JACK TRIED TO OPEN THE FROSTED DOUBLE GLASS doors of Duskoff International and found them locked. The warding was broken, so he knew Mira and Thomas were inside and the alarm system was likely off thanks to the Coven, not that he cared if it wasn’t. He waited until no one was near him on the street and used his magick to melt the outside of the door where the lock and bolt were located, and cautiously stepped inside.
Bodies lay strewn on the marble floor of the lobby, the grisly result of a magickal fight. The windows fronting the building were also frosted, shielding the interior from normal eyes, but it wouldn’t be a good thing for a non-magickal to wander in through the doors from the street, so Jack welded the lock shut from the inside.
He made his way through the lobby, searching for Thomas, Mira, or a conscious Coven witch, but aside from already fallen bodies, he could find no sign of anyone. Clearly, he was late to the party.
“Damn you, Thomas,” Jack muttered. He flipped open his cell phone and tried to call him, but no one answered.
Knowing it was his only shot in a building this huge, he went to the elevators. He leaned against the wall across from the bank of doors and watched, anxiety for Mira and anger gnawing a hole in his stomach.
Nothing.
Then finally the display showed movement for two of the elevators. One went to the twenty-second floor, the other to the thirty-eighth. It was a toss-up. Impatiently, he pressed the Down button to call a car and hit the twenty-second floor.
The muzak in the elevator was an orchestral version of the song “Witchy Woman.” Right now having to listen to piped-in music, especially some warlock’s idea of a cutsie inside joke, made Jack want to hit something. Jack planned to do just that.
Finally, the doors opened on the twenty-second floor, revealing Thomas and a handful of Coven witches. The unconscious bodies of several warlocks lay collapsed on the floor at their feet. The Coven witches had obviously taken a beating in the lobby. Jack was encouraged to see the Coven had won this little skirmish, at least.
That knowledge did little to ease his temper.
Thomas turned to see him standing just outside the elevator. “Jack,” he said in surprise.
Jack rushed him, grabbing him by his shirt front and slamming him back against the receptionist’s desk. “Where is Mira?” he snarled into his face.
Several Coven witches grabbed Jack and pulled him off Thomas. He fought them, but they held him fast by his upper arms, allowing their boss to straighten. “There are a number of Coven witches in the building now. She’s with our strongest.”
“Have you seen the carnage in the lobby, Monahan?” He yelled it.
“We’re all on the same side here, Jack. Calm down.”
His gut said Mira was in danger. “Crane has her.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can feel it,” he growled. He wanted to punch Thomas bloody for leaving him behind. Jack shrugged off the men holding him. “Bang-up job you’ve done here, Thomas,” he muttered and sought one of the still barely conscious warlocks sprawled on the floor.
No time to waste on small talk, he showed the earth warlock a ball of very hot fire. The man’s groggy eyes widened. “Where would they do the ritual?”
The warlock said nothing. His lips moved mutely. The man was obviously too drained to call any power in his own defense. All the better.
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Don’t think I won’t burn you.”
Something in Jack’s expression made the warlock stammer out, “F-fortieth floor. Conference floor.”
Jack let the man slump back to the floor, extinguished the fire, and turned back to the elevator. Thomas and the other Coven witches followed him.
As soon as the doors opened on the fortieth floor, cloying power rushed in to fill the elevator. It smoothed along their skin like black silk, seductive and dangerously lulling. All the men in the elevator groaned under the crushing weight of it.
It was familiar to Jack.
The sound of the chanting filled his ears. He remembered that sound and the feel of the magick tickling through his mind and over his body. It dropped the Coven witches to the floor of the elevator, but Thomas and Jack struggled out before the door could shut on them again.
He glanced back at the closed elevator car. Great. Apparently, they were going to have to take on a whole room full of power-rich warlocks on their own.
Jack blinked and pushed through the nauseatingly strong power. He made his way through the lobby and down a polished corridor on the heels of the sound. Jack staggered and lurched his way to the room where they had Mira under the weight of it. Thomas followed him, stumbling and tripping.
He lunged into the room through a sheer force of will and caught himself on the back of a chair before he collapsed, but no one even noticed him. Thomas wobbled in after him and fell to his knees. The Duskoff had counted on the magick being their watchdog. They hadn’t assumed any witch would be able to travel through it, but he and Thomas had the strength because of their deep love for Mira.
Mira.
