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  Helen glanced at her from behind the wheel of their stolen car and smirked. All-too-often, something in her eyes made it seem like she was reading Cassie’s mind, and wouldn’t that just be her luck. Paxton hadn’t mentioned it as a possibility. The ability that he called the push allowed a spellcaster to exert their will on a hapless subject. Back in Phoenix, Helen had ordered Cassie to come with her and remain quiet, and she’d been unable to resist the witch’s will no matter how hard she tried.

  Cassie was also beginning to understand why Paxton's instinctive response to any situation was either sarcasm or a joke. His mother was the most humorless woman she'd ever had the displeasure to be around.

  And to think I thought I didn’t like her because I thought she was stuck up! If that didn’t qualify as the right reaction for the wrong reason, she didn’t know what did.

  Despite her fear, she’d succumbed to sleep in the midst of the night, though it had been a restless one at best. She rubbed at the grit in her eyes while trying not to yawn. She suspected the logic of the spell would define that to not be quiet. The beginning of the dawn eased above the horizon before them, but the surrounding landscape remained cloaked in shadow. What little she could see didn’t tell her much, though it was an easy guess that they were still somewhere in the southwest. She glanced over at Helen. She’s got to be getting tired. I’ll have a chance soon.

  “We need to stop soon,” Helen murmured, to herself as much to Cassie. “You must be getting hungry. Or at least need to use the restroom.”

  Careful to keep her voice low, Cassie said, “I didn’t realize that was going to be an option.” At the mention of food, her stomach reminded her that she’d missed dinner last night.

  “Hardly. I can’t have you pissing all over the seat like an animal. And I’m as human as you.”

  Cassie must have let a vestige of doubt cross her face because the other woman chuckled. “I haven’t found a spell to replace bread and water, just yet, though I can go quite a while without sleep. That came in quite handy in prison, let me tell you.”

  Well, shit. “I see,” she said.

  “We’ll need to change vehicles, as well, of course,” Helen said. “I haven’t been on the run long, but I know that much, at least. This is a nice enough car, but they’ll figure out we’ve taken it sooner or later and start looking. Best to be one step ahead, we’ve got plenty of miles to go.”

  “Maine, right? If you wanted Pax to come find you, you didn’t have to take me along. He—we—would have tried to stop you.” Cassie hesitated, then went all in. “What are you trying to do, anyway?”

  “All in good time, dear,” Helen smirked. “The thing you have to understand about my dear son is this—he cares, a lot. It’s a bit pathetic, really. If I have you, he’ll be off balance, reacting rather than thinking. He stopped me once before. I need every advantage this time.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Cassie said. Helen could probably give her a brain aneurysm with one word like she had the poor owner of this car, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to look back on her life and regret cowering in the face of true evil. “You could have disappeared as soon as you got the grimoire. You ditched your crew, so they must not have figured into your long-term plans. Why are you taking a risk now?”

  Helen worked her mouth for a minute. With a frigid smile, she said, “Saving the world requires sacrifice, my dear.”

  “Saving the world? Bullshit,” Cassie spat. “How many people died in prison when your little Sabrina squad broke you out? How many people have you killed along the way? You hold yourself up like you’re some sort of magnanimous figure, but you’re no better than a common—”

  “Shut up!”

  The command hit her like a slap, and Cassie’s lips clamped shut. She couldn’t speak, but she could still stare daggers at the other woman.

  Helen threw back her head and laughed. “I’m not surprised he fell for you, girl. You’ve got the same chip on your shoulder. But while you’re casting me as the monster, consider this. If it was the destiny of every man, woman, and child on this planet to die within the next decade, how many would you kill to stop it? So long as I keep it under a billion, I’m calling myself the hero of this piece. Stew over that for a while.”

  Chapter Three

  Paxton

  Location unknown

  The next thing I knew, strong arms pulled me out of a seated position and pitched me forward. My head was too fuzzy to react, much, but I let out an involuntary cough as I hit a lumpy mattress. Coming to my senses, I realized that my hands and feet were free, and I twisted around to catch a glimpse of my captors.

