Witch Fire (24 page)

Thomas closed his eyes and sighed in defeat. “I paired him with you for a reason. He's the best man to guard you, Mira. He'd give his life to keep you safe.”

“Yeah, I know. That's the problem.”

T
HE DAY DAWNED COLD AND GRAY.
S
HE STEPPED
out of the limo on some swanky street in New York City. Mira had never visited this place, knew nothing about it, and she was hardly paying close attention to their surroundings at the moment. The best she could do was note the winter-barren expanse of Central Park that lay across the street. At least, she suspected it was Central Park. It was a really big park at any rate. They were at Thomas's apartment, not very far from Duskoff International.

Mira glanced at the lightening sky, her breath showing white against the cold air. She'd slipped from Jack's bed during the night. He'd be waking up soon to find her gone, but she wasn't going to think about that.

Thomas placed a proprietary hand to her lower back and steered her into the building, past the doormen, the front desk person, and to the elevator. Several witches trailed them. More would follow.

Thomas's New York digs were all Mira had come to expect—hardwood floors, expensive furnishings, huge floor-to-ceiling windows with a view of the park. It was beautiful, but Mira noticed little beyond the obvious. All her thoughts were centered on Annie.

She pulled her coat off, and one of the accompanying witches took it for her, shuffled it away somewhere. She sank down onto Thomas's couch and stared out the window. Behind her the phone rang. Thomas picked it up and spoke in muted tones to the person on the other end.

Thomas approached her after hanging up the phone. She didn't bother to look at him. “They know we're here. They say 4
P.M.
, at Duskoff International. The pretense is that you've agreed to exchange your life for Annie's, but we all know that's not the way this is going to happen. We're here to fight. They know that well enough. They'll do all they can to take you from us. We need to be ready.”

Mira only nodded and kept staring out the window. A curious sense of power had stolen over her, a feeling of confidence. All her fear was locked somewhere deep inside her. She couldn't afford fear right now, not while Annie was with Crane and needed medical attention. There was no time to waste on feelings that did no good, did nothing to get Annie back. Everything seemed so crystal clear to her.

“Where is Duskoff International in relation to your apartment?” she asked Thomas mildly.

“Five blocks north of this building.”

“Thank you.” She stood and walked down the hallway, seeking a quiet place.

“Mira? Where are you going?”

She turned. “I'm a witch. It's time I started to act like one.”

“Do I need to worry about you? You seem too calm.”

“You don't need to worry, Thomas.” Mira turned back around and continued down the hallway, finding one of the bedrooms at the back of the apartment. She sat cross-legged in the center of the bed, closed her eyes, and let her consciousness drift deeper, drift until she couldn't sense her physical body anymore.

She heard a little
pop
as her consciousness freed itself, and she directed it out of the room and into the main part of the apartment.

Her awareness was the air itself, and she could point her attention anywhere she chose. Regulating the sounds of the witches in Thomas's apartment so they faded to nothingness and managing the loud clamor of the street beyond, Mira turned northward and sought the Duskoff Building and Annie.

The gunmetal gray building stood on the corner of a large intersection. A tall, wide, carved granite sign in the common area in front marked it as the building she sought. Despite it being Saturday, many people walked the street outside the frosted double glass doors. Mira tried to send her consciousness into the building but couldn't get past a heavy barrier that ran around it.

Warding.

She'd forgotten that the Duskoff Building would probably have some serious protective wards around it. She remembered what Jack had told her once. The barriers were meant to allow non-magickals through, but not just any old witch. No magick other than what the wardweaver had decided was safe could pass.

That meant she was definitely locked out. She was not safe to them.

Mira slid along the barrier, finding what felt like a seam in the magick. She followed. Maybe she could find an imperfection of some kind, a mistake or a back door. That's what the wardbreakers had found at Jack's apartment, according to Thomas. Completely perfect wardings were a fluke. Some wardings were better than others, but no witch could get a barrier up that was completely solid.

This warding seemed perfect.

She explored for what felt like hours and found nothing. Mira searched until she felt despair rise up from the center of her. There seemed to be no imperfections anywhere in the sleek magickal barricade or along its perfect seam.

Just as she was about to admit defeat, she found a tiny crack at the base of the southern wall. She went right over it at first because it was so small. Mira came back to it and worried at it with her own magick, trying to make it rip, but it held fast. She was incorporeal after all; she couldn't hope to have that much effect.

Taking a different tact, she pushed and squeezed until she forced her awareness through the miniscule tear and into the building. She felt her consciousness ooze through like a viscous liquid.

Now to find her godmother.

The moment she put her focus on Annie, Mira experienced a
zoom stop
straight to her, as though merely thinking of her had some kind of magnetic attraction. Her godmother was being kept in a storage room somewhere in Duskoff International.

Annie lay on her stomach on a cot. Black and red, blistering burns marked her back where her very clothing had ignited and burned away. Shivers wracked her body, either from the cold or from her injuries.

The amount of damage that had been done to Annie stunned Mira into nonreaction…a moment before perfect rage filled her. Mira could feel her physical body shaking from it back in Thomas's bedroom.

Mira attempted something she'd never tried before. She pulled a thread of magick and created a warm breeze in this remote location. It caressed Annie until she no longer shivered.

Annie pushed up, wincing at the pain the movement caused her. “Mira?” she whispered.

Mira could feel tears running down her physical cheeks, but she had no way to answer her. Instead she created another steady breeze in the room, warming the air for her. It was all she could do.

