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He said nothing the whole car ride. We hit a local fast food joint, and he just leaned back and drove while I ate. The silence was awkward, uncomfortable, but that seemed to be only on my end. Jareth looked calm, as though he routinely picked up random, angry witches from jail.
I kept biting back conversation starters, mainly because I had no desire to get involved with him even further, and tried to concentrate on the damage I’d done.
Good chance this was my last case in Baltimore. The precincts would view my attack on Aaron as instability if I was lucky, or an act of hostility if I wasn’t. Neither leant to good relations with the hand that fed me. I’d burned just about all my bridges.
“I hope it was worth it, Zoë,” I muttered beneath my breath.
“Excuse me?” Jareth asked, as we pulled into an unfamiliar parking lot.
I answered his question with one of my own. “Where in the hell are we?”
He let out a long shuddering breath before he turned in his seat to look at me. “I owe you an apology for my earlier arrogance. I am not a god, much less the God. While I have excuses, none of them make it okay to intrude in your life like I did. No matter my interest.”
I hadn’t expected him to attempt a bonding session. “Go on.”
He shook his head. “I know you think I’m a bastard, but after our early conversations, I got to thinking about what you and your sister had said, about how it corresponded to some odd activities occurring within my church and the congregation. You know, those little things that people try to explain away, but it leaves just this tickle in the back of your head?”
He paused for a response, so I nodded.
“Meeting you has become akin to gluing those fragments together, and the picture that’s forming is, to say the least, disturbing. While I am not completely blameless in what has happened, I have no intention of letting it continue. So I let Heath go, excommunicated him as it were, and then proceeded to contact every member of our congregation.”
He grabbed my arm. “People are missing, Ms. Delante. In my name.” He let go. “How can I reconcile that? I mean, they left with people who were supposed to be my men, and they never came home. They left telling family that they were going with the Church. Had I done this? Had I created a congregation of mindless followers? Now they were just gone, because of me.” He dropped his eyes.
I rubbed one hand across my mouth, processing everything he said. Too good to be true, gift horse, yada yada.... I was running out of damns to give and in dire need of an ally. Working with him didn’t mean I had to trust him, right? Because I sure as hell didn’t trust him any farther than I could throw him.
I grabbed him by the chin and met his eyes with the coldest look I could manage. “Jareth, if this remorse isn’t sincere, if you are setting me up for failure, if you’re aligned with the goddamn nagas, I will end you.
“I’m not talking about taking your church away, or your social standing. I won’t even put your ass in jail. No, I will put you down like I did the last guy who tried to manipulate me. Am I clear?” I let go of his jaw.
He rubbed his chin but never took his eyes off me. “Yes.”
“I’m serious.”
He managed a small sad smile. “I know. I’d expect nothing else. This is why I’ve brought you here.” He gestured out the front windshield. “This is my gift to you, my act of contrition.”
Whatever he was trying to show me, I wasn’t seeing it. “Um, what am I looking at? You’re giving me a guardrail?”
He managed to look crushed for a second, but masterful man that he was, it vanished almost as soon as I saw it. “Step out with me.”
Images of being ambushed by nagas gave me pause, but I did as he asked. In for a penny and all that jazz, but armed with... lemonade. Okay, so I wasn’t a hardened criminal.
Stepping out of the car got me a face full of fresh ocean. Well, Chesapeake Bay. Wait, it was under an hour from just north of Baltimore in Towson to Annapolis, but surely we hadn’t been driving long enough to reach the water?
He led me to the guardrail and pointed farther out. In the distance, a series of buildings sat amid a garden of stacked metal cargo boxes.
“Docks,” I whispered before I turned to look at him. “You know where they are.”
A brief smile of triumph was quickly replaced by sadness. “I’m not proud of my methods, but yes. Once I discovered this was no isolated incident, the abduction of your sister and her daughter, I made it my purpose to find out where they were being held.”
It’s a trap! My brain screamed in its best Admiral Ackbar impersonation. I shook my head. “We were at the precinct. You could’ve told the cops. We’d have some serious backup right now, but instead you’re telling me. Why?” He opened his mouth, and I raised a hand. “Aside from saving all the poor people who got screwed over by the nagas. Why are you sharing this with me instead of the police?”
He gave me a thoughtful look. “Revenge really isn’t in your blood, is it?”