She knelt in a circle with three other witches, all of them hanging suspended on their knees in the magick of the circle. Her expression was blank, her eyes closed. Her face appeared sheet-white, her lips and eyelids purplish. The sight of her like that made adrenaline surge through him and denial scream through his mind.
No, she couldn’t already be dead. Gods, no. It simply wasn’t possible.
“Help her,” sobbed a woman tied to a nearby chair.
Annie? He glanced at her right before a surge in the magick nearly brought him to his knees.
Like velvet, the power rubbed along his bare skin. Within the magick he could pick out a strand of Mira, that distinctive scent of fresh linen and lemon filling his senses.
In that moment, Jack understood what he hadn’t as a child. The power filling the room was the raped magick of the witches in the circle—the more powerful the witches in the circle, the more potent the “recipe” of the magick.
This mix was pretty damn heady.
Jack helped Thomas to his feet, and together they made their way to the end of the room where William Crane and the highest of the Duskoff stood chanting. The men and women in the circle had looks of beatific joy on their faces. They had no idea anyone else was even in the room.
Jack shoved Crane hard, breaking the warlock’s circle, but the chanting didn’t stop. Crane stumbled and fell to the floor, taken by surprise. He flipped over and looked up at Jack with disbelief on his face.
Thomas yanked warlocks from the circle and either threw them across the room, or punched them. The chanting stammered to a halt, the powerful magicks eased, and the more comforting sounds of a fight filled the room.
Of course, he and Thomas were outnumbered thirteen to two.
The witches in the circle all slumped to the side with their eyes closed, let down like puppets on strings as the heavy magick dissipated. All of them appeared unconscious.
That was the best-case scenario.
“Jack?” breathed Crane, coming out of his stupor.
“Long time no see, Dad,” he snarled before he grasped him by his lapels and pulled him up from the floor.
Someone grabbed his shoulder and spun him around, making him lose his hold on Crane. He had half a second for Stefan’s face to register before a fist connected solidly with his cheek. A crack of pain echoed through Jack’s head, making him stagger back.
Jack held on to the edge of the boardroom table, his head ringing. Stefan had a good punch on him. The warm glow of fire magick rose right before Stefan launched a ball of it at him. Jack lunged out of the way. It hit the leg of the table, setting it ablaze.
Coven witches swarmed into the room and magick flared hot against his skin as they began to wield it against the still recovering warlocks. One of them doused the table with water, making it sizzle and steam. It was no one’s interests to burn the building down right now.
Unwilling to use his fire magick in such close quarters and with the witches in the circle unconscious and vulnerable, Jack launched himself at Stefan.
They rolled on the floor, punching each other. Jack got a few satisfying hits in, and took a couple as well, before a new power began to swirl around him. It whispered over his skin at first, growing in intensity.
He and Stefan stopped trying to take each other’s faces off. Everything in the room halted under that eerie fluctuation of the magick in the room. A breeze tickled his face, and he sensed Mira’s distinctive power. The scent of clean linen and lemon filled the room, much stronger than he’d ever experienced it.
The breeze became a wind. Jack struggled to separate himself from Stefan and looked up to see Mira standing in her place in the demon circle.
She stood with her head thrown back and her eyes closed. Wind buffeted her coat around her body, sent her hair flying around her head.
Jack and everyone else who wasn’t already standing struggled to their feet, their eyes on the witch who radiated so much strength. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a grimace of pain.
“Mira?” he asked tentatively, taking a step toward her.
Without looking at him, she held up a hand to stop him. He halted in his tracks.
Several things happened nearly at the same time. Fire from his left side flared magnificently. Jack turned to see Crane kindling a white-hot fire ball and throwing it straight at his face at close range. Jack threw his hands up to shield himself, knowing it was too late. Suddenly, the fire was gone.
And so was Crane.
Glass broke. A man’s terrified scream filled the air, fading into the distance. At nearly the same time, the room filled with the sound of bodies hitting the surrounding walls, the room awash in flying men and women.
Silence.
Then groaning. Cursing.
Jack glanced around. Mira had thrown all the warlocks, just the warlocks, against the walls. His gaze went to the window, understanding that Crane had been propelled through it. Shattered glass glittered on the expensive tile and cold winter air rushed in to chill the boardroom.
Mira was crumpled on the floor, but conscious. She pushed herself into a sitting position, holding her head. Her gaze locked with his.
Mira had killed William Crane.
Jack shifted his gaze and stared transfixed for a moment at the broken window. William Crane, the man he hadn’t thought of as his father in a very long time, was dead.
