I’d found out later it had been her first kiss. And apparently not a very satisfying one.
“Connor,” I said.
He came to me, put a hand at my back. “What is it?”
I pointed at the chalkboard, watched his gaze drop from flower to quote to the message scrawled below. And he blinked, frowned, blinked again, then looked at me.
“You think she left this for you? To tell us to go there?”
“I don’t know. But this building doesn’t have an elevator, she wrote it fast, and she had to know we’d come looking for her here.” I looked back at the slanted letters. “It’s a potent memory.”
Connor went silent, considering. “It could be a trap.”
“Or he’s telling the partial truth,” I said, dropping my voice, “and Ariel’s in danger. Maybe she was trying to warn us off before, realized that wouldn’t work.”
“Because in the last ten years, she forgot how stubborn you were?”
I arched an eyebrow. “Do you have a better idea?”
“No,” he said after a moment. “I keep half expecting a raven to come knocking at the window.”
“Nevermore,” Theo said behind us.
“We have to go,” I said. “God knows I wasn’t a fan of Ariel—and I’m still not a fan—but if the coven realizes she knows something, thinks she might try to stop them—”
“She may be next in the circle,” Connor filled in.
That’s exactly what I was afraid of.
We lost precious minutes waiting for the CPD and an ambulance to pick up Jonathan, more as we dodged through traffic. Theo had added a light to the vehicle, but that was hardly a deterrent to the Chicagoans still on the road despite the hour.
Clouds swirled like a typhoon overhead, and I wondered ifthat was a gift of our magicking coven. With dawn looming and Ariel’s life on the line, we needed to end this, and fast.
The grain elevator loomed over the south branch of the Chicago River like a six-pack of enormous concrete canisters. They were stained with time and graffiti but looked the same as they had nearly ten years ago.
There were no vehicles at the site, no obvious disturbance to the fence, no light that indicated anyone was here. But the magic was thick and felt oily on the skin.
“Are we thinking sharknado or hellmouth?” Theo asked contemplatively as he looked up at the sky.
“Hellmouth,” Connor said with a grin. “I’ve always had a thing for Buffy.”
“Hello?” I said, giving him a pinch on the arm. “It’s exceedingly bad taste to mention your love of a slayer to the vampire you’re currently dating.”
“I love you more,” he said with a wink.
“No pinching or winking on an op,” Theo said, but he was smiling when he said it.
We snuck through a gap in the fence, crept toward the main building, and looked inside.
A spotlight illuminated something in the middle of the long corridor.
There, in the center of a glittering circle of salt, was Ariel.
4
I held my breath until I saw her chest rise and fall; unconscious but not dead. We still had time.
“Let’s go,” Connor whispered, and we moved forward across the stained concrete floor to the edge of the light.
