Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,169

her. The fact that the madman responsible for hurting them was free again and out in the world rather than dead was too big a pill for Piper to swallow.

So the very first spell she cast after they’d figured out their magic was a spell she’d cast when she was alone. She’d escaped into her bathroom and turned on the taps and the fan, just to be on the safe side. And then she’d filled the sink up with water and begun chanting. She just said what came to her, what she felt was right – trusting her gut instincts. It was so easy; the words had just poured out of her, the magic in her causing the water to ripple with the force of it.

What resulted was a sort of scrying spell, one she directed at something specific: She wanted to “see” what the next step was in successfully tracking down Randall Price.

And the answers had played across its surface, giving her everything she needed to go on.

Now here they were in a three-story building in the dark in a mostly abandoned part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during a time of heightened crime, riots, and basic unrest. And damn was it cold. New Year’s was in two days and the Midwest had hunkered down for its long-haul hibernation.

Carmen had been the one to transport them. They’d wound up in a parked car across the street from the exact address they needed. Not bad for her first transport ever.

Piper could sense that she had used far more of her residual magic than Carmen had up to this point, so she couldn’t help but wonder if that was the real reason she’d wanted Carmen to come with her. Was that selfish of her?

Oh, who am I kidding? She asked herself now as she glanced back at Carmen in the darkness of the building’s second-story hallway. Carmen was there because the woman had come pounding on her door on a Tuesday night insisting that it was girl’s night – which it wasn’t – and they were going to watch rom-coms all night – which they never did because they all preferred sci-fi – and Piper caught on right away that Carmen was trying to tell her they were being watched.

Piper had suspected as much anyway.

As soon as they’d managed to get alone in the bathroom again with the water and fans on, something that was now simply customary for them, Carmen had opened a very old book to a transport spell page, pointed at it, and they’d nodded at each other in silence. It was now or never.

“I don’t hear anything, do you?” Carmen asked very, very quietly.

Piper shook her head, still straining to listen. It was strange, but she was almost sure she could feel the son-of-a-bitch here, but there was absolutely no sign of life in the building so far. There were no footprints in the dust, there was no fresh, dust-free broken glass to indicate a break-in, there were no body guards – or bodies in general. Did they have the right place?

“No,” Piper told her. “Let’s go up another level.”

But before Carmen could agree and they could begin heading up another level, someone shouted from the opposite end of the level behind them. “Get down!” Piper thought she might recognize the voice, but she had no time to ponder its owner before she and Carmen were hitting the deck – as the ceiling above their heads was violently ripped away from the rest of the building to reveal the cold winter night beyond.

Chapter Fifty-seven – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

It was beginning to storm when Detective Hendrix James brought his car to a screeching halt and threw open the heavy metal door. It creaked, but stayed open despite the building rage of the wind that whipped at Hendrix’s trench coat and stung his eyes. This was not a normal building blizzard. Every molecule in his body could feel the magic underlying it.

His gaze skirted across the street, where trash, branches and leaves skittered or were picked up and pulled into swirling updrafts high overhead. There was no sign of Sterling outside; James was the only one in the street. He looked at the building he knew Sterling had been referring to. It was obvious that this was the one, due in no small part to the eye of the amassing storm sitting like a vortex of evil directly above it.

“I hate Tuesdays,” he muttered to himself before he pulled his weapon from