Chapter 31 #3
“You’re dying to know how I figured it out, right?
” Damien leaned back against the hay bale behind him, looking for all the world like a Samhain attendee letting his funnel cake go down.
Talula wished he’d choke on it. “I’ll let you in on a secret, Talula.
I’ve got a map. Every time magic happens, a part of the map lights up.
It’s a tricky map and can take us a minute to configure coordinates.
But we finally noticed something interesting. We noticed where magic was not.”
Talula’s heart dropped into her stomach.
“It all happened by accident!” Damien laughed as if he were about to tell a fantastic joke.
“I was on a more personal hunt when we met—I had an EpiPen in the car, by the way, thanks for asking. About a month ago, my old flame stole my credit card and made two fascinating purchases before disappearing. A one-way flight to Bahrain and overnight shipping to send something to bumfuck-nowhere Pine Hollow. I spent weeks in Bahrain, but that fucking package kept bothering me. I came here to track it down when something crazy happened. I got a call from my team. They happened to be on the outskirts of town acquiring new targets and had picked up the signal from my company-issue tracker. Turns out, they were headed straight for me.”
Talula’s hands turned to white-knuckled fists. “The wildlings.”
“Whatever you call them, we caught them.” Damien gave a sinister chuckle.
“But there was no way this was a coincidence—Kiki’s package addressed to Pine Hollow; the wildlings trying to come here as well.
So we watched the map. Little lights would come on around the same area and then disappear without a trace.
Always just around the town’s boundaries.
Which meant, of course, that those little lights weren’t disappearing.
They were hiding. Somewhere here. The plan was to let one of our acquisitions escape.
Follow them, see where they went. Of course that plan was delayed; we ran out of inventory unexpectedly. I bet I have you to thank for that.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Talula growled.
“Because my favorite part of winning is telling the loser just how badly I beat them.” He gave her another twisted grin.
“Where was I? Ah, that’s right—our Judas goat plan.
While we worked on catching another creature, I sent some guys here to check things out.
And funnily enough, a lot of weird stuff was happening, and it was all centered around a certain bitchy barista and her god-awful coffee shop.
When we finally did the catch-and-release, I wasn’t surprised when the stupid magic mongrel led us straight to you. ”
Talula thought of inky black fur and eternity-shaded eyes. The deathdog.
Damien twirled his fork in his hand. “When my team first told me about Samhain, I thought, ‘Too obvious. No chance a bunch of magical beings would hang out under a neon sign like that.’ But I guess that’s the point, huh?” Damien trained his cold eyes on Talula. “It almost worked.”
“What’s stopping me from removing you from this festival?” Talula’s magic simmered in her blood.
Damien gave her a smug smile. He raised his arm, letting the sleeve fall back to reveal a silver cuff. “I have so many interesting toys. This one prevents any magical attacks from harming me. Go ahead, try it.”
Damien grabbed her hand and lay it on his chest. Talula immediately summoned witchfire to her fingertips. But the fire felt stuck beneath her skin.
Damien let her go with a smirk. “See?” He tilted his head toward the crowd. “That guy has one, too. He’s been keeping an eye on you.”
Talula saw the strange man from town hall tip his nondescript black baseball cap toward Damien, an identical magical cuff flashing on his wrist. But Damien wasn’t done.
He used his fork to point all around them.
“That guy. And that guy. Oh, and Chad over there. There are more, but I think they’re all catching the aerialist performance.
Anyway, they’re all protected and armed to the teeth with tasers, cattle prods, bullets, grenades, et cetera. ”
Fear and rage tinged Talula’s vision red.
“By the way, I got you a gift for Samhain,” Damien said, sliding his body closer to Talula like a boyfriend about to make a move.
“I don’t want anything from you,” Talula snarled.
“Oh, there’s no returns on this gift. It’s a trolley problem,” Damien went on, mansplaining.
“You know what that is, right? It’s when you have to make the choice between two bad outcomes.
Here it is. You’re going to corral as many of your people in one place as possible for us to acquire.
If you don’t, my team has orders to burn this town to the ground and make it look like a gas leak. ”
Damien talked about committing mass murder like someone would say I’m going to clean the gutters this weekend.
“You have until noon.” With a Prince Charming smile, he tapped his watch. “I’ll meet you at the café for your answer. Happy Samhain!”
Damien dropped his empty funnel cake plate on the ground and strode away.
Talula and Simon watched Damien melt into the crowd. Without a word, they both sprinted toward the Blue Moon.