As Dru finished installing the crystal grid inside Opal’s old Lincoln, her thoughts kept drifting back to Lucretia’s spell book. How many dusty bookshelves had it sat on over the past half century while no one suspected its true nature? Unimaginable power lurked within those pages, promising exactly the kinds of supernatural abilities Dru once thought she would never possess. But now that she had cracked the code, the possibilities were suddenly laid open before her.
Of course, so were the terrifying dangers of magic too powerful for her to handle. If she botched a spell, it could be fatal. Messing around with a Harbinger’s spells was such a bad idea that Dru refused to bring it up again. Still, she kept thinking about it.
Opal shot warning looks at her, which Dru was able to avoid, at least for a little while. Before too long, Greyson finished installing the new windshield, and Opal pulled her long purple car out of the big cluttered garage. She sat outside in the driveway with the engine running and the window rolled down, waiting for Dru.
Reluctantly, Dru followed her outside, squinting in sunlight hot enough to wilt Greyson’s green lawn. “See you back at the crystal shop?”
“It’s Saturday. Supposed to be my day off.”
“Oh. Is it Saturday? Wow.” Dru felt unanchored. Everything was moving too fast. She couldn’t keep up. And she desperately needed sleep.
“But considering there’s an evil sorceress trying to bring about the apocalypse, I think that definitely calls for some overtime,” Opal said magnanimously. “First, I’ll get us something to eat. What do you feel like?”
“I don’t know. Breakfast burritos? Duffeyroll? Yummy’s Donuts? I’m so hungry.”
“Then let’s go with all of the above.” Opal tossed her head. From the driver’s seat, she frowned up at Dru. “You remember the sorceress that used to come into the shop all those years back, the girl in the black Panama hat with a red ribbon?”
Dru had to think back. After a moment, she did remember a bone-thin woman with a sharp nose and piercing eyes, wearing a black hat slashed with a blood-red ribbon. She was always drumming her red fingernails on the countertop, interrupting Dru every time she tried to explain how different crystals interacted. The woman kept glancing over her shoulder, as if someone or something was constantly closing in behind her and she was desperate to stay one step ahead. “Kind of jumpy? Kept coming in for hematite crystals because she was burning them out with negative energies?”
“Mmm-hmm. That’s the one.”
“Gosh, she hasn’t been by in forever. What about her?”
“Nobody knows.” Opal gave her a no-nonsense look. Her voice dropped to an ominous low that raised goose bumps on Dru’s arms. “She got into dark magic like this. Nobody knows what happened to her. Just one day, she was gone without a trace. Nobody ever found her body, either. Her body and soul were consumed by dark magic.”
“Um . . . I thought she kind of freaked out and moved to Arkansas to be a mermaid in a tiki bar?”
“What?” Opal blinked. “No. Uh-uh.”
“Pretty sure she did.” Dru tapped one fingernail on her teeth, vaguely remembering a stream of gag-worthy underwater photos with a luminous smile, a wavy red-haired wig, a seashell bikini top, and swim goggles. “She was posting that stuff on Facebook for a really long time. Ugh.”
Opal waved her hands as if trying to ward off an annoying insect. “That’s not the point. I don’t care if she discovered her inner mermaid or not. Originally, that girl got into some seriously dark magic, the kind that crushes the soul of anybody who uses it.” Opal jabbed her finger into the air to punctuate her words. “Same kind of magic in Lucretia’s spells. The kind of spells that hurt people, sow the seeds of destruction and chaos, all of that negativity. Magic that brings you power at other people’s expense. It’s the worst thing for you, honey. You can’t be messing around with that.”
With one hand, Dru shaded her eyes against the glare of the sun. “Even if the fate of the world is at stake?”
“See, that’s the kind of thing Salem always says. And where has that got him?” Opal’s expression darkened. “It’s not right. And it’s not safe. You go too far down that path, and there’s no coming back. It won’t hit you until it’s too late. You won’t even know that you’ve gone too far.”
Dru thought about that, and suddenly the answer came from deep inside her. She folded her arms across her chest. “Well, if the world comes to a fiery end, I guess that means I haven’t gone far enough.”
Opal just stared up at her, looking worried.
“I have to find a way to track down Lucretia. And I have to find a way to fight her.” Dru couldn’t help but notice how small and quiet her voice sounded. She was badly outclassed, and both of them knew it. “I’m not going to just let her bring on doomsday. I have to fight back somehow. I don’t have any choice.”
Opal gave her a warning look. “You always have a choice. Remember that.”
Dru bit her lip. She knew arguing wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Opal was right, in a way. She always was. That was what made this so incredibly hard. Because in times like this, you could be right and so totally wrong at the same time.
Her brooding thoughts were interrupted by Greyson strolling up to them, wiping off his hands on a red rag. “Somebody say breakfast? The arepas truck is usually down by the park on Saturdays.” He jerked his chin in that direction.
Opal perked up. “Mmm. Arepas. Oh my word, Ruiz brought those the other day. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.”
“Didn’t bring me any arepas,” Dru muttered.
Greyson’s teeth flashed as he grinned. “You go on. I’m going to grab a quick shower. Meet you back at the shop.” He gave her a quick kiss. It seemed to linger on her lips as he turned and strolled back inside.
