going to happen, she noted the change in her mirror self’s eyes.
The green filled with shadows, darkened and then fired with sparks. Then her vision blurred, became indistinct while at the same moment, she felt raw strength pulsing inside her. Power. Magic. It was there, within her. She drew on it, giving herself up to it, surrendering to whatever might come next.
In her reflected eyes, she saw… something. A woman. Looking into a mirror, as she herself was. Shea watched, swaying under the onslaught of the vision, as the strange woman murmured a chant. And in the glass the woman held, figures appeared. An image of Shea, under attack by a crowd of people and Torin, fighting for his life. For their lives.
And the woman surrounded by darkness laughed.
Shea jolted back from the mirror, breaking the link and shivering as the sound of that evil laughter continued to spill out all around her.
“I know I hit her,” Landry said. He stood at attention in front of his superior’s desk. There was always a followup interview after a hit. The MPs, like the feds, had to keep their paperwork straight. “I shot, she fell, the man dropped on top of her.”
His boss wasn’t happy about the situation, seeing as the Do Not Kill order had gone out and Landry was claiming he hadn’t heard it.
“You were told not to kill her.”
Landry shrugged. “Reception was bad. Missed that part of the call.”
“Sure you did.”
Orders or not, Landry told himself, no one cared about a dead witch, not really. Well, except maybe for whatever big shot had put out the order in the first place. But for those of them in the trenches, a dead witch was a safe witch.
“Never mind,” the other man said with a resigned sigh. “Did you see bodies?”
“No,” Landry admitted, remembering the thick mist that had swept into the area, hiding his targets from him, obliterating the scene. “A fog came up suddenly and hid them. Hell, it hid my car, too. Took me a half hour to find it.”
His superior sat forward in his desk chair, picked up a pen and tapped it against a neatly stacked sheaf of papers. “We sent a team out a few hours later. They found the car was on the side of the road, but the witch and the man were both gone. We found blood, yes, but no bodies.”
Landry gritted his teeth. She’d escaped. Gotten away once more. But he knew where his bullet had hit her. She couldn’t have gone far. Not even magically. “Let me track them.”
His boss sighed. “By now, they’ve realized that she was bugged and they’ve gotten rid of it. You have no way of knowing where she went.”
Leaning both hands on the desktop, Landry stared into the other man’s eyes. “I don’t need GPS. I can find her. And when I do-”
“Forget it,” the man said with a shake of his head. “We’ve got plenty of witches around here to worry about. BOW’s taking this over. We’re out.”
“Out? I’m the one who caught her in the first place!”
“And according to the feds, we’re the ones who let her escape.”
“It’s the MPs’ fault that the internment camp is loaded with incompetent morons?”
“Forget it, Harper. As far as our organization is concerned, it’s over.” He gathered up the papers and began to flip through them. Pulling one free, he handed it over. “I’ve got a new assignment for you. This witch is hiding out in Sunset Beach. Got a tip. So forget about the one that got away and go retrieve this one.”
Landry stared at the legal notice giving him the right to apprehend and thought about not taking it. He knew he could find that witch and her man. BOW didn’t have the right to tell him to back off. His insides jumped with adrenaline and restrained fury as he fought with himself over just how to handle this.
He wanted that damn witch.
But as the seconds ticked past, he had to admit that he also wanted to keep his job. It was important to him. To be on the front lines, protecting humanity from this plague of witchcraft. So, if he had to back off of one witch… he’d simply ramp up his efforts on the others. And maybe, one day, he’d get another shot at Shea Jameson.
Snatching the paperwork from his boss’s hands, he glanced at the witch’s name and address and nodded. “I’ll have her to Terminal Island by this evening.”
“Good. Dismissed.”
As he left, Landry told himself he was a lucky man to be able to do the work he loved.
Chapter 30
“Did you recognize the woman in the vision?” Torin asked.
“No,” Shea told him. “I wouldn’t know her if I saw her out on the street, either. She was pretty much just a shadow in the dark. But she was looking into a glass and seeing us.”
“Scrying,” Torin said. “It’s a way witches have of seeing the future, the past-” He broke off and looked at her. “Somehow you managed to do some scrying of your own. Your magic’s coming back fast. Still, you should have waited for me to return before trying a spell on your own.”
“Please. It wasn’t a spell,” Shea said. “I was just trying to see. And I can’t always wait for you, Torin. I have to find answers for myself.”
“We are together in this, Shea,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, we are.” She laid one hand on his arm and looked up into his gray eyes. “But the truth is, I’m the witch with the evil past and I have to do what I can, when I can, to get to the bottom of this. So while we eat, why don’t you explain what it is we’re supposed to be looking for?”
He frowned as if he didn’t like what she’d said, but he had to admit she was right.
“Black silver,” Torin said, “is the element created by the coven centuries ago. Formed with breath and fire and blood a thousand years before the birth of the one called Christ.”
Shea had had no idea that the black silver was so ancient. “Before the birth of Christ?”
He smiled at the stunned expression on her face. “Long before, when the earth was young and magic was widely sought. The coven was powerful even then and they sought more knowledge and hoped that through the creation of the black silver they could add to the wonders of the world.”
“But…” Shea prompted. “There has to be a but, because the memories I’ve seen aren’t of shiny, happy bunnies. They’re of death and darkness and terror. So what the hell happened?”
Torin frowned at her as he considered her question. His pale eyes locked on hers. “Are you ready for the whole truth?”
“Doesn’t seem to matter if I am or not,” she countered, frowning as her memories darted away again. “You said yourself we have one month. We really can’t risk waiting.”
“True,” he agreed, handing her one of the sandwiches he’d slipped out to get a while ago. Setting his own meal down on the table, he leaned toward her, looking into her eyes.
Since leaving the safe house on the mountain outside Palm Springs, they’d talked about anything and everything. Torin had been giving her lessons in magic but even as she felt her powers growing, Shea knew she still had much to learn.
They had finally stopped for the night at a tiny motel in Flagstaff, Arizona. There was an American Indian feel to the place. Kitschy, she decided, rather than tacky. There were old paintings on the wall, tepee-shaped lampshades and an unusable kiva-shaped fireplace. The beds were lumpy, but the sheets were clean and they hadn’t wanted to risk staying at a more well-known hotel. This one was tucked away in the trees, hopefully far enough off the beaten track that no one would notice an escaped witch and her Eternal.
She unwrapped her sandwich, took a bite and chewed, despite the fact that at the moment the sub tasted like sawdust.
“Tell me,” she prompted.
“Silver is an earth element,” he said quietly and even the room seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the
