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Tallak grabbed the phone for him, brought it to his ear, and said, “Merle, this is Tallak. Rhun will be right over.”
Disconnecting the call, he handed the phone back to Rhun and jerked his head at the bluotezzer’s car parked a few feet away. “Go. Your mate needs you. I’ll try to catch up with Hazel.”
Rhun nodded. His face pale, he grasped Tallak’s forearm in a quick goodbye gesture, his gaze holding Tallak’s for a heartbeat. “Don’t let that bitch kill us all,” he rasped, true fear in his eyes.
“I won’t. I promise.”
With a last nod, Rhun ran to his car, got in, and sped away with screeching tires, just as Tallak sprinted for his Tesla. It was sheer dumb luck that he’d walked to Hazel’s earlier; otherwise, his car would still be sitting in the Murrays’ driveway after the ward had kicked him out. As it was, his smooth ride was parked in his designated spot, just waiting to deliver him to Hazel’s in a few short minutes.
He only hoped he could still catch her before she left.
Gunning the Tesla to the fastest it could go on the winding, tree-lined roads in this upper-class neighborhood, he arrived at the Murray mansion in record time. As he neared the property, he caught sight of the wrought-iron gate slowly sliding closed—indicating someone had probably just left.
Heart beating like a staccato drum, he scanned the street up ahead, his eyes homing in on taillights in the dark several yards away. There. He sped up again, recognizing Hazel’s white Honda as he got closer.
Gotcha.
Anxiety spiking in his gut, he settled in to follow her.
CHAPTER 36
Hazel steered her car down the rural road, her eyes searching the darkness ahead, checking the map with the spot and her phone’s GPS intermittently. The location wasn’t exact, couldn’t be, since it was just a guess on her part, not a result of a locator spell. She had to guess at it because waiting for the last sigil to be laid so she could then better search for it with the locator spell she’d used before would mean she’d be far too late.
She’d checked the other ward points on the map again before leaving, had measured their distance with a ruler even to see how much of a difference there might be, and as it turned out, the witch had indeed taken care to keep them at about the same distance. Which was lucky for Hazel, because given that each ward point was connected to two other ones, the equal distance gave her a more precise location of where this last sigil was likely to be laid.
Going by the point on the map, the probable murder site was once again in a rural area, this time to the west of Portland, about halfway between North Plains and Holbrook. There was only one bigger country road out here, with smaller dirt roads leading off it to farms and remote houses. If the witch’s pattern so far was anything to go by, she’d pick an abandoned building again to better hide her activity.
So Hazel could rule out any of the houses she passed where lights shone brightly inside, with cars parked in the yard that looked in good repair, the property obviously lived in.
She slowed down when she came closest to the spot marked on the map. There hadn’t been a house or farm for the past few minutes, the landscape dark all around her except for her headlights illuminating an old sign to the side of the road reading OLD BARNEY’S STABLES, with another sign tacked on that said PERMANENTLY CLOSED.
This could be it. Heart beating faster, she veered off the main road and onto the smaller one leading to the right where the sign pointed.
The car that had been following her for a while now turned down the same road, too much of a coincidence in this remote area. If she wasn’t mistaken, they’d been tailing her at least since Portland proper. She’d first noticed them when she’d changed lanes a few times on the 26, navigating around a couple of slowpokes as she’d been on the phone with Lily, persuading her to leave the city instead of coming to help.
Her heart ached at the thought of Lily. When faced with the news of the spell, her stubborn, kind, and loyal daughter had opted to run over to Alek’s family and assist in evacuating everyone. Alek was currently deep into Arawn’s territory on some work assignment, but his brothers lived close to Alek and Lily within Portland’s borders, right where the spell would wipe them all out.
Dima, Alek’s twin brother, had four children, one of them a babe of less than a year.
The ward would kill them all, uncaring, indiscriminate, its scale and intention more nefarious than the “evil” it sought to destroy.
I have to stop this.
Eyes flicking up to the headlights visible in her rearview mirror, Hazel brought her own car to a stop a little ways down the small road, the dark silhouette of buildings looming up ahead a few yards down the path.
Pulse racing, her magic primed and ready, she exited the car and turned toward the vehicle that crawled to a stop behind her, its headlights still too bright to make out anything in more detail. The cool night air whispered over her face and neck as she watched the door open and a figure jump out and jog up to her.
Her skin hummed with her power, a defensive spell ready to roll off her lips—when he stepped into the shine of the headlights, his golden hair lit from behind, his face half-obscured by shadows. She still recognized him, would always recognize him, the way he moved, his dark energy caressing her senses, the way he held himself, his every breath branded on her soul.
I know you, her heart whispered. That stupid, foolish heart of hers that loved him despite how much it hurt.
“What are you doing here?” she rounded on him before he’d even reached her. The pain of his words, subdued and overlaid by her anxiety about the witch’s spell, came rushing back, but it mingled with potent fear—for his life.
Tallak came to a stop right in front of her, his chest heaving with the deep breath he took, his voice raw when he spoke. “Making amends.”
“What?” She blinked, then shook her head to clear it. A fresh wave of fear surged through her at seeing him standing here when the damn spell could go active anytime now. “You shouldn’t be here. You can’t be here! Go.” She pointed back to the main road, her chest tight, her pulse pounding in her head. “You need to leave. Right now. Get away, as far and as fast as you can. The witch—”
“I know,” he cut her off. “I know about the spell. Merle told me. I’m here to help you.”