Dru watched him go, not realizing she was staring until Opal cleared her throat.
In a low voice, Opal said, “You need a shower, too?”
“No, no. Of course not. N-not right this second.”
“I think you do.”
Clearing her throat, Dru pushed aside her suddenly vivid thoughts of Greyson, feeling the heat rising to her cheeks. She polished her glasses, even though they were already perfectly clean. She had to stay focused. She had to get back to the shop and decipher as many spells in that book as possible. There had to be something useful hidden in those pages.
With a deep sigh, she walked around to the passenger side of the long purple Lincoln and got in. “We have work to do.”
Opal gave her a knowing look, then put the car in gear.
There was no mistaking a wolf track, Rane knew.
It was like a dog’s track but bigger and leaner. And in this case, it was huge. In the morning light, the wolf footprint looked positively cavernous where it was pressed into the muddy dirt near the river. Rane squatted next to the track, gawking over its size. It was bigger than her palm. And she would be the first one to admit that her hands were anything but dainty.
With an experienced eye, she studied the way the toe and claw depressions were deeper than normal. The wolf had been running at a good speed. Plus, considering that the edges of the track hadn’t dried yet, it must have crossed the river sometime in the last few hours. Probably about dawn.
Rane clicked her tongue in thought and drummed her fingers against her bare knees. She’d been looking for panther tracks since first light, hoping that the panther had spent some time prowling around on the ground near its lair, and could lead her back to the bat. Assuming these critters were hiding out together.
But panthers left a smaller footprint, with the toes in closer to the pad of the foot. And since they had retractable claws, they left no claw marks in the dirt. These tracks clearly had claw marks in front of each toe. It was a wolf to be sure.
Was there a wolf sorcerer in the gang, too?
Rane shrugged. Sure, why not? The bigger question was: how many of these animal sorcerers were there? The bright side was, the more sorcerers there were, the more ass there was to kick.
Time to limber up. She stood up and stretched, rolling her head until the bones in her neck popped.
She considered the wolf track in the mud. Over the years, she had tracked plenty of coyotes through the outskirts of the city, as well as more than her fair share of monsters. Mostly, the more unnatural creatures tended to hole up underground or hunt in a limited area to avoid getting caught.
Clumps of green shoulder-high bushes crowded both banks of the river. The nearest road bridge was a half mile in either direction. It was conceivable this thing could come running through here all the time, and no one had seen it yet.
Or if they had, they hadn’t lived to tell about it.
She kept tracking the giant wolf along the river until it headed into a rundown industrial area bordered by chain-link fences and No Trespassing signs.
She ignored those on a daily basis.
Rane followed the giant wolf’s trail through the bushes, climbing up from the river. The shallow tread of her running shoes had trouble getting purchase on the steep slope, and her shorts offered no protection against the scratchy branches. She debated transforming into rock or metal, but she was miles from Salem’s place, and she wanted to pace her energy burn. No telling how long it would take her to find these animal sorcerers, and she wanted to be fresh enough to bust their asses without breaking a sweat.
At the top of the slope, the sagging chain-link fence proved to be easy to slip through. Rane studied its weather-beaten metal links, finding a few strands of bristly gray fur.
Wolf fur, probably. Either that or somebody had snagged his ZZ Top beard on the fence, and that had to have hurt.
Probably a wolf, though.
Beyond the fence lay an abandoned asphalt lot. From the deep gouges in the pavement, it looked like it had been used to park some kind of heavy equipment, maybe bulldozers or something else with treads. But nothing had been parked there for a long time. Weeds grew up through the cracks in the pavement.
Rane stayed hidden in the bushes, soaking up the surroundings, looking for hiding spots for the bad guys. On the left was a deserted gravel access road lined with wild trees. The air over it was clear, with no hanging dust, so no vehicles had driven by anytime recently. A few hundred yards away, empty flatbed trailers were parked in a long row, along with something that looked like an industrial drilling rig. In the hazy distance, the shimmering towers of downtown Denver poked up from the horizon. Softly buzzing power lines stretched across a cloudless, hot blue sky.
Huh. Not a whole lot going on.
On the right sat a windowless shell of a small house halfway through the process of shedding its dark brown roof shingles. At one point, someone had painted the walls the exact green color of mint chocolate chip ice cream. But now that was peeling off, and the place just looked diseased.
Next to that sat a long two-story building of crumbling white-washed brick. Some kind of warehouse with tiny boarded-up windows and four big loading docks. Rusted metal junk was piled up against one wall. Around the corner, a peeling metal side door stood halfway open, revealing darkness inside. It was easily big enough for a giant wolf to get through. Or anyone else, for that matter.
Rane waited a couple of minutes to make sure nothing moved. Bored out of her skull, she was about to step out of the bushes and keep going when a flicker of movement passed beyond the open doorway. She couldn’t see what it was exactly, but it wasn’t human.
Bingo.
Something was in there, and it was about to have a really freakin’ bad day. She hadn’t started this beef with the protean sorcerers, but she was sure as hell going to finish it.
She stood up, already itching for the fight that she knew was coming.