“So we’re supposed to sit on a portal like it's not there?” Theo asked, sounding more nervous than confrontational.
I looked back to Mason for that one.
But in the silence of his thinking, June pushed her way through the crowd, coming out of one of the doors further down. “Bryce is right. It's true. Mason, I’ve told you that my research has shown the leylines beneath the museum, which was accepted. You guys have already fought these demons. Is it really so hard to believe this is where their biggest portal is?”
Continuing, she moved forward, easily sliding her way between the shifters. “Leylines often demarcate earth energies. I don’t know how to neutralize them, but if we can find a way, there’s a chance to eradicate the demons from the town.”
“Djinn,” Theo muttered, looking at me for a moment. I wondered how Mason had corrected them based on my visions. The thought brought a smile to my face, and I turned away quickly.
“Neutralize?” A shifter, I recognized as Nate, stepped forward. “I don’t know a lot about all this shit, but that doesn’t sound like something we want to meddle with, surely?”
“There are other ways.”
Another female voice rose up among the crowd of the pack, and I searched, finding another woman pushing her way to June’s side. She had tattoos spiraling around her arms and her neck, and her eyes looked amethyst in the light. I cocked my head, wondering who she was.
“June contacted me a while back,” she went on. “She mentioned leylines, and while her research has been based on the town and the museum itself, mine has always centered around old legends and leylines. Magic. Scrying. That sort of thing. Think of it as…” Her eyes flashed, her teeth bared in a grin. “Witch magic. I have a leyline tracker and an electromagnetic reader, which can also prove the portal theory.”
Some laughter rippled through the pack, a few of them looking over at the woman. “You think you’re more credible than this freak just ‘cause you’re a witch?”
“A witch and a clairvoyant,” the woman said, and it surprised Bryce that she said what she was immediately. “Is that not two good things to have on your side?”
“Let me guess,” Theo said, moving further into the room, closer to the witch. “You get all these heightened witchy senses just from being around the portal?” He scoffed, laughing, as he shook his head.
“If you think you’re hot shit with all those muscles, how about you take me down there yourself and see, O, Protector of the Town?” the woman muttered, and I decided I immediately liked her, whoever she was.
“Get the equipment.” Mason’s order silenced the laughter and the quips from either the witch or June. I was still lingering on how she knew, exactly, that I was a clairvoyant. Could she sense my energy as I sensed hers? On her way out of themuseum, she caught my inquisitive stare and jerked her head for me to join her.
I glanced at Mason, whose eyes were tight with mistrust of the witch.
He looked as though accepting me going with the witch was the last thing he wanted me to do, but he nodded. It was a way out of the pack. So far, nobody had offered an apology, and as much as I wanted to be around him, the young woman intrigued me.
Slipping through the crowd, I joined her as we left the room and walked out of the museum using a different entrance than I’d come through from.
“You knew I was a clairvoyant,” I said before the witch could say anything. She strode on ahead, long, lavender-colored skirt flowering around her ankles. She glanced at me and nodded.
“Your energy is very strong. Sort of broken, tainted, in the way I’ve only ever seen clairvoyants be. In all honesty, it was a guess, but a good one.” Even as we walked, she held out her hand. “Freya. I’m June’s friend. Well, friend-slash-assistant, I guess. We’ve been combining some research. Like I said at the meeting, she reached out to me a while back through a report I made on ley lines across Virginia. The place is rife with them. I’ve been hunting down more ever since.”
“Why?” I asked.
“The guy with more muscle than sense back there actually sort of nailed it. The leylines do enhance my own abilities. I can’t sense the leylines properly, though, hence the equipment I’m grabbing. But it heightens my awareness of it.”
“Like something feels slightly off?” I guessed.
Freya nodded, her lips pressing tight. “Exactly. It's like filming something central, but the subject is just out of that middle alignment, so everything else feels off, misplaced.”
She got it—she got it in the way the pack only laughed at, and I immediately eased around her.
“What about you?” she asked. “What’s your interest in them?”
“I don’t really have one,” I admitted. “I’m just trying to help the pack.”
“Forgive me for noticing, but why would you want to help a bunch of guys who called you a freak?”
I said nothing, only biting my lip, as we headed toward town. A bunch of keys jangled at Freya’s hip. After a moment, she nodded. “Ah. No, I get it. You must be Bryce, then. The alpha’s girl.”
“I wouldn’t say it that strongly,” I said hurriedly. “We… we’ve reconnected recently.”
“June’s mentioned you. Well, and the alpha. I’m not a shifter, so I don’t get it in that sense, but I don’t judge, either. Just… be safe. I don’t want them using you for any help you can give, but undermine you at the same time.” She shrugged. “Besides, better to be on the side of the weird ones than to be the jackasses saying shit they don’t understand, right?”
