Magic Tides (Kate Daniels: Wilmington Years #1)(28)

Thomas gave me a little wave.

“Did she now?” She’d waded into something dangerous enough for her to send Thomas here, out of harm’s way. Mostly.

What have you walked into, baby?

“Keelan, where did you happen to run into my wife?”

“Oh, nowhere special.”

“We were at the Farm,” Thomas volunteered.

Fucking hell!

Keelan gave Thomas a reproachful look.

“Why were you at the island stronghold of the People?”

Keelan cleared his throat. “Just a bit of harmless craic with a couple new lads. Sort of an initiation, you could say.”

“Not you, Keelan. I really don’t want to know what you were doing there. Thomas, why were you and my wife at the Farm?”

Thomas hesitated.

“The man asked you a question,” Keelan told him, clearly eager to be off the hot seat.

Thomas took a deep breath and recited in the methodical, calm manner Paul used when he gave us yet another list of absolutely necessary, expensive repairs.

“We went to the Red Horn’s headquarters. Your wife asked them who they sold my son to. They told us to ‘fuck off.’ There was a fight. She won. When the man in charge there, the underboss, wouldn’t tell her who took my son, she cut off his head.”

So far all of that sounded plausible.

“What happened then? Please be specific.”

“She held up the severed head and asked it who bought my son. Then she told the rest of them that since their boss couldn’t answer, she would have to keep asking them one by one, until someone told her.”

Of course, she had.

“One of them told her that a journeyman named Onyx paid them to kidnap Darin. Onyx works at the Farm.”

“And then what happened?

“There were children at the house.”

Slavers. This wasn’t an isolated incident. They didn’t just take one child. They were taking children on a regular basis. Onyx must’ve hired them because of their experience.

Thomas had gone quiet. The shapeshifters around him froze.

Keelan cleared his throat. “My lord.”

He pointed to his eyes.

Oh. I blinked the alpha stare off.

“Continue, please.”

“After we got all the kids out of the cages, Kate set the house on fire.”

“As she should have,” Keelan said.

“What happened after that?”

“We took the children to the Order, so they could be delivered back to their families. The Knight-Protector had her fill out some paperwork and gave her a will-o’-wisp in a cage to take to the man in charge of the People.

“Barrett,” Keelan spat the name out like a curse.

Interesting. “Aren’t you supposed to be cordial with the People, Keelan?”

“We’re both alive. That’s cordial enough.”

“You don’t like him?”

“He likes himself well enough for both of us. All big smiles and sharp knives in your guts, that one.”

“Okay, after the Order you went to the Farm?”

Thomas nodded. “We took a boat across. The captain tried to rob us and take the will-o’-wisp.”

Of course, he had. “But she killed him?”

“No, he pulled a crossbow on us, but she hit him with some powder, and he shot himself in the foot. Then, a water monster grabbed him and tried to pull him into the water. It had tentacles like a squid or an octopus, but very large, and the weight of it almost capsized the boat.”

Keelan nodded sagely. “A kraken, most like.”

“A kraken in Cape Fear?” I asked.

“It happens. Probably a wee one chasing fish in from the sea. The juveniles don’t have a lot of experience, so they come up the river sometimes.”

Good to know.

“Did the kraken eat the man?”

“No. Kate saved him.” Thomas sounded like he disapproved.

“How?”

“Well, she said something, a word in a language I didn’t understand, and the thing exploded.”

A power word. She used a goddamned power word to save the man who tried to rob them. A man who would have shot them if they hadn’t complied.

“She became upset and told him to sit still and be quiet. We let him go when we crossed the river.”

“The Consort, ever merciful,” Keelan opined.

Yes, she was that.

“Did any other unusual things happen on your way to the Farm?”

“No. We got there, she spoke to someone at a desk, and a man came to take her to see Barrett. I waited for her. She was gone for about thirty minutes. She came back and we left the Farm. On the way to the ferry, she told me that Onyx didn’t make it, but he told her that he sold Darin to someone named Aaron, who lives on the Emerald Wave and might be a god.”

Why not? Why wouldn’t it be a child-abducting god? A gang of mundane scumbags or a rogue journeyman would have been too damned easy.

“And that’s where the two of you split up and she left you in the company of this gentleman and his friends?”

Keelan spoke up again. “Indeed.”

“Was she hurt?”

Keelan grinned. “No. Not at all.”

That’s all that mattered.