Gray witch, p.18
Gray Witch, page 18
“Lacky?” I inched closer. “Is that who you mean?”
“Rue.” The daemon gripped my upper arm. “Look.”
Mom had meant what she said literally, her hands clenching the roots to hold herself still. The strain in her body became evident the longer I stood there, and then her fingers lost their purchase.
Her magic slammed into my knee. The joint wrenched, popped, and I hit the ground on all fours.
A trembling wand hung from Mom’s fingers, the tip glowing bright, and tears wet her face.
“I can’t control myself.” She blasted me again. “Run.”
The daemon saved me from myself, yanking me up and tucking me under his arm. He ran as fast as he could, weaving through trees, putting as much space between Mom and me as possible. Distance helped. The farther we got from her, the less the compulsion laid on her compelled her to act.
Without her bones, we had no way to stop her. I could blast her apart, as I had Old Man Fang, but this was my mom.
I wasn’t sure I was strong enough to end her, not after a lifetime of the director telling me I had been the one who killed her. I didn’t want to make his lies my truth. Even though she was already dead, I didn’t want to be the reason she winked out of existence for good.
A distant worry sprouted in my mind, a tickle in my brain as a certainty took root.
Whoever possessed her bones had kept them close. For decades. That explained why I couldn’t contact Mom, why Meg couldn’t find her either. She hadn’t been on the other side of the veil. She had been trapped here, and I could only imagine one person who would have treated her so cruelly. The man I had suspected from the start.
The director.
But if he had her bones, and she had been summoned, that must mean…
…he was here.
The only person who knew his whereabouts was Parish, and Parish wouldn’t tell me even if I ripped out his heart and ate it in front of him. It was the principle of the thing. He hadn’t survived being the director’s right hand this long by giving away his boss’s secrets.
A branch raked through my hair as the daemon hiked me higher on his shoulder, but the whoosh of debris flying past kept me from checking behind us. The pain radiating through my back told me I had taken a projectile to the left of my spine, but I had to suck it up and deal.
A mournful howl pierced the night, others raising up that voice, and hope surged through me.
The sound distracted Mom too, who searched for the source and forgot to attempt to murder me.
A massive wolf I recognized as Derry dashed out of the darkness and fell in step with the daemon. Four other wolves emerged, flanking us, herding us toward some distant point. Their yips and barks told me they were having a blast, which made me wonder if they thought Old Man Fang was on their heels and not Mom. Either way, I was grateful for the assist.
“Derry-wolf says this way,” the daemon cut into my thoughts. “Old cemetery.”
A crumbling stone marked the corner of a family cemetery that hadn’t seen visitors in decades, based on the overgrowth. A long slab proclaimed it the Lacky family cemetery, not Old Man Fang’s original resting place.
The daemon skidded past the markers, almost dropping me in the process. Using his momentum against him, I broke his hold and flipped over his arm. I landed on my feet, my knee screaming from impact, and freed up my hands for casting.
I didn’t want to attack my mother, but I would if there was no other choice.
You can’t value the dead above the living.
Twisting to glance over my shoulder, I groped for the edges of a wound I couldn’t see. “Can you help?”
The daemon grumbled about scurvy, proving Colby failed to define it for him, then fell silent.
“Nothing there.” He lifted my shirt and sniffed, which tickled. “Old scar. Smells weird. That it.”
“That can’t be good.” I had plenty of scars, but none that had ever tickled his nose. I reassessed my knee while I was at it, and it took my weight without buckling. I was healing. Fast. But how? “Do you think the choker...?”
The daemon parted his lips to answer, but the wolves broke into warning snarls that deafened me.
On legs that fought against bending, Mom approached me, her battle with the compulsion evident.
“You need to end this,” Mom murmured, her voice a thousand whispers. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She didn’t step a toe over the invisible line onto sanctified ground, for which I was grateful.
Of all the things I could have asked, that I wanted to say, I had to know. “Who did this to you?”
A pinprick of red marked her pupils and grew until her eyes had been devoured by crimson.
“He wants your father.” Strain thinned her voice. “Don’t let him win. Not again. Not this time.”
“The director,” I pressed for confirmation, but her focus blurred as she fought against herself.
No blame passed her lips, proving whoever summoned her had made sure she couldn’t out them.
“Please, baby, end this.” She hugged herself, trapping her wand under her arm. “My bones…”
“How?” I stepped forward, lulled by her moment of lucidity. “How do I give you peace?”
“Burn my bones and salt the earth where you find them.”
“I…” I shored up my courage. “I will.” But I had to locate them first. “Do you know where they are?”
“He buried pieces of me everywhere,” she confessed. “I can’t find myself, only my target.”
Me.
“Why would the director do this?” I couldn’t imagine his endgame. “Why the charade?”
“The director?” A deep line carved across her brow. “He—”
A shadow passed over the moon, and the wargs packed in close around me, all of them gazing skyward. I didn’t have to look. I could feel in my bones who had come, and I began to fear he might struggle harder choosing the living over the dead than I did if his heartbroken awe was any indication.
