Page 42

Chapter 42

‘Shirdal,’ I greeted him. ‘Thank you for coming.’

‘For you, sweetheart, I wouldn’t be anywhere else. What’s the plan?’

‘I really don’t know. To be honest, I was hoping you’d have a plan.’

‘Killing everyone usually works,’ he suggested with no trace of humour.

‘Let’s leave that as Plan B,’ I suggested. ‘There are definitely captives here – my father said he has a truth seeker held here.’

Shirdal’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Okay, rescue the seeker then kill everyone else.’

‘Our priority has to be the harkan.’

‘Which is?’ he asked patiently.

‘A deadly crystal of murderous power that is slowly eating at my mother’s mind,’ I said simply.

Shirdal nodded. ‘It’s on team evil. We’ll kill it.’

I grimaced. ‘I don’t think it’s that easy. It contains hundreds of people’s life forces. It’s not going to be easy to destroy.’

‘Nothing worth having comes easy,’ he shrugged. ‘They won’t be expecting us to return so quickly, so we have the element of surprise.’

I thought of Mack’s throwaway comment. ‘About that… I think they are expecting us. Mack said –’

‘Mack?’ Bastion interrupted with a furious growl.

‘He was the one that took me from Mum’s safe house,’ I explained. ‘He’s working with the evil Coven and the Domini.’

‘The Domini?’ Bastion asked.

‘An organisation that takes after Pinky and the Brain ,’ Shirdal replied. At our blank stares, he elaborated, ‘They want to take over the world.’ It figured that Shirdal would know something about the shady organisation.

Bastion fixed me with a stare. ‘You’d best start at the beginning, Bambi.’

So I did. I told them everything, from my dad’s audio-astral projection to our chats and my final escape. It had all been just a little too easy; combining that with Mack’s comment made me think that they wanted us to come after them, which meant they’d be prepared for us. Though why they’d want that, I didn’t know.

‘They might be expecting us,’ Shirdal conceded, ‘but they don’t know that we know that they’re expecting us. So we still have the element of surprise.’

‘I don’t think we do.’ I frowned. ‘It may not be Apollinaire, but we have a spy in our midst.’

‘All the more reason for you to stay with Charlize–’ Bastion began.

‘No,’ I interrupted firmly. ‘This is a family affair. I need to be here.’

‘Amber…’

‘No,’ I repeated. ‘So what’s next? We can’t take Ria with us, nor can we take Kate.’ I didn’t feel comfortable bringing teens into battle.

‘If we don’t, we’ll have to leave men behind to guard them,’ Bastion pointed out. ‘We’re already sparse on the ground. A few witches, a wizard, a handful of griffins… If we have to leave any of them behind, we’re really spreading ourselves thin.’

‘Let’s leave Ria and Kate with Benji,’ I suggested. ‘He’ll keep them safe. And we can see if Meredith or Melrose want in or not. Everyone else, with us.’

Bastion gave my shoulder a squeeze and went to speak to Meredith and Melrose.

Willow sauntered towards me with a triumphant grin on her face. ‘All cleansed, Crone.’ As I reached out to take the pendant from her, my eyes leached to white. My head flung upwards, fixing on the stars above.

The Goddess wrenched me from my body and showed me the future which might be.