Chapter 21

Murtagh

Things were good. I woke up with Zazie wrapping her little body around me. Caspian was spooning behind her. We had one diamond recovered already, and Caspian had plans of taking the rest of the treasure horde as soon as he got his team of men on it.

I stretched. I craved a cup of coffee, but there was no reason to leave the bed. I was just going to bask right now, let the beauty of the moment and the stillness of the morning wash over me.

But then Miles walked in. He had obviously been up for a while; he was wearing his usual button-down vest on top of his dress slacks. He looked over at us, Caspian first, but then seemed to realize that I was looking at him, so he passed me the phone.

“I bought a new phone for him this morning. As soon as it got hooked up, I had that witch calling the number. Did you want to take it?” he asked me quietly, but then leaned closer and warned, “She’s sounding a little hyper.”

“I’ll take it.” I took the phone from him and put it to my ear. “Hello?”

“Eh ben, finalement!” sighed a young, feminine voice on the other side of the phone. “I was thinkin’ you’d never pick up your phone, cher! Do you even know how many times I tried callin’ this number? Felt like I was sendin’ messages in a bottle down the river, waitin’ and hopin’. Mais, I’m just glad you finally did, yeah. Shit is goin’ sideways, you know.”

“What happened?” I asked, furling my brow. She did sound a little jacked up.

“What didn’t happen is the question! Seraphus has been a’watchin’ my store! He came on by. Himself! Do you know he has a proper army out followin’ him around? It’s not good, no sir!”

I sat up rigidly as I heard the name ‘Seraphus’ and started to pace. “What happened? How’d he find you?”

“Dragon blood. I’ve been sellin’ a little bit on the market. That’s Samael’s guess, anyway. He ain’t none too happy about it, nuther. He just about got his head jus’ ‘bout caved in, or else I have a feelin’ he’d be taken a switch to me about the whole damn thing…”

“Start from the beginning,” I suggested after I took a deep breath. I wanted her to take a deep breath, too, because it didn’t seem like her ideas were very succinct.

“Okay, so the first thing I’m gonna do is make sure ya’ll are okay, and I hope you’re having fun finding that diamond. Ombre told us that that was what you was decidin’ to do.”

I frowned and closed my eyes for a moment, because I had found that when southern women started to count blessings before delivering bad news, that was a very good sign that the news would be very bad.

“We found it,” I announced firmly, hoping that she’d then start to talk about what had happened with Seraphus.

“What? Already?” she asked, sounding both surprised and taken aback. “Well, shoot. Ya’ll don’t waste no time, do you?” She turned and said to someone in the room with her. “Ya know they already found that diamond! Ain’t that some shit?”

“Wendy, give me the phone, baby,” groaned a male voice from somewhere near her, and then after a moment, I heard the black-eyed demon’s voice say, “Dragon?”

“It’s Murtagh,” I replied.

“You’ve got some bad people heading up your way,” he warned, cutting to the point in his southern drawl. “I’d send Ombre up to you, but it won’t make no difference. They done figured out the dot-to-dot from us, to you, to her. So when they came to us last evening, Seraphus was quite prepared this time to handle a shadow demon well and good. It’ll take a while before he’s back to his old self, in fact.

“And then they handled me. That was a bad surprise. Came with a proper demon trap, punched me right into it usin’ a sledgehammer of all things! Put my poor girl all alone except for Silas. And Silas is worthless. Literally—he is in no way prepared to handle that sort of situation. And so Wendy did what she could…”

“Is she okay?” I asked, but really, I wanted to ask what the fuck happened.

“Oh, no. She’s fine. She got a little bruised by the followers because they had in mind to bag her and bring her to a second location. But then Wendy bewitched Seraphus.”

“She did?” I asked, my words hopeful.

“With good manners,” he specified, and my face fell.

“Wendy ain’t no dummy. If you can’t fight, or flee, she knows that she’d better befriend real quick. So she offered Seraphus a tea and had a sit-down, despite the fact that he obviously planned to torture her for information. I imagined he didn’t know quite what to make of her. Folks rarely do. And so here we are,” he continued, “because to keep herself from being tortured, she of course willingly gave up your location and admitted your connection to your mate.”

My mouth dropped.

“She did not explain what you were looking for and is certain that he does not know. She also got from Seraphus that he has a notion of right where your girl’s brother is.”

I blinked, gooseflesh prickling on my skin. “When did this all happen?”

He grunted. “About ten hours ago. Wendy got me and Ombre both out of our fix and back to rights. At least as much as she could, and we’ve been trying to get you on the line ever since. You are going to want to unroot yourself from where you are pronto and get in the air. Doesn’t matter where to, just don’t stay there, because Ombre told us where ya’ll were going.”

“I did not tell the shadow,” I said succinctly.

“Oh, he followed you right to Turkey. Just because he doesn’t say ‘hello’ don’t mean he ain’t there. Don’t you forget for a moment that a holy war hangs in the balance, here.” There was no apology. There was no explanation. There was only a pause in the conversation, and then he said, “I mean now. I mean move your ass. Keep in touch.” The other side of the line went dead.

I pinched my nose and closed my eyes. What a fucking nightmare.

Literally, this was my nightmare.

I whipped my head towards the bed. “Caspian, get up! We’ve got to move!” I barked at him with force, grabbing my pants and pulling them on. “Miles!”

Miles was already walking in, his eyebrows raised.

“We have company heading our way,” I growled at him. “We need to be out of here in five minutes.”

“So, I’m guessing this isn’t company I should be making a charcuterie for?” he asked, annoyed but not startled. It was hard to startle Miles.

“No.”

“I’ll be in the car in five,” Miles assured me and disappeared back out the door.