Derrick’s next question was hushed, soft and low, concern threading through it. “Where’s your mother now?”
Martine fought the scoff. “Still living in Queens and married to my father.”
“You said you had no family.”
“Yep, and I’d say it again. Would you want to claim a man like that as part of your family?”
“Understood. So you know nothing about the lifestyle of a familiar. I don’t get how this connects you to where you are now.”
“I was kidnapped by a warlock.” God. Even with his crazy curse she’d roll her eyes at that explanation.
Derrick cupped her chin, forcing her gaze to his. “When?”
“Six months ago…”
“How?”
“I don’t know exactly how he found out about me. Don’t think I didn’t curse my stupidity for not learning the ways of a familiar, after that. Anyway, he grabbed me at a nightclub I was in, trashed the place, put a spell on me to keep me in shift, and kept me prisoner until someone came along and stuffed me in that Dumpster.”
Derrick’s face went as hard as his eyes. “Kept you prisoner?”
“Ironic, right? Me, the familiar who’s supposed to teach a witch their craft, doesn’t know thing one about witchcraft. It’s laughable. So, yes. Escobar, that’s his name, kept me prisoner in his apartment in a sort of jacked-up version of an enclosed catio, and kept me quiet with a silencing spell right up until you found me. Because I know nothing about magic, which is surely a testament to how stubborn I can be, I was helpless to stop him from keeping me there.”
“Why did he kidnap you? If you can’t help him with his craft, what good are you to him?”
“Ready for more crazy?”
Derrick’s grin was ironic and dimpled and delicious. “I’m the one cursed to die on the full moon if I don’t mate, Pussycat. Don’t go talkin’ crazy to me.”
The tight ball in her chest eased a bit when she laughed. “He sends me off to another realm.”
“To do what?”
“Steal other witches’ magic.”
“For?”
“World domination?”
“Try serious.”
“I am serious. Or rather, it wouldn’t surprise me if that were his goal. The more magic a warlock collects, the greater his chances of becoming immortal. That’s the end game. Immortality. What he wants to do with immortality is anyone’s guess. Why he chose me out of all the familiars in the world…I don’t know the answer to that question either.”
Derrick’s thick brows connected. “And how do you steal it—the magic, I mean?”
Her laugh was derisive and bitter. “Ready for more irony? I have no clue. When he ships me off to the ether, it’s all very vague and floaty, sort of dreamlike, you know? Flashes of colors and sounds, but no definition to them. When I wake up, I’m always back in Escobar’s condo, bloated, like I’m on the verge of giving birth. He waves his magic wand—”
“He has a magic wand?”
“Are you ten?”
Now his grin was sheepish. “Look, ten or two hundred and ten, a magic wand’s a magic wand.”
She couldn’t help but giggle at the boyish look of interest on his beautiful face. “He doesn’t really have a magic wand. He says some words and suddenly, the magic’s gone.”
“So it’s like you swallow the magic? Can I just say how crazy that sounds?”
Martine let her eyes fall to the couch. “Tell me about it. I don’t know why the magic goes where it goes. I just know that’s where it goes.”
“And he’s been sending you off to do his dirty work for six months?”
God, that sounded weak and pathetic. That she’d allowed someone to take advantage of her abilities for six months because she had no clue how to get herself out of the mess she was in was a sad testament to what her life had become.
“Yes, and the worst of it, or what keeps me up at night sometimes, is I don’t know if anyone’s been hurt by what I’ve been doing—because I don’t know what I’ve been doing.” It made her stomach turn at the very thought, to have fought so hard to keep from participating in a world she wanted nothing to do with, only to become a slave to it.
“Okay, so we think Escobar’s who grabbed you tonight?”
Martine bit her nail and shook her head. “I don’t think it was Escobar. But who else would want to kidnap me? I do know from some of the conversations he’s had in my presence he has plenty of people who follow him around as if he has the answer to the meaning of life, so maybe it was someone who owes him something. But I know whoever it was, Escobar has a hand in this.”