The End of Magic (The Witches of Echo Park #3)(11)
"LB!"
Lizbeth's head whipped around at the sound of the young girl's voice, her russet hair flying in her face. She dropped Tem's hand, pushing the hair out of her eyes.
"Ginny . . . ?" She couldn't keep the shock from her voice as she caught sight of her friend Dev's younger daughter, arms and legs all akimbo, as she ran toward them-and her heart lurched as she wondered if the girl was dead.
"No need to worry," Tem said, once again reading her mind. "A living human can be brought here by creatures like you and myself. Our magic is strong enough."
"Thank God," she said as Ginny flung herself at Lizbeth.
She caught the small body up in her arms and hugged her tight. Ginny squirmed in the embrace.
"Too tight," the little girl whispered-and Lizbeth released her, a sheepish smile on her face.
"What are you doing here, Ginny?" she asked, trying to seem calm and more adultlike than she felt.
"Not just me, LB. Marji, too." Ginny's long dark hair was loose around her shoulders, the wind catching bits of it as she spoke. The little girl unconsciously reached up and grabbed for a hank, sticking it in her mouth to suck on.
This was something Lizbeth hadn't seen Ginny do in a long time. At seven, she was far too old for such childish things. Lizbeth realized Ginny was nervous, maybe even scared. Not something she was used to seeing in Ginny. Marji, Dev's older child, was the more delicate one, always letting her little sister take on the role of fearless leader.
"Where?" Lizbeth asked, taking Ginny's hand. She threw Tem a worried look.
Had he known Devandra's daughters were here in the dreamlands?
"I knew Thomas was here," he said. "But not the girls."
He seemed apologetic and Lizbeth wondered why.
"C'mon, LB. It's creepy in the house! And it's really big inside, too," Ginny said, getting back some of her usual vim and vigor as she dragged Lizbeth behind her. Maybe now that Lizbeth was here, she felt safer.
But before they could reach the threshold of the entrance, Marji was rushing out the door of the cabin, tears streaking her face.
"They're all dead," she sobbed, and threw herself at Lizbeth.
Lizbeth caught the older girl and held her tight, feeling Marji's skinny shoulders shake with grief.
"Marji, what are you talking about? Who's dead?" But Lizbeth couldn't get a word out of the girl.
Instead, Ginny answered the question, looking up at Lizbeth with her solemn brown eyes.
"Oh, Marji means Mama and Gramma and the aunties."
And then Lizbeth understood.
Arrabelle
Arrabelle was impressed by the Shrieking Eagles-the banner under which Jessika and her blood sisters operated. Made up of women with military, law enforcement, and governmental agency backgrounds, the Eagles encompassed members of seven disparate covens that had banded together to offer their services to other blood sisters.
"We're mercenaries whose agenda is all blood sister, all the bloody time," Jessika had said as they'd stepped into the elevator that led down into the guts of the former research facility.
Arrabelle appreciated the specificity of their agenda. They were smart and fierce and worked with a military precision that was unreal. Until the moment they'd arrived, Arrabelle had been unaware of their existence, but it made sense. The blood sisters were a secret organization with many enemies. Of course the Greater Council would find itself employing a mercenary group like the Shrieking Eagles to protect its interests every now and then.
Upon first seeing the laboratory-the polished chrome-and-steel surfaces, the strange concrete block rooms with shatterproof observation windows cut into their exteriors at human eye level, the tech equipment, operating tables, surgical implements that resembled torture devices-Jessika had whistled through her teeth.
"Damn, this place looks like it came right out of one of those torture porn movies."
She pointed at the cages lining the walls of the lab, empty now, save for the few that held corpses-blood sisters who were already beyond help when Arrabelle and the others had found them. These cages Arrabelle and Evan had left alone, but they'd managed to free everyone else from captivity and lead them to an empty airplane hangar. Which was crazy, to have an airplane hangar underground? But Evan had found it after roaming the empty corridors, looking for a safe place to put the women until help arrived.
The fluorescent lighting above them was oppressive.
Like a headache in the making, she thought-and part of her wanted to demur, to go back topside and get as far away from this horrible place as she could. But Arrabelle was never one to run from her fears. In fact, she was quite the opposite, always running at full speed toward the things that scared her the most.