As much as I wanted to scream, throw a punch, or kick a hole in the wall, I held myself together.
“Okay,” I repeated myself, taking control of the word. “We expected a negative response.”
A politically neutral phrase for what meant lose their ever-loving minds.
“The wards haven’t been up long enough for that.” He grimaced. “This was already in the works.”
A shiver of unease left chill bumps dotting my arms as the bad news kept coming.
“They’ve located Liz.” Midas set his jaw. “This is their strike force.”
“I should have thrown up the wards myself,” I growled. “I shouldn’t have wasted so much time.”
Fear for Midas had forced me to take a step back, and I couldn’t swallow past the hard lump clogging my throat. Guilt pricked my conscience for putting him first, but I would do it all over again to protect him.
Goddess, what a mess I had made of things.
“You blacked out after your first effort, when you were freshest,” Linus said, his voice tinny in my ears. “Your apartment is one quarter the size of the infirmary, and the holding cells are twice its size. Even if we kept Ambrose fed, we can safely assume your endurance would degrade more with each effort. I estimate you would require an hour—likely two or three—recovery time between each ward.”
“Using the witches got the job done,” Bishop agreed. “It also saved your strength for what comes next.”
“That sounds encouraging.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Hit me.”
“I don’t hit girls,” he teased, but I wasn’t in the mood and didn’t rise to his bait. “Think, kid. We’ve turned this city upside down for weeks searching for the coven’s base of operations and come up empty. Where are the reinforcements coming from?”
“The archive,” I realized. “They’re pulling the troops as needed through the portal and into Atlanta.”
Midas’s lips flattened into a hard line. “That gives them an endless supply.”
“We’ve got to take out the archive, or they’re going to keep coming until their numbers are too great for us to defend against, let alone defeat.” Bishop shifted in his chair to face us. “As much as I hate to say it, the archive must be our priority. Not the Faraday. The city must come first.”
Already shaking my head, I took a step away from him. “The tenants—”
“You’re not thinking big enough.” Bishop rocked back and forth. “Do you believe the coven would bring a whole army here for one retrieval? Even if Liz is a vital asset, ask yourself if this baby of hers is worth the trouble.”
“You think they meant us to overhear the child price talk?” I leaned my hip against the wall. “To focus us on defending the right while they dart in on the unguarded left?”
“We don’t know what they want.” Midas rubbed a hand over his scalp. “Their attacks are scattershot.”
The coven was gunning for Tisdale and her pack, but their hatred for wargs was well-documented too. It made sense to target shifter groups. They represented the biggest predators in the city with the highest populations.
Aside from the OPA, the packs were the strongest deterrent against any new faction moving in and deciding they wanted the whole pie instead of one slice.
“You’re trying to fit a puzzle together without all the pieces.” Bishop nudged the toe of my shoe with his boot to get me to focus. “Start with the border first. It’s the easiest part.”
“They want Liz. Unharmed.” I tried it his way, keeping it simple. “Otherwise, we’d be under attack.”
“When the time comes,” Midas added, “they’ll count on brute magical force to take what they want.”
“And…” I circled us back to Bishop’s advice, “…until we know otherwise, we’ll strategize like it’s Liz.”
Despite their previous claims, the coven had bigger designs on Atlanta than me.
But maybe they had been targeting me, drawing me in, distracting me, this whole time.
Sure, the coven could do a lot of damage if they killed me and added me to their closet, but it got me thinking the only reason they would need me to facilitate a peaceful transition was if they planned on relocating to Atlanta en masse.
The coven hadn’t been twiddling their thumbs since our last encounter. They had tried and failed to wrest control of the city from me, so they were taking it. And I had done what they wanted, focused on the right hand while the left slapped me into next week.
“We need eyes on the warehouse in Buckhead.” I checked with Bishop. “Can the drones handle it?”
“Not from this distance.” He kicked his legs out in front of him. “Their range isn’t that good.”
“How do we get out?” I chewed on my bottom lip. “We can’t risk sending Ford on another errand.”
With their spyglasses offline, they would be that much more cautious about monitoring the exits.
“If his sigils fail,” Midas said, “they’ll assume we’re evacuating high-value targets and move to intercept.”
“The sigils won’t fail,” Bishop grumbled, “but that doesn’t mean the coven can’t counter them.”
The Faraday might be spyglass proof, but that protection didn’t extend to us.
“Glamour is out.” I began to pace. “We can’t risk obfuscation sigils either.”
“There’s a way,” Midas promised me, “and we’ll find it.”
“We’re trapped.” I spoke the bitter truth. “Either we fight our way out, or we sit on our hands.”
Reaching for me, Midas lowered his voice. “Hadley…”
“Any show of hostilities from us will ignite the war brewing on the rooftops,” I countered, “as well as alert them we’re on the move.”
I bet they could guess what would tempt us out of our hidey-hole too. As many practitioners as the coven had dispatched to the city, I didn’t want to think how much worse Buckhead must be.
“I…” Bishop worked his jaw. “I can take you.”
“You?” Gooseflesh pebbled down my arms at his grim expression. “How?”
“It’s not safe,” he said, ignoring the question. “I’m not safe either. Not when I’m…there.”
Left unsaid was I wouldn’t be either, but I heard it loud and clear. Pretty sure Midas did too.
“What do you mean?” I slowed to a walk then to a full stop. “How are you not safe?”
“I’m not this man.” Bishop stared at his hands. “I want to be, I try to be, but I’m not him.”
A pang of understanding pierced my heart. “I know a little about that.”
“You know too little about me.” He angled his head toward the wall. “I should have prepared you.”
As much as his dire warnings worried me, I couldn’t work up any outright fear. Not of him.
“You can get me out of the Faraday,” I clarified. “Without the coven knowing?”
“Both of us,” Midas interjected. “She’ll need all the help she can get to tackle the archive.”