Page 55 of Midnight Witch

“It all feels like a really weird dream.” A muscle jumped in his jawline. “Or a nightmare, even.” The Immortal faltered. “All I remember is a lingering feeling of hate toward you.”

Mae exchanged a careful look with Nikolai. Their suspicions regarding the other effect of the mirage magic had just been proven to be correct.

“How did you know you’d find us here?” Vlad asked the Immortal.

“I didn’t.” Jared grimaced. “I called Violet once I woke up and got out of that place. FYI, the facility was a mess when I left it.”

Guilt stabbed through Mae. “Did Bryony and Abraham get hurt?”

Jared shook his head. “No. And there were no fatalities, luckily.” He frowned at her. “By the way, did you do something to my sword?” He removed the switchblade from his ankle and studied it warily. “It feels different.”

“Oh, that?” Mae wrinkled her nose. “I, er, absorbed its power.”

Jared blinked.

Alicia’s eyes bulged. “You did what?!”

Mae squirmed under their shocked stares.

“I needed something extra to make a new spell,” she said defensively. “Since Jared didn’t have any divine energy in his soul I could assimilate, I took it from his sword instead.”

The Immortal looked a little bit sick at that.

“It wasn’t going to kill you,” she mumbled.

“The stuff you do scares me sometimes, princess,” Vlad said soberly.

Nikolai looked similarly grave where he stood with a knife and carrot held aloft.

Violet and Miles shared an excited glance. “Wait till we tell Artemus and the others about this!”

Mae wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that.

“The barrier around this place should replenish your sword’s energy,” she reassured a worried Jared.

The Immortal’s shoulders unknotted. He sat next to Alicia and observed her waxen complexion curiously. “What’s the matter with her?”

CHAPTER24

It wasn’tuntil they’d finished dinner that Nikolai remembered what he’d snatched from Oscar during their fight at the facility on Staten Island.

“I’d totally forgotten about this.”

He removed the black stone that had been inside the mirage magic orb Oscar had manifested from his jacket and put it on the table.

The others stared at it. It was perfectly smooth, like a pebble.

“Oscar tried to use this on me,” Nikolai explained.

Mae stiffened at his words.

“You mean, when he put that orb inside you?” Vlad said suspiciously.

“Yes.” Nikolai met Mae’s troubled gaze. “It was covered in runes made of the same blue fire we saw on the altar in that church.”

Mae picked up the stone. She frowned.

Though the flames had gone out, there was the barest hint of scorch marks where the symbols had once been.

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