Page 89 of Truthfinder’s Promise

Just like Meredith was smart enough to know she didn’t want Julian handling Jensen’s unwanted presence right now. She rubbed behind his ears and said, “I’m fine, Monster.” Better to get used to calling him by that name again than risk anyone knowing she viewed him as a real person.

Jensen retreated. The SUV broke through the forest into a man-made clearing. Magic dropped its weight from her and she could breathe again, remember again. Remember that this had all been expected, that nothing was wrong.

Softly flickering lanterns lined the drive to either side, seeming to float in the darkness. She squinted out the passenger side window, trying to see what held the lanterns aloft and nearly jumped out of her skin. A pair of vacant, hollow eyes stared back at her.

Thralls. The lanterns were held by thralls, evenly spaced apart and standing perfectly still, their arms holding the lanterns out before them with the same kind of unnatural stillness and lack of trembling the frozen waitress had shown all those years ago.

For one horrible moment, Meredith considered the possibility that there was no Analisa. That all of this was Julian. He hadn’t been affected by the disorientation spell, and the lantern holders were as rigid and unmoving as a person caught in his Aspect.

But Julian’s power didn’t leave this deadness in a person’s eyes. For all the waitress’s stillness at that party, she had looked every bit as terrified as she’d been. And though Julian could make a person move, someone under his control reacted jerkily, like a doll being forced into various positions. Julian also couldn’t make people speak—certainly not like the thralls at her home had spoken to her.

Which made her wonder. “The thralls. Can you immobilize them?”

“Yes.”

Thank the goddess. At least Aspect worked on them.

Julian smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle from his pants. “Though it is irrelevant.”

“Why?”

“Because they are legion.”

A shiver of apprehension crawled down her spine. They must be legion, to waste them so frivolously lining a driveway as human lampposts. How did Analisa hold so many? Was she what Jace had theorized—a Life Aspecter corrupted into something different?

How many thralls had they passed on the long drive? Forty? Fifty? Certainly far more than had been present outside when Hel had done her scouting flight. Meredith’s stomach knotted. People could die tonight. Her friends could die tonight.

The car rounded a bend and a manor home came into view, lit brightly enough to be seen even from afar at this time of night. It looked like something worthy of the best of gothic horror novels, the dark stone and sharp architectural angles adding to the surreal, phantasmagoric ambience.

The SUV stopped at the walk that led up to the entryway. Three new thralls approached the vehicle. Watching them, Meredith finally realized what they reminded her of, why they seemed so alien to her. They had more in common with drones that answered to a hive queen than with people who kept their own thoughts.

Meredith had every intention of exiting the vehicle before a thrall could prompt her out of it. She opened the door, but Julian stopped her from getting out with a painful squeeze on her thigh.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

If he thought he was getting the repository location before she had whatever meager protection the presence of other people could provide, he was very wrong. “I’ll give the location to Analisa. I’m eager to meet her.”

“And I am eager to meet you,” the thrall at her door said. “Do come inside.”

She didn’t want to take the hand the thrall offered her, but her mother’s voice in her head kept her from hesitating.

If you show fear, or disgust, or horror, it should be calculated. If you do not desire the reaction an emotion will cause, do not show that emotion. People will treat you in the manner you present yourself.

She stopped wondering precisely what caused the deadness in the thralls’ eyes. She stopped thinking of them as people at all, because that was the only way to treat them as if they didn’t matter. She fixed an aloof expression on her face and took the thrall’s hand. It wasn’t cold, precisely, but it wasn’t the warmth of a typical person’s skin, either.

She dropped the hand as soon as possible, and when Jensen’s growl alerted her to the fact that the thrall who had opened his door was now trying to grab him, she stepped protectively in front of Jensen and met the person’s hollow eyes.

“My apologies,” she said lightly, “but I’m afraid he doesn’t do well being handled by anyone but me.” This is my one-woman werewolf, bitch.

The thrall nodded and stepped back. The SUV that had brought them drove away, and Meredith swallowed her panic at the effective removal of any speedy means of retreat. If something kept Siren and the others from coming for them…but then a car wouldn’t be much use in that situation. She would just get lost in the woods while she drove.

She rested her hand on Jensen’s shoulder as they followed the thrall to the front door. The gesture looked casually possessive and was one-hundred percent for her own emotional support. A good thing, since she otherwise would have stumbled at the sudden absence of her Aspect as they crossed the manor’s threshold.

Oh, her power hadn’t gone anywhere. But she couldn’t feel it, couldn’t reach for it, couldn’t use it.

A nullifying spell. She looked down at her wrists, as if Julian could have cuffed her with a set of nullifiers when she wasn’t looking. But her wrists were bare, and flicking back the door rug revealed no hidden spell beneath.

“The house,” Julian drawled, amused. “The house is the nullifying spell.”