“Will he be safe up there?”
“I’ve laid salt along all the windows—”
“Will that be protection enough, given she’s capable of magic? Salt doesn’t stop witches, does it?”
“No, but she’s a spirit capable of magic rather than a witch; salt will stop her, if only for the few seconds it would take to create a spell to get rid of it.”
“And in those few minutes, we could have her.”
I nodded. “I doubt she’ll come in through the upstairs windows, though, and given what’s been said about the awkwardness of her gait, it’s unlikely she’ll climb to the balcony.”
“In this reservation, ‘unlikely’ isn’t a word we should be putting faith in. We’ll shove him in the shower—he’ll be out of immediate sight, and if he vomits, it’ll be easier to wash off.”
I nodded, but my gaze was drawn to the darkness beyond the wall of windows. She was almost at the shoreline. We needed to hurry if we wanted to set our trap.
Aiden hauled Mal upright, then shifted his position so that his back was against the man’s chest. After grabbing Mal’s arms to hold him in place, Aiden bent and hauled him up. It very much looked like he was giving the unconscious man a piggyback.
We quickly went up the stairs and into the bathroom. Aiden sat him in the shower and propped him against the rear wall while I grabbed a couple of pillows to break his fall should he flop the wrong way. Thankfully, the shower was one of those large walk-in ones, and there weren’t any large sheets of glass to fall against and smash.
“Right,” Aiden said once Mal was secure. “What’s the plan?”
I hesitated. “You take up position on the sofa. The minute you let her inside, I’ll grab her.”
“Things are rarely that simple. Not lately.”
A truth that could apply to more than just the supernatural. “You’re wearing your protection charm. You’ll be all right.”
The charm in question was little more than multiple strands of intertwined leather and copper worn around the neck. Each strand represented a different type of protection spell, and while the whole thing looked rather innocuous, it was probably the most powerful thing Belle and I had ever created. Only silver would have made it any stronger, but that wasn’t really practical in a werewolf reservation, let alone for a werewolf to wear.
Warmth gleamed in his eyes. “It wasn’t me I was worried about.”
A statement that warmed my foolish heart. He turned and led the way back downstairs. While he walked over to the sofa and settled down, I went through the kitchen and into the small laundry room. It gave me a good line of sight down the entire length of the room but was far enough away that she shouldn’t be able to see me. Unless, of course, she had eyes as sharp as a wolf.
I half closed the door, then hunkered down and reached out with my senses. Her presence was sharp and close, and she was heading straight for the door. I sucked in a breath, drawing Aiden’s gaze, and held up two fingers.
He nodded, then crossed his arms, leaned back against the sofa, and pretended to sleep. My gaze went to the door. For several seconds, nothing happened. The rain continued to lash the night, and riverlets of water raced down the glass, providing a silvery curtain through which little could be seen.
Then a face appeared from the gloom. It was gaunt and white, with sunken eye sockets, sharp bony cheeks, and no hair. Though there was no discernable body, the light from the fire gleamed off what looked to be the upper part of a hip.
A skeletal hip.
Her face returned to the darkness, but her magic rose. I recognized the spell, though it wasn’t one I’d used all that much, thanks to the fact my psi senses could generally do a better job of probing spaces. Threads of evil slipped into the room and gently spread out across the shadows, searching the room in a methodical manner until they reached the sofa and Aiden.
They immediately stopped.
Tension wound through me, and it was all I could do to remain still and not warn Aiden. But if I moved or did anything to counter the probe spell, she’d run. The only way I had any hope of catching her was to wait until she stepped into the room.
Two of the spell’s threads unraveled from the mass and reached out, lightly touching Aiden’s face. The charm reacted, instantly and violently smacking the probe away. There was a screech of fury, and the probing spell disintegrated. The dark presence that was our skeleton spirit fled.
I swore, leapt up, and raced for the door. Aiden was by my side in an instant. “Problem?”
“The charm reacted to her magic and scared her off.”
“I can’t say I’m sad about that.”
“Me neither.” Even if it wrecked our capture plans, it at least confirmed my magic would hold against an entity this strong.
I threw open the door, and the wind blasted in, chilling me to the core. “Stay here and protect Mal. I’ll see if I can get close enough to throw a tracker at her.”
“And if it’s a trap?”
“I’ll deal with it.”
Aiden shoved my coat into my hand. “Please be careful.”
“Always.”
I thrust my arms into the coat’s sleeves, zipped up the front, and headed out. I didn’t bother drawing on the hood, simply because it restricted side vision. But the wind and rain was so fierce, it slapped long wet strands of hair across my face and made it almost impossible to see anyway.
But I didn’t need to see to track our spirit.
I could feel her. Feel her power and her foulness.
She hadn’t headed back to the lake, instead going right, toward the road. Perhaps she thought it’d be easier to lose me—or any magic I might send after her—in Argyle’s more densely populated area.
I broke into a run, weaving a tracking spell around the fingers of one hand while sparks of energy danced around the other. The latter was purely defensive—if the bitch came at me, I was going to hit her with everything I could. I couldn’t kill her with the inner wild magic simply because we had no idea just how connected it was to the reservation’s magic. If there was a deeper connection than what was currently presumed, then using my inner wild magic to kill might forever stain the reservation’s.
But stop her in her tracks? I sure as hell could do that.
Especially when the small but luminous threads of true wild magic were now visible. They were keeping pace with me but, rather weirdly, I had no sense that Katie had sent them. In fact, these particular threads seemed to have come from the bigger of the two wellsprings—the “wilder” one.
It was something that seemed to be happening more and more, and made me wonder if, in protecting the wellspring with my magic in those early months of our arrival—well before Monty and Ashworth had gotten here—some sort of connection had formed.
Which should have been impossible, but in this reservation? Who knew?
Up ahead, streetlights shone, but they were little more than pale yellow spots that did little to lift the overall darkness. A figure moved across the outer reaches of one of those light spots and for the first time, I saw her—though it was undoubtedly an illusion rather than the reality, because she very much reminded me of the old-style movie stars from the forties and fifties: blonde and buxom.