Chapter 4

FOUR

"You need to move. Now."

Paris recognized that deep, serious voice, though it was more strained than the calmer, softer version of several days ago. Hurried footsteps punctuated each word, the raven charging down the hall toward the room at the end Paris had claimed. And painted one whole wall of, from floor-to-ceiling, even the jamb around the door.

But before Mac could reach him, he was waylaid by Liam outside the room. "Where's the fire, brother?"

"Vincent hired someone to hack the coven's location. We're trying to slow him down, but someone made a call out from here. The witch whose phone was used said it wasn't her."

"Shit," Paris cursed as his brush slipped, smearing his guilt across the chin of the young woman from the grocery store parking lot.

A blink later, Mac appeared in the doorway, and Paris stumbled back against the wall behind him.

Eyes glowing violet, color high on his cheeks, wrapped in nothing but a clearly borrowed trench that barely reached his knees, the raven was even more stunning than in Paris's hazy memories. He was tall and rangy like his brother, but bigger somehow. From the added definition of his lean muscles to the authority he carried himself with to the blue, black, and violet aura that pulsed around him—duty, loyalty, and regret, a terrible tangle, inside a barely there ring of red, pushed to the very edge.

Wait... He could sense auras? Since when? He hadn't noticed Liam's or any of the witches' before now.

"It was you?" Mac's bark snapped him out of his thoughts. "You risked all these people." He threw an arm out the direction he'd come. "Witches who brought you back to life. My brother who watched over you. I saved your s?—"

"Thank you," Paris said, finding his voice and legs as he pushed off the wall.

Mac jerked upright and blinked, the violet of his eyes fading to black. "What?"

"Thank you for saving my life. I don't think I said that before."

Mac just stared, his mouth opening and closing several times before he pressed his lips together, seemingly stymied.

Chuckling, Liam stepped to his side and clapped his shoulder. "The appropriate response is you're welcome ."

"Get packed up" was no less appropriate, given the circumstances he'd described. Paris didn't hold it against him, especially as he'd hastened things along. Mac rotated back to the door, then wobbled to a stop, inhaling sharply. "What is this?"

Paris flashed his stained hands, the brush woven through his fingers. "It's how I deal."

Mac moved closer to the wall, his gaze roving over the violet-tinged murals. The small, bearded man in the apron to the left of the doorway. The monster with snakes dripping from his chin to the right. "This was the giant?" Mac said. "Before and after?"

"That's right," Paris said, fighting and failing to keep the shiver out of his voice.

Another step right, and Mac stood before the mural of the altar where Paris had almost died. His fingers hovered in the air, just above the wall, tracing the knives that jutted up from the altar into the painted Paris's back, then the wispy swirls around his head. "What are these?"

"The voices," Paris said, whisper-quiet, afraid that if he spoke of them any louder they might come back. "It felt like they were carving into me, then screaming in my head."

He paused only briefly in front of the raven with its wings spread and talons extended before stopping in front of the last figure. "Who's this?"

"After the witches did their thing," Paris said, then to Liam, "Right before I woke up yesterday and you found me on the floor"—he waited for Liam's nod—"I had a dream about her. But I think it was just me projecting so my brain could work it all out."

Mac jutted his chin at the painting of the clerk, then the one of the woman. "Take pictures," he said to Liam.

"Why?" Paris asked.

"Something about her is familiar," Mac answered, his gaze still fixed on her. "Why is it all in purple?"

"That's how I saw it in my dream."

Mac's head whirled around so fast, so like a bird's, that Paris almost laughed. The shock—and alarm—in the raven's once again violet eyes stopped him. Made him gulp instead. He was thankful a witch leaned her head in the door and released him from Mac's assessing stare.

"We'll be ready to go in ten," she said.

"Where are we going?" Paris asked.

"You'll find out when we get there."

He shifted his grip on the paint brush, holding it in his fist like a weapon. Nothing the ravens or witches had done so far indicated they meant to harm him—quite the opposite—but still... "No offense, but unknown destinations have not worked out so well for me this week."

"He has a point," Liam said.

"You'll go with the witches to Calera," Mac conceded.

"And what about you?"

His face fell—that terrible tangled aura from earlier knocking Paris back a step. And if his aura hadn't, the wretched pain in Mac's voice would have. "I have to do something I've put off for too long."

Liam stepped in front of him, expression sympathetic. "Is there any way around it?"

"We're about to find out."

Liam drew his brother into a tight embrace and mumbled words Paris couldn't understand. "Ní hiasc é go dtí go bhfuil sé ar an mbanc."

Mac's gaze flicked over his brother's shoulder, catching on Paris's, and when he said, "I hope you're right," Paris didn't think it was only about whatever miserable duty was directly in front of him.