  I missed my opportunity. All I saw were bars covered in metal plating sliding home with an authoritative thump that rattled my cot.

  Waiting until the dull echoes of their footsteps faded away, I lurched to my feet. The pins and needles hadn’t gone entirely away, and I stumbled forward into the door. I slammed both palms onto it and winced. I was in a jail cell not all that long ago, and this thing looked like Valentine’s people built it to hold a tyrannosaurus. The vertical bars were twice as thick as any I’d seen before. Layers of steel diamond plate covered the upper and lower sections, leaving a foot-tall opening for inspection from the outside. There was a slot centered in the open section—for passing meal trays through, I assumed. At the thought, my stomach rumbled. I twisted, studying the rest of my cell.

  There wasn’t much to see. It was ten feet square or a little smaller. A single sheet and a flat pillow covered the twin-sized cot I’d landed on. Upon inspection, the bed frame was a single piece of some sort of slick, hard plastic material. It felt sturdy enough, but I wouldn’t be taking it apart anytime soon.

  A combination sink and toilet occupied the far corner of the room along with a single roll of parchment ply toilet paper. I had to pee like nothing else, and that won out over my thirst.

  As soon as I’d emptied my bladder, I gave my hands a quick wash, then let the water run, slurping huge gulps of water from my cupped hands until my teeth ached from the chill.

  Bars notwithstanding, this place had better tap water than the last hotel I’d stayed in. I splashed a bit in my face, scrubbing away the accumulated crud and sweat of my kidnapping.

  Turning away, I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the slab of steel locking me away. I had options. A force blade would cut it, or I could simply phase through.

  Standing up, I muttered to myself, “Here goes nothing.” I took a deep breath, envisioned the control panel I used as a mental focus for my magic and—nothing.

  I let my shoulders sag in defeat and fought the urge to scream in frustration. Whatever drugs they’d used to subdue were still in my system.

  All I need is time.

  Of course, the more time I wasted in here, the longer Mother remained free.

  Without any sort of shower facilities, I had to settle for rinsing my clothing in the sink and hanging it over various fixtures to try. The chill of the water made me shiver as I gave myself a sketchy bath, but being cold was far preferable to being grubby. Once I’d done the best I could, I slumped onto the bed, folded the pillow over, and tried to get comfortable.

  I had no way to tell how much time had passed before the sound of squeaking wheels shook me out of sleep. As I jerked myself to a sitting position on the cot, nothing in my surroundings gave me any clues, either. The blurry mix of a dream and a memory rested at the forefront of my mind as I teetered on the edge of coming fully awake. Blinking, I played it back, over and over, trying to strain the truth from the surreal nightmare imagery. John Henry Holliday, I heard a harsh voice whisper, and I frowned. Why was that name so familiar?

  After a few moments of thinking, I shook it off and passed it off to a hangover. You’d think being drugged unconscious would keep you from being tired, but I’d slept far more deeply than I would have expected given the strange atmosphere.

  The intermittent squeaking down the corridor was the first noise I’d he
ard all night, which seemed strange in and of itself. My gut told me I wasn’t alone down here, but for whatever reason, an unnatural silence gripped the facility.

  My boxer shorts were still a little damp, but I pulled them on and moved to the cell door. The concrete was chilly against my bare feet. I bent over and craned my neck, trying to get a look down the hall. The source of the noise was too far away for me to see with my limited viewing angle. Closer to the opening, the noise was loud enough for me to make out quiet murmurs of conversation accompanying each pause.

  Stomach growling, I muttered to myself, “Hopefully it’s breakfast.”

  “It’s breakfast,” a whispered voice confirmed, and I jumped.

  The corridor across from my cell was a blank block wall, and the voice seemed to originate from my right. My neighbor, maybe? Cautiously, I ventured, “Who’s there?”

