Chapter Thirty-Four
Douglas stomped his way through the darkened streets of Langeais.
If he got his hands on that fucking beggar boy again, he would wring his scrawny little neck.
Directions to the d’Louncrais keep, my ass.
For hours he’d ridden the horse he’d stolen from a stable in the part of town where the huts weren’t so ramshackle and the streets not so narrow.
Hours. Most of the goddamn day. If he never saw a goddamn horse ever again, it would be too damn soon. He’d been glad to get rid of the beast.
He was hungry, he stunk of horse, his muscles burned and he was no closer to the d’Louncrais keep than when he’d started. Because the little twerp who’d given him directions had had him riding in fucking circles. He was lucky he’d found his way back to Langeais at all.
Goddamn it all to hell. He needed that spell from Isobella.
Douglas turned the corner, intent on squelching the burn of his anger with whatever cheap slop that passed for wine Didier had in his squalid little hut, and skidded to a halt, nearly losing his balance on the slick-with-whatever-revolting-substance cobblestones.
Silhouetted by the lone oil lamp on an otherwise empty street, was a boy.
Standing in front of Didier’s hut. The beggar boy?
The one who’d given him false directions?
Douglas sneered. The boy lingered near Didier’s doorway.
That couldn’t be a coincidence. Was this his haunt?
His territory? Where he picked pockets and preyed on unsuspecting mugs?
Had he thought to get Douglas away from the hut so he could steal what he wanted?
If that was his plan, Douglas would have told him to have at it.
It would’ve saved him a sore ass and a wasted day.
Nothing Didier owned was worth stealing, anyway.
A man stepped out from the shadows. The glint of moonlight on his armor and his sword confirmed it was not Didier. A chevalier. One of the comtesse’s men? The chevalier cocked his head, listening to the boy.
The chevalier turned in his direction, and Douglas ducked back behind the building, his breathing harsh and loud in the silence of the night.
No. He didn’t think so. His cheek pressed against the rough mud brick of the hut, he peered around the corner.
The chevalier still stared in his direction.
Douglas held his breath. Then the chevalier shrugged and turned back to the boy.
He watched, he waited, for what he didn’t know, but his gut was telling him something wasn’t right.
That this wasn’t a visit from the comtesse and her men.
Or Cordelia. There was something about the chevalier.
It was in the way he moved, the set of his shoulders. Something familiar. Something…other.
Douglas pulled back behind the building again.
Shifter. The chevalier was a shifter. One of the Langeais wolves?
It had to be. It wasn’t one of the Montagnes.
The chevalier was big, but not that big.
Lance? Douglas had heard all about the shifter who’d turned on his pack.
Could it be him? Didier had bragged about working with him.
He risked another peek. The chevalier and the boy were silent. Waiting. What for? He leaned back against the wall. What was going on here?
He peered out around the corner of the building again, and his eyes widened.
Well, well, well. It might be dark, but he would recognize that silhouette anywhere.
And that hair. The curls that flowed over her shoulders and down her back.
Isobella. Two more chevaliers joined her.
Huge. Like a heavyweight MMA wrestler big. The Montagnes.
They all stood talking, their voices too low for him to hear.
One of the Montagnes went back into the hut and returned with what looked like a sack.
His? The one with his clothes and his phone in it?
Isobella held up an item, something rectangular.
Not his phone. Something much larger. A book?
She tucked it into the sack, and the big chevalier hoisted it over his back.
No. It couldn’t be? Could it? How would Didier have…
? The slimy snake. He’d stolen from his own mother.
Douglas hadn’t thought Didier had had it in him to go against Cordelia.
His mind raced. Cordelia’s grimoire. It would have all sorts of powerful spells, including the one for traveling through time. If he could get his hands on it, he wouldn’t need Isobella. He could make his own way home.
Douglas pulled out his athame. But how? A cloaking spell?
The shifters would smell him a mile away.
Especially as he’d been living in Didier’s disgusting hut.
A spell to change his appearance? That could work.
Isobella was a third-rate witch at best, focusing her magic on plants and healing.
If she did sense his magic at work, it’d be too late. He’d be too close.
He pricked his finger, let the blood flow and chanted his spell, changing his appearance. Then, stumbling along like a drunk peasant on his way home from the alehouse, he plunged into the street.
Ten steps in, a prickle of awareness skittered up his spine.
He leaned against the wall, keeping up his pretense as a drunk, and peered into the shadows.
In the darkened doorway of a hut and along the wall, the shadows seemed thicker, darker.
They swirled like smoke, yet there was no seeing through it to what it hid within its inky depths.
Magic. Powerful magic. It reeked of anger and malice.
From the spell itself, or the caster’s own thoughts, leaking out through their magic, like fingers searching, seeking. Cordelia.
The shadow moved. Slow at first, muffling sight and sound, then faster as it closed in on Isobella and her friends. Should he risk snatching the book? Before whatever was in the shadows reached them?
Too late.
The shifters had all drawn their swords. They had sensed the danger, if not the magic. Smelled it. They’d formed a protective barrier around Isobella and the boy. It would do them no good. Not against Cordelia. But it had effectively blocked his opportunity to seize the damn book.
He slunk back into a doorway. He needed that grimoire, but he wasn’t stupid.
That Cordelia had been here all along, lying in wait, told him everything he needed to know about his worth to her.
She’d foreseen this. With her freaky eyes and her second sight.
She’d known the Montagnes would come here and had ordered him to stay put.
Good thing he hadn’t or he would’ve been in the hut when they showed up.
Suffered the same fate as Didier. His guess, skewered with a sword.
Douglas wouldn’t be shedding any tears. Nor did he plan to join him.
He pressed himself further into the doorway as the shadows moved past him, preparing to slip away.
The faint clink of armor and the muffled thud of footsteps reached his ears.
Hm. Not some mythical beast or a plague of epic proportions.
Chevaliers. Men. Humans. He held his place.
Humans he could deal with. Follow. Wait for an opening.
The shadows swirled, parting, and like a ship from a fog, chevaliers in white and blue emerged and surrounded Isobella, the boy and the Langeais wolves.
The comtesse’s men. House Allard. They would take them to the keep.
To the comtesse or to Faucher. Perfect. He would get another opportunity. He would make sure of it.
Safe in the knowledge Cordelia’s second sight wasn’t infallible, that she’d failed to foresee his escape from certain death, Douglas, with his transformed and unfamiliar face, slunk off down the street.