Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
But Lorcan ignored her and rounded on Graves. He lifted his gaze to his enemy, who held the sword between them like the death that would come for them on the solstices.
“Think that belongs to me,” Graves said, deathly low.
“Then come and get it,” Lorcan snarled.
“We don’t have time for this shit,” Kierse said as she finally got the door open. “Put aside your differences for once. We need to save Walter!”
“I’ll go with you, lass,” Bram told her when neither of them moved and she couldn’t wait for them.
She dashed through the open door, and Bram cried out as he tried to follow her. She whipped around to find him trapped against a solid invisible barrier.
“What’s going on?”
He tried to speak, but she couldn’t hear him. She put her hand against the wall, but it would no more let her back in than them out. Bram shouted at Graves and Lorcan. She’d never seen two men jump to attention quicker than at whatever order Bram had issued at them, but the sword was swiftly replaced, and Lorcan and Graves appeared at the door. Their magic glowed a faint gold, but she was wasting time to help Walter.
She pointed to Walter’s hiding spot and left them to figure it out.
When she made it around the corner, her blood ran cold. Walter was unconscious. A knife was jabbed into his gut as blood flowed from it. His computer system was out of reach and intact. She rushed forward, putting her fingers to his neck. He had a pulse. Her heart skipped in thanks. She ripped up his shirt and wound it around the wound to try to staunch the bleeding.
Then she grabbed at the phone inches from his hand and pulled up the heist group chat.
Walter: SOS. Downstairs. Walter is injured. Hurry quick.
Lyra was upstairs. She could get here first, but they were going to need Gen or Niamh for healing of this magnitude. She couldn’t move the knife. She had nothing to help. And a killer on the loose. Jason on the loose.
Lyra: on my way.
Niamh: Gen and I are incoming.
Kierse tapped her feet, holding her hand against Walter’s wound, knowing that Jason was getting farther away and that Graves and Lorcan were still trapped in the room beyond.
“Come on. Come on,” she hissed.
Lyra appeared at the top of the stairs. She inhaled sharply, her vampiric eyes taking in all the blood. “Jason just rushed past me.”
“Keep pressure on the wound until Niamh or Gen get here,” Kierse ordered her.
“What are you going to do?”
“Have a talk with Jason.”
“You’re covered in blood,” Lyra said through gritted teeth.
“It’s a costume party,” she said as she came to her feet. “No one will look twice.”
“Where’s Graves?”
“Finding his way out of a locked room with Lorcan.”
“Are they going to kill each other?”
“I can’t wait around to find out.”
Lyra held her breath and then replaced Kierse. “Good luck.”
Kierse nodded at her before taking one last look at the enchanted door—likely Jason’s work—and then took the stairs two at a time. Jason wasn’t in the library when she made it inside, though it was now packed with more costumed individuals. She hardly recognized anyone anymore. She was likely too late to reach him, but she wanted to make him pay for what he’d done…what he had always done.
She dashed through the crowds and made it into the rotunda, where she saw a flash of Jason’s profile. He pushed through an exit door, and she followed him out into the chilly outdoors.
“Jason!” she called, striding toward him and pulling her magic in tight.
He was dressed in a tuxedo, his face half covered with an opera mask, a cape across his shoulders. Still, he was unmistakable as her greatest nightmare and darkest fear. The man who had raised her, trapped her, and destroyed her. She’d been bloodied at his hands more than anything else in her life. She’d nearly died from his fists. Without Gen, she never would have survived him.
And now he was here trying to destroy her new life.
“Hello, Kierse.”
“You coward!”
“I’m just playing the game,” he said as he twirled his cane around once.
“You stabbed Walter.”
“He was in the way.”
“You sealed the door to the room.”
“Clever, wasn’t it?” His grin was frenzied, the look he got with a particularly good score.
“How did you know that we’d be there?” she demanded.
He shrugged. “Not hard to plan for something when my persuasionist is getting information from within your ranks.”
“George,” she whispered.
Of course, she should have realized that Maya would be using George. He’d been permanently attached to his phone. She hadn’t thought that Maya’s persuasion worked through text. Did it? That didn’t sound like Druid work. The only people who could infuse magic into something else—Walter into technology and Imani into powder—were warlocks. But Maya was certain she was a Druid.