  “I could say the same of you,” the voice replied, then tittered a giggle made even creepier by the echo effect of the prison walls. “Call me Puck, and well met, my new friend.”

  “Paxton,” I said, after shaking my head over his odd phrasing. Puck didn’t have an accent, per se, but he didn’t sound like he was from around here. “What are you in for?”

  “A little of this and some more of that. Much like you, I assume. The guardians of this particular prison don’t pay more than lip service to small details like charges. Welcome to the Menagerie. With luck, your stay won’t be a long one—though if you’re less lucky, it’s off to the Pit for you.”

  I slid to the left, pressing my cheek against the opening in the door. The source of the noise was still out of sight, though the murmured words were becoming clearer. Two voices, it sounded like. “The Pit?”

  “A place far worse than this, or so I have heard. It’s nice to have a proper companion once again. The fellow to my right has nothing to say, and your cell has been empty since the Division M agents brought me here.”

  I frowned. “What’s Division M?”

  “You don’t know?” Puck sounded surprised. “They are a secretive branch of your government tasked with securing your country against magical threats.”

  Mulling that over, I shook my head. “First I’m hearing of it. Would have been nice to have had some help, over the years. I’ve been taking care of magical threats on my own for a while now.”

  Puck didn’t respond for a moment, and I worried that I’d somehow insulted him. Finally, he said, “How did you come to be here, then?”

  I dug through memories slowly emerging from the drug-induced murk in my head. “His name was Valentine.”

  “I’ve not met him, but I know the name. Many say that he is both more and less than human, though few know what he truly is. If you survived an encounter with him…” Puck’s voice turned thoughtful. “That’s interesting.”

  “I don’t remember much, but I remember getting my ass kicked,” I admitted. It was probably a bad idea to tell a fellow prisoner that I spent a lot of time having that happen, lest he shank me in the shower later. If we even got showers.

  “From what I’ve heard, there’s no shame in that.” The click of heels on concrete joined the squeak of rolling wheels. I got a glimpse of two uniformed figures flanking a flat-topped cart.

  One spoke. “Back away from the door. You know the drill.” His hands were empty, but his partner held a spray-gun with a large cylinder sticking out of the bottom with the business end pointed at Puck’s cell.

  The pair waited, then the speaker opened the flat top of the cart and passed a covered tray through the gap in the cell. “Enjoy.” After a moment, an identical tray passed through from Puck’s side—the previous meal’s, apparently.

  They advanced to me. The speaker looked at me through the hole in the cell door. “This is your first time, and I’m only going to say this once.” He pointed at the canister. “That’s bear spray. You screw around with us, you get a blast to the face. Your eyes will swell shut, and that’s if you can get to the sink to rinse them out in under three seconds. Takes about three, four days for the effect to wear off. You create problems for us, you lose meal privileges for the day. You catch my drift?”

  I raised my hands and backed away from the door. “Catching it just fine, officer. Any chance I can get my phone call now?”

  The one with the bear spray snorted a laugh. “That’s a good one.”

  Up went the top cover, and the first guard stuck a tray through my cell door. “See you at lunch, prisoner.” I eased forward slowly, cringing at the thought of high-octane pepper spray, and pulled the tray through.

  Sitting down, tray on my knees, I cocked my head and listened. The next time they spoke seemed to quite a bit further away than Puck, so the cell immediately to my left must have been empty.

  I moved back over to the door and leaned my back against it while I popped the cover off the tray. If not for the difference in packaging, I could have sworn that this was a fast food breakfast. It had the same bright yellow square of eggs, circular sausage patty, hash brown, and biscuit that I’d seen more than a few times. Turning my head to cast my voice toward Puck’s cell, I said, “Is this seriously McDonald’s?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment—eating, I guessed. “There don’t seem to be any cafeteria facilities on site. It’s all catered. Maybe you’ll be here long enough to get lucky—every once in a while, we get pizza.”

