Page 71 of Filthy Fae

“Did you believe them?” the younger woman asked.

“I’m starting to. I go back and forth. I think about asking Rick, but what if Rick is considered a leak? This could change everything. I could move out of living with my mom. I could finally pay off my school loans. The suit guy starts to explain the qualifying challenge. We’re going to get a task, equally hard and tailored to our skillset. He passes out a packet of papers to each of us, telling us that a lawyer is on call if we need anything explained. After we sign the paperwork, we need to do our intake interviews. That’s when we’ll receive our first challenge. The most important part of this is our discretion. I already had to sign a nondisclosure agreement just to get into this meeting, but when I peek at the papers, there are several more NDOs. They’re giving us a week to decide, and then the interviews and challenge will start. I—I--” The older woman hacked.

“Her heartbeat is spiking,” the younger woman said, her voice even. “I’m going to pull her out in ten seconds, counting down.”

“Ask her what the building looked like,” I said in a low voice.

Every witch and wizard in the room turned my way and several put fingers to their lips.

“What do your surroundings look like?” the younger woman asked.

“Dark blue walls, white stripes.” The older woman’s voice grew strained, and her breaths came out in labored rasps and grunts as she spoke. “There’s a long oval table. It’s a conference room. Hotel.” Her petite frame began to convulse.

The younger woman reached, fisting a hand in front of the woman and grasping onto what looked like nothing. She wrenched her hand away.

The older woman dropped to the floor with a thud and threw out a hand to the younger woman to catch her balance. Every mage in the room clapped, giving quiet applause before turning to their companions.

Rick’s hand clapped over my shoulder, making my wolf jump, but I managed to keep my shit together this time.

“Sorry for the strange greeting, Darrel,” Rick said as he smiled. “The medium made contact, and we needed to start without you. There’s no guarantee the ghosts will stick around.”

“That woman was talking to a ghost?” I demanded, even though I’d already suspected as much. My every hair was still on end. The scene sat very wrong with my wolf, and I could easily believe that there was a supernatural source behind the unease.

“She made contact with Helen Blane, one of the union witches that died at the party in Cutten Steps.” Rick lumbered out of his chair, making it look like the motion was difficult for him before gesturing to the door. “Do you want some coffee for the road?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll walk you out.”

He didn’t need to hint any harder. Between my drive to return to my brothers and Scarlet and my unease with what I witnessed here, I had to force myself to walk at a measured pace.

The other mages were leaning over and talking amongst themselves. A few stood at the coffee station. The young woman and older medium had joined the crowd, chatting as if they hadn’t just been communing with the dead thirty seconds earlier.

Halfway back to the street, Rick threw a look over his shoulder. “I hope you’ll tell the new alpha that we’re doing our utmost to figure this out quickly. We’ll be happy to send all findings over and invite you if we can find a way to commune with any of the other spirits.”

I nodded. Clearly the guy had invited me here to cover his ass with the alpha. “Can you explain to me the context of what I saw in there?”

Rick turned at the bottom of the stairs, his hand on the bar of a heavy metal door. “Helen’s mother said that she’d been heading out for secret meetings every week for about two months leading up to the party. According to her mother, she was excited and nervous. She hoped that it was a new man in her daughter’s life, but Helen told her that she’d been given an amazing secret opportunity. We saw echoes of a similar message with the other mages, but all the deceased mages were single and lived alone.”

“Doesn’t sound like a coincidence.”

A hard glint entered Rick’s eyes. “Not to us, either. From the sound of it, someone went after our most vulnerable mages and impersonated the Mage Union to do it. Los Angeles had nothing to do with this. No one has heard of Mage of the Ages. It sounds like a group of people went to a lot of trouble to arrange what happened. They told our people that they were special, that they could do something important, and then they killed all of them. Six of our witches and wizards were murdered, and we’ll be doing everything in our power to learn why.”

“We tracked down Nancy,” I said. “She doesn’t think Morte is dead. She thinks he’s still binding the demon to the bidding of whoever’s behind this.”

Rick nodded. “Well, she’d know. Morte’s family and friends are under the impression that he’s dead. The queen of the fae allowed us into the Cutten house today, but it had been scrubbed clean. Not a trace of magic there, demonic or otherwise. We won’t be able to do any kind of tracking spell with that as his last known location. We’ll put some mages on trying to find his signature. What do you know about this Queen Titania?”

“More than I want to.” I felt a surge of anger just hearing the woman’s name. “She’s determined to blame the pack for the deaths and has called a hunt on us. The alpha of Six Rivers is trying to track down the person who arranged all this before a war starts.”

Rick whistled and ran a hand over his head. “Well, we’ll do what we can from our end. I hope your alpha won’t hold any ill feelings toward the Mage Union. As you could clearly see, our representatives were tricked, too. They paid the highest price for it.”

I wasn’t going to make any promises to the man on Scarlet’s behalf, but I had to agree with his assessment. It sounded like there was a fourth party out there. Not the fae or werewolves or mages, but a group of people in suits who had arranged this months in advance. The question now was, why? Were they trying to cause a war? Had all their plans gone as intended, or had they gone astray?

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Aaron

“Where the fuck is she?” Lance’s expression was livid. If looks could kill, I’d have exploded into a thousand pieces by now.