Patrick let his headthunkback against the headrest, staring blankly at the road lit by headlights. “I don’t know what we’ll find when we get there.”
“We haven’t had a call from Georgelle, so if anything has happened to Eloise, it was out of sight of the packs up there, and quite possibly any SOA agent,” Jono said.
He was driving because Patrick was apparently not allowed behind the wheel, and Wade had stolen his keys and wouldn’t give them back. Patrick was fairly certain Jono had them tucked away in his pocket, but he hadn’t had a chance to check.
Wade had wanted to come, but with everyone pairing up, he’d had no choice but to stay with Sage since she was holding their territory for them as proxy with her dire rank. Patrick knew he’d be fielding more phone calls than he already had from Priya and General Reed after last night. Nadine had already taken a nearly hour-long one with PIA Director Franklin.
With five days now left until Samhain, the veil thinning from the other side, there was only so much time they had to get everyone in place. Federal agents were all well and good, but Patrick hoped General Reed could get boots on the ground through the National Guard with the governor’s support. If not, getting anyone from the Department of the Preternatural would be even more difficult.
But soldiers on the streets of an American city wasn’t typical, and Patrick couldn’t be sure that support would come in time. It was a numbers game, and he knew they were coming up short.
“We should’ve asked Lucien for a carbine,” Nadine muttered.
“I wasn’t going to ask Marek to front that kind of money like last time. We have too many eyes on us right now, and I’m still not sure our finances aren’t being watched,” Jono said.
Patrick’s murder charge had brought a lot of scrutiny. While he and Jono were operating as any other god pack when it came to tithes and money handling, he wasn’t stupid enough to think the federal government wasn’t monitoring their activities.
“As much as I’d like a carbine, showing up for brunch with a rifle would probably get their threshold to block us,” Patrick said.
“How powerful is it?” Nadine asked.
Patrick sighed. “Strong. It’s had generations to build in that one spot. It might toss you out if you try something.”
“Duly noted.”
It was going to be tricky, showing up how they were. No one had announced Eloise was missing, but that wasn’t to say the Patterson family was hiding that information. The Dominion Sect had clearly been making exploratory forays into Salem. While Patrick was more and more certain New York City was where Ethan would cast whatever sacrificial spell he had in his repertoire to turn himself into a god, they couldn’t rule out Salem.
They had too much ground to cover and not enough people to guard it.
Halfway to Salem it started raining, a downpour that turned the windshield into a waterfall no matter how fast the wipers moved. Jono never let go of the steering wheel, keeping his eyes on the road, while the drenched scenery passed them by.
“This doesn’t feel normal,” Nadine said.
Patrick nodded in agreement. “I think it’s safe to say the reactionary storms are growing in strength.”
It was a problem no number of magic users with an affinity for weather magic could fix. This was the natural world responding in a slow rise to an imbalance of magic. An action would always cause a reaction, and one couldn’t mess with magic on a large scale and think everything would be all right.
If the storms held, as Patrick was pretty damn certain they would, they’d be fighting in what amounted to a landed hurricane. It wasn’t anyone’s idea of fun.
“So what’s the plan?” Jono asked when they finally drove into Salem, the sun struggling to get light through dark rainclouds. It was midmorning but could’ve easily passed as early evening.
“We knock and hope we get asked inside,” Patrick asked.
“And Eloise?”
“Best-case scenario? She’s there and fine, and we just make a fool of ourselves. Worst case?” Patrick shook his head, curling his fingers between the straps holding his dagger in place to his thigh. “At this point, I don’t know what the worst-case scenario is.”
Because death wasn’t the comfort people tried to make it out to be at times. He didn’t want his grandmother to be dead, but he also knew the nightmares that came with every other option his mind dredged up.
Tension left Patrick hyperaware as Jono parked some ways down the street from Eloise’s house. Nadine cast a discreet shield to hold off the driving rain as they headed for the home.
“It has defensive wards around it,” Nadine said as they turned up the walkway.
“SOA agents should’ve set them after our visit the other week,” Patrick said, taking the lead.
He climbed the porch and rang the doorbell, hearing muffled voices from inside. The curtains shifted slightly over the window to his right, wide eyes peering out. Then the door opened, Madelyn standing there to greet them in surprise.
“Patrick! What are you doing here in a storm like this?” she asked, gesturing them all inside with a hurried wave of her hand.
