They claim they don’t know what’s wrong with me, yet the tests don’t seem particularly comprehensive. I feel fine. Normal. Except my blood doesn’t clot when they take blood. But so what? Give me some medicine and my life back.
The mages here seem to pay special attention to me. To what I’m eating. Saying. Doing. It creeps me out. Something isn’t right.
The only thing that feels cursed is around the time Dad dumped me off at Mom’s. The memory… doesn’t feel right. Yet the mages haven’t done a damn thing to fix it.
Today, I accidentally tripped and sprained my foot during mandatory exercise. You would’ve thought it was an emergency from how they reacted. Tense faces. The kind Dad taught me to target when lookingfor marks. They’re the sign of a courier, of someone carrying something valuable for someone else.
What the hell is going on?
The only way to find out is to hurt myself again.
Fuck this journal, I’m investigating.
It took a few hours of Wren studying her soul to figure out how to put all the pieces back together.
“Good thing I didn’t cut you two apart all the way,” the necromancer babbled, “or else her soul would’ve floated away and this wouldn’t be possible.” She then began stitching.
The soul stitching tickled pleasantly, not at all like the agony of the failed excision. Gentry hadn’t expected that. The biggest inconvenience was the coolness of touching Wren’s skin too long, but that was the least of her concerns because she had a bit of an audience.
They’d settled in Adrienne’s lab, which was a state-of-the-art facility within the inner complex of the Weavers’ many properties. The set of rooms had Bunsen burners, Tesla coils, and all sorts of things that Gentry wouldn’t associate with magic — not that there weren’t also the usual horrifying potioningredients of dead monster parts or herbs. The lab was also fully staffed and was nerds galore. Witches in lab coats milled all about the place.
That was, until Wren had started stitching Gentry’s soul back to the Netherton’s. Then they’d stared, murmuring amongst each other and taking notes.
“Get back to work,” Adrienne growled from her workstation and her subordinates all listened, scurrying back to their varying projects of horror. She then put down her stirring rod. “Potion is done. I’ve weakened its potency so it shouldn’t give you a fever. Not often I brew for someone who’s not a witch.”
Gentry accepted a glass from her and tipped it back. Instantly, the aches and pains she’d felt from Adrienne restraining her during the failed excision disappeared. “Thank you,” she said, still feeling the tiniest bit awkward because there was still one audience member who’d yet to depart.
As soon as he’d heard of her plan, Luke had joined their little group, his eyebrows drawn together in a look of intense concentration. Busy with his new role as leader of the enforcers, he often left to take calls, but he always returned. Gentry still felt a little bit intimidated by the quiet man but chose to doggedly ignore him.
Impatience brewed in her blood as she waited for Wren to finish up her stitching. If this didn’t work, then they would still have no clues as to where Freya had taken Kit and Amelia. Thishadto work.
She still hadn’t told Kit how she felt about him, told him that she loved him back.
Over her dead body was she going to let Freya turn him into her undead slave for all eternity.
“All done.” Wren sat back and lifted her hands from Gentry’s. “I can’t say with certainty that the bond will be as strong as it was, but it should be there.”
Gentry wasted no time closing her eyes and letting her mind drift. The thoughts came, followed by the pictures. Freya was outside by a fire, a few rural houses within sight. None were enough information to identify the location. But then she caught a stray thought that changed everything.
“I don’t know where they are, but I know where they’ll be.”
Luke was already out of his chair. “Where?”
“She’s going to move them to the Underground tonight. That way she can Make Kit into a vampyre and keep him down there, and then”—Gentry shuddered at what she was about to say—“Freya plans to feed Drayer’s body to the vampyres after she transfers her soul into Amelia.”
“We‘ll have to intercept them before they get down there,” Luke said. “If she transfers her soul into the girl’s body, then we’ll likely have to take her in custody and prove that she's Freya. And even after that, her punishment would likely be lightened from execution to life imprisonment because of the optics.”
“Hey”—Wren glared at Luke—“you can’t kill Freya anyway, or else Gentry might die too.”
Gentry’s stomach churned. She had a different concern. “What about Amelia?”
Wren spoke up, her voice soft, “Body snatching is the process of removing someone’s soul from their body and replacing it with your own. If Freya does that to Amelia, then her soul would likely cross over.”
So that little girl would be dead.It was a horrific thing to do to someone. Gentry had never thought about what had happened to therealDrayer Netherton, but if what Wren said was true, then Freya had snuffed out that teenage boy’s life to improve her own miserable existence as a vampyre.
Luke didn’t waver once from his goal. “Feed me the exact location when you have it, Gentry. We’ll save them.”
Gentry noted he’d made no such promises about not killing Freya, and thus sparing her, but she didn’t care about that. All she could think about was deadly spells flying every which way with Kit and Amelia in the center. “She has hostages. Can you really guarantee their safety? EvenCleasays that Freya is a strong witch.”
