“I mean it. I can’t, okay? She spelled me.”
Well, that was inconvenient. Samael shot me a look and I frowned at him. Then the door opened, and Gloria walked in.
Of course. I slid a look up to the camera in the corner of the room. I doubted the Mage Council needed to see exactly how Samael interrogated his suspects. The camera’s red light flicked off and I glanced at Samael. He smiled at me.
“I was a practicing witch when your friend was a sparkle in her mother’s eye,” Gloria crooned to Cassie.
I scowled. What did that even mean? On the bright side, Cassie was trembling. It was probably small of me to enjoy her terror, especially when the expression on Gloria’s face told me she found it delicious. But Cassie had tried to kill me. Twice. It was game on.
Cassie stuck her chin out. “Do your worst,” she hissed.
“Oh, I will,” Gloria said. She took out herbs, candles, and most importantly, a very familiar grimoire. I stiffened, and Samael raised one eyebrow.
I slit my eyes at him.“Not only do you have a grimoire, but you’re sharing it with Gloria?”
“I knew you would eventually succumb to this method of communication, little witch. If only to berate me in private.
“I’m serious, Samael. What are you thinking?”
“Relax. Gloria is holding one of six grimoires that I own. She has used them before and always returned them to me.”
I gaped at him and a hot, very male look slid into his eyes.“Close your mouth, Danica. You’re giving me indecent thoughts.”
My mouth snapped shut and I barely refrained from letting out a low growl. He had six grimoires. Six. “Wewilltalk about this later.”
“I look forward to it.”
Gloria cleared her throat. “If you two are quite finished, I am ready to proceed.”
I turned to face her. “How come you need the grimoire for this, but you didn’t need it for Cil?”
“The child is young and wanted to tell us what happened. This woman is stubborn and has been spelled to do everything but tell us what we want to know.”
Cassie began shaking. “Wait, please don’t do this.” She turned and faced me. “Don’t let her do this to me.”
I shook my head at her. “Even if you hadn’t planned to murder me multiple times, the fact remains that you were hunting the kids. I know you paid someone to set that magical bomb, which means you could’ve killed my sister too.” I let her see how I felt about that, and she flinched. Now she was getting it. There would be no mercy from anyone in this room.
Gloria began humming in a way that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I had the strongest urge to burrow into Samael’s chest, to wrap one of his wings around me and close my eyes, shutting out the world like a child.
I took a careful step away from him so I wouldn’t do anything stupid.
And then Gloria stopped humming. Cassie’s eyes were blank, as if she was a puppet, a shell of herself.
“Tell me the name of the witch you used for your spells.”
Cassie’s face slowly drained of color. Her breath became a death rattle. This would kill her.
I’d gotten everything I needed from Bob, and we still had the other members of Cassie’s little play group to interrogate. Steve hadn’t yet been able to crack Cassie’s laptop, and I was guessing she was much too smart to keep anything that would connect them.
The witch was the biggest threat right now. I forced myself to lean against the wall.
“L-l-l-lydia Miller.”
Cassie’s eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped in the chair.
Gloria sucked up the death magic, her eyes glowing for a single second. “Mmm,” she said. “Delicious.”
I attempted to ignore Gloria, but my face must’ve told her what I thought of that, because she didn’t stick around. I peered up at Samael. “Lydia Miller is one of the McCormick descendants.”
