Page 66 of Twisted Magic

“Now we’re taking orders from familiars?” a new voice grumbled.

Gabriel wasn’t sure if they referred to Nic, Quinn, or Han, but he had no patience for the absurdity of the protest, regardless. He produced a thin smile. “The next person to complain about anything at all gets to be the first test subject on assessing the location of the enemy.”

That worked like a charm, everyone immediately dispersing. Still holding Nic’s hand, he tugged her into the temporary peace of the library. The tall windows shimmered with the ward he’d hastily erected around the entirety of the manse.

“Where do we stand?” he asked her, glancing at the list she’d given him, the words and numbers on it making little sense to his numbed brain. Easier to hear her summary.

“About two-thirds of the house denizens were inside the boundary of your wards when the horde manifested,” she replied crisply. “As you would expect for the middle of the day approaching harvest season, most everyone else was in the fields and orchards, along with a generous helping of wizards, familiars, and others enjoying the beautiful autumn weather.” She grimaced for that unfortunate timing.

“Confirmed deaths and injuries?” he made himself ask, then sat on the arm of a chair. He couldn’t relax, but he also needed a moment.

“Ten deaths confirmed. The hunters killed anyone nearby when they decloaked, before establishing their perimeter. We know that because they left the bodies in plain sight.” She swallowed, rubbing her rounded belly. The stretching skin itched her and he’d been rubbing oil on it for her in the evenings. “Injuries… we just have no way of knowing.”

“My parents?” he asked, not really wanting to hear the answer, but needing to.

“They were out of the house,” Nic answered with quiet compassion. “They’re not among the dead, but more than that, we can’t be sure.”

“And the dead?” Much as he worried for his parents, and all the people outside his wards, he couldn’t squelch the utter relief that Nic had been inside the house when the horde appeared and attacked without warning.

“There’s a list of names on the back of that sheet,” she answered quietly. “Mostly non-magical folks, but we lost Wizard Faith and Familiar Michael who were walking on the far side of the lake.”

Gabriel scrubbed a hand over his face, knowing he’d have to set aside grief and regret for later. Knowing also that the list of names would grow. “And the assessment of how they managed to surround us without us knowing?”

She sat in the chair he perched on, losing verve like a puppet with cut strings. “Elal magic is our best guess. I kept thinking I sensed it, but dismissed that as wishful thinking because I miss Alise. Now I’m so glad she wasn’t here and is safely at Convocation Academy.”

“The downside of that is we could use her wizardry to send out spirit scouts.”

“Don’t remind me. If I could do it, I would,” Nic replied with bitterness.

He feathered fingers over her hair. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know.” She reached up and linked her fingers with his. “I just feel so cursed helpless.”

“We all do.” He let out a breath. “Elal magic how?”

“Some kind of cloaking, as you surmised,” she answered, shaking her head. “Not anything I was aware of, but it seems Elal spirits were employed to hide the approach of the horde until it was too late. Iliana is a mass of guilt. Remember how she said Nephi was trying to tell her something but she couldn’t understand what? Apparently it was this. They’ve been massing for more than a week.”

“There’s no way Iliana could have extrapolated this turn of events from Nephi’s emotion-images.”

“I could have. I should have because Seliah wrote about it in her initial missive from Refoel. Remember how she told us that the El-Adrel wizard and automatons who attacked them were cloaked in the same way? The clues were right there, but I didn’t give them as much attention as I should have.”

“You can’t second-guess these things,” he told her. “I didn’t give it much thought either.”

“But I should have.” She shook her head impatiently, curls bouncing. “All I could think about was my father colluding with El-Adrel. I didn’t follow her warning to the logical conclusion.”

“This is the logical conclusion?” he asked incredulously. “An army of hunters and spirit-driven automatons surrounding House Phel is something you think you could have predicted?”

“Yes.” Dropping his hand, she propelled herself from the chair, restlessly pacing to the window, skirts swirling in a rustle of color, hissing like her impatience. “We knew they were coming for us, that they were plotting and scheming. All this time that we’ve been going back and forth with those legal actions and counteractions and motions to do jack shit, only gave them the time to plan this battle. They’ll crush us, Gabriel,” she said bleakly, turning back to him. “We should talk about evacuation, if that’s even possible.”

“The countryside outside the wards is likely even more dangerous,” he pointed out, though they both knew that. “We can fight. This isn’t insurmountable.”

“We’re facing virtually indestructible automatons,” she shot back. “Not to mention thousands of hunters.”

“We’ll use moonsilver to melt—”

“No,” she interrupted. “We won’t. I haven’t told you the worst parts yet. Wizard Faith and Familiar Michael had moonsilver weapons on them. They didn’t work.”

Real fear trailed cold down his spine and coiled into his gut, wrapping itself around his entrails and beginning a slow strangulation. “What do you mean?”

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