“Yeah, okay,” I mutter.
“Right, can you hold me up so I can get areallook at this thing?” Cassian asks.
I drag my feet over to the tear and hold up the phone so he can see the edges. Can he see them the way I can? I don’t know what the hole in reality looks like where he and the other Guardians are, but I know that one is intentional.
This one feels like it isn’t meant to be there. I don’t like it.
Cassian makes a thoughtful sound. “Move me to the right a little? I want to see the centre.”
I do that, too. He makes more sounds. I don’t know if they imply good or bad things. At least the others seem to have busied themselves elsewhere. Maurice has wandered over to the warehouse walls and I can feel his blessing probing the wards that are still shielding this tear from the outside. The Huntsman has shifted his focus to him instead of me, and I’m grateful for that.
“Okay, flip the camera.”
I sigh but do that, too, squinting into the lens. With my hood up, I look younger than the twenty-one I was when I was turned and far older than my mid-thirties, which is where I’m at now. Cassian looks, physically, like he’s a similar age to me. I don’t know if that’s a lie in the same way my face is.
“Anyone close?” he asks, lowering his voice.
I dart my gaze around. It doesn’t matter, and we both know it. Everyone in this room has the ability to hear us. And while the others might not be watching, Vlad’s gaze is unerringly on me like I might run away again if he averts it.
“They’ll still hear us,” I mutter.
Cassian stares at me, then nods. “Tell me what you saw.”
Maurice has already told him. Still, I need to help. “A fae. I don’t know what kind, but I wasn’t trying to work it out. Theyhad all this magic, and they didn’t know or didn’t care that I was there. It went—”
My mouth goes dry. The magic wentintothem. The memory of it makes me shiver.
“Where did it go?”
“Inside them. And exploded out. The wards kept it in the building, but then… they came through.”
“How many did you see?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to remember. “Six. I think.” I haven’t told any of them about the one that came towards me and sensed my power, magic, whatever it is I have. I’ll tell Paxton, or maybe Maurice, if I can get either of them alone.
Vlad’s made it clear that the Huntsman doesn’t need to hear about things like that.
“This magic the fae had, was it their own?” Cassian asks.
“I-I don’t—”
“You’re Vlad’s turn, right? Grant?”
“Yes.”
Cassian’s gaze sharpens. “What magic did they have? Could you feel where it came from?”
Okay, being a vampire is great, except I don’t need to glance around to know that everyone else in the warehouse has stopped to look at me. I resist the urge to bare my fangs. I’ve never been that kind of vampire.
No need to be rude.
“Yes,” I say.
“And?”
“It was… It felt like Asher. And Quinn.”
Quinn’s magic isn’t allthatfamiliar to me, not yet. He’s a shifter, and he and Asher haven’t been together that long, so we haven’t spent much time together. But I met Asher early on after Vlad turned me, and his blessing is one I recognise.
