Peter started talking as soon as it was out.
“I told you the spell worked. It works like a dousing rod. It should lead us right to Caroline.” Peter glanced around at the unhappy faces around him. “You’ll let me help, right?”
Nathan threw the rag on the table and crossed his arms, glaring at Peter. “I suppose this means we have to wait to kill him.”
Neither one of us bothered to answer Nathan.
“We should grab something flat to put it in,” I said. “It’ll make following its direction a little easier.”
Liam nodded. “I agree.”
Chapter Seventeen
We all ended up in Liam’s black escalade, Nathan and Peter in the front, Peter holding the blob and navigating, Liam and I sitting in the back.
“Go left here. No wait. We’re going in the wrong direction now.”
“You said left,” Nathan snapped.
“It looked like it was moving left,” Peter defended.
“Someone else should have the blob,” Nathan said, yanking the wheel right on the next street. “You obviously have no clue what you’re doing.”
Peter shielded the petri dish Liam had unearthed from Nathan. “It’s my spell. I’m the best choice to decipher its signs.”
Nathan’s snort was derisive. “What signs? It moves in a direction and we go that way. We’re like friggin homing pigeons.”
It was an apt description. Getting a general direction was easy, but narrowing the area to a specific location had proven much more difficult. For the blob, street layout wasn’t a factor. Unfortunately, the escalade could only drive in straight lines down streets that weren’t always lain out in a perfect grid pattern. As a result we’d been circling the same area for over an hour and were no closer to discovering Caroline’s location.
I stared out the window, ignoring the argument continuing in the front seat. We were in one of the less well-off neighborhoods on the east side. I hadn’t spent a lot of time in this part of the city. Growing up on the west side meant most of my experience had been confined to that area and a few neighborhoods downtown and to the south of Columbus.
The houses were different here, built so close together they almost touched. They looked deceptively small, not being wide in the front but each went back quite a ways. Every single one had a porch. Some were falling down, windows boarded up and weeds overgrown in the front yard. Others looked well maintained, with painted trim and cut grass. The neighborhood must have been charming at one point, but now it looked like it couldn’t decide between being part of the up and coming town or the part people didn’t go to after dark.
My eyes caught on a figure creeping through the shadows in front of a house down the street. It was a flash of movement that I almost missed.
I peered closer.
There. The shadows shifted. To my left eye, a spark of green wrapped in threads of bronze coalesced in the darkness where I thought the figure was.
This time it was easier to follow the figure as it moved from house to house. I turned backwards to follow it. We were almost to the end of the street. Once we turned, I’d lose sight of it.
Come on, I urged. I needed to see what it was.
A large dog darted across the street, the faint light from the moon showing its sleek form.
Liam, noticing my focus, turned to look.
“Werewolf,” he said.
I nodded. I was betting that werewolf had a reddish coat and white paws.
“Could be nothing,” Nathan said. “A wolf out for a run.”
“Brax has a strict policy about running in their fur in the city without a good reason. None of his people would flaunt his rule, especially so soon after the assassination attempt last year,” Liam said.
“Remember me telling you about that wolf meeting the other demon tainted in the woods,” I said in a soft voice. “I’m pretty sure that’s the same wolf.”
“You said you couldn’t describe the wolf,” Liam said sharply.
