Rocked by Love (Gargoyles, #4)(61)


A jolt of something sizzled through her when she saw it. Electricity, awareness, magic, she didn’t know what to call it, but she absolutely felt it. All the way down to her bones. Maybe because she read it on the computer, her mysterious power made the seemingly innocuous information mean more to her, but whatever the explanation, she had no doubt that she had found the fateful day.

“It’s not Patriot’s Day, but it’s close,” she said, and felt all eyes turn her way. “The following weekend, in fact. The Carver Foundation World Congress on the Environment, Hunger, and Global Activism.”

Wynn hurried to her side and peered at the screen. “Right here in Boston, April 23 and 24, at the Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center. You really think this is it?”

Kylie nodded. “I’m certain. Don’t ask me why, but there’s not a doubt in my head. It hits all the criteria—first, numbers. It says they expect more than five thousand people to attend from all over the world. All those people will be concentrated in one place for the event. The media will be swarming because of Carver, the topic, and the chance of other prominent world figures attending. The topic is so philanthropic that emotions will be running high, and there will be a huge outpouring from the public if anything tragic happens there. It both feeds the Demons and feeds Carver’s need to appear in public and be adored. I know this is when they’ll strike.”

She met her friend’s gaze and watched while Wynn digested her words and nodded. “Okay. I buy it.”

Knox rose and began to pace. “It is a starting point. We should still perform our research to confirm.” When Dag snarled at him, the other Guardian held up a calming hand. “I do not doubt your mate’s sincerity, nor her intuition, but we cannot afford to be careless. I believe Kylie is correct, but we will use our research to verify and to gather further intelligence.”

Kylie flashed the room a grin, a surge of energy filling her. She had a mission, a method, and a goal in sight. “Grab me a flashlight, boys,” she crowed, cracking her fingers and settling in at her computer. “I’m going dark.”

*

Kylie enjoyed the dark and dangerous aura of the deep Web as much as the next person, but the truth was most of what lurked out there was about as sinister as your average university bulletin board. A little sex, a lot of rock ’n’ roll, and maybe one or two part-time pot dealers. The darknet, the dingiest corner of the deep, did play host to illegal activity and immoral adventures, just the kind of thing to interest the cultist who wanted everything.

Or, you know, a bored NSA agent with an arrest quota.

Its reliance on anonymity made the users of the darknet feel safe in doing things they wouldn’t want to come to light (pun intended), but the rub was that as soon as what was discussed on the Net was put into action in the real world, that anonymity disappeared. When you actually started to do stuff physically, people got the chance to see you doing it and figure out who you really were.

Kylie was counting on that, and kept it as a mantra in her mind while she began to slowly and carefully follow the threads of the nocturnis’ plans for the April conference.

Knox and Wynn elected to return to Chicago for a couple of weeks. With the group fairly certain that whatever was going to happen wouldn’t happen until late in the month, hanging around twiddling their thumbs together seemed less than productive. Wynn could work more and better magic in her ritual room at home, and Knox could train and prepare from anywhere. They would return once they had all agreed on their plan to foil the Order, and in plenty of time to set themselves up.

Before leaving, Wynn had dragged Kylie away from the computer long enough to give her a few short lessons in what it meant to be a woman of power. Apparently, no one intended Kylie to get away with being a supernaturally gifted hacker and nothing else. Since she knew she had magic inside her now, Wynn fully intended to show her how to use it.

She had to learn to feel it first. Wynn showed her how to turn her attention inward and look for the spark of the power inside her, the little buzz that always lived in the corner of her mind. And here for all these years, Kylie had thought of it as the mark of undiagnosed ADHD. No, Wynn laughingly contradicted her; that was magic.

Once she found the spark, she got a lesson in how to nurture it. How to blow on the tiny flicker and bring it to a small, steady flame, then how to pull on it and let the power in it seep through her until it waited, tingling, in the tips of her fingers, ready to do her bidding.

Wynn, though, wouldn’t let her bid it for bupkes. No, teacher witch told her that for now, she needed to concentrate on just learning to recognize the magic and calling it to her command. Anything more advanced would have to wait until they had some real time to concentrate and work together.

Just the idea made Kylie grimace. It was like those three horrible months when her mother had forced her to take piano lessons all over again. Kylie had wanted to rock a little ragtime and the stern, humorless teacher just had her practicing scales over and over and over until the very sound of them made her teeth ache.

At the time, giving up had felt like being released from prison, but to this day, she couldn’t play more than “Mary Had a Little Lamb” on the piano. Wynn assured her that taking the same path with magic practice would undoubtedly lead her at some point to singeing off her own eyebrows. At the very least. So Kylie promised to practice.

Wynn and Knox’s departure left Kylie and Dag alone in the house, which worked out better than she had expected. Her new live-in-the-now philosophy kept her from getting too worked up by analyzing everything that happened between them, and she had to admit the sex continued to rock her world.

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