At my feet, the demon’s body began to disappear back to the underworld. With any luck, he’d be gone before anyone realized I’d killed him.
I took my prize back to the shelter of some of the wine barrels and poked at the screen, swiping with my thumb. After a few seconds of fiddling, the thing turned on. It took longer to pull up the maps application since I was so unfamiliar, but eventually I got a latitude and longitude.
“Bree? Rowan? I’ve got something.” I rattled off the coordinates.
“Good. We should be there soon,” Rowan said.
“There’s a huge wall. Call me when you arrive. I can meet you, and hopefully I’ll have found a good way in.”
“Will do. Stay safe.”
I cut the connection, then powered down the phone and stuck it between two loose stones in the ancient wall. I almost considered taking it, but the demon’s master could have tracked it. And I didn’t want a dead demon’s phone anyway.
“Come on, guys. Let’s go find Lachlan’s friend Decker and retrieve the spell.” I set off, not sure if the cats were following me. They’d show up if I really needed them, I was starting to believe.
I’d covered almost the entire enormous wine cellar when a voice sounded from about twenty feet away, back in the far corner.
“Hey, lady, who are you?”
I squinted into the dim light, catching sight of an arm sticking out of a cell door. I hurried forward, spotting a skinny young man with big dark eyes. A swash of dark hair flopped over his forehead in a trendy style, and his band T-shirt was dirty and ragged. He looked hungry and tired, and bruises speckled his jaw.
His eyes widened when he saw me. “Ana?”
“Connor? What are you doing here?” I hadn’t seen him in a month. We didn’t know each other well, but we had mutual friends in Cass, Del, and Nix, the FireSouls who’d been too busy to help Lachlan because of an emergency.
Holy crap, this had to be the emergency.
“Well, you know. Just being a prisoner. The usual.” His English accent was strong despite the fact that he’d lived in Magic’s Bend, Oregon for about a decade. “It’s not as fun as making lattes and potions, but it’ll do.”
I looked around for the cats and spotted them nearby, trying to pry a silver medallion off a large wine barrel. “Guys, you gotta get my friend out of here.”
The cats ran over and got to work with their unlocking routine, and I looked back at Connor. He worked at Potions & Pastilles in Magic’s Bend, the coffee shop he and his sister owned. On the side, he made potions. “You’re friends with Lachlan, right? Abducted while helping him?”
“I am.”
“But why did he call you Decker?”
“That’s my last name.”
“So I didn’t know I was looking for you this whole time because of some cool-guy thing, like going by your last name?” I’d thought I was rescuing a stranger, when in reality I was rescuing my friend. I’d never known Connor’s full name. Apparently, I should have asked.
Now I really had to get us out of here alive.
He grinned. “Basically.”
“Ugh. Dudes.”
Muffin wiggled his tail in the lock, and it popped open. Connor stepped out. “Can you get a message to my sister and the FireSouls? I bet they’re worried sick. I don’t know why they haven’t found me yet.”
“This place is blocked with powerful magic. Tracking charms don’t work, so I’m sure that the FireSouls’ tracking power is blocked too. It took the whole Protectorate to find this place.” I touched the comms charm at my neck. “Bree? Can you get a message to the FireSouls that Connor is here with me?”
“Wait, what? Connor?” Shock sounded in her voice.
“Apparently, he’s Decker. That’s his last name.”
“Well, crap. Yeah, I’ll tell them. They’ll be good fire power.”
“Thanks. See you soon. We’re off to look for the spell.”
Bree and Rowan both spoke at the same time. “Be careful.”
I cut the comms charm, and Connor grinned at me. “You’ve got backup coming?”
“Soon. In the meantime, we need to find the ancientus spell that was stolen and also whatever magic is suppressing the power of the Protectorate members who are hunting it.”
“I can help you with the second part,” he said. “I heard the guards talking about a huge dampening spell that the Creeper is running. It’s separate from the ancientus spell, but I think we can take it out.”
“The Creeper?”
“I don’t think that’s his real name. But I’ve heard mention of a lair down by the lake.”
“Great, let’s go before any guards show up.”
We set off through the cellar, looking for the door.
“How’d you end up here if the ancientus spell only just arrived?” I asked. “Weren’t you captured while transporting it?”
“Yeah. But the spell had to go to a sorcerer to be decrypted.”
“Decrypted?”
“Of course. Did you think that Lachlan was sloppy enough to let such a dangerous spell out into the wild?”
“Um, maybe?”
“Well, he’s not. He put a powerful encryption on it so that only the intended recipient could use it. There’s just a few sorcerers in the world powerful enough to break an encryption like that.”
“And I suppose the evil mastermind who built this place knows a guy like that?”
“Or can hire one. I don’t know the details—this is really just all assumption and bits and pieces I picked up.”
“It makes sense, though.” I stopped in front of the door that I was pretty sure was the exit. Everything had looked different when I’d been hanging upside down over the shoulder of a demon. “Do you know where the lake is?”
He shook his head. “I’ve only heard them talk about it.”
“No problem. We’ll find it.” If we could manage it before my friends arrived, they’d have their magic back in time to help us retrieve the ancientus spell.
Slowly, I pushed open the door and peeked outside. The moon hung high overhead, and fortunately it was just a sliver. There was only one guard patrolling—a demon, from the looks of those horns. He was about fifty yards away, pacing near the great wall that surrounded the manor. Almost out of range.
Almost.
I drew a dagger from the ether and got him in my sight, then threw. The blade flipped end over end, glinting in the pale moonlight, before it sank into his back.
He stumbled forward and fell flat on his face, then lay still.
“Blimey, you’re good at that.”
“Thanks.” I continued to scout the grounds, but no one else came. I didn’t see a lake, either.
Hopeful, I tried calling on my magic. It sputtered weakly inside me, still clearly influenced by the spell that was affecting everyone at the Protectorate.
Come on!
Whatever light Arach had seen inside me needed to get to work. I had to find this lake, and my new power could come in real handy for that. I gave it my all, focusing every bit of energy I had on my magic.
Briefly, it flared to life, but it didn’t tell me anything. I was hoping it would turn out to be like the FireSoul power, where they could ask it to help them find stuff and it would.
That didn’t seem to be the case.
“Since it’s not back here, let’s try the other side of the house.”
“Let’s go, then.”
We left the cellar and crept along the side of the building. It was quieter over here since we were down by the working part of the winery and it was night time. There was no gate to get out of the walls, though, so we had to go around the side.
The Cats of Catastrophe had disappeared somewhere, but maybe it was better that way. I wasn’t sure that one or more of them wasn’t a bit drunk off the wine. I drew another dagger as we snuck toward the corner of the house.
The night was silent, just a ripple of breeze, but it made the hair on my arms stand up. There had to be a lot of guards at a place like this.
No sooner had I thought it than one of them stepped out from behind the corner of the house. My heart jumped in my throat. He turned, eyes widening. We were so close that I could see his pupils and smell the rank scent of his dark magic.