“Howl.” He landed before her, his wings quivering as if he couldn’t believe it. “You’re here.”
“I was sent for our baby.” She flung herself against his chest. “Please, help me.”
“Come with me.” He scooped her in his arms. “You always did love to fly.”
A watery laugh escaped her that turned into an anguished cry of pain.
“I can’t fight it much longer.” She cupped his cheek in her palm. “End this.”
“I would sooner the sun burn out than give you up again,” he said, and I could tell we both believed him.
“I can’t live like this.” She bit her bottom lip. “Exist like this.” She pleaded with him. “I’m not real.”
“You’re real enough for me.” He held her tighter, like he would never let go. “I’ll fix this, Howl, I swear it.”
“My Saint.” She tipped her chin for a kiss that forced me to turn my head. “You can’t fix everything.”
“I can try.”
Without a backward glance, he launched into the sky, taking the immediate threat with him.
If it hurt, that they had been so lost in each other neither of their gazes had found me, I couldn’t show it.
And it worried me, that flaring the grimoire alerted Dad in record time.
“This won’t end well.” I watched them until they were a speck on the horizon. “Not well at all.”
“Your father has one of her finger bones.” Asa must have shifted while I was busy tucking away my pain. “Perhaps he can bury it in land they owned and award her some control over her actions.”
“She’s been in limbo all this time.” I basked in my shame at leaving her there. “He needs to let her go.”
As always, Asa heard more than I said, and he drew me against his side. “This doesn’t make you weak.”
“I barely remember her. I’m not sure I do remember her. I shouldn’t have locked up like that.”
“She’s your mother.” Asa rested his chin on my head. “No one blames you for not wanting to hurt her.”
“She’s dead.” I forced myself to say it. “I can’t hurt her.” I swallowed again. “She asked me to end it.”
Whatever afterlife she believed awaited her, she had hoped I would help her reach it. An act of mercy. An act of love. Instead, I performed an act of cowardice. I allowed her to be taken by a man who would rather die than live without her.
“Let’s circle back to the den.” I wiped my face dry with my tee. “Maybe we missed something.”
“Your father has a piece of her now,” Asa reminded me. “He’ll find the rest.”
That was what I was afraid of.
“None of this makes sense.” I balled my hands into fists. “Why involve her?”
Why involve me?
Selfish? Yes. Whiny? Also yes. But come on. Did karma really have no one else to pick on?
“She fought a compulsion to kill you, specifically.” He sounded thoughtful. “That confirms Colby’s Game Over theory. The murders weren’t random.”
“We need to take a closer look at our victims, dig up their connections to their specific summoner.”
The best cyber sleuth in the business was on her way to us, but I figured I could give her a head start.
“Hey.” I didn’t waste time on pleasantries when I dialed Colby. “We need to be looking for a link between the summoners and their victims. They weren’t random. They were targeted.”
“I know.”
“Oh.” I should have known better than to think I was ahead of her, but I did have one confession left she couldn’t know. “Well, we didn’t figure out they were assassins until the last victim got away.”
“Got away?” Colby click-clacked in the background. “No one has gotten away.”
“I did.”
“What do you mean you did?” Clay bellowed in my ear. “Who came after you?”
A child’s first word is often a variation on mother.
Funny how I couldn’t get out a single one of them.
“They sent her mother,” Asa told Clay for me. “Saint collected her before anyone was hurt.”
A fountain of profanity spewed from Clay’s mouth, and I swore I could feel his spittle rain down on me.
“Mom couldn’t name him, but the director is behind this. He must be.” I yanked myself back from the edge. “I don’t know if she meant the entire thing or just her part of it.”
“We know he’s out of the office.” Asa lent his weight to my worry. “If he carried those bones with him, they would have offered him a bargaining chip if he ran into your father before he was ready to face him.”
I’ll trade my life for the bones of your wife, that I murdered and hid from you while I imprisoned you and raised your only child to be a psychopath.
The sad thing was, I could see the director believing that was insurance enough to save his hide.
He really had no idea who his son was or what Dad was capable of if he thought he would survive this.
“About that.” Clay hemmed and hawed. “Colby and I have been working that angle since you guys left.”
“You’ve been hunting the director.” Asa pounced on the lead. “Have you found him?”
“He’s still at the compound,” Colby told us. “Rogue agents attacked him on the grounds.”
“Parish was with him,” Clay continued. “He scooped up the director and ran with him inside. The compound was locked down for twenty-four hours, and all traces of the attack were erased.” He hesitated. “It must be bad, if they don’t want anyone to know how bad it is.”
The director might be my grandfather, but I couldn’t find an ounce of pity for him in me.
“Travel provides him with a safer cover,” Asa agreed, “one that might keep him in power a little longer.”
“Wait.” I heard my theory hissing like a popped balloon. “Then who…?”
“Did I mention we haven’t sat on our hands the past few days?” Clay sounded proud enough to burst. “Colby is a verified member of the Mystic Realms Live Guild.”
