n’t know.” I hesitated. “We might be able to create a spell that could track down her energy output, but to do that we’d first have to get some sense of said output.”
“I could run back to the club,” Belle said. “She had to have been in there for a while before she found her target. Even if her energy isn’t lingering, the damage caused by the fireball might just hold enough of her essence to design a spell around.”
“And if we can’t, surely Monty will be able to.”
“Exactly.” She swung the pack off her shoulder and handed it to me. It was waterproof, so even though water dripped from the straps, everything inside the pack should be dry. “Be careful if you do track the bitch down.”
“I’ve been fireballed twice now. I do not intend to suffer through a third.”
“Then we’d better start figuring out a proper fire dousing spell.” She glanced around at the sound of a siren. “That’ll be Tala. I’ll head off.”
“Tread lightly around Maelle. She’s going to be mighty pissed.”
“I think that may win the award for understatement of the year.”
She jogged away. Several seconds later, a green-and-white SUV slid around the corner and roared toward me. I could see two figures inside—one was Tala, the other had reddish hair, which meant it was probably Duke, a ranger I’d seen on a couple of occasions but never been officially introduced to.
The SUV slid to a halt beside me and Tala motioned me to hurry and get in. I ran across the road and jumped into the back of their vehicle.
I’d barely pulled on the seat belt when Tala took off again. “I take it you managed to get an address from the rego number?”
“Yes.” Duke’s voice had a decidedly Irish lilt to his voice, which suggested he was yet another wolf who’d come into the reservation under the exchange program. “It belongs to one Jason Harding, who lives in Louton.”
Louton was one of a handful of small gold mining towns that ringed Castle Rock, and only ten minutes away. But that still gave the soucouyant too much of a head start, and more than enough time to hastily seduce and then kill.
“So what, exactly, happened at the club?” Tala turned onto the highway that led down to Louton. “We got a report that the fire brigade had been called to the scene.”
I gave them a brief rundown on what we were chasing and then said, “The bitch wasn’t trying to burn the club down—she was just trying to delay me.”
“Successfully, it seems,” Duke commented.
I glanced at him. “Yeah. But she’s aware her attack wasn’t fully successful and would expect us to track her victim down fairly quickly.”
“Meaning she may not be there when we arrive.”
“If they’re going to his place, yes. But she can seduce and feed anywhere between here and there.”
“Meaning we’d better keep an eye out for an abandoned silver Kia.”
Given this whole area was a rabbit warren of scrubby trees and intersecting tracks, it would be fairly easy for a Land Rover to disappear let alone a smallish sedan. But there was little point in stating the obvious.
We roared down the highway—though calling it that was something of a misnomer given the road consisted of a single lane each way—and were soon out of Castle Rock and heading into Louton. Tala slowed enough to do a right into the street just past the local pub and then switched the siren off. The sudden silence was decidedly eerie.
“The registered owner of the Kia lives in the last house at the other end of the street,” she said. “How do you want to play this?”
I undid the seat belt and leaned forward. The glow of the SUV’s headlights revealed a street that was single lane and roughly asphalted. Light peeked out from the covered windows of the three nearest houses, but the far end of the street remained wrapped in shadows.
I had no sense of the soucouyant; in fact, my senses were tugging me back down the road and out of Louton. And yet we couldn’t leave—not until we’d checked the house out. My instincts hadn’t been wrong often of late—and the star-struck stranger certainly couldn’t afford them to be wrong now—but the truth was, we knew very little about soucouyants and just what they were truly capable of. Given her ability to disappear to the senses of others, it was totally possible she was using a similar magic here.
“Well?” Tala said, a touch impatiently.
“I’m not feeling anything on the psychic radar, but I don’t think we can leave without checking that house out.”
“And if they’re not there?”
“We can discuss that after we uncover whether they’re there or not.”
Annoyance ran through her expression, but she didn’t say anything and shoved the SUV back into gear. The house at the top of the hill was a single-story, tin-roofed old weatherboard cottage that was painted in an ugly brown. Rather weirdly, though the front door pointed toward the main street, there was no street access or even a pathway, and between the picket fence that surrounded the entire place and us was a rather large embankment.