‘T and I are holed up in my loft, but we’re going to leave soon to meet you at the sheriff’s. It’s all over the news. People are going nuts out there. It’s really bad.’
‘Yeah, Ray says the fog has completely overtaken pack land, which means Gran’s cabin must be in it too.’I worried at my lip. Molly was in the cabin with Haru and Reo, and my dad was at Brock’s house.‘We’re on our way to the sheriff’s. We saw my cousin Johnny, and he’s agreed to send seven witches from the Black clan. Did Tianna get a hold of Willemena?’
‘Yeah, apparently the cranky old witch had a premonition about her being needed. She was already on her way. She’ll meet us at the station in twenty.’
‘That’s good news. We need all the power on our side we can get.’I sighed in relief.‘We might be late at this rate, but we’re making our way straight to the station. Meet you there.’
‘You got it, my girl.’
‘And, Cass?’I said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Be careful.’
I didn’t want to think about anything happening to my demon imp bestie. Life had changed so much over the last several months as to become nearly unrecognizable; Cass was the one constant fixture in my life I could always count on, and I wanted to keep it that way.
‘Don’t worry about me,’Cass said. ‘My badass T has some kind of spell that keeps the fog from touching us. You watch your back till I’m with you to watch it for you.’
I smiled through our link, wondering if he could feel me, before disconnecting. “Willemena’s coming,” I said aloud to Brock, before finding it too difficult to communicate through the masks. I switched to our pack link.‘We need to stop this fog demon, stat.’
‘You can say that again.’
We continued to crawl along the road until my right eyelid twitched at the slow pace. I’d agreed to be at the station in an hour; at this rate, if felt like we’d be lucky if we made it before nightfall.
I handed my phone to Brock.‘Text Molly and Cho and tell them to meet us at the station. Tell Molly to wear the mask you left her, and to make sure to bring her apprentice badge.’
‘What about Haru and Reo?’
I hesitated. In reality, I wanted everyone I cared about to stay safe and put. But that wasn’t an option. Still...‘I don’t see what they can do to contain the fog. They should go protect my dad, especially since we’ll need Cho for the fog.’
Brock nodded and got to typing, and when we finally pulled up outside the station it seemed as if ten hours had passed, though it’d only been ninety minutes or so.
We were definitely late.
I cut the engine and peered at the barely-visible building. Immersed in the thick, putrid-looking fog, it was like a haunted house, not a police station. It perfectly matched the rest of the scene. The trashcans lining the street were upturned, parking meters were bent and knocked over, and cars had been abandoned with their doors hanging open and engines left running. And that was only as far as I could see in the fog.
‘It looks like the set of a horror flick,’Brock said.
I nodded sadly. How had things gone so wrong so fast? And how was the responsibility of the entire town squarely on my shoulders? It felt like I was carrying around a refrigerator on my back, and all my body wanted was a nice, long nap … monster free.
I needed to close that fucking gate, like yesterday.
Car alarms blared in the distance, making the uneasy stillness of the town seem all that much more wrong. There wasn’t a person in sight.
‘Is it safe to walk through as long as we’re not breathing it, do you think?’I asked, wishing—not for the first time—that I’d had the chance to learn more about my witchy powers. If Tianna could make a bubble that kept out the air, I should be able to as well … if I’d learned how.
‘I have no idea…’Brock trailed off.‘You’d better double check with Cass.’
But just as I reached out for Cass, a rap on my driver’s side window about gave me a heart attack. I yelped and jumped half a foot off my seat, before seeing that Cass was hovering at my window, flapping his little wings to keep him aloft. The fucker was laughing at me as I attempted to gather the scraps of my dignity.
Tianna loomed behind him, but she wasn’t laughing. The Amazonian fae-witch with the great hair was shooting looks in every direction, her magic crackling between the open palms of her hand. The fog didn’t seem to touch them. They were surrounded in a thin clear bubble of clean air. She spoke to Cass in their transparent bubble, and he relayed to me.‘My sexy T says she’s going to extend the bubble to surround the cab of the truck until you and Brock are inside. Got it?’
I nodded first at him, then at her behind him. Her magic flared as she pushed the invisible force of her power outward to bolster and expand her clear bubble. The moment she nodded at me again, I popped open the driver’s side door and Brock and I slid next to them, pulling off our gas masks but clutching them in our hands. There was no way I was leaving it behind in the car, not with the way our day had been going.
“Let’s move,” Tianna said in her best military commander impersonation. “Hostiles are everywhere.”
“I don’t see anyone,” I stated while hustling along the sidewalk in front of the station.
