“The one woman will have a pretty hard time getting out of everything. I think they’ll probably take her husband in too when they dig deeper. There was a ton of fraud and tax evasion and more with their business. The other guy’s case isn’t quite as egregious, but the fact that they arrested him at all is a good sign.”
“What do witches usually do if they tangle with the unsparked law enforcement?” Seth asked me. “Can they magic their way free?”
I shook my head. “Sometimes, maybe. But that usually depends on covering up the evidence so they’re not found out in the first place. Once there are computer records of the crime and the arrest, and all kinds of people are aware of the issue… Unless they’re vital to some mandate of the Assembly’s, the usual policy would be to see it as their own just punishment for their carelessness.”
“Perfect.” Ky kicked his feet playfully. He was obviously enjoying his new role as anonymous avenger. “I’ve got a third couple I’m digging up some shady stuff on right now. If the trails lead me where I think they’re going, I’ll have them locked up in a few days. Actually, let me check my progress on that.”
As he pulled out his tablet from the little satchel he had slung from his shoulder, Seth stepped closer. He rubbed my back as I set the last of the plates in the rack. “It’s coming together,” he said. “We’re really making progress now. If Ky can put enough of the people involved behind bars, they won’t be able to conspire anymore.”
The remaining witches could still attack us, though. And after our first two strikes, I suspected any other of the Frankfords’ colleagues who’d been engaging in questionable practices were scrambling to erase any proof right now. It seemed unlikely that people as high up as the Frankfords themselves would have left proof in the first place. But itwasa start. It was real ground gained. I smiled at him, drying my hands on a towel, and leaned in for a quick kiss. “It feels good to be getting somewhere.”
Kyler’s feet went still with a thump against the cabinets. When I glanced up, he’d stiffened, his gaze glued to the tablet’s screen. The small piece of happiness I’d found vanished under a wave of panic.
“What?” I said.
His head jerked up. The color had drained from his face. He blinked at me, his lips parting and then pressing together again.
Seth moved to his side and poked at the tablet. His expression darkened a few moments later. “Is that…?”
Ky nodded.
“What?” I said again. “Tell me what’s going on, or at least show me.”
I held out my hand. The twins exchanged a glance. “Whatever it is, you’re going to have to tell me eventually, aren’t you?” I said.
Ky hesitantly extended the tablet to me. “There could be other explanations than what it looks like,” he said. “There’s no way of knowing what’s definitely going on.”
The screen was paused at the beginning of a video. I recognized it immediately: it was the traffic cam Ky had hacked into on the intersection near the Frankfords’ Portland house. We’d been checking the footage periodically to see who he might be meeting with at home. So far it hadn’t turned up much. What could they be so upset about now?
I hit play, my gut clenching. A couple of cars cruised by. Then a taxi arrived, pulling up to the curb at the corner of the screen where you could see just the corner of the fence outside the Frankfords’ house.
The back door of the cab opened. A head of dark red hair came into view, a familiar set of well-muscled shoulders, a stride I would have known anywhere. Gabriel crossed the sidewalk and out of view of the camera, heading toward the Frankfords’ house.
My stomach plummeted. The tablet shook in my hands. I set it down on the counter before I could drop it.
“He went to them. He went right to them.” I swallowed hard, nausea bubbling inside me. “When is that footage from?”
“Yesterday afternoon,” Ky said quietly. “It could be— We don’t know for sure that he even went to their house.”
“Who else’s house would he have been going to there?” I said.
He didn’t have an answer for that. I dropped my face into my hands. Seth put his arm around me, steadying me with his embrace, but part of me wanted to cringe away.
Did I deserve that comfort? I didn’t want to believe that Gabriel had not just left me but gone to my greatest enemy, but there he’d been. I’d seen it with my own eyes.
The way he’d talked right before he’d left… Did he really think I was so dangerous he’d go to those lengths to make sure I didn’t do anything worse? That I was more dangerous than the Frankfords’ faction and that monster we’d seen in the cave?
I couldn’t wrap my head around it, but I’d heard the horror in his voice when he’d accused me of becoming someone he couldn’t love anymore. That had been real.
“The Frankfords could be using some kind of magic on him,” Seth put in. “Especially if he’s taken off his protective token. I didn’t see it on him in the video.”
Ky skimmed back through the recording to check. He squinted at the screen. “It’s hard to tell with the limited resolution,” he said. “But I don’t see the string around his neck where I’d expect to.”
“So either he’s gone to the Frankfords of his own free will or they’ve used the doubt he was feeling to control him,” I said. Both of those possibilities were awful.
“We’ll get him back,” Seth said firmly. “No matter what’s going on. We’ll end this, and we’ll find him, and—”
“He doesn’twantto come back,” I said. “I can’t force him to still act as my consort.” My hands dropped to my sides and balled into fists. My stomach was churning, but a sense of resolve rose through the nausea. “We have to be better than them. No more hurting any of them. No more lashing back just because I can. Everything through official channels, witching or unsparked—like those arrests.” I couldn’t be a woman one of the guys I loved saw as a monster. I couldn’t let our enemies change me like that.