This particular feeling, he called his sixth sense. He’d experienced it a few times as a child, once before a bully pulled a prank that had injured him. He’d experienced it when he was seventeen, right before he and his dad got in an accident. Elijah had launched himself at his dad, grabbed him, and the next thing they were outside of their vehicle, a hundred yards away, watching as it was decimated by the drunk driver who’d lost control of his car.
That had been a difficult one to explain to the police.
In the end, they lied and said their car had been stolen that night.
No one could explain the lack of bodies in the vehicle.
It was the first time he and his parents realized he could move magically from one place to another.
His mum and dad had begged him not to do it again, terrified someone else would find out how different he was and take him away from them. He hadn’t been able to do it again, anyway. He reckoned it was his fear for his father at that moment that had fueled the ability.
Elijah stared around the lobby again, searching, searching. Then a pulse of energy caught his attention, and he noted the man reading a newspaper in an armchair near the lobby bar. He paid no particular attention to Elijah, but there was something in the man’s aura that reminded him of the warlocks he’d met.
Was he the reason Elijah sensed danger?
“Elijah, you are in danger. Not just from The Garm. There are others. A coven, a powerful coven, who, if they discover you are fae, will take you away from everything you love and killyou to open the gate. They’ll kill your friends, your family, if they stand in the way.”
Growling in frustration, Elijah stormed out of the hotel. Echo was making him paranoid.
However, as he marched aimlessly, Elijah’s pulse refused to slow. It was like walking through electrically charged air, and the dread would not leave him. A few minutes from the hotel, he strolled onto a busy square in front of a theater built in the Greco-Roman style with Ionic columns.
The sensation of danger became too much to ignore. He stopped, staring around the square at the passing faces.
And then, like magic, they appeared.
Their power pulsed out at him.
One by one, Elijah spotted the witches and warlocks in the crowd.
The amount of energy they emitted suggested one thing: They were a coven.
And if his sixth sense was accurate, they weren’t here for his autograph.
She can’t be right about this.
Elijah lifted his wrists, glowering at the leather cuffs.
But what if she is?
Suddenly uncaring of who would see, Elijah drew on every ounce of power within and sped away from the square at full speed. Such a blur, the humans would conjure up some benign explanation for it.
Now and then, he’d stop to check Maps on his phone, but he still arrived in Antwerp in only twenty minutes. It took an hour to drive there, according to the app. Shooting a quick text to Jamal that he was already in Antwerp and he needed his buddy to make sure the team organized his luggage, Elijah checked into their hotel.
Once alone in the room, he took a minute.
His sixth sense for danger had dissipated.
However, the dread hadn’t.
Because now Elijah was starting to worry Echo wasn’t so crazy after all.
Reaching for the phone on his bedside table, he called down to reception and ordered room service and requested a computer.
Ten minutes later, his food arrived, along with an iPad.
Logging in and using the private browser, Elijah searched the supernatural sites and chatrooms he’d discovered over the years on the shadow web and did something he’d avoided doing. He typed in his name. Sure enough, he’d been the subject of much discussion over the past few years. Apparently, he gave off tremendous energy, and there were rumors he must be an incredibly powerful warlock.
Fuck.
