Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
“Do you think they hired someone?” he asked.
She issued a soft laugh, studying the map now. “You’d need incredible strength and wickedness to pull that off, and you’d need someone with a certain flair for emotional manipulation. That scene elicits a visceral reaction.” She shook her head, the barest hint of a smile touching her lips. “Tristan and Niamh. They’re proving to me that there are bigger monsters in the world than I am, and they’re two of them.”
Sebastian didn’t mistake the sheen of tears filming her eyes. The tension in her shoulders released slightly. This was apparently a message that she’d badly needed to hear.
He put his hand on her shoulder in support. She’d always struggled with the things she had to do in this life. She hadn’t had the morality tortured out of her like he had. She didn’t have the same vendetta against the Guild—not as fervent of one, anyway. She struggled with being a “bad” person, a damaged person. A person she didn’t think was deserving of respect.
But she respected Niamh and, even though she wouldn’t admit it, Tristan, too. She counted them as friends. For them to do something like this—to go to these extremes—when they didn’t have to clearly showed her that bad deeds didn’t matter an iota to them. Getting their hands dirty was a job, one they had made into an art. Grisly, hard-to-look-at art.
“Edgar would do something like this, too,” Sebastian said, a strange mania making him smile. It was almost surreal, all of this. The grimness, the extremeness of the blood spatter, the flamboyance of violence. Yes, they’d made this scene into a piece of art. An emotional punch you couldn’t look away from, horrified and awed at the same time, terrified that the monsters that did this might be on your doorstep. It urged you to run. No one wanted to succumb to a death like that because that much blood meant they’d been alive to spill it. At first, anyway.
“Edgar would probably go a step further, actually,” he said. “He’d make it into a shrine.”
Her body shook as she chuckled silently and wiped a tear from her cheek. “Yeah, he would. People would think we were unhinged then, though, since the Ivy House crew are framing us again. They’re issuing a pretty clear warning on our behalf.”
“The mage world already thinks we’re unhinged.”
“No, they think we’re eccentric, powerful, and dangerous, not unhinged. We have very clear motives and very obvious and strategic plans. We systematically create violence, not randomly. We’re not hotheaded in our violence.” She studied the map. “I don’t know this location. Who do they assume is spying on us? And how?”
Sebastian moved so he could lean against the wall. “I don’t know, but Ivy House has eyes on us. They seem to have brought on a new crew member,” he said absently, before he shocked her with what that person could do. There would be no hiding now, not unless they completely disentangled themselves from the grid.
FOURTEEN
Niamh
“Those crafty devils.” Fred bent over her computer in glee, sitting beside Niamh on Niamh’s porch. The extra chair was getting a lot more action since Fred came to town.
A layer of frost covered the yard, the sun having not been up long enough to burn it all away. At the end of the street, mass preparations were underway at Ivy House. Shifters loaded luggage and supplies into vans. In an hour or so, they’d start loading people. The clock had finally run out for Austin Steele. Ready or not, it was time to start his campaign to win over the shifters.
For the first leg of their trip, they’d head across the country. Kingsley had set up a meeting with the group of people who’d originally tried to unify the shifters. None of them had had enough power and determination to make it happen. Austin would attempt to win them over, and then, with their support, systematically hit other prominent packs.
Niamh’s luggage was already over there. Fred’s, too, as the Jane had proven invaluable. Forget saying she wasn’t magical—she all but pulled a rabbit out of a hat with that computer of hers. Niamh had made Jessie give her a raise, and a bonus besides. Fred had found Sebastian and Nessa, after all, and Jessie had promised the moon to do that. Now they had eyes on the mages. When the time was right—or when they had some time at all, rather—they could show up at will and force those meddlers home.
“Who?” Niamh asked her as she toyed with a rock. Every once in a while, a shifter wasn’t paying attention, and she was able to startle him with a rock to the head.
“Your mages. They don’t have the know-how to keep me out of their lives. Do you know what they did? Those little cave dwellers went off-grid.” Fred shook her head, grinning. The woman loved a challenge, and Niamh had handed her a basketful of them. “Smart buggers, they are.”