Page 89

“I think you and I should make that meeting.”

“It could be dangerous.”

“It could also be our one chance to snare Marie and stop this rot.”

“She’s not going to be there—Hank will be, whoever he is.”

“Yes, but you can sneak into his mind and steal her location information before he actually shows himself.”

Belle waited for a few cars to pass, then did a U-turn and headed down the street. “If Hank is a fledgling or even a feeder, she’ll feel me in his mind and kill him before I can steal too much information. Or, even worse, she’ll flick another goddamn fireball at us. She’s got a penchant for doing that, remember.”

“I could hardly forget, but I still think it’s worth the chance.”

“Are we telling Monty and Ashworth? Because I don’t think it’s wise to do this without backup.”

“I agree.” If only because very little so far had gone to plan. “They’ll need to be far enough away that the vamp can’t hear their heartbeats, though.”

“Which will be difficult when we’re in the middle of a forest and we have no idea which direction they’ll be coming from.”

“True.” I tugged my phone from my pocket and googled the mine he’d mentioned. “Okay, the mine is basically one of those metal tower thingies, but there are a couple of old dams not all that far away. The satellite image has a car parked close to the largest and shows some people in the water, so it’s obviously in use as a swimming hole.”

“Handy cover, given the heat.” A smile twitched her lips. “Though Monty’s lily whiteness might just blind Ashworth at the wrong moment.”

I laughed. “They don’t have to strip off and actually go in.”

“But he will, because under all that whiteness, he is a fish. Shall we head over to Ashworth’s and update them?”

I nodded and sent him a text to let him know we were on our way.

I’ll put the kettle on, he sent back, making me smile.

It only took a few minutes to get over there. Once Belle had parked behind Monty’s old station wagon, we made our way through the front gate and up the path. Eli opened the door and ushered us into coolness, and Ashworth had the promised cup of tea waiting on the table.

“Any luck with the tracer spell?” Belle asked, dropping a kiss on Monty’s cheek before sitting beside him.

“Yes and no,” he replied. “The bit of mage fire I snared flamed out before we could test the spell, but we think we can apply it to active mage fires. Its reliability will, of course, depend on how soon we notice the mage fire.”

“Given we’ve tended not to notice them before they’re almost on us, that’s not sounding too hopeful.”

“No, but it’s better than nothing, which is all we would have otherwise,” Eli said. “To what do we owe this unexpected honor?”

“We found the telepath that mushed Roger’s mind,” Belle said, “and had a quiet chat with him.”

“Did you now?” A smile twitched Ashworth’s lips. “Was it a willing chat or a forced one? From his point of view, I mean.”

“It was a pleasantly compliant one, so a bit of both,” she replied. “He was given a big cash incentive to come back, kidnap me, and then hand me over to one of Marie’s people at a prearranged time and place. Liz and I believe we should keep that meeting.”

“We’ve nothing to lose by trying,” Monty said. “Whereabouts is the meeting set up?”

I gave him the coordinates then added, “It’s apparently up near a metal thingy over the Red, White, and Blue Mine.”

Monty pulled the location up on his phone. “According to my longitude and latitude app, it’s actually the intersection of two tracks a few hundred yards away from the poppethead—the metal thingy you mentioned—which means it should be far enough away from the meeting point that they won’t hear our heartbeats or sense our presence, but close enough for us to ride to the rescue should the shit hit the fan.”

“They would surely do a check of the area before they revealed themselves, though,” Ashworth said. “We are not dealing with stupid vampires, unfortunately.”

“What other choice is there? We could do an invisibility spell, but they’re likely to sense it,” Monty said. “Besides, a lone car or a truck isn’t going to cause too much alarm, and surely they’ll be anxious to get the exchange over with quickly, given they’d know Liz and Aiden would be pulling out all stops to find Belle.”

“Speaking of Aiden,” I said. “Has anyone heard how the fire is going? Is it under control as yet?”