“Kind of? He was going to build a lab in my backyard.” I paused. “Apparently, he was a foreman in Misty Hollow.” More scribbling in Tally’s notes.
“And would he have any reason to hurt you?” she asked.
I frowned. “Not that I know of.”
Which was the rub when you lived in a Hollow. So many monsters around that it was difficult to tell when therealvillains struck.
Taliyah shrugged. “I’ll stop by and ask him some questions.” She looked up at me. “Smith? Is that his first or last name?”
“I have no idea.”
“Maybe it’s like Cher or Madonna or Prince or something,” Maverick offered with a shrug.
Tally glared up at him. “That doesn’t help.” Then she looked back at me. “Anything else?”
I shrugged and offered her a sheepish smile. “That’s all I know. I’ve got his number if that will help.”
Taliyah nodded curtly and patiently took down the number as I pulled out my phone and finding his contact, recited it aloud. I jumped when she snapped the notebook closed.
“I’ll be in touch when I have something concrete,” she said. “For now, just take care of yourself.”
“Okay.”
“And Poppy?” she asked as she stood up.
“Yes?”
She smiled. “Get some sleep. You reallydolook like hell.”
Chapter Thirteen
By the time Andre and I arrived home, the house was infested with witches.
Granted, there were things I would have liked a lot less, like roaches, but it still brought me up short to see the entirety of Circle Scapegrace marching in and out like they owned the place.
Wanda was waiting on the porch, a glass of something amber in her hand. It was too early for whiskey, so it had to be something innocuous from my fridge. Apple juice, maybe. Except, I couldn’t see Wanda drinking something you could find in a supermarket. Her tastes ran to the expensive, and Lorcan indulged her every whim.
As soon as she saw us, she wordlessly got to her feet and came to support Andre’s other side as we exited the car. He mumbled something about being able to walk himself, but we both shushed him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, trying to push the headache down, but it kept coming back again. And my back was still screaming from the scratches on it. Good thing I was wearing Andre’s sweater, because I was fairly sure they were bloody scratches.
“We came to help, of course. I arrived at dawn. Astrid wanted to stay up, but I don’t trust the curtains in this house. Too easy to have an accident.”
Because Astrid was a vampire. She hadn’t started out that way. When she’d discovered the plot to start a war at her prep school, she’d done her best to thwart it. But she’d been captured by one of the ringleaders and turned. And that had been thebest-casescenario. Wanda thought the fact that Astrid had been turned against her will was ghastly, but I preferred it to the alternative. At least she was alive. Well, somewhat.
Wanda’s eyes rolled skyward, and she crossed her arms over her ample chest when we managed to set Andre down on the couch. He sank down gratefully, eyes closed, ready to pass out then and there.
“Wanda, you all really don’t need to be here,” I argued.
She propped her hands on her hips and studied me. “No gaggle of witches under my command are going to sit back and watch another coven member suffer. It’s a ground rule. If we want to be different, it’s going to show.”
“So, what exactly have you been doing?” I was a little nervous to learn the answer.
“Imani and Maverick cleared the debris from Finn’s room, and Betanya and Olga are going over the room trying to get a reading on whatever made the mess.”
My eyes pricked, and it took every ounce of weary willpower remaining in my body not to fling myself into her arms and go to pieces. It felt like I’d been up for days, just pacing the floor of a hospital waiting room. Tally had been right about Andre’s injury not being that serious, but the fact this was all happeningagainwas almost too much to bear.
“Did Maverick tell you what happened?” I asked hopefully.
