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Stick together, said Charles. Malcolm, your job is to keep our FBI agents safe.
Leslie drew in a breath, but Goldstein held up a hand.You and I cant see in the dark if our flashlights give out. Theres a moon out right now, but given the clouds in the sky, that could change. We are slower and more vulnerable than they are and if this is the killing ground, then someone might be here to guard their latest victim.
Leslie pulled out her gun, checked to make sure it was loaded, and then put it back in her shoulder holster.
If you can manage without flashlights, Charles told them, it will help the rest of us keep our night vision. But dont risk a broken ankle. I dont know how well you can see we wolves can see just fine in the dark; most witches have a trick or two He glanced at Beauclaire.
The fae nodded.I can see fine.
So its up to you. If you use the flashlights, please try not to shine them in our eyes.
I have a question, said Leslie. If you can see in the dark, why did Malcolm say he needed lights to find the island?
Because Im not taking a boat that has parts not working into waters that arent safe, Malcolm said. There are some pretty nasty places around here if you dont know where you are, and her spell killed all of my instrumentation lights GPS, depth finders, the whole kit and caboodle.
The witch smiled at them all.Are you still talking?
Isaac touched her shoulder.Lead the way, Hally.
The fae followed Isaac and his witch, her pale skin standing out in the darkness like a candle in the night. The FBI agents followed the witch with Malcolm trailing them. That left Charles and A
Castle Island had been parklike with carefully planted trees and bushes. Gallops was more like a jungle. Not quite as dense as the temperate rainforest near Seattle, but the undergrowth could have used a machete or two to clear it out. Perforce they followed paths that had once been sidewalks or narrow roads before nature had started to reclaim them. Mostly they walked uphill from what hed seen on the water, the whole island was mostly one long, narrow hill. It wasnt very big, less than forty acres, he thought. It wouldnt take them long to find the place where Jacob had been killed, as long as the witch was telling the truth that she could feel it.
A
The whole thing stank of black magic. If hed been trying to find the center on his own, hed have had to crisscross the whole island and hope hed stumble into it.
As much as he hated to admit it, the witch had been right. Only amateurs would leave this much power residue behind. After they were done here, hed have to talk to his father about how to clean it up. This much tainted power was more troublesome than asbestos people would get sick here and die from colds. They would scratch themselves on a thornbush and die from the resultant infection. They would kill themselves from a despair they would never otherwise have felt.
This much residue would also attract dark things and in the ocean there were some very bad things who might decide to come ashore for the kind of invitation the island was sending out. And the worst part was that there were more places like this, everywhere the killers had struck over the years.
Sally Reilly, Caitlin the witch had said when she identified the marks the killers left on their victims. It made sense. He hadnt ever met Sally, but his father had made a point of attending one of her demonstrations and had come back shaking his head and sent Charles out to do research. Back then it had been more foot and phone work than computer work. After talking to her father (her mother was dead), some old friends, and a couple of witches, hed returned to Bran with a report.
Sally wasnt a hack or an amateur, but rather a skilled witch. Shed broken with her family and decided to turn the heat up maybe cause another witch hunt. A hunt that she intended to protect herself from by money she gained while she was busy convincing the television-watching public that witches were real.
Hed told Bran that they needed to stop her and then shed quit trying to publicize witches. Instead, shed started charging rich people large fortunes for her work. Shed disappeared altogether sometime in the early 1990s, but hed always supposed that she had retired, until Caitlin the witch had been so utterly convinced that Sally Reilly was dead.
It would have been just like Sally to do something like agree to work up a spell that would leave a residue like this, one with incorrect symbols, maybe while she charged them through the nose for it, thinking them fools who intended to kill chickens or goats.
Hadthey killed her? The timing was right. And if hed paid a witch for a spell to let him feed from people he killed, hed have felt the need to get rid of her, since she was a witness he wouldnt have wanted. And a serial killer didnt stay free and killing for this many years without being smart enough to take care of witnesses.
Charles let his hand linger on A
Brother Wolf wanted her off this island and somewhere far away from killers who hunted werewolves and left no scent behind for them to discover. But Charles knew better. To try to encase his A
Then why are you hiding your ghosts from her? Brother Wolf said.
Because I am afraid, Charles answered his brother, as he would have answered no one else. He had lived a very long time, and only since he gained A
Beauclaire had addressed that. Charles couldnt remember the faes exact words, but he felt them. People as old and powerful as he should never be given someone to love.
For A
A
She could smell the wrongness in the air and it made her wolf nervous. It felt like something was watching them, as if the wrongness had an intelligence and it didnt help to remember that at least one of the people they were hunting could hide from their senses.
A
Maybe he was just tired of her. She had been telling everyone that there was something wrong with him
but Bran knew his son and thought the problem was her. Bran was smart and perceptive; she ought to have considered that he was right.
Charles was old. Hed seen and experienced so much next to him she was just a child. His wolf had chosen her without consulting Charles at all. Maybe hed have preferred someone who knew more. Someone beautiful and clever who