Blade Bound (Chicagoland Vampires 13)
We exchanged brief kisses, and then looked at each other.
“You ready for this?” I asked Mallory.
She held out her arm. “Let’s follow the yellow brick road,” she said. And we set out to find the Wicked Witch.
• • •
We followed the island’s main road toward the park, the sorcerers in front of us, at least until they split off to take their positions. Ethan and Catcher would come in from other directions, hopefully surreptitiously. Luc, Lindsey, and Juliet would stay near the planetarium and closer to shore, in case Sorcha made a run for it. Brody would stay with the vehicle. Thankfully, the CPD had thought ahead, made sure the snow and ice had been mostly cleaned off. The asphalt was still slushy and slippery, but we didn’t need skis and snowshoes.
“How are you feeling about the governor?”
“‘Confident’ is a word. It’s not the word I’d choose, but definitely a word.”
She slipped a little in the slush, and I grabbed her elbow before she could go down, helped her straighten again.
“And what word would you choose?” I asked her.
She thought about it for a moment. “Encouraged?”
“I’ll take that. How close do you need to get?”
“As close as possible.” She pulled the compact from the pocket of her coat. “It’s a spell-alchemy hybrid. I’m a spell kind of girl; she’s an alchemy kind of girl. Without getting into the gory details, it’s like Spanx for magic. Sucks it all in.”
“You are a wonder. And you’ve come a long way in a year.”
“Just need an endorsement deal and I’m good to go. I’m going to need to concentrate—both on finishing the spell and keeping her from knowing about it. So I need you to handle her.”
“That will not be a problem,” I said. My blade and I needed a good workout.
She nodded. “I’ll give you a signal when I’m ready.”
As we reached the hill, she cleared her throat nervously. “Do you want to bet on how bad this gets?”
I grimaced. “Like the number of people who die?”
“No, that’s just morose. More like, will Baumgartner blame us when this thing goes to shit?”
I’d spent ten minutes in a room with the man, and I already knew the answer to that. “He absolutely will. No bet.”
“Hmm,” she said, and crossed her arms. “Other obvious predictions—Sorcha will wear a completely inappropriate outfit. She’ll blame something on someone other than herself. Baumgartner’s sorcerers will either completely fail to make a dent, or screw up out of some misplaced sense of ego.” She paused. “The mayor will refuse to take responsibility.”
“You’re basically laying out the Supernatural Debacle bingo card,” I said. “And you’re right about all of it.”
We reached the loop around the lagoon, scoped out the place we were supposed to wait for Sorcha.
“You think she’ll come down in a puff of smoke?”
“Wicked Witch,” she reminded me.
One more square on the bingo card.
• • •
The sky was clear, and the air was frigid. We stood atop the snow-covered hill in utter darkness, in the middle of a plateau about forty feet across. The hill wasn’t very tall—maybe twenty feet above the lake—but it was elevated just enough so the wind whipped around us.
It was August in the Midwest, and the island should have been alive with sounds—the chirp of crickets, the croak of frogs, the rhythmic humming of cicadas. Waves should have bumped against the shoreline, and wind should have rustled spent and browning grass. Instead, the world was silent.
“She’s coming,” Mallory quietly said, at an hour until dawn.