It was doubtful any of them would be able to raise the sort of protections Mo could, but I guessed it was better to be safe than sorry when it came to the rivers of power most knew as ley lines. I motioned to the papers they’d been transcribing. “Have you found anything interesting?”
“What appears to be several lists of names.” She picked them up and offered them to me. “Barney recognized some of the people on the first list—they’re mostly low-ranking government officials.”
“Our theory is,” Mia said, “that it’s a list of people working with Darkside in some capacity.”
“Be handy if it was, because it’ll make it easier to weed them out.” I scanned the first page, looking for familiar names but not finding any. “Why would a list like this be in the hands of mere foot soldiers, though? Darkside generally isn’t that careless with information.”
“Except not everyone killed in that church was a foot soldier,” Ginny said. “The setup in the chancel area and the size of the desk where we found all these bits of paper suggests someone much higher in the ranks had been working there.”
“So why didn’t we find his body?”
“We can’t be sure he wasn’t there,” she said, “especially given it’s damnably hard to tell a menik from a controller when the explosion made an utter mess of them all.”
A mess the preternatural team was still sorting out. I flipped over the page. There were only a dozen names written on this, but one immediately jumped out at me.
Daniel Durant.
The name of the Blackbird who’d attempted to kill the queen.
This wasn’t a list of people working with Darkside. It was a list of people who were infected.
My heart leapt into a whole other gear. “Well, I think we finally got a bit of fucking luck.”
“How?” Mia asked.
I shook the second bit of paper at them. “We need to get this to the High Council ASAP.”
“But why?” Ginny asked. “What is it?”
“I think it’s a list of those who have been infected by wraiths.”
“Wait—what?” Mia said.
I shot her a glance. “You weren’t told?”
“About what?”
“That the reason you were first taken to a safe house rather than here was we needed to check you for infection,” Mo said as she came into the room.
“But by what, though?” Mia’s voice was filled with exasperation. “Just spit it out, ladies!”
“By a wraith,” I said. “Which is a nasty sort of demon that infuses itself into human bodies and basically take over all thought and actions.”
“Well, that’s fucked.”
Mo got her phone out and took a picture of the list I was holding. “You would have been, had you been infected.”
“How long have these delights been in action?” Ginny asked. “And how come we’ve never heard of them?”
“Forever, I’m afraid, and very few know about them because it was deemed safer that way.”
“Because giving people the opportunity to protect themselves against such an aggressor can never be a good thing.”
Ginny’s voice was dry, but there was little responding amusement in Mo’s expression. “And neither is panic.”
“I think you underestimate the witch population.”
“Trust me, I don’t.”
Nex pulsed. It was only brief, little more than a couple of beats that warmed my thigh and then faded away, but it very much felt as if something had moved briefly into her sensing range.
Then I heard the scratch. Like Nex’s pulse, it came and went, but unease nevertheless stirred. I cocked my head and listened intently.
“What’s wrong?” Mo immediately asked.
“I’m not sure …” I stopped as the scratching repeated. “You didn’t hear that?”
“Hear what?” Mia said, voice a little exasperated. “Seriously, can you not be a little more forthcoming with information?”
I held up a hand and cocked my head sideways. The noise wasn’t coming from directly above us, but rather from the garage end of the house. Why I could hear it given the distance, I had no idea, but I wasn’t about to ignore it.
It wasn’t a squirrel, though. Aside from the fact they weren’t active at night, I certainly wouldn’t hear one running around on the roof from this far away.
Another pulse from Nex, though it once again faded as quickly as it appeared.
And that could mean only one thing.
There were people moving around out there.
People who meant us no good.
Chapter Eleven
I glanced out the French doors. The sun had dipped behind the horizon even if night had yet to fully fall, so in truth it could be demons out there, though there were no gates close enough for them to have gotten here so quickly. Besides, if it had been demons up on the roof, Nex would have done more than simply pulse for a beat or two. But that didn’t make whoever the hell it was any less dangerous.
“Gwen?” Mo prompted, when I didn’t immediately answer.
“I think we’re about to be attacked.”
“Demons?”
“On the roof? No. Elsewhere, I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Then we work on the principle that they are out there. Mia, Ginny, run down to the orangery at the other end of the house and check if anyone is trying to enter through there. Tell any staff you see to get down into the basement.”
“And if we happen to find intruders? Or worse, demons?” Mia asked.
“Work on an attack first, ask questions later principle.”
“A principle I highly approve of in this sort of situation.” Ginny drew her weapon and then glanced at Mia. “Let’s go.”
Mia’s grin was one of anticipation. “Looks like I’m getting my wish to be involved in the action sooner rather than later.”
As the two of them raced out, I glanced at Mo. “Do you want to grab Barney and check the other end of the house? I’ll go after the thread of darkness Nex felt, just in case whoever or whatever is on the roof is a distraction.”
She nodded. “It might be an idea to strip down to basics—that way, you can call on the earth and the air if it becomes necessary.”
“Basics being bare feet, jeans, and my tank top. There’s no way known I’m going naked, given how cold it probably is out there by now.”
She tsked and shook her head. “It’s a sad state of affairs when the younger generation is so much softer than the older.”
“Says the woman who walks around in sheepskin slippers all winter bitching about the cold.”
She laughed, squeezed my arm, and headed out.
I kicked off my shoes and socks, then tore off my sweater and tossed it onto the nearby chair. The floorboards were warm under my feet and the earth’s pulse faint, but it nevertheless seemed free from the weight of anything that felt foul or wrong. I still doubted that meant our attackers were all on the roof, but there was only one way to find out.
I padded across to the French doors and quietly unsnibbed them. I didn’t step out, instead studying the immediate surrounds, looking for anything or anyone that shouldn’t be there.