Devils & Thieves (Devils & Thieves #1)(59)

“You heard Darek—Killian’s the one who hid him away so no one would know the kid had the same power as his father.”

“I get that, but it doesn’t mean Killian wanted history to repeat itself.”

“Crowe!” shouted Hardy from outside.

Crowe and I rushed to the front door. Using the magic he’d been born with, Hardy sprinted after Darek’s car as it tore down the road. His fingers scrabbled at the trunk. “Gina!” he shouted.

A massive blue barrier exploded around the car, and Hardy collided with it at top speed. He crumpled to the ground as Darek’s car sped away. Crowe and I ran across the lawn to reach his injured best friend.

“I’m sorry, Jemmie,” Hardy muttered, climbing back to his feet. “I’m really sorry.”

My heartbeat was hollow as I took in the tortured look on his face. “What?”

“I heard thumping as he drove away,” he said, gesturing to his ears to indicate his uber-sensitive hearing. “He has your mom in the trunk.”

Crowe picked up a rock and hurled it down the street. It bounced off the shimmering blue barrier that spread so wide I couldn’t see around it.

“Oh God.” I covered my mouth with my hands. “He’s going to try to use her for the spell,” I said weakly.

Crowe’s brows lowered. “I thought Gina had no dominant magic.”

“She doesn’t, not really, but she definitely has traces of merata in her blood. She never gets sick.…”

“Remember when Owen had that accident while she was riding on the back?” Hardy asked Crowe. “Your dad had to heal Owen’s broken leg and cracked ribs, but Gina—”

“Had only a few scratches despite hitting the pavement at thirty miles an hour,” Crowe finished for him.

“Merata magic is rare. She’s the only person in this area who has even a little bit of it,” I said. Tears filled my eyes. “God, Crowe, we have to do something. He’s going to kill them all.”

“We will,” he said, squeezing my hand.

“I’m so sorry I doubted you.”

“I’ve given you more than enough reason to doubt me.” His thumb slid over the back of my hand. “We’ll stop him, Jem, and we’ll get our people back and then we’ll figure this out.”

I shivered, feeling the heaviness of his words, the promise that came with it. I didn’t know what the outcome of figuring it out would be, but I understood that we weren’t done. We hadn’t ever been done.

He let me go and said, “How long do you think it’ll take you to get your magic back?”

“No idea,” I said. My eyes skimmed the barrier Darek had created. “That thing is huge. I can’t believe it came from me. There’s a lot of magic there.”

Hardy squinted. “Wait. You can actually see it?”

I blinked, realizing I’d just revealed a secret I’d been trying to keep for years. But somehow, it just felt right. It was time to stop hiding. “Yeah.” Resolve filled the empty cavern inside me, the one that had been filled with my magic. “And I’m going to try to take it down.”

Hardy looked back and forth between me and Crowe. “She can see her own magic?”

Crowe’s eyes flicked to meet mine, and in them was something that I hadn’t felt in a long time—respect. “She can see everybody’s magic.”

“Whoa,” Hardy said. “And that wasn’t drained when Darek stole your locant?”

I frowned, realizing that was true. “I don’t think he knew it was there, so he didn’t know to take it. I’ve never really told anyone about it. It’s not a kind of magic anyway, or a power.”

“The hell it isn’t,” said Crowe.

I smiled at the awe in his voice, realizing he was right. I’d been so focused on avoiding magic for so long that I hadn’t really understood what I could do, or how useful it could be. I could see the magic people had. I could see when they were preparing to attack, or when a spell was wrapped around another person or thing. I could see all of it.

“Oh my God,” I whispered as another realization struck. “We have to get back to the festival. We were looking for the wrong thing.”

Crowe frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We were trying to locate the people who were missing, but Darek must have cloaked them using the magic he’s been siphoning from me. That’s why Alex disappeared from my radar, and why we couldn’t find Katrina or anyone else. He’s shielded them.”

Hardy dusted himself off. “So, what do we do?”

“What do I do, you mean,” I said, walking up to the barrier and placing my hands against it. “I’m going to take this down, and then we go back to the grounds.” I looked over at Crowe. “And then I’m going to look for my own magic.”





SIXTEEN


I APPROACHED THE BARRIER WALL, SHIMMERING SAPPHIRE under the starlight. My nose and throat stung with the sharp mint prickle of it, but I knew now that it couldn’t hurt me if I didn’t panic. For so many years, I’d done exactly that, running or drinking or doing whatever I could to avoid letting the sensations get too intense, all out of fear that I couldn’t take it.