“Patrick said you got attacked by hunters, and we had to hear about it from the Seattle god pack and not you. He was pissed.”
“He could’ve called. That doesn’t explain why you’re in the Pacific Northwest.”
“Oh, well, Patrick sent me because he thinks you’re being dumb. Something about vampires?” Wade wrinkled his nose before his brown eyes narrowed. “Is that ahickeyon your throat? Oh man, was Patrick right? Didn’t London teach you anything?”
Spencer made a wordless, protesting sound in the back of his throat, aborting the motion of his hand as he instinctively tried to cover the hickey. The look-away ward was still present, but Wade’s particular immunity to magic meant he’d seen right through it. “It’s nothing.”
“Uh, it looks like you got mauled, so it’s something.” Spencer watched in betrayal as Fatima darted over to Wade and rubbed up against his legs. Wade immediately bent to scoop her up in his arms, cooing at her with a stupidly adoring expression on his face. “How’s my favorite girl?”
You!Fatima chirped happily.You are here!
“I thought Lillian was your favorite girl,” Spencer said, glaring at Fatima’s smugly satisfied expression on her furry little face. “That’smypsychopomp you’re holding.”
“Well,myniece is a princess among mortals, and Fatima isn’t mortal, so she gets her own pedestal.”
Spencer dragged a hand down his face before looking around for Makai and the others. “We need to get out of here before the local police find the courage to arrive after your flashy entrance.”
“Eh, I made sure no one would see me.”
“But they’ll have heard you, so let’s go.”
Fatima leaned up to lick at Wade’s chin before wriggling out of his arms and dropping to the ground. She darted off into the cemetery, but Spencer didn’t get any hint of concern off her. He waved Makai over, and the other werecreature approached warily, keeping his attention on Wade.
“I need you to shift. We need to get these two back to the parking lot,” Spencer said.
Makai shifted back to human as Brooke and Isaac slunk out of the dark, all three of them looking more than a little worse for wear. The shifts took care of their wounds though, the werevirus in their veins healing up injuries that would cripple anyone else.
When the three were human again, Brooke and Isaac tended to their pack members while Makai focused on Wade, looking at the young man with pure disbelief in his eyes, despite what he’d just witnessed. Wade didn’t seem fazed by the attention, merely wriggled his fingers at the dire.
“I’m with the New York City god pack. Your alphas said you’d gone with Spencer out this way, which is how I knew to find you. The light show was also pretty helpful,” Wade said.
“Right,” Makai said slowly.
“Sorry for the manhandling before. I promise I wasn’t going to eat you.”
“Wade,” Spencer sighed as he walked past him to the spot of scorched earth and blackened headstones.
“What? I wasn’t!”
“Please tell me Patrick sent along a credit card because I don’t have the funds to keep you fed.”
“I’ll have you know it’smycredit card.”
Spencer ignored him, gesturing at a mageglobe to make it glow brighter. He cast a few witchlights, sending them all skimming over the blackened ground that bore damage from Wade’s dragon fire. He slipped his sight sideways but didn’t see any sign of an active crossing, though he did sense the echoes of a metaphysical pull he only felt when Fatima was actively guiding souls onward.
He blinked his sight back to normal, letting his magic guide him to the circular shard of opaque glass lying amidst the damage, having somehow survived. Dragon fire had scorched the snake eye to nothing, and the glass itself was warped and fractured. No matter the strength of a spell, fire would always be a threat, and Spencer didn’t know anything that would withstand the effects of dragon fire. That horrible presence from before had disappeared with Wade’s arrival, but Spencer didn’t trust it wouldn’t find another way to return. Demons were tenacious that way.
Spencer knelt and glared at the damaged piece of the Ouroboros Mirror and the headache it presented before encasing it in a mageglobe with a containment spell to secure it for transport back to Seattle. He had no desire to touch it with his bare skin, and he’d let Fatima or Wade eat the damn thing if he thought that would solve his problem.
Somehow, Spencer knew it wouldn’t.
He commanded the mageglobe to follow after him as he stood and returned to the others. “Fatima?”
A muffled yowl was his answer as she popped into existence beside him, holding his discarded wool coat and suit jacket in her mouth. Spencer took them from her with a nod of thanks and slung them over his arm. They were soaked through and muddy and not worth putting back on.
Wade wrinkled his nose at whatever scent he got off the wool coat, eyeing it distrustfully. “You and vampires.”
“Car. Now,” Spencer retorted.
