“Because I’m a girl?” Amber demanded, voice full of teenage vitriol.
“Because you’re achild.”
She glared up at him. “I have more field experience than Zack does.”
“Considering the hours he’s put in on my mission, that’s debatable,” Roger replied. “Do you know why your parents deemed him ‘unfit’?”
Amber’s gaze darted to the side. She didn’t squirm, didn’t give in to the tiny burst of fear that expanded inside her. The fear was too vague and transient for Roger to discern what sort it was. She said, “I know. Up until this summer, I thought … I thought Zack was the fuckup. But he values life. He spared someone who needed a chance.”
“What changed over the summer?” Roger asked.
“We’re not friends, okay?” Amber snapped. She gestured between them. “This is not some amazing bonding moment. You’re on my shit list.”
“Because the family dictates me an enemy?”
Amber stepped closer despite having to crane her head farther back to glare up at him. “Because you got my brother kidnapped by psycho, torture-happy, ancient freaks.”
She was her own person, but the pieces of her that mirrored Zack clawed at Roger’s heart.God, I hope he’s alive.
The truck doors opened. Amber whispered, “Hey, you should know?—”
“Cal plans on putting a stake in my heart at the earliest convenience,” Roger finished.
“Yeah … guess that’s pretty obvious.”
Cal and Thomas stepped out of the truck. They were armed for combat in entirely different styles. Cal had gun holsters, multiple weapons in sight against his black clothing. His hunter’s belt had a section of shotgun ammunition. He had an ammo belt that ran across his torso and a shotgun in his hands. A wealth of silver bullets glinted in the dim streetlight.
Thomas had a sword on his hip, a quiver on his back, and a bow over his shoulder. On his belt, he had a wooden stake, two flashlights—likely at least one of them was UV—and his sheathed enchanted blade. Amber was outfitted like her father, with a crossbow instead of a bow and a backpack.
“Let’s get this fucking over with,” Cal said as he stomped off in the direction of Seamus’s mansion. Amber was quick to follow him.
Roger and Thomas brought up the rear. Roger said quietly, “I thought the plan was discretion. Why does he have firearms?”
“He’s convinced we’ll have to blast our way out. Might not be wrong.”
“And he might be planning to kill innocents like he did in Texas,” Roger snarled. He motioned at Cal. “I struggle to reconcile thatthatis the brother of a man I love.Thatwould have left Vincent to rot. Zack does not condone my every action, but he makes an effort to understand. He calculates withcompassion. He escaped the mold you pushed him into, and for that, you disowned him.”
Thomas was quiet for long enough that Roger was certain their conversation was over. Then, in a soft whisper, he said, “He’s always been brave. I didn’t understand how brave until recently.”
The thinnest touch of the desire to do things differently—regret—radiated from Thomas despite the shield of his hunter’s tattoo. Roger allowed the silence between them to grow.
Cal must have sensed how close they were because he stopped creating unnecessary noise and began to slip through the darkness. The group’s footfalls became as soft as predawn whispers between lovers.
When they reached the iron-wrought fence surrounding the property, Thomas held out a hand and took out his enchanted blade. He murmured a spell, and the blade’s runes shifted in color to a dull orange. Carefully, he neared the fence, and the runes grew slightly brighter. “Basic intruder spell. Nothing lethal. Amber.”
Amber pulled her backpack off and took out two iron hooks with a cord of silver between them. She knelt beside the fence and murmured a soft incantation as she put the hooks onto the fence. They were spaced two feet apart.
Once she’d nodded and backed away, Thomas used his blade and incantation to check that the spell was gone between the hooks. He nodded for Cal to go first.
“If I get cursed, I’m burning shit,” Cal muttered. He grasped the iron fence. When nothing happened, he climbed over it.
Amber’s spell and equipment had nullified a spot of Anton’s magical defenses. The idea was simplistic and brilliant. Roger wouldn’t have believed it could be done. Had Zack thought of such a scenario? Did he know the spell? Would they have been successful in defeating Seamus if Roger had stopped to listen toany of Zack’s ideas?I will beg him to go through every possible plan. Every thought. I never want to give either of them up.
Roger jumped over the fence, and then Thomas climbed over it, and finally Amber. The process took only seconds.
While light streamed out from various windows, Seamus’s mansion loomed across the lawn. Roger had witnessed the construction of this mansion, visited it time and time again when Seamus wanted to check on the progress. Built in the 1920s, it imitated the structure of a French palace, yet it lacked any of the polished charm. Its edges felt cold and severe rather than graceful.
A pair of guards making their rounds pricked Roger’s hearing before he saw them. He motioned for his group to fall in behind a tree. Tapping into his shadow abilities, he gathered darkness around them and deepened the shadow on top of them, obscuring them. The patrol passed on without hesitating.
