warning I wrote up for Anthony to include with love potion ingredients…

That might be how she's controlling the guys.

If so…

I step around Mrs. Miller, no longer worrying about making sound. It feels like it takes twice as long to get back up and across the lawns.

I use the key to their house. If the talismans are still over the door, their protection magic would knock me back into the yard for trying.

But the key turns effortlessly and I step into a house that is cold and unnaturally empty.

It's a feeling I can't linger on. One I have to force myself to ignore.

I slip through the kitchen, silent for completely different reasons, and pull the vegetable oil from where it sits beside the stove.

I have to hope they've got what I need. I can't trust anything in Mrs. Miller's kitchen, and it would take far too long to search through her cupboards.

But when I open the cabinet with their spices… they've all been replaced. I pull out brand new jars… "That was an expensive grocery run."

Taking the herbs I need—in this case, dried is going to be better than fresh, even if they had it—I set them on the counter beside the oil.

It's a decently sized bottle, made of glass. I don't bother trying to find a jar to make a smaller mix. Instead, I pour the entire bottle of ground sage into it, ignoring the green powder that falls down the sides in my hurry.

Basil and dill follow… salt.

There are a dozen other things I would use, but there's no reason for them to have them. Whispering a spell and a prayer, I screw the cap down tight and shake it as I head back out.

This time, I do take a moment to spell the four-wheeler. A few quick words and a snap… and the sounds of the engine die away.

I have to believe that Aphrodite was in too much of a hurry to lie around Mrs. Miller. Have to believe that all of the signs pointing to the old Boy Scout building are correct.

I take the roads this time. There's a gully between here and there and the last thing I need is to total this vehicle too.

It's a five-minute drive to the lodge that backs up to the town's largest park, and there are a pair of cars parked in the gravel lot out front. The front end of the green beetle is smashed up from her encounter with my car, and I have to assume the other belongs to one of Mrs. Miller's granddaughters.

I pull the four-wheeler on to one of the heavily used walking paths just to the east of the lodge and listen for any sound that might clue me in to where they are.

They aren't being quiet.

I hear Aphrodite bark orders and slowly steer the ATV toward them.

There's a dense thicket close to where I see the four of them moving around, and I stash the ATV there, creeping closer and using the trees for cover.

The trees branches twine overhead, blocking the night's sky from the clearing she's using.

And moon magic requires line of sight.

"What are you up to?"

A glimmer shifts beside me and I look down to find Joshua's wolf pressing close. The other three sit, just outside the clearing, watching.

Aphrodite must have laid down a protective circle if they're not moving closer.

Because the guys are here.

All four of them sit in the pine needles, eyes tracking Aphrodite's every movement.

Otherwise, they're unnaturally still.

Aphrodite ignores them.

Her focus is on the Miller sisters.

The three women who work around her do so in mechanical movements. And as soon as they move, I see what the vampire meant when he said she was going to fake the blood moon.

Like something from a child's play, two of her acolytes hoist a paper maché moon into the air, to hang above the branches. The third is crouched by a light projector, fiddling with its connection to a small battery pack.

There's a pile of stones Aphrodite is using as an altar, and on it… an enormous malachite sphere.

She's going to use it to channel their strength into her. And she'll take the magical essence of the wolves with it.

The acolytes finish placing the moon where they want it, and the projector creates a red hue on the paper surface. They walk quickly to sit beside the guys, hands in their laps as Aphrodite pulls a jar of blood up from the ground and throws away the lid.

I hurry back to my four-wheeler as she pours it over the sphere. I can't stop her before she starts the spell… but I can't let her keep it up for long either.

If this goes wrong, it might kill us all.

If it goes right, it's definitely going to kill the seven there with her.

My phone hums when I get back to the ATV, and the screen tells me it's the fifth call I've missed.

The text from my mother tells me to call her with five exclamation marks. But I don't have time to explain why that's not going to happen. So I send her my location and toss the phone back into the bag.

Aphrodite can't wait.