That familiar rage boiled in my gut over a fellow practitioner getting one over on me, but this time it was the result of terror, not a matter of pride.
After flinging open the gate, I jogged up the steps onto the front porch. The first step told me the ward on the house itself had been cracked open. There were no signs of forced entry, but the doorknob turned in my hand without resistance. The silence of a dark and empty house greeted me.
Colby’s name burned down my throat, eager to escape, but I didn’t want to lure her out until we cleared the house. Room by room, I checked every nook and cranny, using a minor spell to sense her.
“She’s not here.” I swallowed the panic in my voice. “But that’s okay.”
“You mentioned she had safe places.” Asa touched my elbow. “Let’s check those.”
“The house is clear,” Clay confirmed. “The wards are down, the power’s out, and my cell has no signal.”
The killer must have laid hexes on the wards when he dropped them, forming a dead zone within their boundaries.
“That gives us a timeframe. He was here six or seven hours ago.” I checked my messages. “That’s the last time I heard from Colby.”
“He’s come and gone.” Asa rubbed his thumb over my arm. “But he might be hunting her.”
“Let’s do a circuit of the property,” Clay suggested. “Once we clear it as best we can, we’ll fetch Colby.”
Certainty rang through his voice that she would be safe and sound, and I clung to that by my fingernails.
“Okay.” I led them out the back door. “We can start on the north corner and work our way in.”
Within seconds, Asa had given himself over to his daemon, whose eyes burned with determination.
“Smell better,” he said by way of explanation. “Stronger too.”
A nod was all I could spare him as I hit the tree line and began walking the fence that enclosed my land. I couldn’t shake the sensation of being watched, but that came from knowing the witch we hunted was gifted in the art of concealment. If we weren’t careful, we could lead him straight to Colby.
When we reached the point where we began, Clay slanted his eyes toward me. “Satisfied?”
“Not even close.” I offered him a weak smile. “Let’s check her cubbies.”
The first four yielded nothing but a flash of renewed hope. Each one was secured by a functional spell.
That meant the most critical of all my wards had held and that Colby, if she’d reached a cubby, was safe.
Around the ninth location, I began to sweat, and the twelfth left me with shaking hands.
Before I unwound the spell on lucky thirteen, I shut my eyes and sent up a prayer to anyone listening.
As soon as the magic winked out, a small white blur rocketed out in a frenzy of fuzz and wings.
Next thing I knew, a cat-sized moth smacked me in the face. Her legs wrapped around my head in a death grip, and I got a mouthful of furry abdomen. Wings beat against my ears, deafening me, but I didn’t care one whit.
“Rue,” she sobbed onto the top of my head. “I was so scared.”
“I know.” I tugged her down until I could see again and cradled her against my chest. “Me too.”
“He walked right in.” She clung to me. “It was like the wards weren’t even there.”
“You didn’t see him before he walked through the gate?”
“I was online.” Her feathery antennae quivered. “The power cut out, and I went to check the breakers.”
Our house was old, and her rig had shorted out her room more than once when she got plug happy.
“That’s when I saw him.” Her feet bit into me. “He was dressed like Clay and Asa.”