"What do you remember of your parents?"
"Not much," I swallowed a sob and closed my eyes against the pain that always came with talking about them. "Is this another test? Why can't you just leave them out of this?"
"There are no baby pictures of you, Synthia."
"Maybe I was an ugly baby?" I said grinning.
"Or maybe you were not theirs."
I wanted to scream at him. They were my parents, they were all I remembered. I hated that he was making sense. And that I had never questioned it before. "Why would the Guild lie? It's not like I'm the most powerful Witch in the Washington Guild, it's not like they are trying to hide that I am a card carrying member either Ryder. So what would it matter if I was adopted?"
"I'm on a need to know basis and you are the only witness to the murders of your parents."
I nodded but knew I was about to shoot holes through his theory. "The Fairy was killed by at least one woman and there were no woman at the deaths of my parents Ryder. Nor were bombs placed inside of them. It's not the same killers."
"You blame yourself for their deaths, why?"
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. "Because I could have prevented it, I could have protected them."
"You were five, what the hell could you have done to stop Fae from killing them?" He snarled.
"I'm a shield Ryder. I could use the ability when I was five. I was the only reason they couldn’t cast, because they chose not to tap the line because of me. My parents were powerful, but they needed the lines to cast and doing so could have hurt me, so technically they died protecting me."
I wasn’t sure why I had told him, or why I was indulging him with any information for that matter. I felt as if I wanted to, which wasn’t like me at all. I didn’t discuss my life with anyone, not even my friends who knew it already.
"That's what parents are supposed to do."
I glared at him, "Why the hell am I telling you this?"
"It's the binding of the contract," he said smoothly with a smile twisting his lips. "The contract makes you feel comfortable around me. Basically I can ask you pretty much anything and you'd feel the need to talk about it." He smiled wickedly.
I felt the anger boiling up. "That’s shit, how do I get out of the contract?" I asked with a hint of anger making my voice shaky.
"You make me trust you enough that I no longer need it to control you," he said before turning those amber eyes back on me with his smile still in place.
"So basically if I do everything you want, I can get out of it?" I asked hoping it was that easy, but he was Fae and nothing would be that easy with him.
"You can openly become my property," his smile turned wolfishly handsome.
"Can you hold your breath while I think about it?" I smiled back showing him my own pearly whites. "You don’t even like me, so I'm not even sure why you would offer that."
He was about to say something else when his phone went off. He reached into his pocket and answered it, his eyes narrowing which I noticed he did a lot around me.
I watched him swipe his finger over the screen and hold the phone up to his ear. "Z, you sure? And you confirmed it was another Witch yourself?" He listened and then continued giving me a sideways look. "Sounds good, stop by the warehouse and get the gear," he paused listening again, "Yes, full armor this time. No, keep the reporters out of this. No, it's out in the middle of nowhere, should be easy to secure," more silence ensued, "Yes. Okay good, we're in route now."
He hung up his phone and turned to meet my eyes. "I hope you're ready for this, not the same when it is one of your own."
Great, the bodies were piling up faster than we could stop them from happening. At this rate we would have an entire army of dead women. "Oh shit, necromancers?"
"Necromancers what?" He asked narrowing those brooding eyes again.
"What if they're building a Frankenstein? Part Fae, part Witch? Think about it, they can reanimate the dead, but what if they built the dead?"
"Why would they? What purpose would it serve?"
I winced, it didn’t make sense. They could kill them and raise them for their powers. Something was off though. Someone was collecting pieces of the dead. Like a puzzle that needed put back together. I tilted my head considering what we knew and then exhaled slowly.
"None of this makes sense, the Guild needs to recall everyone and go on lock down until we can catch whoever is killing the weak links."
"You think it's that easy? We can’t just recall the Fae. We have thousands living outside of Faery."
"You might have to," I argued, "I can't find a pattern and neither can you. Which means Washington is a hunting ground for a serial killer who likes to cut people up and play with their insides before planting bombs that ruin the evidence. Feel free to chime in if you have a better idea, but until we can find a pattern, it means anyone left outside the walls of protection is fair game to this sick freak.
Fifteen