“I’ll call you when I know something.” Owen hurried after Reggie and Pru.
The townsfolk, who had parted like the Red Sea at the sight of the dog and the wolf, flowed back together like the ocean. Owen had to take to the street to keep up. At least everyone was keeping their distance and not following them.
A flash of metal to his right drew Owen’s gaze as a man stepped out of the hardware store with a rifle. He sighted on Pru. Owen snatched it out of the guy’s hands.
“Hey!” The fellow—someone Owen didn’t know—tried to snatch it back. “There’s something wrong with that wolf.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Owen said.
“The wolf or my gun?”
“Yes.”
Picking up speed, Pru left Carstairs Avenue. She wasn’t a fool. Best to get where they needed to go before someone else appeared with a firearm.
Like Chief Deb. Where had she gotten to? Owen hadn’t seen her since the incident on Route GG.
Ahead lay the coffee shop/motel. The wolf trotted right up to the same room Owen had been in that morning, bopped her head against it—once, twice. When it opened she went in.
Reggie glanced back, saw that Owen was close, and went in too.
*
For probably the fiftieth time since I’d bought my Bronco I was so glad that I had. What had once been a shitty, gravel road leading to Revelation Point was now a shitty, rock-strewn, overgrown dirt path leading to the same. Apparently kids no longer came here to smooch. Had to wonder why.
It wasn’t until I shot out of the trees and put the vehicle into park that it occurred to me to call someone and tell them where I was. By then it was too late. My phone read no service. Maybe I could borrow Jeremy’s. Different carriers covered different areas, and his might work.
As if the thought had conjured him, his Jaguar emerged from the forest and stopped behind mine. He had to have scratched the undercarriage badly on that trail. Weeds clogged the wheel wells and pine needles stuck in pine tar all over the hood. He must have something pretty damn important to show me.
I wondered for an instant why he didn’t pull his car next to mine instead of behind it, but then he got out, all smiles, and I forgot.
Jeremy wore perfectly pressed charcoal-gray trousers and a red Polo shirt. I had an instant to think that he should have brought a coat—it was chilly enough up here on the ridge above the lake that I was thankful for my own—before he enveloped me in a hug. “Thanks for coming.”
“No problem.” My hands slid down his arms.
Electricity flared. Sparks flew, reminding me of the last time I’d touched his arm, in the parking lot after someone had tried to smother me.
My gaze fell to his forearms, both scratched badly—one worse than the other, but healing even as I watched. The really strange thing—and that was saying something—was that the scrapes matched my fingers. As if I had raked my hands down his arms and— I had raked my hands down his arms. Then I’d touched one arm and it had healed just enough to make it seem like he hadn’t tried to kill me. But he had.
Jeremy caught my wrists as I drew back, capturing me, holding on tight.
“It was you,” I said. “In my apartment, with the pillow. The ring. The ski mask.”
He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. Owen had been right.
I yanked free. “Why?”
“Witches must die.”
“But … you’re a witch.”
“I only pretended to be one to discover their identities.”
“Being a witch is that big of a secret?” I asked.
I had to figure out what to do. Behind me lay a cliff, the drop straight to the rocky shores of Lake Superior. Jeremy stood between me and my car. The forest was an option, but I’d have to disable him first. He was fast. Much faster than me.
“The identities of the elemental witches, the ones with true power and real magic, like you, are a secret. It’s those witches we need to kill. They’re dangerous.”
He was dangerous. But I didn’t mention it.
“You mean to tell me no witches but elementals have been harmed?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I’m sure a few pretenders have died along the way.”
His casual dismissal of lives chilled me.
“What makes you hate them”—hate us?—“so much?”
“I don’t hate you, Becca.” He shook his head, his expression that of a professor admonishing a dumbass student. He’d no doubt used it a hundred and one times before. “But I do need to kill you.”
I could tell he believed it, was, in fact, looking forward to it. How had I missed the crazy before? Or had he become crazy only recently?
“Roland speaks to me. In my dreams, my mind.”
Recently then. He couldn’t have hidden that for very long.
I needed to keep him talking, maybe talk him out of this. I had a pretty good idea how.
“If you’ve been chatting with McHugh, you know he wants to kill me and my sister.”
“Sisters,” he corrected.
He had been talking to McHugh, or reading Venatores Mali propaganda.