Chapter 24

I might not beable to move as fast as a ghost, but I could haul ass in my car. I got to Natalie's house in less than fifteen minutes.

Even from the street, I could tell her house wards were broken. It felt like something was scraping against my brain, and the feeling got worse the closer I got to the house. By the time I reached the porch, I was staggering. The wards hadn't just been broken; they'd been ripped apart with brute force.

I managed to get to the house and place my palm against the doorframe. I brought down the broken wards, and the disorientation and pain vanished. I straightened up shakily and tried the front door. It was unlocked.

Inside, it didn't look like anything was out of place. Whatever happened, it happened quickly. "Malcolm?"

Malcolm appeared next to me. He flitted back and forth so rapidly, it hurt my eyes. "She's gone. There's blood in Betty's room."

"Shit." Just outside the library door, there was a large smear of blood on the floor. I wondered if Natalie was trying to get to the safety of the library, where the wards would have protected her, but someone got her just before she crossed the threshold.

"Whatever happened here, we missed it." Malcolm flitted so fast I could barely see him. "Someone took her."

"Can you sense her?"

Malcolm stopped, closed his eyes, and concentrated. He vanished for a moment, then reappeared, then vanished again, then came back.

"I can't," he said finally. "Something is blocking me. She must be spelled or inside a ward. Whatever it is, it's got to be strong."

I cursed. The library wards ran over my skin like an electric current. Whoever had come into Natalie's home, they hadn't broken them. I wondered if that was because there was nothing in the library they needed anymore, if the wards had proven too strong for them to break, or if they figured someone would feel the house wards break and come to investigate.

I put my hands on my hips. "Natalie said she had the letters from West on the dining table, but they weren't there. I'm guessing they were taken too."

Malcolm moved next to me. "Can you track her with blood magic?"

I glanced at the blood on the floor. "Maybe. The longer the blood sits there, the harder it gets. If she's protected by a masking or protection spell or ward, it gets even harder. I'll need some of the things from my basement. I'll get what I need to do the spells and be back as soon as I can."

"I'll stay here in case whoever took her comes back."

"Be careful." I shut the front door of Natalie's house and hurried to my car.

My thoughts raced as I drove back to my house. Why take Natalie now? Malcolm and I had used his spell detector on Natalie's aunts and uncle, but I didn't see how any of them could have been aware we'd done that since Malcolm was invisible. Even if they had, none of them were the mystery mage. I was pretty sure John West hadn't noticed us tailing him last night.

I almost hit a parked car when a sudden realization struck me.

Son of a bitch. The lawyer.

I'd asked Natalie to call Betty's lawyer and find out if her grandmother had any other children besides the ones we knew about. Hours after leaving another message for him, Natalie was gone. Was there a connection? If the mystery mage wasn't one of the siblings Malcolm and I had checked out, then there had to be another family member. It made sense. Maybe Natalie's calls to the lawyer had spooked someone, and they'd come to shut her up.

I didn't know the lawyer's name, but I'd bet it was in the paperwork on Betty's desk. I'd find it when I got back to Natalie's house, and if my blood magic wasn't able to locate Natalie, Malcolm and I would pay him a visit. If he knew who had Natalie, he'd tell me.

When I parked in my driveway, I left everything but my keys in the car so my hands would be free to carry what I needed for the blood magic ritual.

I was so focused on getting in and out of the house as quickly as possible that it took me way too long to realize Peter Eppright was standing five feet away in the shadows under my carport, and that he was pointing a gun at me.

I stared at him for a full second before reacting. I lashed his right hand with my cold-fire whip. He yelled in pain and dropped his gun, bending over to cradle his hand. I reached into my car to grab my gun off the passenger seat just as I heard a footstep crunch in the gravel behind me.

Something smashed into the back of my head, and everything went black.

The digital clock on my nightstand read 3:35 a.m. I sat cross-legged on the floor inside a circle. In front of me were three large jars filled with my blood and a spell crystal into which I was draining almost every last drop of my magic. Anyone monitoring me—which they certainly were, as I was under surveillance almost every minute of every day—would see me working ritual blood magic for my grandfather. They would not be able to see the jars or the spell crystal. I'd spent many hours crafting the circle. It was a powerful obfuscation spell, one of the most difficult I had ever attempted.

Tonight was the culmination of almost a year of planning and preparing, waiting for the right time, for the right type of contract. When my grandfather was hired by a smaller cabal to wipe out their competitor, it was the perfect opportunity for me to put my escape plan into action. Of course, I couldn't readily accept the assignment or that would have aroused suspicion, so I'd initially refused to obey my grandfather's command. I hoped Moses wouldn't suspect I'd relented too soon. I had to balance how much torture I could take with how much I would have to recover for my plan to work.

