Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 131708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 659(@200wpm)___ 527(@250wpm)___ 439(@300wpm)
Dashing down the hallway toward her apartment, she frowned. Because there was no one there. Coming to a stop near her front door, she breathed hard and fast. “They’re gone.”
Mia swore, panting. “It has to have been your note writer.”
Ella scanned the carpeted floor around them. “There’s nothing here. If they came to leave another letter, they forgot to drop it off before they left.”
“Do you think they were trying to get inside?”
“Possibly.” Ella briefly chanted under her breath, causing the four wards protecting her door to become visible. The size of her palm, they were all gold, glimmering circles containing glyphs and old arcane writings. Scanning each of them, she froze. “Wait.”
“What?”
“Look at that.” Anger scraping at her nerves and boiling in her demon’s gut, she pointed to the ward on the top left of the doorframe. “See the shadow there?”
Mia studied it closely, and her nostrils flared. “Motherfucker, they took a shot at unraveling your wards.”
“Only one, so maybe … ” Ella trailed off on noticing that her sister’s gaze had turned inward. “What is it?”
Mia blinked, refocusing on her. “Dice telepathically reached out to ask what time I want him to pick me up. Can I tell him what happened here? He’ll only brood if he later finds out I didn’t say anything at the time.”
“Yeah, that’s fine. Tell him to relay it to Viper—I would have texted him about this anyway.” Ella turned back to the front door. “Whoever came here was cocky to think they’d unravel my personal wards. I mean, people literally pay me to build wards for them. It’s no secret that I’m good at it.”
“They stupidly thought they were up to the challenge, I guess.”
Just then, Viper and Dice teleported a mere foot away. Both were tense, their eyes hard, their jaws tight.
Viper crossed to Ella. “What the fuck happened?”
“I’d put a magical tripwire on my front door,” she explained. “If anyone came near it with negative intent, it would go off. Which it did. But whoever set it off had left by the time we got here.”
Dice’s face firmed. “Shit, Mia, you should have called for me before running down here to—”
“Save it,” advised Mia, slamming up a hand. “I’m no damsel. I did not feel that my sister and I would be unable to handle whoever had been dumb enough to try to enter an incantor’s apartment without invitation.”
Viper’s gaze sharpened. “They tried to enter it?”
“Yup. I thought they’d just come to drop off a note, but there’s a shadow on my ward.” Ella gestured at it. “They wanted inside.”
Viper snarled. “Son of a bitch.”
“Indeed.” Ella chanted low and soft, releasing a thread of magick that surged up to the ward and pierced its center. The entire ward flickered, glowed, and then settled—the shadow now gone. Sending out a soft wave of magick, she made the four wards once more transparent.
Turning back to Viper, she almost flushed at the covetous look on his face. Huh. Somebody liked watching her work magick. If her demon wasn’t so pissed, it would have smiled at that.
Door hinges creaked somewhere down the hall, and they each went very still.
Viper caught her wrist as he looked at Dice. “Clubhouse. Main room.” He then teleported him and Ella to said room. Milliseconds later, Dice and Mia joined them.
“Wow,” breathed Mia. Her gaze bounced around, ricocheting off the reddish brown brick walls, leather couches, pool table, mahogany furnishings, and small bar. It was then Ella remembered that her sister hadn’t been here before.
Viper planted his feet as he stared at Ella, still in possession of her hand. “Would only another incantor be able to untangle the wards?”
“Yes,” replied Ella. “And they’d have a heck of a time doing it. The process would take literally days, if not longer. But it isn’t only incantors who can attempt to damage magickal wards. Anyone with power could make a go of it, they just wouldn’t stand a chance of succeeding with mine—unlike incantors.”
“The shadow that was on the ward … does that mean it was damaged?”
“No. Think of it as a bruise. The ward took a hard hit. It didn’t break. No threads of the spells popped. There was just a mark from the impact. I removed it.”
“There was no other ‘bruises’?”
She shook her head. “Just that one.”
“The question is,” began Mia, “who was it who left the bruise?”
“I’d say my pen pal gave up on using notes and decided it was time for us to have a showdown.”
Or they wanted to take her, Dice telepathically suggested to Viper. A celestial might do that on behalf of the Uppers to force your hand, knowing you’d return to the upper realm if it would keep her alive.
Possibly, but … It wouldn’t save her life. They’d kill her anyway.
Mia very theatrically cleared her throat, arching a reprimanding brow at him and Dice. “It’s rude to exclude us by having private telepathic chats. If you know something, you should share it. This is Ella’s safety we’re talking about.”