Page 62 of Oh, Sacred Dark
Tyler’s mind blinked out, going dark for a second. “No.”
“I…fuck.”
“Archie, that can’t be right. Look again,” Tyler pressed.
“Ilooked, Tyler! He’s…”
Tyler shook his head. That wasn’t possible. Roman wasn’t using Chaos Magic. Everything they’d been through couldn’t be a lie.
Nobody was that good of an actor.
“Someone is using it against him,” Tyler said. “No, listen to me. You getstrongerif you use Chaos Magic, right? Roman wasn’t. He was wasting away, was…it was like someone was draining him. Someone’s doing this to him.”
Tyler heard Archie take a deep breath. “He’s not within the wards, Tyler. If that’s true…someone’s taken him.”
**********
Tyler was going to be sick. Connie, Cross, and Charlie were milling around him, talking loudly. He just sat on the steps of Roman’s house, staring at the scuffs on his sneakers.
There were absolutely no clues in Roman’s house regarding where he could be. No convenient piece of paper with a phone number or address. No threatening letter.
Tyler’s magic was sizzling under his skin, restless, but there was nowhere for it to go. It was useless in this situation.
Hewas useless.
Tyler snapped into awareness as Archie’s voice called out to him. He got up, stumbling forward, Cross catching him. Tyler brushed him away, hurrying towards Archie.
“What did they say?” Tyler demanded.
“The person at the High Council said that everybody from the Imber coven was accounted for. Even the ones released but under supervision. They’re monitoring their magic, so they’re sure,” Archie explained.
Tyler let out a noise of frustration. “But ithasto be one of them. Ask them—”
Cross cut him off. “Not necessarily.” They both looked at him as he went on. “Our coven—our old coven—they did a lot of terrible things to a lot of innocent people. Roman was the son of the high witch. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone assumed that meant he was involved and wrongly released.”
Tyler had to swallow to keep the bile down. If anything had to drive home how mistaken he’d been in the beginning, that would be it. “Yeah.”
“That could be anyone,” Archie pointed out. “I mean, maybe we could get some information from the High Council about the victims’ families, but the chances of that are low.”
Tyler pressed his fingers against his temples. “What about the scryer? Did she—”
“Blocked, like we expected,” Archie said.
“Fuck. Roman…they could be doing anything to him. They could…”
Connie made a little noise of distress from where she had apparently been standing off to the side. “No. I…they’ll see he’s innocent. He’ll…”
The truth hung in the air—that grief could do terrible things to people. That if someone had used Chaos Magic on Roman, they were probably willing to go a lot further.
Charlie pitched in. “Well, we know he ain’t dead, right? The coven bond is still there?”
Archie nodded.
“They may have had almost two days already, so they don’t want to just kill him and be done with it. There’s still hope.”
Nobody said anything about the fact that there were worse things than death.
Cross cut through the silence that fell. “The only place we know he could be is Wyoming…specifically, where Imber used to be.”
