Page 71 of Mage Massacres

The rest of my guys stepped out of the Void, walking across the columns as if they were stairs. Briggs was visibly angry.

“What the fuck, Fae?” he shouted, startling the coastal birds.

“Why are you yelling at me?” Vaughn asked my wolf.

“I saw Barbie disappear with Annette, but none of us saw you leave.”

He shrugged. “I followed her.”

“Maybe warn us all next time?” Stone suggested. “We were worried.”

Vaughn turned back to me, smiling slightly over being reprimanded. “Did you enjoy your worldly travels?”

“I have no idea where we visited, but I did find some useful information in my studies abroad,” I sassed.

“India, China, Russia, Italy, and then back to Northern Ireland,” my fae called out, lifting his fingers to count.

“I didn’t pay much attention to the places.” I bounced my head side-to-side. “Actually, that’s a lie. The third place was disgusting. But the first stop was interesting. Did you see the black van?”

“I did,” he told me. “I couldn’t understand what they were saying; however, I got the sense that she didn’t expect you to chase her. Maybe not to so many locations, at least.”

Stone narrowed his eyes. “What makes you say that?”

“Two of the guys from India followed them both to Russia.” Vaughn turned to me. “That was the third stop, by the way.”

“How do you know where they were?” Palmer inquired.

He waved his phone at us, the map still open to show the tiny blue dot with our current location. “I took screenshots to keep track of the locations. It took a few seconds for the maps to load, but I got the general areas.”

“Quick thinking,” I praised. “I’m pretty sure I left my phone at Amelia’s, but it doesn’t matter. I have a question.”

“What’s that?” Vaughn asked, with a slight tilt to his lips.

“I lost Annette when we got here. She was hopping across the rocks, and I made a wall of ice, attempting to change her direction—”

“Ahh,” he interrupted, understanding exactly what I was asking. “She’s part fae.”

Or not… “Yes. I comprehend her species quite well.”

He pursed his lips at my sarcasm. “She went home.”

“Uh-huh.” I raised my brows, nodding my head. “How, Vaughn?”

“She probably pushed her magic into the ice as she broke it, and that created a temporary portal of sorts. One that you couldn’t follow her through because it was destroyed as she jumped in. It’s risky, but if you can time it just right, then the trashed portal won’t rip you to shreds.”

Right.

“It would have been fun if she’d have miscalculated, though,” he assured me.

Novak snorted. “Didn’t she tell us once that she couldn’t swim?”

Vaughn hummed in agreement. “I’ve never met a fae who couldn’t swim, but she’s a fae hybrid, so who knows if she was lying or not. We can’t use that information.”

“No, but I did notice a few things,” I disclosed. “I think her fae magic is limited. I’m not positive why it would be, but she couldn’t do it again after misting us both. She used the Void to run. Her defense was slow, too. That may have been because she wore herself out. And she threw raw magic at me, which was a waste.”

I thought more about the rapid traveling we’d just done. “I hit her arm with a bolt, but she didn’t heal it, or maybe she couldn’t. I don’t know. She’s got some hand-to-hand training, though it was hard to judge with how fast we were moving.”

I sat down on a column next to Vaughn, staring at the cloudy sky. “I put a tracker on her. I should be able to feel where she is when she uses magic again.”