“Marko needs one more victim,” Kat said, realizing what Davina was getting at. “Someone born at noon on the first of August—Lammas. All we have to do is find them before Marko does, and it will disrupt the entire ritual he’s spent all this time preparing for.”
“Is that something STAT can do?” Connor asked eagerly. “That would require access to birth certificates, maybe even medical records.”
Davina nodded. “STAT analysts are already working on it.”
“That’s good,” Rachel murmured. “Also more than a little disturbing. But right now, I’ll take whatever we can get. The problem is that Marko and his crew have been grabbing up these kids at a rate of one every two or three days. That means they could be heading after this fifth kid as early as tonight. That doesn’t give us much time to find the kid first and lay a trap for them.”
That was an understatement, but Kat had to put her faith in Connor and his teammates. She’d seen what the Pack could do when they were desperate to help people. They’d find this last kid in time. They had to. And if they were lucky, they’d get Marko at the same time. Though Kat wasn’t sure what they would do when they ran up against him face-to-face. Tatum had been more than they could handle, but maybe if they had the entire Pack together, with her limited magic, they might stand a chance. If Marko didn’t have too many members of his coven with him.
“While I agree that it would be best if we could stop Marko and his coven before they kidnap their fifth victim, we have to remember that the true goal is stopping them before they hurt the kids, which I assume will happen when they conduct this ritual to fire up these ley lines,” Gage said, his tone indicating he was already thinking of a backup plan. “So, bottom line, we have a little more time than Rachel implied.”
“Actually,” Davina said, looking grim. “We probably don’t have as much time as you might think. If Marko sticks with his trend of following the calendar, he’ll likely conduct the ritual during the autumn equinox, which is the twenty-second of this month.”
“Why do you think he’ll do it on this particular date and not sometime later?” Connor asked.
“Autumn equinox, which we call Mabon or the harvest home, comes during the final harvest of the year. It marks the time when the beauty and bounty of summer gives way to the first desolation of winter, and the darkness begins to overtake the light. I can’t think of a better time for Marko to try and pull off the ritual to create these ley lines.”
Kat silently agreed with Davina’s assessment. If she had to guess, she’d say Marko had built his entire timeline for this scheme around the autumnal equinox. But if Davina was right about everything going down on the next equinox, that meant they had only a couple days to not only find this fifth kid but also figure out exactly where Marko would be holding this ritual and then come up with a way to stop him—once and for all.
She gave Connor and his pack all the credit in the world, but bringing all this together in such a short amount of time was still a big ask.
***
After the bomb Davina had dropped on them, there wasn’t much left to say. Normally, Connor and his pack mates would sit down with Gage and try to come up with a plan on how they were going to deal with Marko, but if one thing was certain, it was that planning alone wasn’t going to see them through the coming confrontation. Considering how badly they’d gotten their asses kicked in their first run-in with Marko’s coven, they were going to need more than a little luck on their side for the fight looming on the horizon with the man.
Even though he was concerned about that—and what failing to stop Marko might mean for Kat—after they were done talking to Davina, Connor’s thoughts turned back to his sister and how he might find her. Assuming, of course, that she hadn’t already left town, which was a serious possibility, especially considering how badly he’d screwed up by saying what he had.
Connor cursed silently. What the hell had he been thinking, using that word around her?
He had his parents to thank for making Jenna hate the word when she’d overheard them call her crazy during the arguments that always followed his sister’s first few sessions with her therapist. No teenager should ever hear a parent use that word to describe them, but Jenna had, and it changed everything.
And then Connor had used it, too, at the worst possible time—in the worst possible way. His sister had been reaching out for help, desperate enough to fly halfway across the country on a whim, and he’d thrown that awful word right in her face. He wondered if she’d answer her phone if he tried her number. Considering he’d called her twenty times already and gotten nothing, the possibility seemed slight.
Maybe he should call in a favor with a few TSA agents he knew at the airport to find out whether she’d already left Dallas. If she hadn’t, he’d drive around to all the hotels and motels near his apartment and see if she’d checked into one of those. It would take forever and would also torpedo his original plans of spending the entire day chilling with Kat, but what else could he do?
“Kat, could you stay a minute?” Davina’s voice intruded on his thoughts, making him realize the woman hadn’t disconnected from the call. “There’s something else I want to talk to you about.”
Everyone else had already moved into the bullpen, but Gage turned back at Davina’s words. “Take all the time you need. We’ll be over in the training room if you need us.”
Davina glanced at Connor, then looked at Kat. “I thought maybe we could talk in private?”
“It’s okay. Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of Connor,” Kat said without a moment’s hesitation.
He breathed a sigh of relief. His gut told him Davina had something serious to say, and he was hoping it had something to do with breaking the binding spell Marko had put on Kat. He’d prefer to be in on that conversation.
Davina glanced at him again, then nodded before turning her attention to Kat. “I think you should seriously consider leaving Dallas.”
Connor was pretty sure his jaw hit the floor. Because of all the things he’d been prepared for Davina to say, this definitely wasn’t one of them. Beside him, Kat looked as stunned as he was.
“Are you saying Kat is in danger if she stays in Dallas?” he asked.
The expression on Davina’s face seemed to suggest she thought Connor was an idiot. “Did you miss the part where Marko turned her into a cat for the express purpose of enslaving her as his familiar? Of course she’s in danger. But in this particular case, it’s not only Kat I’m worried about.”
“What do you mean?” Kat asked.
“Remember what I said about Marko needing some way to regulate the raw power that exists within the ley lines?” Davina asked. “Well, I didn’t want to talk about this in front of the others, but I’m almost certain he already has a way to regulate the power in those lines—you. Worse, I think he’s had you in mind from the very beginning. In fact, it’s probably the reason he attacked your particular coven in the first place. And how you were able to get away from him.”
Connor tried to work his way through all of that but ultimately decided he simply didn’t have the background in magic to understand any of this.
