I shook my head, disbelief flowing through me. Milly had kept her word, had fought Orion from his side of the veil. It had cost her life … emotions welled up in my heart and I struggled to put them away. Worse was when Erik slid his arm over my shoulder and tugged me close.
“Grieve her, she was your family.”
A sob escaped me, but I forced the next one back. “Let me go.”
“It’s good to let it out.” He half shook me.
“I said let me the fuck go!” I jerked away from him, taking solace in the anger that coursed through my veins. Erik didn’t seem surprised, nor upset. He just gave me a sad smile and shook his head. “One day you will have to learn to allow yourself to grieve, to feel.”
“Well, it isn’t going to be today,” I snapped. I reached into the hay and pulled out the violet skinned book. The cover was slightly pebbled, not smooth like I knew Sas’s skin was. Maybe it was an older ogre that had lost its hide to cover this book. I shuddered and flipped it open, going for a random search.
My eyes skimmed along, not really catching on anything at first. I flicked the page and in the middle of the paper was a picture that made me hold my breath.
Three figures were depicted in the center, a little girl, and two young boys who were older, but not adult. Under the girl was “Spirit Seeker.” Under one of the boys was “Witch,” and under the third boy was “Human.” That wasn’t the worst of it.
“When the three shall be bound to demons, the four horsemen shall be ready to come forth and seek the Tracker’s heart. Stop the possession and the end days shall be displaced for a time.”
Erik leaned over me and looked at the picture. “Those the three kids who are missing?”
“Motherfuckers,” I whispered as I nodded. They could have taken any human, but whoever had done this at Orion’s bidding had chosen to take those who were closest to me, those they knew I would go after.
“Doesn’t make sense. Why would they take kids I knew, if they read this?”
Erik took the book from me and looked at the page. “I don’t follow.”
“Why not take random kids, like Simon, that I would probably never know they took? This is more like bait than trying to make something happen.”
He frowned and stared harder at the page. “They weren’t expecting you to know this would happen. Didn’t you want this Kyle kid,” he tapped the picture in the book, “to come to you? To help with keeping an eye on things? Would you trust the spirit seeker if she came to your front door? And if a young male witch came to you for help, would you give it?”
He had a point. I wanted to scrub my hands over my face, but I didn’t want to deal with the reminder my hands were not yet up to snuff. “Yeah. Either of them I would trust and help without thinking. Both of them could have gotten close to me with ease. This is just another type of trap. Fuck, I hate Orion.”
Erik grunted. “He’s a demon and will do everything he can to fool you.”
There was no choice but to go after the three kids, even if they were bait for a trap. I Tracked India, feeling her threads steady and even in my head. I Tracked Kyle and, though he was terrified, he was physically okay. The other kid, Simon, was curious, but not hurt and not even that fearful. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It always worried me when a salvage was curious, but not afraid. Spoke of possibilities I didn’t like to imagine. Like a child being convinced they were better off with their perps.
“What would it take to make for possession of three kids at the same time? How many witches?” I took the violet book back from Erik and flipped it open to the front. Since it had taken a full coven to try and possess India that first time, I had a feeling I already knew the answer to the question, but I had to ask, to be sure I wasn’t jumping to conclusions.
“Three covens.”
I nodded as my oversensitive fingers touched the pages, the words flowing under them.
Why, oh why did I have to be right about that? A small part of me hoped it would only be one coven. One coven would be far slower in having the demons possess the kids. Which, in turn, would have given us more time to get to them.
I Tracked witches as a whole, hoping we were wrong and it really was only one coven. Nope, there they were, lighting up inside my head like a pinball machine gone wild. A massive cluster of witches wound their way around the three threads of the three kids I still held.
But for the first time, something new kicked in with my ability to Track.
More than just the general direction the kids and witches were, I knew exactly what city.
My home. Not the one I’d lived in for the last ten years in North Dakota. No, my other home, the one I was raised in with Berget.