Hell's Bell (Lizzie Grace 2)

I think you’d have to be more than a little left of center to even consider becoming a vampire’s food source.

“Which gives us more than enough to go on. Interview suspended at,” Aiden glanced at the clock and then said, “two forty-five. Suspect to be held until more secure arrangements can be made.”

“I’m not going to fucking prison,” Molly growled. “I haven’t done anything.”

“Including not answering questions.” Aiden walked around the desk and hauled her upright. “Let’s go find a nice little temporary cell, shall we?”

“I’ll add an exclusion note to the magic protecting this place,” Ashworth commented. “Just in case the bastard gives us the slip and attempts to free his sister.”

Aiden nodded and led Molly out the door. I put my cup down and quickly followed, as did Belle. It seemed both of us were desperate to avoid the looming confrontation with Ashworth.

There were only a couple of cells in the station, and all of them had silver-coated bars bracing the doors. A werewolf might well be able to smash through regular metal cell doors, but they wouldn’t go near ones braced with silver.

“How do you rangers get around the problem of the silver?” I asked.

“Special gloves.”

He shoved Molly through an open door, placed her on the very basic bed, and retreated. Once he’d plucked what looked like a thick oven mitt from a holder to the side of the doorway and tugged it on, he then closed and locked the door.

“Ashworth,” he said, raising his voice so that the other man could hear him. “You can release her.”

He did, and she immediately launched at us. She didn’t get very far—cells designed to hold werewolves were not going have much trouble containing a troubled young woman—but her language was thick, foul, and filled with threats.

I blinked. “Well, I’ve certainly learned a few new curses in the past couple of seconds.”

“As have I.” He lightly touched my back and guided me down the hall. “You two need to go home. Ashworth and I will go search her apartment.”

“Neither of them are going anywhere until they explain what the hell is going on.” Ashworth came out of the interview room and propped in front of the exit door.

I stopped and tried to ignore the sick sensation growing in my stomach. “With what? I don’t understand—”

“I meant with the two of you, and you’re well aware of it.” He shook his head. “Taken as separate entities, you are, at best, very weak witches—”

“A point that’s been well established, so what’s the problem?”

“The problem isn’t a problem, as such,” he said. “But it’s certainly something

I’ve never seen or even read about.”

“If this has any sort of point,” Aiden said, “can we get to it? We have a dark practitioner to capture and time’s a-wasting.”

“The point,” Ashworth said, his gaze once again gaining that sense of wonder, “is that these two might be separately weak, but together, they’re as strong as any single witch I’ve ever come across outside of Canberra’s confines.”

It was a comment that had relief stirring. At least he wasn’t saying we were all-powerful—that would have been the quickest way ever to have Canberra scrambling to investigate us.

“That’s impossible. No witch—not even those from royal lines—can blithely share powers.”

Except that we’re not ordinary witches, and we can and do share our physical energy, Belle commented. In fact, we’re something that’s never happened before—a witch who has a witch familiar. Your parents and the council were so busy bemoaning your lack that they didn’t even check what our situation might have meant for us jointly.

But if Ashworth can see the immersion of our powers so clearly, why wouldn’t have my parents, our teachers, and everyone else up in Canberra? Once you became my familiar, we were constantly together.

Perhaps it’s been a gradual thing. It’s been the two of us for such a long time that maybe this is simply a development of the trust and friendship that lies between us.

Possibly. Though it still didn’t explain why my parents wouldn’t have seen the possibility, given they were considered to be amongst a mere handful of the most powerful witches in Canberra.

“So the High Council would have everyone believe,” Ashworth said, dragging my attention back to him, “but there have been rare occasions where it has occurred, even if on a temporary basis. This, however, isn’t temporary. It’s full-time, and it’s something that has developed over time. Your separate energy outputs flow and combine in a way I’ve never seen. It makes the whole greater than the two parts.”

Which basically confirmed Belle’s thoughts, even if it didn’t explain why no one else had noticed it before now. Anna certainly hadn’t mentioned it, nor had any of the other witches—some of them powerful, most of them not—that we’d come across over the years.