Chapter 30

THIRTY

Ethan entered the small clearing formed by the trailers, scanning his surroundings with nervous jerks of his head. He huddled deeper into his leather jacket and hurried toward Lee’s trailer. After one final look around, he opened the door and slipped inside.

I checked my phone. Right on time.

“ You better go get him,” I whispered to Brimstone . Initially , I hadn’t seen the need for Ethan to go through the charade of actually showing up, but Ian had pointed out that if McKee or the guilty party was following Ethan , it’d raise suspicions if he didn’t go to the meeting.

“ I don’t understand why I can’t just set your suspect on fire,” Brimstone muttered.

“ Because justice! Innocent until proven guilty!”

“ Pshe .”

“ Sonia wouldn’t like it, remember?”

Brimstone let out an unhappy sigh, then turned on his heel and slipped around the trailer toward Lee’s .

“ And you leave your shop in his hands?” Hutton asked sarcastically.

I shushed him, then leaned a bit out to study the dark recesses between the trailers and trucks surrounding us. The night remained silent even while Brimstone helped Ethan escape through the window in the back of the trailer. He’d then take him to a secure location while we waited for McKee to make his appearance.

A couple of minutes later, a text from Brimstone flashed on my phone: Safe .

Good . While I hadn’t been exactly ecstatic to involve Brimstone into our plot, given that he was dating Sonia and all that, we’d needed a big magic hitter to guard Ethan or he’d refused to help us.

With Ian in charge of Key and the strays’ safety, and Dru and Hutton refusing to do it, I’d had no other choice. Hopefully , he maintained a strong work-relationship separation ethic.

“ You know he’s totally going to tell Sonia , right?” Dru whispered as I got back onto my feet.

Hutton grunted in agreement.

“ I trust he won’t tell Sonia like he trusts me not to tell Ian about his illegal magic dealings and potions.”

“ Ian totally knows.”

Yeah , Ian totally did. “ Yes , but he figured it out by himself before I told him. That’s what matters.”

“ If you say so.”

“ Stop smirking.”

Dru’s smirk intensified. Now that she no longer needed shifts at the Tea Shop , there had been a marked increase in jokes about the way I ran the fake dark magic side of the operation.

“ You should listen to your friend,” Hutton said.

I pointed toward the back of the small space. “ And you should check out the area as you promised.”

With a glare, he slipped around the trailers and disappeared from view to cover our backs in case McKee or anyone else tried the more scenic route to Lee’s trailer. We had debated waiting inside one of the other trailers, since it would’ve been safer from being discovered, but if things went south, those precious moments of having to open the door and rush out might be the difference between one UNSUB in the wild and one UNSUB caught.

Dru joined me at the corner of the trailer. “ You think Hutton will keep his word?” she whispered.

“ Yeah , he’ll look out for anyone.”

“ About my shop.”

“ Yes ,” I told her seriously. Because if this were my shop we were talking about, I would be stressed, not rolling my eyes.

“ He better.”

“ He knows better than to cross you.”

She let out a Hutton -like grunt, and we settled in to wait. We had given McKee a meeting time through the message conversation with Ethan , but we expected him to show up ahead of time.

He did not disappoint.

About five minutes later, Hutton reappeared behind us, all but giving me a heart attack.

“ He’s here,” he warned in a low growl.

My heart redoubled its beat, and I held my breath. The crunch of loose pebbles and the splashing of puddles reached our ears, and a couple of seconds later a dark figure, tall and lean, walked up to Lee’s trailer. His gait had purpose, like he had no reason not to be there, and when he looked right and left, an errant beam of direct lamplight illuminated his face— Charles McKee .

Hah ! I knew I’d been right.

He opened the door of the trailer and slipped inside.

I immediately sent Ian a text: McKee here.

He answered right away with a thumbs-up emoji. We’d agreed that even if our UNSUB showed up at the trailers, Team Key would remain at Ethan’s , in case a conspirator popped out of nowhere to help plant evidence.

I put my phone away and scanned the open space between the trailers and trucks. Now we simply needed the final piece of the trap to drop: the Council witch.

We had rigged a camera courtesy of one of Alex’s buddies inside the trailer to film McKee cleaning up the place, leaving something to implicate Ethan while he wasn’t there, or do any kind of magic, but we didn’t have much hope of it catching much. Magic wouldn’t be captured, and it’d be easy for McKee to explain away messing with Lee’s trailer—curiosity, trying to find something to sell, and so on. All much lesser demeanors than murder.

Inside the trailer, a phone flashlight turned on, and McKee’s silhouette moved behind the drawn curtains. None of us had wanted to go inside the trailer and pull them open. Better not mess with a possible murder scene.

As the minutes passed and the flashlight inside the trailer turned off, I began to get angsty. What if the Council witch didn’t show up in time? We’d agreed to let our UNSUB go and follow him rather than do a paranormal citizen arrest. But now that we had him here, clearly guilty, it didn’t sit right to just let him go. What if he slipped out of reach like Johnathan Smythe had back with Grandma’s spellbook’s incident? I didn’t want to put a bounty hunter job on McKee ; I wanted him caught and secured and?—

Dru nudged me and tilted her head toward the open space. A smaller, female figure was creeping along the trailers, using the deepest shadows, and I recognized her as she crossed a pool of dim light.

The Council witch had arrived.

I gave silent thanks to the universe. Behind us, Hutton grabbed our arms and pulled us back, in case the witch checked the openings between the trailers on this side. The last thing I saw before we slipped around the back of the trailer hiding us was the Council witch taking out a small vial from a pocket in her jacket. She was going to put down a ward before going in, like I had. I hurried to text Ian about her presence.

We waited by the back of the trailer, tension thickening the atmosphere until I could all but bite a chunk off it. Ambient sounds filtered through—some animal scurrying, a squeaky piece of metal moving back and forth in the small breeze, the distant noises of traffic.

I checked my phone. Three minutes had passed. It had to have been enough for the witch to put down a ward and inspect the surroundings to make sure nobody was around.

As if reading my mind, Hutton slipped back into the narrow opening between trailers. Dru and I followed, trying to be as silent as possible.

The Council witch was finishing checking the sides of Lee’s trailer, crouching so she wouldn’t cross the windows. The fact she could do that after putting down a ward filled me with awe. Most witches could without problem, of course, but that didn't mean it didn’t deserve some well-earned appreciation.

At last, she moved back to the entrance of the trailer, took out another vial from a pocket, jerked the door open, and rushed inside.

Time stopped. As did our breathing.

Then someone shouted, and all hell broke loose.