“Where’s Stefan?” Thomas’s voice sounded sharp in the sudden absence of the magick.
Jack broke his fixation on the broken window and glanced around the room at the witches and the warlocks. The warlocks were peeling themselves up from the floor. No one was fighting. Everyone seemed stunned by what had happened.
Stefan was nowhere in the room.
His gaze met Mira’s and held. She’d struggled to her feet and looked ready to cry.
Thomas rattled off orders to the Coven witches to go find Stefan, but Jack was done. In several wide strides, he caught Mira in his arms and held her tight, kissing every part of her body that he could find. “Are you all right?” he asked between kisses.
She nodded.
He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her lips, tasting salt from the tears running down her cheeks. She wrapped her arms around him and deepened the kiss.
He was so happy she was safe that the anger he’d felt at her leaving him behind and endangering herself disappeared. All that mattered was that she was out of harm’s way.
Gods, it felt so good to have her back in his arms. He would never let her go again.
Mira broke the kiss slowly. She stayed in his arms for a moment but would not meet his eyes. Gaze downcast, she licked her lips. “Thank you for coming, Jack,” she said. Then she raised her eyes and whispered, “I know what you hid from me. I know all of it.”
Shock and dread jolted through him at the resolute look in her eyes. He’d forgotten about all that in his haste to see her safe.
She took one step back from him, out of his arms. It was like a chasm opening up between them. She gave him one last lingering look and then rushed to her godmother’s side.
“WE HANDLE OUR OWN INJURED,” SAID THOMAS.
Mira shook her head. “No. Not my godmother. I want someone to call an ambulance for her right now. Right now, Thomas.” She wouldn’t take anything less than that for Annie.
He stared at her a moment, but she was wearing her don’t-mess-with-me face. She felt a lot more comfortable wearing that one these days.
“Adam, take Ms. Weber back to my apartment. Tell the doorman to call an ambulance,” Thomas said.
“Thank you.”
Adam, a fire witch who had the body of a weight lifter and a nose that had been broken more than once, helped Annie to her feet with a gentleness that seemed at odds with his obvious physical strength. Annie stopped in front of her, and Mira cupped her godmother’s face in her hands and kissed her cheek. “I love you, Annie.”
Tears streamed down Annie’s cheeks. “I love you, too, kiddo.”
“Now go. I’ll be right behind you.”
Adam helped her out the door.
Mira could feel Jack’s gaze on her back. She stared at Thomas, struggling not to turn around and go to him.
“Mira,” Thomas said. “Jack is a good man. He can’t help who fathered him.”
She went stiff. She shifted her gaze so she looked through Thomas, instead of at him. “I don’t care about that, Thomas. I don’t care who his father was or that when he was a little kid he saw my mother die. But I do care that he lied to me about it,” she said tonelessly. “I love him, Thomas, but he lied to me.”
Thomas sighed. “It’s my fault. I asked him not to tell you who he was. Thought it would interfere with the job if you knew. I never thought you two would fall in love.”
“And he obeyed you blindly. I don’t accept that. He should have told me.” Mira pushed past her cousin without looking at Jack and left the room to follow Adam and Annie.
At Thomas’s building the doorman called an ambulance. She knelt beside the couch in the lobby, where Adam had helped Annie sit down.
Annie fisted her shaking hands in her lap. “I thought maybe you hated me.”
“Hate you?” She covered Annie’s hands with her own. “I could never hate you, Annie. You’ve been a mother to me my whole life.”
“But I kept things from you.”
“You did what my parents asked of you. You’re loyal. When everything started to go down, you did your best to protect me.” She shook her head, her eyes filling with tears. “I don’t hate you, Annie. I love you.”
The ambulance pulled up to the curb and the paramedics rushed in, tending to Annie. Adam told them that she’d received the burns from a space heater incident gone awry. The paramedics looked askance at that, but they didn’t ask questions, they just bundled Annie into the back of the ambulance.
When Mira tried to climb in the back with her, the paramedic stopped her. “You’ll have to follow in a car. We’re taking her to Mercy General.” He slammed the door.
The ambulance drove down the street. Mira watched until it turned the corner. She felt Jack come up beside her before she glimpsed him out of the corner of her eye. They stood for a moment in silence.
Every part of her body seemed to ache from the knowledge that he’d deliberately misled her. He’d concealed and twisted the truth.
“I expected you to break my heart in the end, Jack, but I never thought it would happen this way,” she whispered. She turned and walked down the street and didn’t look back.