I hadn’t hesitated to aim for Justin. Had the mentalist specified my target … or had I chosen him because of something in my subconscious?
Shivering even more, I pushed the thought away and opened my makeup bag. Fishing out the compact with the demonic amulet, I popped the lid up, slipped the mysterious talisman from its hiding spot, and tucked it in my pocket. I’d surreptitiously move it to my combat belt as soon as I had a chance.
“This is escalating faster than I expected,” Blake added, “but it’ll be another eight hours at least before the team is here.”
I froze—then shot toward the door. Bursting into the living room, I demanded, “What team?”
“A Keys team.” Blake had his phone out and was peering at the screen. “Make that two teams. They’ll tag the Praetor, and I’ll let them know about the assassin as well.”
Panic drummed across my ribs. Bad, bad, bad. We were here to find a grimoire that could save Ezra’s life, and the presence of even one Keys of Solomon mythic was already complicating that. Two teams of them would screw us completely.
Which meant we needed to act fast. We had only eight hours before the Keys teams arrived and snatched away Ezra’s last chance.
I darted back into the bedroom, flung my shit into my suitcase, and zipped it up. When I dragged it into the living room, Justin was closing his duffle bag. Leaving my suitcase beside him, I hurried into Aaron’s room to see if he needed help.
Standing at his bed, he stuffed a shirt into his bag, then pulled the zipper.
“Ready?” I asked. “We should—”
He glanced up, and I faltered at the paleness of his face.
“Aaron?” I stepped toward him. “What—”
He shifted away from me like I had a contagious disease, then caught himself. His jaw tightened. “Tori, if I seem to be acting even the slightest bit strange, run the hell away from me. I won’t be offended.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
His hand closed over the shoulder strap of his bag, his knuckles turning white. “An assassin who can make us attack each other …” His haunted eyes flashed across my face. “A gun is child’s play compared to my pyro magic. One bullet hole? I could—”
Breaking off, he shook his head, unable or unwilling to describe the damage his white-hot fire could inflict on a living body.
“If that mentalist gets me—” He swallowed. “Maybe I should stay behind.”
I strode across the gap between us and threw my arms around him. “You’re coming with us, Aaron. We’ve handled worse.”
His gaze dropped, and I could hear his unspoken, “But have we?”
Taking hold of his arm, I dragged him out of the bedroom. “Let’s get moving already, guys!”
Blake went ahead, climbing into his jeep and starting the engine while Aaron, Justin, and I threw our bags in the back of the SUV. We drove our convoy of vehicles to a supermarket parking lot, where Justin left his truck and got in with us. Aaron followed Blake’s jeep toward the suburb’s outskirts.
“An assassin,” I muttered, shivering at the word. An assassin trying to kill us. Not that people hadn’t tried to kill us before, but this was a lot scarier. Not merely a killer—but a manipulator who would try to make us kill each other.
Swallowing a surge of dread, I added, “And pretty soon we’ll have two Keys teams to deal with too. Unless there’s a cult grimoire in the Praetor’s house, we have no chance of finding one before they show up.”
“We need to get rid of Blake and the Keys,” Aaron said, eyes on the jeep ahead of us. “If we can send them off in the wrong direction, that’ll buy us time. As soon as Kai joins us, we can figure out a plan.”
I nodded. Yes, we needed Kai. He was our plan guy. He knew how to get shit done. He did his research, and …
My eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You brought a laptop, right?”
“’Course.”
“Then while you search the house, I’ll work on something else—something that’ll put us a good long step ahead of Blake and the Keys.”
By the time we arrived at the Praetor’s house, his garage—the vehicle one, not the demonic-worshipping one—was empty. He’d already left and would hopefully stay gone for the day.
Aaron and Blake had the job of breaking in and systematically searching the entire four-thousand-square-foot house. Me, on the other hand—my ass was parked in the SUV, and the SUV was parked in a sheltered copse of trees just off the road. Through the windshield, I could barely see the street and one corner of the Praetor’s distant driveway.
Aaron’s laptop was open on my knees, and on my phone was Justin’s video recording of last night’s cult meeting. I clicked around in the spreadsheet I’d made, prepping it for my self-assigned task.
My brother, sitting in the driver’s seat, leaned over the center console to peer at the laptop. “What are you doing?”
“Making a chart with our best guesses at the age, height, weight, hair color, and eye color of all the cultists. Then Aaron or someone else in the Crow and Hammer can use the information to search the MPD’s mythic database for them.”
“Is it a database of criminals, or …?”
“Every mythic is supposed to be registered by eighteen. If all the cultists are rogues, then we’re SOL, but if even one of them is registered, we can find them.”
“Hmm. Would the assassin be in the database too?”
“Probably not. Assassins don’t usually play by the MPD’s rules. Besides, we don’t know anything about them, so we can’t look them up.”
As I spoke, I racked my brain again for some inkling of who’d messed with my head, but I had nothing to go on. Anyone from the barista to a random passerby could’ve poisoned my mind.
“So,” I declared determinedly, “let’s see what we can figure out about the cultists.”
I listed each cult member in the first column of my spreadsheet, labeling them from one to twelve based on their position in the circle. I added the Praetor too, since we didn’t know his name yet.
Justin picked up my phone, started the video—sound muted—and watched it play for a moment. “Let’s see … the first cultist is female, medium brown hair, between five-foot-three and five-foot-six, and between a hundred and thirty pounds and a hundred and fifty. I can’t tell her eye color.”
I blinked repeatedly, then typed the details into my spreadsheet at top speed. Why was I surprised? My brother might know next to nothing about mythics, but he knew how to profile suspects.
“Okay,” I said brightly. “That’s it for Cultist Number One. How about Number Two?”
He skipped forward through the video, searching for a better view of the second cultist. “Tori … did you overhear Aaron and I talking earlier?”
My gut twisted. “Yeah.”
His finger paused on the phone screen. “I’m sorry for—”
“Forget about it.”
“But—”
“You’re worried that I can’t keep up with Aaron, Kai, and Ezra. They’re powerful, combat-trained mages and I’m a … Yeah, it’s a legit concern. But I’m not like I used to be, you know. I don’t just impulsively charge headfirst into danger.”