The Blood Spell (Ravenspire, #4)(74)

His sister stood behind him, a matching streak of white at her temple, along with matching runes in her skin and charms in her hair. The way she held her lithe, graceful body reminded Blue of Pepperell’s sudden stillness as he stalked prey across the garden.

“Hansel! Gretel!” Ari rushed to them and threw her arms around them. “It’s been ages since you’ve visited.”

Hansel grinned, lifted her in the air, and spun her once. Gretel simply gave her a serious smile and squeezed her shoulders once. Hansel slung an arm around Ari’s shoulders and looked around. “Where is your silent, predatory partner in crime?”

Ari grimaced. “Still on the boat, lying down. Turns out Sebastian doesn’t handle sea travel well.”

“Vomited, did he?” Hansel asked.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t tease him about it,” Gretel said quietly. “Cornering Sebastian is a good way to get hurt.”

Hansel included everyone in his smile. “Speaking of getting hurt, Your Majesties, if I might suggest clearing the dock before we bring our beasties off the boat? While our cages are solid and our crates are strong, Akram has ordered some of its most vicious monsters yet. If one of them gets loose, you’ll need all prey . . . I mean people, of course . . . out of the way so we can catch it.”

“What happens if you can’t catch it?” Kellan asked, frowning.

“Then we hunt it down and kill it,” Gretel said in a voice that left no doubt she was capable of doing exactly that.

Blue thought of the witch hurting people in the city and blurted, “Can you catch a witch?”

Kellan met her eyes and nodded his agreement with the direction her mind was heading.

Hansel’s eyes lit up, and he cracked his knuckles. “Witch hunting happens to be a specialty of ours. What’s the problem? You have one going a bit rogue?”

“We have someone who released a spell in multiple parts of the city. It caused black flames to burn on whatever living being it touched until it extinguished itself, long after the person or animal was dead,” the queen said. “Then, a few nights later, a house and everyone inside it simply disintegrated into dust.”

“I hate witches who hurt people,” Hansel said, for once sounding nearly as serious as his sister. “Any clues to the witch’s whereabouts?”

Kellan shook his head. “We sourced the ingredients and followed up, but no one sold those items to anyone besides their regular customers within the last year.”

“How did you know which ingredients were used?” Gretel asked, the stillness of her body somehow going from aware to menacing without Blue being able to identify what specifically had changed.

“I identified them,” Blue said, flinching a little when all eyes landed on her.

“Are you a witch?” Ari asked, sounding more curious than afraid.

“I’m an alchemist.”

Hansel grinned again. “Smart and beautiful. Please tell me you aren’t spoken for.”

Blue didn’t dare look at Kellan. Instead, she said, “If we could focus on catching the witch—”

“Well, that’s a lot less fun than what I was going to suggest, but I suppose we can’t have everything we want.” Hansel winked at her, and Blue folded her arms across her chest.

Gretel laughed, a solemn, quiet sound. “This girl is immune to your charms.”

“Or maybe you aren’t as charming as you think,” Kellan said, and then hurried on when his mother shot him a questioning look. “I’m concerned about catching a witch when we can’t follow the ingredients. How do we find this person?”

Gretel met Kellan’s gaze. “Since magic is illegal in your kingdom, I’d start turning over every rock to find where a witch interested in hurting people might hide to practice magic in secret.”

Hansel nodded as the queen gave orders to her guards to clear the dock in preparation for the bounty hunters’ crates. “It’s unfortunate that you have a witch using spells to hurt people, but as long as you don’t have one feeding on the blood of children, you’ll be able to put the witch down easily once you find him or her.”

Blue froze, her eyes finding Kellan’s, the horror on his face a mirror for what she felt inside.

Hansel’s grin disappeared, and his body took on the eerie, predatory stillness of his sister’s. “You have a witch feeding on children, don’t you?”

“We have children disappearing,” Blue said softly. “Orphans. Homeless. The kind who won’t be missed by those with enough power to find them.”

Hansel and Gretel exchanged a long look, and then, finally, Gretel said, “We have to deliver this shipment to Akram on time. They run a tournament in a prison there, and the beasts can’t arrive late. But once we finish, we’ll return as quickly as possible and help hunt down your witch before it turns into a blood wraith.”

“The good news is that it takes months, sometimes even years, of feeding on the blood of innocents before a witch goes full blood wraith,” Hansel said. “We have time before this gets out of . . .” He looked from Blue to Kellan to the queen, took in their uneasy expressions, and sighed. “You already have a blood wraith, don’t you?”

The queen nodded, her lips pinched. “We caught and imprisoned it sixteen years ago.”