Page 7 of Adepts and Alchemists

Angelo snorted delicately, eyes flicking over the treeline again. He was relaxing a little now that we’d passed the town limits. We hadn’t met a single car on the road yet, which wasn’t odd for this time of night. People were enjoying the end of another long day, which meant most were either at home or living it up in the Half-Moon Bar and Grill. I wouldn’t see a lot of other cars on the road until last call, when Roy inevitably called family members or Uber for those he peeled off the bar.

“And why is Maverick tailing my truck like he’s James Bond?”

Angelo crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest. Only now that he was wearing my clothes did I realize he wasn’t exactly a slouch in the muscle department, and he probably had supernatural strength that made him even tougher than he looked. It was probably a bad idea to cop an attitude with him. But damn it, they’d sprung all this on me. If anyone got to bitch about things being confusing, it was Mr. Mind Wiped.

“In order?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He sighed like he was bored. “We’re facing a threat bigger than anything we’ve ever had in the Hollow before.”

“Monsters?”

“Not just monsters. We’reallmonsters here. Those of us that count, anyway. This is a Hollow. It’s designed with us in mind. Ley lines running under the earth here anchor enchantments. It amplifies whatever the witches...”

“Right—Poppy explained that already. That you’re supposed to be safe here.”

“Right, but we aren’t. At least, not any longer.” Angelo paused, gesturing backward at the truck bed. I felt bad for the women stuffed inside. Even driving as carefully as possible, the journey couldn’t be pleasant. “Or warlocks, in Maverick’s case, are able to make strong enchantments even more potent. Anyway, Maverick won’t be riding your ass much longer—he’s planning to take the next street in about a mile to report to Tally.”

“Then what?”

“Then he’s going to meet up with us again. Once Tally is in the know. We need to come up with a plan before then.”

I raised an eyebrow. “We don’t have a plan?”

“You’rethe plan,” Angelo said with a shrug.

“Then that’s a bad plan,” I said, and couldn’t keep a note of panic out of my voice. “I don’t know what I’m doing!”

Angelo’s shrug was too casual. “I know, but you’re one of the few people we were reasonably sure wasn’t being watched.”

“That’s why I’m involved?”

He nodded. “The monsters after us aren’t friendly. They’re a group of organized and powerful terrorists looking to drive a wedge between your kind and ours. They think humans are all violent, selfish, and cannot be co-existed with.”

“Terrorist monsters?” I checked.

Angelo rolled his eyes at me. Again. At this rate, they’d get stuck in an upright position.

“Yes, keep up.”

“So monsters don’t like humans?”

“No, we don’t all think like these monsters do. We’ve gotten used to living side by side with your kind. You can tell by the fact you’re still alive.”

“Then you like humans?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he grumbled. “Point is: we’ve fought off threats that have come for the Hollow before, but they don’t usually have as much institutional power as these guys. Indigo is probably the only one who can tell us how to beat them, and she’s currently in the back with the rest of the witches.”

“Which one was that?” I asked. “I mean, I knew most of the women back there, but not all. Was she the one standing next to Lydia?”

To my chagrin, I couldn’t really focus in on any of the other women who’d barged into my bathroom. They were all attractive brunettes, save the one, but I only had eyes for Lydia. I hadn’t had it down bad for anyone since breaking up with Libby. It was just my luck that the one I wanted was dating a sex demon I had no chance of competing with.

Or... did I? Angelo had been very unhappy and unpleasant about this whole affair. He hadn’t looked or spoken like he liked Lydia at all when he’d been helping pack everyone and their supplies into the bed of my truck. In fact, they’d pretty much been arguing for the entire time I’d seen them together. Maybe there was a breakup story that I didn’t know about. And did it make me a terrible person if I was secretly rooting for that to be the case?

His expression darkened, and his arms flexed, straining the seams of my hoodie as his muscles shifted, becoming larger than they appeared at first glance. He had to breathe in evenlythrough his nose before he could speak, and when his voice came, it came out on a rasp.

“The creature that attacked us took Lydia’s soul.”