She let herself drift out of the room, examining the building and the location where Annie was being held. She could tell by the views out of the windows that it was somewhere high. By finding the lobby and elevator, she discovered which floor it was for certain.

Eventually, she came to a large boardroom. Two men stood near the long table in the center. The older man had his back to Mira. The younger, handsome man she recognized right away as Stefan. As the two men spoke in low voices, she noticed that Stefan's visage had a brutal set that he didn't allow the world to see.

This was the man who'd taken Annie and who had burned her.

Mira's anger flared, and Stefan jerked his head up. He put his hand on the older man's shoulder, helped him into a chair, and then circled the room, looking up at the ceiling. He knew they weren't alone.

Had she inadvertently caused a disturbance in the air, or was Stefan simply sensitive to other magicks?

She had no time to wonder further. Stefan flicked his wrist, and all Mira saw, tasted, and felt was fire. Her consciousness slammed back into her body, making her gasp. The coppery scent of burnt blood filled her nostrils and the persistent sense that she'd been seared lingered along her skin. She touched her face and chest, making sure she hadn't truly been burned, but it had been an illusion.

She collapsed to her side and closed her eyes, her heart thumping wildly. Her legs had fallen asleep, and she suffered through the pins and needles. When her heartbeat had slowed to an acceptable level and the pain in her legs had receded, Mira opened her eyes. She knew where Annie was being held within the building, and she knew what they had to do. They wouldn't wait until it was time to meet and battle it out.

They would take them by surprise before then.

She slid off the bed, stalked into the other room, and told Thomas as much.

“You're forgetting about the warding, love,” said Thomas. “They'll drop the warding before 4
P.M.
so we can get in. We can't break through before that time, not even with our top wardbreakers working nonstop between now and then. They need more time.”

“But I know where there's a chink in the warding, Thomas. It's how I got in. It's a hairline crack at the base of the southernmost wall, but maybe it can be exploited with the right magick. I know exactly where it is.”

“Whoa, calm down.” He took her by the upper arms and guided her to sit on the couch. “What are you talking about?”

“In the bedroom I just…I don't know…traveled to Duskoff International. I wanted to see if I could locate Annie. I ran into the warding, but after spending some time exploring the seams, I found a little chink and worked my disembodied awareness through it.”

Thomas shared a look with a male witch standing behind the couch. The guy was about six three, blond, and built like a tank. Mira thought his name was Brandon or Brian or something.

“She's powerful,” said Brandon or Brian.

“First, it's incredible that you managed to do that.” Thomas shook his head in disbelief, sending his loose hair sliding over his shoulders. “But it's because you have the magick of air. It needs only the tiniest of cracks to squeeze through. Getting in physically is something altogether different.”

Mira closed her eyes for a moment in frustration. “Stop telling me what
can't
be done, Thomas. If I can give the wardbreakers the exact location of the imperfection, can't they worry away at it until it rips?”

Thomas pushed a hand through his hair. “Andrea?”

A sleek redhead who was leaning against the foyer wall with her arms crossed spoke up. “Maybe.”

“Mira, this is Andrea, our best wardweaver and breaker.”

The redhead smiled. Mira let a ghost of a smile pass over her lips in return. She didn't have time to make new friends at the moment.

“Try it,” said Thomas.

J
ACK STRODE DOWN THE CORRIDOR TOWARD THE
office of the one person who would know where both Mira and Thomas had gone. He'd woken to a cold, empty bed and the knowledge that Thomas, Mira, and the top fifteen most powerful witches—except him—in the Coven were gone.

Anger made his magick restless, made sparks jump from finger to finger when he wasn't actively suppressing them.

Last night, Mira had kissed him, curled up against him to fall asleep…and then left him sometime this morning to put herself in Crane's way. He was sure of it.

He'd believed her yesterday when she'd told him that her meeting in Thomas's office had been of a personal nature. She'd told him that it had been about her family. She'd seemed depressed and subdued all evening, but he'd equated it to her nightmare. Now Jack suspected that for unknown reasons, Thomas had whisked Mira away from him.

Fear flicked through him. Was Thomas in league with Crane?
No.
He gave his head a sharp shake to rid himself of the notion.
Impossible.
But what other reason would cause Thomas to take Mira and leave him behind when he'd been the one tasked with keeping Mira safe?

He reached Ingrid's office and stood in the doorway, watching her shuffle papers on her desk.

She looked up, caught sight of him, and sighed.

“Tell me.”

She shook her head. “I can't. I'm sorry.”

He stalked to her. “Tell me.”

“I can't tell you anything. You're wasting your time.”

“Ingrid, I love her.”

She looked away. “I'm under orders, Jack.”

Jack took her by the shoulders and made her look up at him. “I love her, Ingrid,” he repeated. “Don't do this to me, please.”

Ingrid sighed, swore, and softened. “Stefan kidnapped the godmother to draw Mira out. They're holding her at Duskoff International. Mira went with the others to try and get her back.” She paused. “What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to make sure she's safe. I'm killing anyone who gets in my way.”

She nodded slowly. “That's a good plan. Simple. Brutal. Effective. Easy to remember.”

“I think so.”

“They didn't tell you because—Jack? Jack?”

He was already on his way to New York.

M
IRA GOT A FASCINATING CRASH COURSE IN
wardweaving and wardbreaking with Andrea, an earth witch. Apparently, only earth witches could construct or deconstruct a warding because it was all done with plants and potions and things that remained elusive mysteries to Mira.