Blade Song - By J.C. Daniels Page 0,50

door of a massive library, she stopped and turned to face me, a smile on her face. “Nothing to say to that?”

“Nothing to say.”

“Oh, you got plenty,” she mused, shaking her head. “You just hold your cards close to your chest. Smart girl.”

Behind us, Damon made an odd, choking sound that might have been a smothered laugh.

“I just know when to hold them sometimes,” I said, sliding him a dirty look.

Kori smiled. “Maybe that’s what it is.” She nodded to the library. “You want Jo. She’s in the stacks.” Then she pinned a hard look on Damon. “You don’t want to go in there. Maybe you’re her bodyguard or whatever, but Jo isn’t one of our fighters. The girl can take little Jo blindfolded, even with magic. You will scare her. If you go in there, she’ll shut down and whatever information you want from her? You won’t get.”

Damon lifted his hands, moved two paces and leaned back against the wall, folding his arms over his chest.

Day-yum. I actually got to get away from him for a few minutes. I gave Kori a bright smile. “Hey, mind if I hang around here for a few days?”

She laughed and then headed down the dark hallway. “I’m on kitchen duty tonight. You all are welcome to eat with us if she doesn’t freak you the hell out, Colbana.”

In the stacks.

I thought it would be easy to find her.

It took me almost thirty minutes.

Because she wasn’t on her feet and she wasn’t on the floor.

She was hovering in midair, arms wrapped around herself and rocking, mumbling and muttering.

“Ah…hey, Jo.”

She tensed. The rocking grew more frenzied.

Licking my lips, I looked around, spotted a table. I started to strip off my weapons, all of them. Once I’d stripped them all away, I looked back up. But she wasn’t there.

Aw, hell.

“Jo…”

I searched the air above me, but she wasn’t anywhere—

A flicker of movement just out of the corner of my eye had me turning and I saw her drifting around the edge of the bookshelf at my back. I caught her just as she moved into the next aisle, clutching a book in her thin, pale hands. “Jo. I’d like to talk to you.”

She glanced at me and her eyes were awful.

Black, empty and void of…everything.

Swallowing the knot in my throat, I managed to squeeze out, “It’s about the boy you saw.”

Slowly, she drifted down, down, down…then she stood and shook her head. When she looked at me again, there was…sense. I guess. Something of self in her eyes and I sensed…witch. Her power. Earlier there hadn’t been much of anything.

Just cold.

“The boy,” she whispered.

“Yes. You saw him.”

“No.” She shook her head and gestured broadly at nothing. “They saw him.”

“Who are they?”

Her eyes went black. “We are.”

The skin on the nape of my neck crawled and I hoped like hell I didn’t let the fear I felt show. “And who are you?”

“We are we. And we saw him. He’s dying. You can’t save him because you are not looking. He’s no longer the predator…just prey. Just meat. Like we were.”

She blinked and the moment shattered. Jo stood there looking at me with lost, sad eyes. “I’m sorry. Did they talk to you?”

Numbly, I nodded.

“I hope they helped.”

Then she gathered up a stack of books I hadn’t noticed and slid out of the library.

Helped?

Um. No. Not really.

As I left the library, another witch was waiting. She was as lacking in color as Kori had rocked it—hair so blonde, it was practically white, skin so pale I don’t think she ever went out in the sun, and her eyes were so pale a gray they seemed nearly colorless. Her clothes were white. Everything. White.

A polite smile curved her lips as she nodded at me. “I’m Es.”

“S. As in the letter?” Immediately, I winced. “Sorry.”

She chuckled. “Colleen told me you were…well, I’ll be polite. But it’s fine. It’s E-S. But yes, it sounds like S the letter. I’m the mother here.”

Witch houses had a leader. A mother, or if the most powerful was a guy, the father. I hope I managed to keep my astonishment hidden. Nothing about her screamed power—shit, Kori’s strength had made this woman seem like…nothing.

Another one of those polite smiles curved her lips. “I wouldn’t be much of a caretaker if I intimidated the hell out of every witch who came to me, would I?” she said gently. She looked down the hall, gazing in the direction Jo had run. “Many of mine are…broken. They