I closed my eyes and sighed. “So, let me get this straight: you discovered the location of a crap-ton of missing people, but you feel bad about how you’ve been treating me since we met. So instead of taking this vital information to the police, you’re giving it to me.”
“To do with what you will.”
To do with what I will, huh? “What if I call the cops?”
He shrugged. “What if you do? The backup will arrive, the bad guys will be apprehended, and the people freed.”
I rolled that over in my head. “What about the babies? Do you know where they are?”
He shook his head. “Sadly, no, I do not. That seems to be a naga-only part of the operation.”
I glanced back over the guardrail, pushing my energy over the distance to sense Sera. It didn’t take long to find her, and she wasn’t alone. Sure, I felt the other humans, but there were pockets of emptiness in the same space. Nagas.
I touched the spot on my neck, and my wolf growled. “If they get arrested, no one’s going to find those babies. Those guys aren’t going to give up a location, not to the cops.”
“No, not to cops,” he repeated. “Sometimes, Zoë....” He said my name as if it were a decadent candy between his lips. “Sometimes we are truly all that stands between evil men and those they would harm. Sometimes....” He closed the space between us and whispered in my ear, hot breath on skin. “Just sometimes, we are called on to be the agents of karmic retribution.”
“I can’t. If I go in there....” The thought trailed off, as the greatest tenet of Wicca whispered in my head. An ye harm none, do what ye will. The wolf was pacing the width of me, ears flat against her head, the fur on her shoulders standing up. “No, you will not make me a murderer.”
Jareth smiled, an echo of the earlier sadness. “No, I will not. I cannot make you into someone you already are.”
Motherfucker. Protest was futile, so I bit my lip. The other alternative was to punch him, but since he’d gotten me this far, that seemed uncouth.
Someone tugged on me. Sera had discovered the fishing line I’d thrown, and her mental pulling felt frantic. “Zo-Zo, we’re in trouble!”
I blinked, and the view around me changed. Jareth disappeared, and when I raised my hands, they were Sera’s. What the hell? “I pulled on your line,” she whispered in my head. “But we can figure that all out later! Look, Zo! Look at what’s happening!”
I lifted my head up.
The doors rumbled open, and a horde of twenty to thirty men poured in. Some carried bats, others semi-automatic weapons of varying sizes, and still others carried those red plastic gasoline containers.
“Well shit.”
Heath stepped forward from the throng. “Our Lord and Master requires a sacrifice of you in the name of His glory and might.”
The gathered women spoke in unison. “As He commands, so we do.”
A nasty smile crept its way onto Heath’s face. “By fire, we give of ourselves that we may honor Him.”
“As He commands, so we do.” Collectively, the women all moved closer to the group of madmen. Even I, much to my dismay, had taken two steps forward—in Sera’s body, of course.
“Sera?”
“I don’t know how that happened, Zoë. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
Must be magick. “Goddess, I ask that You let me see the threads that bind, that I may save these people from themselves.”
I exhaled, and my breath colored the lines of magick that lead from my sister across the warehouse and right into Heath’s hands. My magick trickled outward, like raindrops racing down spiderwebs, until he stood in the middle of a network of shiny blue webbing connecting to all the bodies in the room.
Sonofabitch.
A sparkle of green behind Heath caught my eye. Was the light playing tricks? No, definitely blue lines in front to the humans, and those were distinctly green lines running to his brute squad.
Thicker, shinier threads that pulsed on some but not on others? An odd thought occurred to me. “Like giant straws.”
Sera squealed. “Oh my God, Zoë, it was Heath all this time!”
Indeed it was. Well, not so much that he was this big, powerful figurehead. No, that title still firmly lay with his Great Naga boss, but he was using the thugs to power his magick, like human battery packs. That’s why they felt empty. That’s why there were no emotions.
But why kill all those people? Someone was going to notice a giant fire on the dock, no matter how strong his magick was. Humans weren’t just going to ignore it. Maybe that was the point. Maybe the naga were ready to wrap up their business in Baltimore, and who would be looking for them when there was a perfect patsy in a local preacher?
I had to tell Jareth, and we had to hurry.
“Zo-Zo.” Sera’s voice trembled in our shared headspace. “Zo, he sees us. He sees you.”
Two sets of strong hands grabbed Sera’s arms from behind us, and Heath’s wicked grin spread almost ear to ear. “Hello, little witch.”
Oh, fuck my life.
