Praise for Blind Salvage(10)

I gave him a tight smile. The thing gave me the willies, but there was no way we could leave it behind.

Pamela’s fingers tightened on the handle of the short sword. “Are we going to have to fight a giant?”

“Hopefully not. They aren’t real bright and love to be destructive. They would make Blaz look neat and tidy.”

There was a twinge in the back of my head as Blaz, even as far away as he was, perked up as I said his name. I ignored him.

She swallowed hard. Liam shifted his shoulders, glanced at Pam, and then away into the forest. Yeah, he wasn’t real comfortable with the young witch yet, but we didn’t have time for worrying about who liked who the best at the moment.

Liam stared around us, touching the broken branches closest to him. “Why didn’t we feel the giant walking?”

Pamela answered for me. “I read that they move on the other side of the veil, that only when they move on this side of the veil can they be felt moving around, and then the humans think it’s just thunder.” She looked to me for confirmation. I nodded.

“She’s right. And they tend to be lazy, sleeping for days, sometimes weeks at a time. But when they wake up … .”

I stood and put both swords back into their sheaths. Liam frowned. “What about when they wake up?”

I gave him a tight smile. “Hungry. Like sharks on the prowl, they’ll eat anything, friend or foe, alive, dead, rotting. Whatever. If it’s even remotely edible, they’ll scoop it up and eat it. Then they crash again.”

“Well, that’s just fantastic,” he grumbled. “Should we be expecting more than one?”

Pamela shook her head. “There are less than six giants left in the world. Only one resides here in Great Britain, and from what I read, he spends most of his times in the wilds. It would be quite unusual for him to come this far south, actually.”

“How do you know all this?” Liam glanced down at the young witch, making eye contact with her for a split second. That was an improvement for him.

She gave him a tentative smile. “I like to read, and once Jack’s library was opened up for us, I read everything I could about our world.”

Smart girl.

We left the empty bag behind and started out again along the path. The depressions we had noticed before were clearly visible for what they were now—giant footsteps.

“Rylee, do you think the giant is here for us?” Pamela’s eyes flicked up to mine, then back to the ground at her feet.

I couldn’t lie to her. “Probably. Though how the hell anyone knew we were coming this route, I don’t know.”

I had made sure that only Deanna and Will understood why we were choosing to use the castle as our means of travel. It hadn’t been our first choice. Liam, Pamela, and I had gone to an airport and boarded; Alex was put underneath in the cargo hold. We’d sat in the plane for three hours before everyone was forced to disembark.

Apparently, the engines wouldn’t start, and the humans couldn’t figure out why—as soon as all the passengers were off, the engines miraculously revved to life. Supernaturals causing grief again and the humans were none the wiser. Though it had been a pain in the ass for us.

I’d suggested going to Agent Valley, to use his specially rigged jet that blocked whatever vibrations supernaturals gave off, but Liam had wanted to avoid his old boss. He wouldn’t say why, even when I pressed him. My suspicions were that he didn’t want to get roped into working for the AA division. Which, with Agent Valley showing up when he did, was exactly what would have been required of us in exchange for using the FBI’s plane.

That had left only one option.

In order to get us all home together, this was the only route we had left to us. Even if I knew how to jump the veil like that asshole, Faris, Liam couldn’t cross the veil like that. It had to be a physical crossing, like the way he’d come with Milly. A pain in the ass, but it was what we had to deal with unless we wanted to take a boat across the Atlantic in the dead of winter. Not something I was interested in, thank you very much.

The path wound through the forest, and as we walked, a light drizzle started. Alex grumbled up ahead about the ‘fucking wet’, Liam chuckled softly, and even Pamela laughed.

Me, not so much. All I could think about was why the hell this giant showed up here. Now.

Right in our way. And how the hell we were going to get by it?

I had a sudden, terrible feeling that someone didn’t want us going home. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it would be Will popping out to stop us from leaving. Not this time.





The castle stood on an outcropping of rock that overlooked the channel, but calling it a castle was a bit of stretch. A pile of crumbled rocks, which maybe at some point had been a castle, were strewn about for at least a quarter mile. Maybe a thousand years ago it had been a fortress, a stronghold on the edge of the island. But not anymore.