I gasped in shock. Preceptor Bellmore stood in front of us, gathering balls of flickering flames in her palms.
What the hell? Is Bellmore one of Katherine’s goons? All I could say for sure was that the trackers had become the tracked.
“Preceptor Bellmore, stop!” Wade shouted, gathering fire into his own palms.
As a paltry flare whizzed past Wade’s shoulder, missing him by at least ten inches, a sudden thought struck me: this couldn’t be Preceptor Bellmore. This attacker’s powers were different than those of the preceptor of Charms and Hexes, and clearly weaker—I’d seen her in action before.
Wade retaliated quickly, an orb of whirling red energy zipping toward the agent. The fireball struck her full in the arm, halting a second attempt in its tracks. As the smoke swirled upward and the figure yelped in pain, the guise faded for a second. Dark clothes appeared underneath, leading down to a somewhat masculine hand. It was hard to tell if it actually belonged to a man or a woman, but there was something bulkier about it that instantly rang alarm bells.
Jacob scrambled to forge a portal, but the poor guy’s hands were shaking and the ripple of terror that flowed off him was overwhelming. It almost threatened to stifle my own survival instincts as I ducked out of the way of a renewed attack.
“Jacob Morales,” the disguised agent purred, in Preceptor Bellmore’s familiar voice. “We’ve been looking for you. You’re wasting yourself here, boy, all cooped up in this shoebox. You belong with Katherine, just like your parents before you.”
Jacob froze. “My… my parents?”
“There’s a lot the coven isn’t telling you, kid,” the agent replied. “Your friends here have been lying to you. Your mother and father were some of Katherine’s most trusted soldiers. You have to continue their legacy.”
What legacy? I had no idea who Jacob’s real parents were, but I hadn’t expected they’d be connected to Katherine.
The spark of Jacob’s magic died in his hands, the agent’s words throwing him off. I could feel the doubt inside him, mingling with confusion and panic. If we wanted to get out of here in one piece, we couldn’t rely on his portal-making.
I focused on the imposter, whoever he or she was, and cast a mental lasso through my Telekinesis. It wrapped around the agent’s throat, their cheeks reddening as I tightened the noose. With a forceful twist of my hand, I sent the imposter flying against the far wall. It gave us the window of opportunity we needed. They would be on their feet again in a minute.
“Snap out of it!” I barked at Jacob, then lunged forward to grab him by the shoulders. I shook him hard and saw the lucidity flickering back into his eyes. He looked up at me with an expression of bemusement, as though he no longer knew what was going on around him. “We need you! Jacob, make a portal!”
He shook his head, the last glimpse of terror fading away. “Sorry…” He lifted his hands, and a ferocious fork of green-tinged light shot out of his palms, tearing a hole in the fabric of reality. A savage wind howled from the gap in time and space, the portal swirling open before us.
“Let’s go!” I roared.
Wade scooped Isadora into his arms, and we hurtled through the portal. It snapped shut behind us. I hit the ground on the other side with a hefty thump, my face colliding with ticklish blades of grass and churned-up mud. I spluttered as I hurried to my feet, trying not to fall on my ass. The others picked themselves off the ground around me, spitting out grass and dirt.
We’d landed on the green expanse of Balboa Park, right in front of the spot where the interdimensional pocket was built. After all of Isadora’s complaints, the choice had been taken away from her. She was coming to the San Diego Coven whether she liked it or not. I only wished it could have been on better terms.
Twelve
Harley
We ran for cover, settling for Wade’s Jeep. Only when I saw his car did I remember mine. My sweet Daisy was left behind, outside that solitary house in Bressi Ranch. I was going to retrieve her at some point, though I wondered if she’d still be in one piece. After only just getting Daisy back, it would break my heart all over again to find her a wreck. We’d also left behind a pissed off agent of Katherine’s.
Right now, however, I had other things to worry about.
“I should’ve been able to open that portal,” Jacob muttered, as Wade lay Isadora down on the back seat. “I can’t believe I messed up like that, after everything Isadora has taught me. I should’ve been able to focus.” Disappointment poured off him, finding its way into my veins.
“Hey, you did your best. We all mess up,” I replied, patting him on the back. “It’s not easy to make your powers work in high-pressure situations. It could’ve been a lot worse—you could’ve made the portal and not been able to control it.”
