Chapter 4

Onen, I said inside the safety of my own head.

The front door of my house flew open, burying the single click of my atern. I'd walked out of here an hour ago with one click of magic on the silver bracelet; now after stopping at an atern charging station, I had exactly sixty. No telling how I would've opened the door without my last click if Ty hadn't paid me since my hands were useless. I could've either died out in the cold or died after the last click of my atern with poisoned spikes gouging my wrist. It would be like a Witch Way book Mom used to read me, except both choices would end horrifically. I didn't exactly think through my return here very well.

As I stepped into the entryway, the door slammed into my hip before it clicked shut. I winced at the spark of green flames that burst from the wall sconces around the living room. A blaze shot up in the fireplace, and from that amount of light, it didn't appear that I'd dragged in any rabid fae dogs with me. They could watch me all they wanted after I found the human. Kason. Even his name sounded delicious.

I panted my relief, exhaling a wintery breath and inhaling sugary-laced air with a dash of sour and stale. My lungs felt like they were still outside, and my loud breaths rattled like I'd been couch potato-ing two years too long.

My wool coat, torn, raggedy, and about three sizes too small, snapped open when I stuck out my chest She-Woman style. My boobs were good for something, at least. I shrugged out of the coat, letting it fall to the blackened floor, then made a beeline through the living room, past a barbed-wire gate that barricaded the hallway, to the kitchen and my laptop.

With an obscenely spacious hard drive, more memory than I knew what to do with, and a custom-made, voice-activated keyboard, this laptop was state of the art, my pride and joy. Dad had given it to me when I was fourteen, and I'd slowly upgraded a few things with my earnings as a hacker, or "information borrower" as I liked to call myself. On the outside of its case, I'd written the word "Nasty," so named by Ty because of all the scandalous things I'd found out for my clients.

Nasty powered on quickly, the screen's glow casting a small orb onto the blackened kitchen table. While it did its thing, I moved past the back door window toward the countertops to deal with my sudden drunk munchies. On the right of the sink were plastic bowls and rows of boxes of flaky or puffed breakfast cereals. On the left were several opened boxes of unwrapped straws, and on the other side of the refrigerator that had stopped working about six months ago, was a Necromancer's Piss wine tap, complete with spigot that stuck out of an actual cardboard box. Fucking brilliant.

Empty bottles sat underneath the spigot, so I elbowed one underneath it, grabbed a straw in my teeth, and took the wine and Nasty to the living room couch in front of the fire.

Hackers left certain signatures behind that could lead a digital trail right to them if they were messy. Good thing I wasn't messy. The back pocket of my pants snagged against the black couch cushion, and I slopped wine all over my sweater. Good thing I wasn't a messy hacker.

An open bottle of fennel seeds sat propped in the corner cushion, but when I attempted to pour them into the wine, most of the seeds ended up on the floor. With my new cheap perfume of wine soaking through my bra, I assumed the position on the couch with my head propped up on a pillow and a straw dangling from my lips.

As long as I cleaned up after myself online, the Diamond Dogs would never know it was me hacking into the fae network to dig up info on Kason Fields. Or they wouldn't be able to prove it, anyway. But they sure did suspect me. Which meant I needed to find him fast.

I got to work on searching for the name Kason Fields, but it didn't exist in cyberspace. That made sense, because if the fae knew about Kason, his profoundly hot face would likely be caged up in a laboratory somewhere while the fae used him as a human battery to feed their own power. And when he wasn't useful to them anymore? He could be buried under six feet of snow, sans other, probably just as beautiful, body parts. That would fucking suck in more ways than one, because then his knowledge about ending the faes' power over witches would die with him. No way would I let that happen.

My voice-activated keyboard shuffled past pictures of several vacant houses in Faction 11, and I supposed any of them could have hidden a human. I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking for, but I kept clicking at the same speed at which the snow pelted the window behind me.

And something else tapped behind the barbed wire gate that led down the darkened hallway.

I shoved myself into a sitting position, my heart making a permanent home in my throat. The whole house was protected by a multitude of charms, spells, and herbs that had only been breached once. And once was all it took.

With breath held, I stood and let Nasty drop to the couch. I held my wine bottle close, but I wouldn't be able to use it as a weapon. Not with these shaking, useless hands. The only weapon I had was magic, but even as I faced the gate and the barricaded hallway beyond, even though I didn't know what kept tapping, a large part of me didn't want to use up my magic for this, whatever this was. If I was going to find Kason and make him end fae power over witches, I was fairly certain that would require more than a couple well-timed sarcastic jokes and a roll of duct tape like most of my problems.

One of my feet aimed toward the gate. The other pointed toward Nasty, my coat, and the front door. I could just say fuck that sound and attempt to search for Kason outside on a wintery night. Or I could put my big girl panties on-the ones with all the holes-and unlock the gate to check out the sound.

I'd fortified the charms, spells, and herbs after the breach had happened two years ago with most of what remained on my atern. There was nothing down that hallway except more barbed wire nailed across closed, black doors. Behind those closed doors... Well, behind them was nothing I wanted to remember.

But if something was down there, inside one of those sealed off rooms touching the things I never could throw away, then that tugged a nerve that could potentially stir up too many memories. The things inside those rooms shouldn't be touched by anyone. Or by anything.