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)
“Are you all still monster hunting now that the monsters are out in the public eye?”
He sighed. “We’re on one right now actually. Some blood sucker has been working his way across town. We lost his trail yesterday, but I’m the best in the business. I can find anyone.”
“Are we taking you away?”
“No. No,” Bram said quickly. “We just continue to do the hard work. There are always monsters out of line that slip under the law’s notice. Hunting monsters has kept people alive for hundreds of years.” He gestured to the dead body.
“Fighting the good fight,” she agreed. There were more times than she could count that she’d bypassed the Monster Treaty, and she wished she could have done something to stop the monsters who circumvented it more.
“So, should I even ask why we’re burying the Edinburgh warlock?” Bram asked.
“Probably not.”
“All right. Well, it’s probably going to get out that something happened. He’s well liked. He was part of the Scottish independence movement for years. He even helped some guys in the fifties steal the Stone of Scone from Westminster. That was hugely popular.”
“He was responsible for that?”
That had come up a couple times in her research on the Stone of Fal, that when they’d hauled the stone out of Westminster, it had cracked in two pieces from some earlier bombing during the Women’s Suffrage movement. There were still thirty missing pieces from the time it had cracked.
“Well, they say his father did it, but those of us who deal with monsters know that business was always just one person.”
“Are you telling us to get out of the country?”
He shrugged. “What if I asked you to stay? I could introduce you to the rest of the clan. We could go to the McKenna ancestral lands. I could show you where you came from.”
Kierse wanted that badly. It was so agonizing that she couldn’t even look at Graves. She had to consider it without his interference. It was probably why he hadn’t said anything, because he clearly could hear them even so deep in his digging.
“I…can’t,” she said finally. “I want to, but…” She gestured to the dead body.
“Yeah, you’re on your own hunt. I understand.”
“I still want to find who killed my parents.”
Bram rubbed his calloused hands together. “The only hunt that I never completed. It still haunts me.”
“I can’t give up.”
“Nor should you,” he said, clapping her on the back affectionately. “And if you ever need an old monster hunter again, I’m right here.”
Kierse nodded, holding back tears. “I’ll give you a call if we’re in the market.”
“Well, that looks deep enough,” Graves said as he crawled out of the pit. “Shall we?”
Walter gestured to Archie’s dead body. “After you, George.”
The driver rolled his eyes. “So generous.”
He bent down and hefted Archie’s feet while Graves grabbed his shoulders, and with a heave, they tossed the body into the empty hole. The three men refilled the site the best they could, and at the end, Graves added a ward to the gravestone that would hopefully keep people from investigating.
“What do you think?” he asked Walter.
“Yours are stronger than mine,” Walter observed. “But if I put up a force field, then I could keep anyone from finding this for much longer.”
“Could you sustain a force field from a continent away?”
Walter mused over the question. This was how Graves’s training always went. A lot of questions and stumbling through the clues he left for you to walk into. “Probably not.”
“No,” Graves agreed.
“But you can keep the ward up that far?” Kierse interrupted.
Graves shrugged. “I’m holding up the ones on my property.”
She marveled once again at the breadth of his ability. That he could hold things like that at such a distance. Sure, the carved wards were stronger and took less energy to maintain, but she wasn’t sure she could do it across an ocean, either.
Walter shrugged, unconcerned. “I could force field until we leave and let it drop when we’re out of the country. That’d buy us a few hours.”
Graves’s nod was neutral, but Kierse knew him well enough to know it was laced with affection. That was where his lesson led Walter without telling him.
So the force field went up, and then they were all back into the cars driving across town. Bram pulled onto a darkened cobbled street in the Stockbridge area of Edinburgh. The walkup cottage was around the corner from a lush green park and cute independent boutiques. Kierse would have loved to wander the area if they’d had time and hadn’t been there to steal.
“Nice place,” Bram muttered.
“Mmm,” Graves said noncommittally. “I’ve had it for a while.”
“Do you have houses everywhere?” she asked.
“Mostly when I needed to get away from Kingston.”
Bram’s eyebrows shot up. “Warlock of London?”
“That’s the one.”
“He’s a scary one,” Bram admitted. “Wouldn’t want to tangle with him. Then again, I don’t run with monsters. Magic or otherwise.” Then he seemed to think better of it as Graves stepped out of the van. “Present company excluded.”