Chapter 31
Chatan walked inside with Jacinda under his arm. He couldn’t explain the nervous energy that had cropped up. He sent Loretta a text he was taking Jacinda to his mother’s but nothing more.
How much of the night before did she know?
“Stop stressing,” Jacinda whispered.
“Wish I could,” he muttered.
“There you two are.” Loretta smiled. “George was right. I’m sorry.”
“Huh?” Chatan asked.
“He was right about you. Something broke the dam wide-open. I feel it now.”
“Feel what?” he asked slowly.
Jacinda squeezed his hand and whispered against his ear. “Your magic. When you healed me, it flowed past whatever was blocking it.”
His brow pinched as he shook his head. “What?” He didn’t feel any different. Sure, the healing worked better, but the only thing that changed is that he felt whole.
“It’s true,” Loval said, coming into the kitchen. “It’s like your energy to the millionth power.”
Taryn nudged Loval. “Leave him alone.”
“Don’t you dare tell him not to try,” Loval whispered loudly.
She shook her head. “Not another word.”
Only one possible cause. Chatan turned to Jacinda. “What did you do?” She had to have done something.
She shook her head, her eyes bright. “Nothing. You did it.” She pushed him toward the table. “You’re hungry, right?”
“Yeah.” He sat down and filled his plate while Jacinda did the same. Questions tumbled around his head. He glanced at Jacinda. Maybe Jacinda was right. Maybe everyone’s doubts blocked his ability. She had faith in him, and his magic broke free.
He squeezed her hand and she met his gaze with a radiant smile.
“So, last night,” Loretta started, “how did you get away from those brutes?”
“Invisibility spell,” Jacinda answered. “Thought Chatan might give me away when I snuck out and stepped on glass.”
Loretta shook her head. “Explains the bloody track of footprints to the tree and the mess there.”
“Sorry.” She ducked her gaze. “Didn’t think it was that bad.”
“It was bad,” Chatan admitted.
“Don’t worry about the mess. It’s already cleaned up. And I should give you some money back.”
Jacinda shook her head. “No, I won’t take it.”
“Are you going back to the room?” Taryn asked, her eyes narrowed.
Turning to Chatan, she looked into his eyes. “Are we staying in your home?”
He smiled. “We are.”
She faced Taryn. “No.”
“You were welcome in this home,” Loretta stated.
She nodded. “Thank you, but it would have felt strange to me. I’m used to being on my own, no one to check in with. I can get used to checking in with Chatan, but not everyone else.”
“You really should have a phone,” Taryn said.
“Never needed one before,” Jacinda admitted.
“Well, maybe we should fix that. Then if one of us worries, we can call,” Chatan murmured.
Jacinda held up her hands. “Everyone stop. You can’t expect me to want a phone. I’ve never needed one.”
“I’ll work on her,” Chatan announced. “Now, I’m starved. And we have a long day planned.”
“Have dinner at our place,” Taryn said. “Please.”
Loretta nodded. “I’ll be busy tonight. We have a lead, and I need to find out more.”
“Call if you need me,” he said.
“If, but I think it will be fine,” Loretta assured.
Chatan took Jacinda’s hand. “Want to eat with Taryn and Loval?”
“Sure, sounds good to me.”
Loretta pulled the subject back, “How’s your foot. You aren’t limping.”
“Well, Chatan took care of me. My foot is fine now.”
Pride filled Chatan as Jacinda smiled his way.
* * * *
Loretta drove to the elders’ log cabin and pulled out the laptop they kept stored there. She needed to continue the trail she’d found. So many shifty things hidden in the Monvoisin bloodline, and several of their own members had disappeared after going to Saint Morton.
Josephine seemed to be behind it. And yet Sigmund and Francis Monvoisin hadn’t reported anything unusual. Why should they? Their daughter was a monster, literally. And Loretta had done some digging into strigoi. Seemed Jacinda had nailed that one on the head.
Josephine wasn’t alive, and her soul was only partially intact. The rest was filled with a dark entity, pushing her drive for violence and power higher than anything it normally would have been.
“We need to call the Council,” she told George, Nadie, Joe and Mac. “We can’t handle her on our own. If what I just found is true, she may have the power of a transcendent mage now.”
“Why?” Mac asked slowly.
She sighed. “Because her cousin, Maxine, was a transcendent mage. And she flew in last night. Her husband too. Though the warlock doesn’t likely have magic we need to be concerned with.”
