“I go to bed late,” Rick said. “And I always check on him before I lay down. He was there around three.”
“And I get up early,” Dana continued. “But I didn’t check on him, then when he didn’t come down for school, I went up. Around seven-thirty. And he was gone. We’ve contacted anyone in our pack that could help, and only the alpha stepped up. He’s tracking Zane with his nose, being a wolf shifter. But we thought maybe you could do a spell or something?”
I met Owen’s gaze and he shrugged. “We could certainly try. Did you bring something that belongs to your son?”
Dana nodded and pulled a jacket out of her bag. “He left without a coat.” Tears filled her eyes. As I took the cloth from her and opened it up, I realized how small it was. “Wait a minute, how old is Zane?”
“Six,” she said softly.
Olivia gasped. “Oh, honey. Did you call the police?”
Rick shook his head. “No. This wasn’t a human. No human could sneak into a shifter’s home, even a shifter such as us, ferrets.”
“This was the same people that took Ricky.” Dana sobbed quietly into a handkerchief. “There’s no way it’s anyone else.”
I stood. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
Chapter Eighteen
We put little Zane’s coat on the middle of the coffee table. “Locator spells are simpler than anyone thinks,” I said. “It’s just a matter of putting magic into an object that belongs to the person.” I’d known how to do a locator spell since I was a kid and used to mess with Sam by appearing at all sorts of places when he hadn’t told me where he’d be.
As long as it didn’t explode, we were good.
“Quaerere dominum.” I spoke in a commanding, no-nonsense voice and sent magic into the jacket as I said the words.
Seconds later, a light appeared in midair. A line, sort of like it was made from a neon sign. Only I could see it. “Let’s go. Wherever he is, he’s not somewhere guarded.” Magic could be done to make a location unsearchable. My home had been protected that way probably since the day it was originally built. That reminded me, I needed to refresh that spell.
Spells didn’t last forever, though I suspected the house wouldn’t let its inhabitants be found… or messed with.
“Come on,” I said urgently, walking toward the front door and grabbing my coat on the way. The line of light preceded me, directing me to Zane.
I stepped out to see the Johnson’s had an SUV. “Oh, good, can you drive?” I asked. We’d all fit in it.
They ran out ahead of me, and Olivia and Owen followed. I ran back inside and yelled up the stairs. “Back in a while!”
“Okay,” Larry called down. “Be careful.”
Seconds later, I was in the passenger seat, giving directions to Rick. “I have no idea how far it will take us,” I said. “This sort of locator spell isn’t like when you do a scry over a map.” I described the light I saw and how we were following it. We drove down the coast road for a good ten minutes before anything changed. “Hang on,” I barked. “Turn here.” The light veered off to the right.
“There’s no road,” Rick said. “Just a field.”
“Well, go as far as you can in the vehicle, then we’ll walk.”
Olivia leaned forward. “There’s not a road nearby that I know of. This is a bunch of woods, owned by the government if I’m not mistaken.”
“Text Sam,” I said. “Let him know what we’re doing.”
Rick pulled off the road and drove carefully across the field, getting close to the copse of trees. “Now what?”
“Let’s go.” I unbuckled my seatbelt. “We might be walking a while. I can’t tell.”
We didn’t end up having to walk far before the light blinked and faded. “It’s gone,” I whispered.
“What does that mean?” Rick spoke in a hushed voice. Something about the woods made us all feel like someone was looking over our shoulders.
“Either someone intercepted our spell,” Owen said. “Or Zane crossed onto spelled land where he can’t be tracked. Given where the spell took us, I’m guessing he’s on spelled land now.”
“Let’s keep going forward,” I said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
As we walked, hope began to wane.
And then, a noise. I held up my hand and everyone froze. “I heard something,” I said in a hushed voice.
Very carefully, we tiptoed forward until a clearing came into view behind the trees. There was an old horse paddock, what looked like pig pens, and a barn. Farther back, near the other side of the clearing, was a small shed.
A small service road led off into the forest on the opposite side. As we stood looking around, the sound of a vehicle starting made us all duck, but it was parked out of sight down that road because we never saw it leave as the sound of the engine faded.
After another several minutes, when nobody came out of the barn and nothing seemed to move, we tiptoed out of the woods and toward the big, faded red structure.
We circled the barn, but the only door was inside the horse paddock. Pushing open the gate, I tiptoed into the big circle and moved quickly toward the barn door.
“I smell him!” Rick rushed around me and pulled the door open, despite my hurried whisper for him to wait. Dana followed quickly behind.
We followed on their heels, not that I could’ve stopped Dana from going to her son once they had a line on him.
The interior of the barn was dim; the only light was from a few missing boards over the windows in the loft area. The ground was dirt and hay. There were three stalls on each side.
We found the poor shifter kids in one of the horse stalls, huddled in the corner. “Mama,” one little boy cried and ran forward. “Papa!”
I smiled as Dana and Rick got their son back, exclaiming in relief to see him, then we entered the stall, and my smile faded. These kids had gone through hell. It made my heart ache to think about it. Well, we were here now, and they’d never have to fight again.
Olivia and I crouched down. “Hi,” I said softly. “Are you guys okay?”
A teenage girl stepped forward. “We’re hungry, but everyone here healed from the last fight.” A tear tracked down her face. “We don’t know where the shifters who lost the fights went.”
My chest tightened even more while my magic roared to life deep inside me. I was going to make whoever was responsible for this to pay. Long and painful.
“Well, we’ll figure all that out,” Olivia said. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“The bad man just left,” Zane said as we helped kids of various ages off the dirty ground.
While I took calming breaths, I ran around to inspect the rest of the barn and make sure nobody else was hiding anywhere. “Is there anyone else we need to look for?”
“No, they usually had us fight other real animals like dogs or roosters,” the teen girl said.
“What’s your name, honey?” Olivia asked.
“Jennifer-Nicole,” she said. “I’m a wolf shifter”