If only you could stop me if I needed it. “I’ll talk to Alec. He’ll help.”
“We’ll end this. We can do it, Jackson. Together.”
He nudged her, and she slid from his lap to her feet and held out her hands. He rose, his heart feeling lighter. “Yeah. Let’s go eat so we can learn how to do this thing.”
Jackson was so tired he might not have heard his cell phone ringing, but Mackenzie jabbed him in the side with her elbow. “Make that stop.”
He grabbed for the phone and nearly knocked it off the nightstand. The backlit display showed a familiar name and number. “Shit. It’s Wesley Dade. I forgot to call him back.”
Mackenzie mumbled something and snuggled closer to his side as he flipped open the phone.
Wesley’s voice crackled out of the speaker before he got a chance to answer. “Jesus fuck, Holt. It takes an act of God to get you on the phone.”
“Alec got your message, but I’ve been covered over.” He sat up, careful to keep his voice low. “What’s going on?”
“Covered over and then some. What the hell did you stir up? My head’s gonna split open from all the visions of terror and chaos I’m getting nailed with thanks to you.”
The hair on the back of his neck rose, and his lips felt numb as he murmured, “Care to explain, Dade?”
“Started two days ago. Who the fuck did you piss off, Jackson? I’m talking serious damage. Everyone you ever knew is going to die if you don’t stop doing whatever you’re doing. I mean everyone. That hot-ass chick who bought Mahalia’s, your cute little assistant, her cousin, your partner, your God damn parents—”
“What the fuck?” His heart shuddered to a halt before resuming its furious pounding. Nick, Alec, Kat, his family… “Fucking hell. Christ. Okay. What’s happening? What have you seen?”
He felt the bed shift behind him even as Wesley continued, “I don’t know, man. Magic. Unholy wrath of God, smite the wicked magic. Maybe not rain of fire or locusts in the streets, just this knowledge. Something’s coming for them. It’s big and bad and scary, and it wants you to hurt.”
“Yeah, it does.” He slid out from under the covers and grabbed his pants. “How soon?”
“Couple days at the most. Maybe not even that. Listen, man, you should get the fuck out of town.”
Mackenzie handed him his shirt and slid past him to kneel in front of her own bag. Jackson tried to slow his breathing and focus. “I’m already gone. If you don’t hear from me in a week, talk to Alec. Tell him I owed you, big time. He’ll take care of it.”
“Okay, Holt. Just be careful. You pay me too much to end up dead.”
“Will do, Dade.” He closed the phone with cold fingers and tossed it on the bed while he tugged on his jeans. “How much of that did you catch?”
She’d already pulled on a pair of slacks and was adjusting the strap of her bra. “All of it, I think. Can we get out of here without Alec hearing us?”
“Not likely.” He stepped closer and pulled her body to his. “But, since we’re going to steal his car, I’d better make it work.” Jackson closed his eyes and mumbled the Latin words that comprised one of the first incantations Mahalia had taught him. A wave of magic swept over them both, and he lifted his lids. “Don’t scream or slam any doors, and we’ll get out.” We have to. For all their sakes.
Mackenzie rocked up on her toes and kissed him once, hard. Then she snatched a plain black T-shirt and jerked it over her head. With her shoes in one hand and her duffle bag in the other, she nodded to him. “Let’s go.”
They crept down the hall, and Jackson took Alec’s keys from the hall table. He handed them to Mackenzie. “Go. I need to leave a note, at least. Tell him we’re okay.”
She nodded, and he grabbed the notepad by the extension phone. It took him only seconds to scribble a few words.
Dade said Talbot was going to kill us all, so gather everyone and be on the lookout. Hopefully, we’ve fixed it by leaving. Sorry about the car, but this is important.
He left the note on the pad and closed the door gently.
Inside Alec’s SUV, he laid his hand on the dash and repeated the charm before starting the engine. “We can get as far away as we can in a couple of hours and do the binding spell.”
Mackenzie pulled something out of her bag. It was a small charm, one that looked like the talismans Michelle and Mahalia had created to get by Charles’s wards. “I brought this too. I remembered how everyone kept talking about how you could track someone. This is the charm Charles made. I thought you could use it to find him.”
He tried to smile. “Good thinking. I can use it.”
“We can do this, Jackson.” She dropped the charm into the console between them and reached out to touch his leg. “We’re going to do it.”
“Yeah.” He headed for I-10 and covered her hand with his. “Yeah, we are.”
Chapter 25
Mackenzie dumped the takeout containers on their motel room’s tiny, scratched table and stretched her arms over her head. “Okay. Let’s eat and you can explain to me how this works.”
Jackson double-checked his notepad and the small bags of herbs in front of him. “Not much to explain. Like May said, it’s a fairly simple spell. The tricky part is finding someone willing to go along with it.”
“Uh-huh.” Even though they’d been sitting for the last few hours, she sank into a chair and reached for the box of chicken fingers. “So you’re going to do something that sort of makes us one person. But it won’t kick in until I shift forms?”
“Right. When you shift, the spell will take effect. You won’t be able to shift back until I release you.”
She nibbled distractedly on the chicken, but most of her earlier appetite had fled. “But I’ll be me, right? I mean, I won’t be a wild animal.”
“You’d have to stay in cougar form without shifting back for a long, long time before you started to lose touch with your human side like that.”
“Okay. So, you hold the spell.” She tossed the chicken finger down and said the one thing they’d been avoiding. “And I kill him.”
“Hell, no.” Jackson leaned back in his chair. “I do the spell and then shoot his ass. Or give him a convenient heart attack, or any number of cool things I’ll probably be able to do as a temporary Seer. You’re my backup, sweetie, not the brute force.”
Her temper flared and she curled her fingers around the arms of her chair in an attempt to keep from tangling them in his shirt. “Well that just seems downright stupid, Jackson, since I’ve got a lot more brute force than you do right about now.”
“You absolutely do, and we might need it. But unless we do, I want you as far away from this shit as possible. I don’t know how practiced Talbot is with fighting as a cat. One lucky swipe at you, and he could take us both down.”
It was logical, even reasonable. But every instinct in her body protested that she needed to fight. She needed to protect Jackson, because he was hers. She closed her eyes. Her fingers hurt as she slowly uncurled them from the arms of the chair. “Okay, I’ll be backup. But you’re not stashing me somewhere. We’re doing this together.”
When she opened her eyes he gave her a lopsided grin. “Wouldn’t do me much good not to bring my backup to the fight, darlin’.”
She didn’t want to laugh, but she couldn’t help it. “Fine. You cast the spell, you shoot him, and we go home before Alec and Mahalia track us down and kill us.”
He rubbed a hand over his forehead and stared at the notebook on the table. “At this point, I’m looking forward to the angry yelling. It’ll mean we won.”
“Yeah, I’ll remind you of that when Nick finds out about what we did.” Just please be alive to yell at us. She sipped her own soda. It was room temperature and flat, but it helped her suddenly dry mouth. “We should do it. Now. So we can figure out a backup plan in case it doesn’t work.”