Nadie paced away. “That foolish girl. She’s playing with powers she cannot hope to control. She’s going to tear the fabric of reality if she gets too cocky.”
“Who’s to say she hasn’t? Of the pricks they arrested last night, Mason Shirington wasn’t among them. What if she turned him into something like she is?” Mac asked.
George pushed out a breath. “Then she’s killed him too. Even if he is alive, once the Council takes him in, they’ll have no choice but destroy him or let him fade away.”
Nadie shook her head. “He won’t want to live without her. And they will certainly destroy her.”
“Do you see another outcome?” Loretta demanded.
“Of course not. She’s a loss.” Nadie pushed her hair back. “I’m only sad she lost the humanity she had.”
“By her choice,” Loretta argued.
“I’m not arguing. Doesn’t make her story any less tragic. Her parents blamed her for not being good enough. She clung to someone who could get her where she wanted, manipulated them into making her more powerful, without realizing she wouldn’t be her anymore. There was a girl there once, one who had a shred of decency that could have grown, but no one nurtured it. She fell to darkness instead.”
Loretta dipped her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t think we could have done more to stop her. And now a stupid, foolish man has lost his chance to redeem himself because he decided to follow a psychopath.”
* * * *
“I want you to stay here,” Chatan said as he parked the truck.
“Not going anywhere.” She sat back and opened the paperback she picked up at the store.
Smiling, he headed into the police station. Joe looked up with a grin. “Thought you were coming by earlier.”
“Woke up late,” he answered sheepishly.
“You can go back there, but they don’t remember shit. And they aren’t faking it.”
“What?” Chatan asked.
He shook his head. “Never seen anything like it. They’re acting as if their minds were wiped. They don’t have a damned clue why they’re here, or what they did to deserve to be in cells. And no lawyer has come to talk to them. No one has come to bail them out. It’s eerie as fuck.”
“Interesting. I still need to see for myself.”
“You could bring her back, see if she jogs their memories.”
“Oh, hell no. She doesn’t need to be harassed.”
“Chatan, they honestly don’t remember what they were doing here. They don’t remember Josephine. They’re lucky they know their damned names.”
Frowning, Chatan shoved through the door and stormed into the cell hall.
Butch stormed to the door. “Stop playing games and let us the fuck out!”
“What are you in for?” Chatan asked.
Butch pulled at his hair. “Honest to fucking God, I don’t have a damned clue. I haven’t driven out to this piece of shit dump in years. I want out.”
The other four men closed in on the doors. “Let us out. We haven’t done anything.”
“There’s video evidence of you smashing a window, Butch. The same tape shows all of you breaking and entering into a motel room. And you don’t remember that?”
“Not a damned thing.”
Chatan spun on his heel and left. “What the fuck? Did Taryn’s tonic go wrong?”
“She didn’t give them anything,” Joe said. “And they’re going apeshit because they don’t know what the fuck they supposedly did.”
“Damn it. I need to go.”
He hurried back to the truck and climbed in. “You know magic, right?”
Jacinda nodded. “Yeah, why?”
“About things you don’t know how to do?”
“Yup.”
“Can some kind of caster wipe someone’s mind from a distance?”
“A powerful enough psionic, if they’ve performed a ritual to form a mental bond. They would have to withdraw the bond and everything to do with that person would recede with the magic that held them under thrall.”
“Fucking hell, that’s what she did.”
Her head cocked.
“None of them know what they did last night.”
“Do they remember Wendy?” she asked with a snort.
He dialed Joe, instead of going inside. Chatan hit speaker.
Joe answered, “You’re in the parking lot, dude. Why didn’t you come in with her?”
“Just in case that bitch decides to restore someone’s memory. Do they remember Wendy?”
“Nope. Nothing to do with why they were here, who they were searching for, what crimes she supposedly committed.”
Jacinda rubbed at her face. “I didn’t even get to order food, let alone steal anything.”
Joe chuckled. “Don’t worry, we know you didn’t.”
“Thanks, Joe.” Chatan hung up and started the engine, throwing the truck in reverse. “Mason wasn’t in there.”
She nodded. “Okay, what does that have to do with anything?”
“This isn’t over.”
“Well, no shit. Look, I’m staying with you, right? And if you need to work at the motel, I’ll stick with you those nights. Relax.”
Chatan looked over, his expression softening. “Really?”
“Yeah. I found what I was looking for. I just have to figure out what it means.”
“And then what?” Dread set in.
“Then we have a long talk. You need to understand everything.”
A smile spread across his face.