Moira shrugged. “I don’t grow hair,” she said.
I gaped at her. “Anywhere?”
“I have what I had when my immortality switched on. That’s all.”
“Oh man. You can never get laser hair removal, can you?”
Moira flashed a grin, the first one I’d seen since this mess started. “I’d shaved the morning of. Fortunately.”
“Imagine if you’d let the bush go free. You’d have to hope the 70s came back into style. Forever cursed by style trends.”
“Ladies,” Marnie drawled disapprovingly. “We have more important things to focus on.”
Twila cleared her throat, but I didn’t miss the sparkle in her eye.
“I can cut it,” Moira quickly added. “But it’s back within 24 hours.”
“There is a God,” I said.
Marnie snorted. “Trouble magnets.”
She swiped the rest of the bowls and moved them. Twila picked up the rest of the sorted debris and floated it to another table, then focused on what was left.
“If this works, it will lead you to this person’s current location.”
“But if it’s not his, we’ll find someone else, I assume.”
“Yes. Depending on who it is, they may sense they’re being tracked, but there’s no way to know until you arrive.” Marnie’s gaze flicked to Moira. “Do you know how powerful this being is?”
We both shook our heads.
“Very well.” She raised her hands over the pile and closed her eyes. “Let us begin.”
We left with a small silken bag holding a blue glowing ball and a promise to fulfill a favor of their choosing at an undetermined time. As loath as I was to hand out favors without strict parameters, we didn’t have much of a choice.
“Maybe we should have narrowed the tracking spell to Tess,” Moira said quietly as we piled into my car and pulled into traffic.
“If this doesn’t work, we will. I want to know if he has her first. Plus, I want to see what he’s up to. Tess can handle herself.” I believed the words, and Tess had shown me how powerful she was before, but I still couldn’t shake my sense of unease. Why would Lou want a banshee he’d never seen before?
Or had he seen her?
Or, even worse, was this all a weird fluke and he’d shown up on purpose under the guise of a magic blip.
That last theory sounded bonkers, but strange things had happened over the last few months, strange enough to make me believe just about anything.
The bag held a steady glow as we drove, brightening when we were on the right track, dimming when we’d either passed a turn or gone too far down a street. For twenty minutes we drove around in what felt like circles until the bag pulsed twice and warmed just as we passed a small, nondescript house behind the busiest area of Joy Springs.
Lights blazed from the porch and inside the house and music pumped through the streets. Someone was hosting a party, a big one from the number of cars in the driveway and crowded along both sides of the street.
We slowed the vehicle to a crawl and passed by, Moira craning her head to scan all the people milling around. “I recognize a few people, but there’s no one we know well. Most are locals.”
“Lou’s made some new friends, it appears.”
Moira leaned back and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, I don’t like it.”
“We don’t have to like it. We just need to find our banshee.”
“Pull around and park a couple of blocks away. Maybe we can talk to some people and find out if Tess is here before Lou spots us.”