He glanced at me. “She taught me how to make portals in high-pressure situations. She taught me how to control Chaos and make it work for me. She’s spent weeks teaching me all of that, and I still screwed up when it mattered.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Wade said. “It happens. Take Harley, for example. She’s good, but she still glitches. She almost killed an entire room of people because she wavered.”
I shot him a look. “Thanks for sharing.”
“It’s the truth. Self-control and determination are key when dealing with Chaos. All the theory in the world, or the practice, won’t prepare you for casting spells in the midst of true danger,” Wade replied, then raised an eyebrow at Jacob and Isadora. “I doubt Isadora here was literally chasing you around and trying to kill you when she trained you to open portals.” He sighed. “What I’m trying to say is, everyone has to keep practicing. Nobody’s perfect. Besides, we got away, and that’s all that matters. So just forget about it and move on—that’s the only way to learn.”
Jacob sat back in the front seat of the Jeep. Wade had a point, but I’d get him back for making me the center of his little lesson. I didn’t nearly kill a room full of people. I dropped a chandelier, that’s all. But something tells me I’m never going to live that down.
I turned in my seat as Isadora stirred. Wade joined her in the back seat, reaching over to help her sit up as she came to with a slow blink of her blue eyes. A smudge of soot streaked her chest, a black mark reaching all the way up to her jaw. The fireball had hit her square in the ribs, knocking her out in one harsh blast. She grimaced as she gripped Wade’s arm, forcing her aching body into a sitting position.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Wade’s Jeep,” I replied. “More specifically, we’re parked outside the San Diego Coven.”
A trickle of sweat meandered down the side of her face. “I won’t go inside, Harley. I know you want me to, and there are very few things I would not do for you, but I can’t set foot inside that place. Not right now.”
“Alton will keep you both safe,” I promised.
She smiled. “I believe he would try,” she said solemnly. “The trouble is, he can’t protect us from Katherine and her army of agents. He doesn’t even know who the spy is, amongst members of his own coven. Someone followed you tonight, and if what you told us is true—that nobody saw you create the tracer spell and you told no one of your plans to find us—then Katherine is having you watched more closely than you think. The coven has been compromised.”
“We’ll sneak you in,” I replied, struggling to hide the note of desperation in my voice. “We’ll sneak you in and we won’t tell anyone that you’re there.”
“Until Katherine’s spy has been outed, I can’t stay. We aren’t even sure if there is only the one.”
I stared at her and willed her to change her mind. There was so much I wanted to know, and if she disappeared again, I had no idea when I might see her again. The coven had definitely been compromised, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t stay. I knew we could always hide Jacob and Isadora in the Bestiary, under Tobe’s care. It was more secure than anywhere else in the coven. Either that, or we could give them a secret room, similar to the one that Alton had spoken with me in. We were working on fixing the problem, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t protect them in the meantime, within the coven. And anyway, soon enough, the spy would be found, and everything would be secure again.
You’re not naïve, Merlin. You don’t really believe that. They’re like dirty little weeds—remove one, another one takes its place.
“We don’t know if the Shapeshifter that attacked us tonight is different than the spy who’s been feeding information to Katherine,” I said reluctantly. “There still might only be one, working from within the SDC. That’s something we need to figure out, and fast. We’d be able to get it done quicker if you helped us, Isadora.”
A tight chuckle rasped from her throat. “I’ve made my choice, Harley. Nothing can make me change my mind.”
“But how can you continue to train me if you’re not with me?” Jacob asked. “Tonight proved that I’ve got a long way to go, and I can’t figure this stuff out without you. You told me yourself, this skill is so rare that there are virtually no textbooks on it. It’s not like I can teach myself.”
“I can’t teach you, Jacob,” she replied bluntly. “Not if you stay here and join the coven. I can’t train you, and I can’t protect you.”
Jacob sank down in his seat and turned his gaze out toward the pummeling raindrops beyond Isadora’s head, where they rattled against the back window. He looked completely torn. Either he stayed here and floundered over his powers, or he followed Isadora wherever she wanted to go. He’d clearly formed a familial attachment to her, but the coven offered something he’d never experienced before… a true family. A group of people who would rally around him and accept him. As one person, Isadora could never offer him that.