Chapter 27 Into the Woods
INTO THE WOODS
Fitting two werewolves, a vampire, a witch, a dragon newt, an elderly witch, and a Husky into a surveillance van proved to be an exercise in patience.
“If anyone touches my herbs, I will make them regret it,” Mrs. Chen announced sourly as she settled into the folding chair Gavin had placed next to his stack of fire extinguishers.
“How many fire extinguishers does one dragon newt need?” Barney muttered from where he was wedged between Bo and Didi.
“All of them,” Gavin said defensively. His tail was curled around the nearest one like a security blanket.
The van was parked on a logging track a quarter mile from the Thornwick property and was hidden beneath a canopy of oaks and pines dense enough to block the fading daylight. My wolf had been restless ever since we’d turned onto the trail.
It wasn’t fear that was making her unsettled.
It was something deeper. An awareness that hummed through my bones like a tuning fork struck against stone.
The ley lines were close.
I could feel them beneath the forest floor, three currents of ancient power running toward each other like rivers converging on a falls. The pull was faint but undeniable, a low vibration that made my teeth ache and my wolf pace beneath my skin.
Since everyone suspected Esmeralda has been spying on Hawthorne & Associates and knew what our surveillance van looked like, Samuel had borrowed the vehicle from the Alliance’s motor pool.
It smelled of old coffee, stale magic, and whatever Finnic had spilled in it the last time he’d used it.
“Dear God,” Didi muttered, wrinkling her nose. “Is that dwarf ale?”
Samuel released a long-suffering sigh where he sat next to me in the front.
“Finnic doesn’t drink ale,” Barney said coolly, turning a page in his newspaper. “That’s mead. A particularly potent batch, judging from the residue.”
“That dwarf is a menace, sober or drunk,” Mrs. Chen grunted. “Also, why is the vampire reading a paper?”
“He does that on stakeouts,” Samuel muttered. “It calms his nerves.”
“I don’t have nerves,” Barney said irritably.
“He’s right,” Mrs. Chen said flatly. “He doesn’t even have a pulse.” The witch eyed Barney’s newspaper. “Is that today’s edition?”
“Yesterday’s,” the vampire admitted. “I prefer to digest the news at a measured pace.”
“At your age, I imagine everything is at a measured pace.”
Barney’s pupils flashed crimson for a fraction of a second.
Didi’s expression was close to the one she wore when she was thinking of turning somebody into a toad.
“I assure you, my reflexes are perfectly adequate,” the vampire told Mrs. Chen with cool dignity.
“Good,” the elderly witch said, turning back to her herbs. “You’ll need them tonight.”
Mrs. Chen had arrived at Hawthorne & Associates that afternoon with a leather satchel of supplies and the kind of calm determination that said she’d been preparing for this kind of confrontation her entire life.
Mimi had apparently been left with strict instructions to guard the apartment building and judge anyone who walked through its doors.
I decided to ignore the background chatter happening behind me and adjusted my earpiece.
“Nigel, you there?”
“Present and all tentacles accounted for.” The boogeyman’s voice crackled nervously through the connection. “I’ve got Melody’s GPS on screen. She left her house four minutes ago.” He paused. “She’s heading north on Route Seven.”
“How many in the car?” Samuel asked.
“Thermal signature shows four occupants,” Nigel reported. “Melody and three others. That matches the Ashgrove witches Mrs. Chen and Didi spoke to.”
He’d connected to a satellite, something I didn’t know Hawthorne & Associates had access to until Samuel had authorized it. It was apparently owned by a supernatural conglomerate.
Convincing Melody to cooperate had been hard enough.
Getting the Ashgrove witches on board had been doubly so.
Melody, Didi, and Mrs. Chen had spent the better part of the afternoon at their property talking in hushed tones through a barely open door while the binding magic fought to keep the witches silent.
In the end, Mrs. Chen had done what Mrs. Chen did best. She’d been blunt.
“I told them the witch subjugating them was draining the Lincoln sisters on a convergence point and that we had a werewolf who could break the spell holding them hostage,” she’d reported when she and Didi finally returned.
“Two of them cried. The third tried to slam the door in my face.” She’d sniffed. “I put my foot in it.”
The story the Ashgrove witches and Melody would feed Esmeralda was simple: they’d come to warn her that Hawthorne & Associates had located the warehouse and were closing in. A panicked visit from her own pawns would be exactly the kind of thing the Thornwick witch would expect.
Unease coiled through me.
Melody’s role was the most dangerous in all of this. As the most visibly compromised witch, she had to sell her performance while fighting the binding’s grip on her mind.
“She’s turning onto Blackwood Lane,” Nigel announced.
My wolf stirred. So did Samuel’s, his alertness singing across the mate bond.
Blackwood Lane was the road that led to the Thornwick property.
Barney folded his newspaper with deliberate precision. “Showtime.”
Bo’s ears flattened a little.
“I want updates every thirty seconds, Nigel,” Samuel instructed tensely.
“Copy that.”
Mrs. Chen opened her satchel and began extracting small bundles of dried herbs. The smell of sage and something sharper filled the van.
Gavin sneezed. His nostrils sparked.
“Not in the van!” Didi and Barney barked simultaneously.
The dragon newt clamped his nose shut with both hands, his eyes watering.
“Sheesh,” Bo huffed.
“She’s on the forest track now,” Nigel said. “Speed has dropped. Thermal imaging is getting patchy under the tree cover, but she should reach the house in about two minutes.”
Samuel checked his watch.
Barney had scouted the property boundaries that afternoon. According to the vampire, the house was in surprisingly good condition for somewhere that had been off the grid for decades.
“There’s a cellar entrance on the east side,” he’d reported. “And I detected significant magical barriers around the perimeter. Nothing we can’t get through, but they’ll slow us down.”
“Those barriers will be keyed to the ley lines,” Mrs. Chen had said. “Once we’re close enough, Dorothy and I should be able to feel the convergence. That’s when we’ll need Abby.”
My stomach tightened presently. The plan was deceptively straightforward.
Melody and the Ashgrove witches would go in. We would wait for confirmation that they were inside. Then, we’d move. We would locate the Lincoln sisters and I would break the subjugation spell. The freed witches would combine forces with Didi and Mrs. Chen to use the convergence against Esmeralda.
It was simple alright. Except for the dozen ways it could go catastrophically wrong.
“Melody’s car has stopped,” Nigel reported. “She’s at the property.”
I closed my eyes and reached for my white wolf. She was already there, coiled and ready beneath my skin.
Samuel turned to face us, his eyes gleaming amber.
“Didi, Mrs. Chen—the two of you stay close to Abby. Barney, you’re on point. Gavin, watch our backs.” He glanced at Bo. “You stay in the van.”
Bo’s tail drooped. “Alright.”
I knew the Husky wanted in on the action, but neither Samuel nor I wanted a repeat of the Ludvik battle.
Samuel’s gaze found mine. The mate bond hummed with everything he couldn’t say in front of the others. I touched his hand. He turned his palm over and squeezed my fingers.
“Radio silence from here,” my alpha said. “We move on my signal.”
We waited tensely, the forest pressing against the van.
Somewhere in the trees, an owl called.
Nigel’s voice came through, barely above a whisper. “I’ve got movement. The front door of the house just opened. Somebody’s letting them in.”
My wolf growled low in my throat.
“All four of them are inside,” Nigel confirmed seconds later.
“Let’s go,” Samuel ordered.