“I tracked down our suspects’ emails, handles, and social media links.” Her enthusiasm was contagious. “I can link the Amhersts to Ms. March and Lacky. There are six others we suspect are waiting on their turn to go active. Each more powerful than the last. I’m still cracking those identities.”
“That’s amazing.” I pressed a hand against my chest. “You’re amazing, smarty fuzz butt.”
Six was so much better than the sixty members on the Amherst’s original roster.
“It gets better,” Clay rushed out. “Tell them the rest.”
“The ringleader’s handle is Advent.”
“Any idea who he or she is?”
“Yeah.” She drew out the word, giving me time to dread the reveal. “I chatted with him earlier.”
“I’m sorry.” I attempted to find my Zen, but it was MIA. “You chatted with him?”
“In the game. In a side chat.” She huffed at me. “Relax.”
Secret Agent Moth could fuss all she wanted. I would never relax over direct contact with a suspect.
“Anyway, he vetted me some, and I let him. I was even super helpful and sent him a link to my website.”
“You have a website?”
A smile warmed her voice. “I do now.”
“This is taking too long,” Clay added his two cents, “and Rue won’t understand half of it anyway.”
“Thanks.” I would have smacked him if I could reach him. “Your support and encouragement are truly limitless.”
“The link to my website was malware,” she explained patiently. “Malware is malicious software.”
“Okay.”
“When he clicked the infected link, he gave the malware permission to download onto his laptop.”
“Okay.”
“The malware was actually spyware, and it gave me access to his computer.”
“Okay.”
“He has multiple email accounts, which, most people do, you know?”
“I totally knew that.”
“He had an account for gaming, under Advent Infinity. I made copies of correspondence that links him to the Amhersts, Ms. March, and Lacky.” Her pause held an unexpected gravity. “His primary email, however, was for work. It took me longer to crack its encryption, but I’ve got it now.” She blew out a slow exhale. “Advent? He’s Jai Parish.”
“The dragon?” I slotted those pieces into what we already knew, or tried to, but most didn’t fit. “He’s already the director’s right hand. What does he have to gain? Control of the entire Bureau?”
“You say that like it’s as disgusting as bathing in a tub full of slugs,” Clay intoned, “but we’re talking about the Black Hat Bureau.”
“I know that.” I dug my nails into my palms. “I don’t need a refresher course on family history.”
As the founder’s granddaughter, and a victim of his constant scheming, I wore no blinders. I never had. I hadn’t been afforded the luxury.
“That’s the problem. You view it as the family business, but it’s not. It’s an organization that has taken on a life of its own. Your grandfather awarded himself the power to punish any member of any faction at his discretion. He chooses who lives, who dies, who serves.”
The bitterness in those last two words speared me through the heart. “I’m aware.”
“I don’t think you are,” he insisted. “People outside the organization don’t care who runs it as long as it runs smoothly. They’re willing to turn a blind eye to us creeping in the shadows, cleaning up their messes, making their worst villains go away. Dollface, I think you fall in that category. I think you’re happy to be there. To pretend the director is the worst fate to befall us, but he’s not. Trust me. The Bureau is a powerful tool, and in the wrong hands, it will become a weapon against anyone the new director decides to punish.”
“The whole premise behind the Black Hats are we enforce justice.”
“Whose justice?” he demanded of me. “Whose orders do we follow to the letter or else?”
“We stop dangerous predators. We protect the paranormal community from discovery. We might not be doing the job out of the goodness of our hearts, but we put in the work.”
“I love you for your idealism,” Asa entered the conversation, “but Clay is right that it matters who runs the bureau. As bad as it is, it can get worse. Things can always get worse.”
“Parish isn’t walking away from this. Even if I trusted the director to slap him on the wrist, and I don’t, Dad won’t give him the chance. He’ll kill Parish for the insult to my mother.” I focused on Clay. “We need to anticipate what comes next. Who comes next. After Parish. Do you have anyone on the inside who’s in a position to snag the promotion?”
“No one in my pocket is that high in the organization, no.”
As persona non grata in the Bureau, I had no strings to pull that wouldn’t garrote me in the process.
Asa, who wasn’t in the habit of making friends or forging alliances, didn’t have anything to add either.
“One step at a time.” Asa massaged between my shoulders. “The director will recover. He always does. He’ll name a second. Things will go on as they have.”
“If you believe that, then why push back? Why agree with Clay?”
“He thinks you can do a better job than Parish. Or the director.” Clay made it sound obvious. “That’s why.”
“A dead bird in a cat’s belly could do better,” I argued. “That’s not saying much.”
“You care.” Asa made it sound obvious. “That alone qualifies you.”
“You want me chained behind a desk for the rest of my life?” I recoiled from the idea. “I’m not going to be the director, or the director’s pet. I don’t want that much power. I can’t handle it. It would corrupt me, and people would die.” Their endorsement terrified me. “I don’t want it.”
This much, Asa and I had in common. Ambitious families. Powerful fathers. And the weight of expectation that came along with it. As if either of us wanted to step into the roles we had rebelled against all our lives. As if either of us wanted to become the next director or the next high king. As if either of us owed our bloodlines for anything, let alone for being born and forced into the role of heir.