The attack would require an enormous amount of energy, which was what I had been waiting for. I had been instructed to perform the ritual tonight, when the targets would all be at a location that was less well-protected than their compound. Everything had been carefully planned. It was a shame it was about to go completely sideways.

I'd drained as much of my blood into the jars as I dared. It had to be an enormous amount, and full of magic, for this to work. When it was dispersed by the explosion, my grandfather would have to believe I had been killed. I'd been thinking about this for almost a year. Now, in the moment, I was very calm, almost detached. It was almost certainly mainly the blood loss, but the rest was cold resolve. Either I would be free, or I would be dead. There were no other alternatives. Knowing that made it easier.

I funneled all of my magic into the spell crystal until all I had left was a tiny amount of blood magic.

I opened the jars and poured their contents into the circle. The coppery scent turned my stomach. The smell of my blood was inexorably tied to torture by my grandfather, the recently deceased blood mage, and others. Tonight it would be the key to my escape—I hoped.

The blood ran across the floor in wide rivers. I left the jars where they were. There would be nothing left of them, or the room I was in.

I used a small knife to cut four runes into my forearm with quick precision. A blood-magic protection and obfuscation spell flared over my body, powered by the last of my blood magic. It had to hold or I was going to be dead in about five seconds.

I closed my eyes. Blood magic flared around me.

I don't remember the actual blast. One second, I was standing in my room. I blinked, and I was outside.

I lay in the courtyard, surrounded by burning debris. An enormous fireball billowed from a giant hole in the side of the compound where my rooms used to be. My hearing was gone, but I saw red flashing lights and knew every alarm in the compound was going off. People in black uniforms were running everywhere, some toward the blaze, some toward my grandfather's apartment, the library, and the storage areas.

No one saw me on the ground, staring dazedly at the ruined section of the compound where I'd been kept prisoner for most of my life. The obfuscation spell was holding for now, but only fumes of my magic remained to keep it going. Once it failed, I'd be visible. I had another spell in my pocket, but it was an emergency backup and I couldn't use it until I was well outside the compound walls.

I sat up and pain took my breath away. The protection spell had saved my life, but my left arm was broken at the elbow. I staggered to my feet, holding my arm against my body, and focused as well as I could to avoid bumping into anyone as I made my way through the chaos and smoke to the main gate.

Behind me, there was a second explosion; apparently, the fire had reached something volatile. I smiled grimly. Maybe the whole damn compound would burn to the ground. It was probably too much to hope for. It wouldn't destroy the cabal, but it would certainly cripple it for a while.

The guard at the gate was shouting into his radio as the heavy double doors beside the gate opened. More uniformed men and women came pouring in—they'd been outside the gates on patrol and had been called in to help. They wouldn't open the main gate; if it was an attack, that would put the compound at risk, but the small personnel doors could be opened to let in reinforcements.

I waited for my chance. When the guards stopped coming through, I slipped out and began running. Every step jostled my broken arm, but I held it as steady as possible and moved as quickly as I could through the woods surrounding the compound. I had to put as much distance between myself and that place as I was able to before blood loss and exhaustion rendered me visible and vulnerable.

Somehow, I made it the three miles from the compound to the state highway before I could go no farther. My vision was graying, and I was reduced to crawling the last few hundred yards. I'd hoped to use one of the disguise spells in my pockets and get a ride from a passing motorist, but I couldn't even stand up, much less wave anyone down.

I spotted a culvert under the highway. On my knees and one hand, my left arm held against my body, I crawled inside the drainpipe and crept back into the darkness, half burying myself under leaves. Luckily, it hadn't rained lately, and the drainpipe was dry.

Despite the warm summer night, I was shivering from shock and pain. With fumbling fingers, I dug into my pocket and felt around for the healing spell I'd brought. It was the largest of the spell crystals in my pocket; the others were mainly disguise and masking spells, plus a suicide spell that would burn my body to ash. The latter was the only one in my pocket that was distinctly cube-shaped. I was careful not to grab it by mistake.

My fingers closed around the healing spell. I had to hope no one came near this area and sensed its use before the magic trace dissipated. I knew I was risking being caught, but I also knew there was a real chance I would die from shock and blood loss if I didn't do something. I hadn't come this far to die now. I'd already gone all-in. What was one more gamble?

I pulled the crystal from my pocket, stuck it inside my bra so it would stay against my skin even if I passed out, and invoked the spell.

Magic hit my chest like a sledgehammer, and I spun off into darkness. My last thought was of freedom.