Hell's Bell (Lizzie Grace 2)

Meaning you haven’t read him?

No. You know how those two IIT officers were wearing a device to stop me reading their thoughts? I think he’s got one.

The IIT—or Interspecies Investigations Team, as they were officially known—were legally required to be called in whenever there was a murder on a reservation that involved humans. Whether they would be called in on this case now that Teresa White had been killed, I couldn’t say, although I rather suspected it would be the RWA’s call if they were.

Why would a witch be wearing an electronic device like that? Surely it’d interfere with his ability to sense the natural energy of the world.

You might be right. Maybe it’s a charm of some kind.

Possibly. It’s not like we’ve kept up-to-date with recent spell developments. And if the High Council’s spell development team could create magical fingerprint locks, it was certainly possible they’d found a way to stop telepathic intrusion.

I could probably get past it, but it’s really not worth the effort given he has absolutely no problem telling the world at large exactly what he’s thinking. She paused. I’d better go. He’s heading into the reading room, muttering something about ley lines and wild magic and why didn’t the bastards in Canberra know that.

Know what?

I have no idea. But I daresay he’ll tell us sooner rather than later.

I couldn’t help grinning. He really did sound a hell of a lot like my grandfather.

“Lizzie?” a familiar voice said from outside the truck. “You there?”

I rose up on my elbows and warily looked out the windshield. Zak and a man who was almost a carbon copy of him, but with slightly fuller cheeks, were standing at the front of the truck.

“I’m not entirely sure where else you’d expect me to be,” I replied. “Has the shooter been caught?”

Zak grinned. “Yeah, Aiden got her. He’s asked us to escort you up to the compound proper.”

“I have to walk?”

“No. The council gave you special dispensation because you’re shot. Jak and I will drive you.”

I sat up and unlocked the doors. Pain slithered up my shot leg, and I winced. “Jak and Zak? Seriously?”

His grin grew as he climbed into the driver seat. “For some weird reason, Mom likes names that rhyme. So aside from the two of us, there’s Nick and Mick, and Jen and Wren.”

I laughed. “Are you all twins, or just born close together?”

“Twins,” Jak said, and handed me a bandage. “Wrap that around your leg. The medic is on standby in the meeting hall.”

“Why are we going there rather than to a surgery?”

“Because it’s the elders’ right to be present when Aiden questions Larissa.” Zak started the truck and reversed out of the parking spot. “And he also wants you to be there.”

I blinked. So it was Larissa who’d shot at me? Why on earth would she want to kill me? Then a chill crawled across my skin as another thought stirred—what if she was under the soul eater’s control? If Aiden was still wearing the amulet I’d given him, he’d be safe enough, but everyone else in that room certainly wasn’t. They had, quite literally, invited death into their presence.

I shivered and rubbed my arms. That thought was probably nothing more than paranoia; there had to be easier ways to access a meeting of the elders—especially given they apparently had regular pack meetings. But that still didn’t discount the growing conviction that both the soul eater’s presence and these murders were something other than Larissa needing revenge.

“You cold?” Jak said.

“No, just uneasy.” I lifted my leg up as best I could and started bandaging the wound. “Can we hurry this up a bit? I need to get up to that meeting and check Larissa out.”

“She’s no danger to anyone now,” Zak assured me. “She’s trussed up tighter than a turkey at Christmas.”

Even so, he planted his foot on the accelerator and we shot up the old track at a faster pace than was probably wise.

As we wound our way up the mountain, the track grew increasingly narrower, the forest darker, and rock outcrops bigger and closer. Eventually, the truck could go no farther. Zak pulled into a small clearing off to the right of the track, and stopped. “We’ll carry you from here.”

“I’m not an invalid—”