“Sallie,” I said, assessing our immediate area for visible threats, “do you feel that?”
She hugged me awkwardly, the bones of her forearms bruising my lower ribs. “I do, and I don’t like it. It’s making me feel sick to my stomach.”
The magical signature echoed one I’d encountered the same day I met Tanner and began this whirlwind odyssey into the concealed world of magic and magical beings. Once again, the signal blinked in and out from the vicinity of the marina, a mere three blocks away. There, float planes, fishing boats, and yachts docked alongside one another. One of the more ostentatious yachts, the Merry Widow, belonged to my ex-mother-in-law.
Intellectually, I knew she was under house arrest at her estate in Victoria. Emotionally, my gut roiled at the thought of encountering Meribah Flechette anytime soon.
Sallie’s battered fingernails contracted and elongated, switching erratically between her chewed-at human version and the claws Fae trained themselves to use as weapons. I swept away the shoulder-length hair she kept deliberately shaggy. Her ears were turning, too.
“Get in the car,” I said, sliding one hand between her arms and my torso and keeping my voice steady. “Lock the doors and lie down. Now.”
Sallie had been schooled into round-the-clock obedience by the succession of collars her parents forced her to wear. Though now free of the magic-imbued restraints, she released her grip and reacted without question. The speed of her acquiescence pained me.
I pointed to a strip of bushes and trees dividing the public parking area from the section reserved for business employees. I could dig my toes into the soil and keep my niece in sight. “I’ll be right over there.”
Sallie’s face was streaked with splotches of red and white. She silently mouthed, Okay.
The sickening sensation heralding the Magical’s presence grew stronger. I ducked beside a scraggly maple tree and pressed my hand into the deep grooves of the bark. Scuffing away leaves and a crushed can, I slipped one foot out of its flip-flop. Toes in the soil, I kept glancing at my car as I attempted to pinpoint the oddly colored spot.
Hating that Sallie would be out of sight, but not knowing how else to do what I needed to do, I closed both eyes and settled all ten toes into the soil. A circuit board of familiar magical signatures spread and multiplied across the insides of my eyelids and through my brain. The surface of the blackish area swirled with a rainbow of colors, like a shallow puddle on an oil-slicked bit of road. Added now were a handful of whorls—five maybe, or six—tightly joined and moving together. My eyelids flew open. The group was approaching a building that backed onto the parking lot. The building belonged to the Flechette Realty and Property Development Group.
I wiped my toes on my pants, forced my dirtied feet into the flip-flops, and hurried to my car. I didn’t press the unlock button on my key fob until I made sure my niece saw me. “Sallie,” I said, tossing my bag behind me and whispering, which was entirely unnecessary, “sit up slowly. I’m going to move us out of here and drive around the front of the real estate company’s office.”
“If you mean my family’s business, just say it, Aunt Calli.”
I nodded. “Yes, that one.” I started the car, backed out of the slot, and stopped at the parking area’s exit to let a gaggle of teens make their way along the crosswalk. The queasy feeling in my belly intensified.
“Do you feel that?” Sallie asked.
“I do. What do you think it is?”
Sallie pressed her lips together, grabbed the headrests of the front seats, and hauled herself forward. “It’s not an it, it’s a who, and I know who it is.” She reached for the sunglasses I’d tossed on the dashboard. “Meribah and Adelaide share a lover and he’s here. Complete with his faithful entourage.”
Sallie flicked her thumb at the windshield and wiggled deeper into her seat.
The last pedestrian was safely on the sidewalk. I hit the blinker, signaling a right-hand turn, when two people stepped off the curb to my left. They were followed by a trio, then another couple. I watched, jaw agape at the precision with which the group maintained formation.
“Shut your mouth,” Sallie hissed. “You’re giving us away.” I clamped my lips together, adjusted the rearview mirror, and pretended there was nothing more fascinating than whatever was going on with the blemish on my chin.
The man in the middle of the group demanded attention. Slightly shorter than the six others clustered to his back, sides, and front, he was the only one not wearing a Bluetooth device. Disconnected from technology, he was acutely connected to the swirling magical signature I could now see even with my eyes wide open.
The seven disappeared around the corner. I inched into traffic and glanced to my right in time to see the couple bringing up the rear step into the Flechette building. The reflection on the glass doors hid the interior, but a honk from behind hurried me along.
“That was intense,” I said, bursting into a nervous giggle.
Sallie glared at me over the top of my sunglasses. “That was Odilon Vigne.”
Chapter 2
“Hey, Mom. Hey, Sallie.” My younger son, Thatcher, came barreling out the open screen door when we got home and enfolded his cousin in a hug. “Guess what?”
“You made dinner?” I asked. A mother could always hope.
“Close. I’m on kitchen cleanup tonight. Sallie’s on dinner prep. And dessert’s covered because—”
“Ta-da!” Leilani and Harper squeezed past Thatcher and tumbled down the porch stairs. Harper caught me up in a hug that forced me to exhale my breath. Lei-li brushed a kiss against my cheek and dodged the bumper of my car as her fathers, James and Malvyn Brodeur, drove through the wards and pulled onto the grass. “Daddy, Papa, we’re back!” she yelled.
Harper whispered, “Missed you, Mom.”
I didn’t care one whit that Harper’s tight embrace pulled at slightly raw skin at the base of my neck. “This is the best surprise,” I