  “Great,” I said, turning back to my breakfast. I poked the eggs and tried not to wince. They had long gone cold. Eat up, so you can get out of here. Miles to go.

  Assembling the sausage, egg, and biscuit into a crumbling sandwich, I tried to balance wolfing it down with keeping it in one piece in my hands. I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but I could tell I’d missed a few meals between Valentine knocking me out and waking up here.

  The food settled into a hard mass in the pit of my stomach. Right about now was the time I’d pull up a TV show on my tablet and sip soda refills until I felt like hitting the road. Tap water would have to do. For the briefest moment I considered yelling for the guards, remembered the bear spray, and realized why the damn place was so quiet. Nobody wanted a blast in the face. I rinsed my hands off in the sink, washed cold greasiness out of my mouth, and put on the rest of my clothes. My socks had dried stiff, and my T-shirt was still a little damp, but at least they didn’t reek of sour sweat anymore.

  Sitting on the bed, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I visualized the control panel I used as a mental focus for my various spells. I couldn’t help but smile as it snapped into razor focus. Whatever the drugs were, the effect had faded. I opened my eyes and held out my hand. Faint blue lines of force appeared around my extended fingers, foxfire dancing in the harsh light of the fluorescent fixture in the concrete ceiling.

  Standing, I released the force blade and focused on a different sort of effect. “Puck,” I said, taking a big step toward the cell door. “It’s been real, but I’m blowing this popsicle stand.”

  Snapping out of phase, I held back my laugh. Try and bear spray me now, assholes. I’d bent forward to push my torso through the door to get the lay of the land when my hair stood on end and every muscle in my body twitched.

  Blinking, I realized I was staring at the ceiling. The room spun and every part of me ached. When I was a kid, I made the mistake of plugging in my night light with a finger on one of the prongs. This felt like I’d done that a couple of hundred times, only all over. “What the hell,” I groaned.

  Even from the floor, I could hear Puck’s sigh. “They don’t pay much attention to their charges, young wizard, but they’ve spent plenty of time locking down the cells with runes. We aren’t going anywhere until they want us to.”

  Chapter Four

  Valentine—Sunday morning

  Phoenix, Arizona

  The man currently known as Agent Matthew Valentine hadn't needed to sleep in well over a century. He still missed it sometimes.

  On the bright side, last night’s accommodations wouldn�
��t have lent themselves to sleep even if he’d tried. Tying up all the loose ends on their cover-up of a witch coven’s assault on suburbia had taken a full court press. By the the Division M crew had that in hand, it was well after midnight. It was easier, then, to move their equipment to the agency’s secure headquarters in downtown Phoenix than to coordinate hotel rooms for the few agents who weren’t locals.

  Not that Valentine had done much of the heavy lifting, there. Once he was certain the situation was well in hand, he’d taken a vehicle and spent the rest of the night and predawn hours running a search grid of the entire Valley in hope of finding some trace of the leader of the coven, Helen Locke.

  While his more fragile coworkers caught snatches of sleep in conference rooms and offices, Valentine spent his night on the phone with police departments across the southwest, praying that he’d get the opportunity to rouse his team to chase down the one who got away.

  He’d taken down Helen’s familiars and the witch she’d left behind to cover her trail, but not soon enough to stop her from making her escape with a hostage—ally?—and a powerful magic grimoire.

  He’d had better days and more fruitful nights. None of his calls netted him any results. Division M’s multi-state dragnet garnered no results. More often than not, Valentine spent his time staring at empty streets and listening to late-night conspiracy radio. They were close to right more often than they knew, but the hunch or gut feeling he sought in his own quest never came through.

  Just before dawn, his stomach’s frustrated growls came in stereo with his own mutters. He turned the car back toward the office until he found a Krispy Kreme, the sign alight with the promise of hot and fresh confections. He bought as many as he could carry, and the stack of boxes rode shotgun on the way back, filling the Crown Vic with the mouth-watering smell of warm dough.