even though he had been watchful from the moment he had left the office, he drove through a series of maneuvers designed to lose a tail.
While his Audi purred along neighborhood streets, he whispered spells to prevent farseers from gaining accurate visions of his actions. It was all standard procedure that he insisted his coven employ whenever they gathered. His insistence was why they had all survived as long as they had.
He was confident he had garnered no more than the usual mundane interest from starting the new job, but he never, ever left things to chance. Sloppiness could get you killed.
Or worse. There were much worse things than death.
Finally he reached the address at the southern outskirts of the city, another country house as unprepossessing as the one outside Atlanta. He followed the gravel drive around to the back and parked beside two pickups, a Subaru Outback, and a Honda CRV.
As he climbed out, Maria appeared by the car door. She was a short Hispanic woman with long black hair pulled back in a braid and large, luminous eyes. She looked like a human Bambi, and her aura of harmless vulnerability was one of the most lethal illusions he’d ever seen.
She hugged him. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong question,” he told her, returning the hug. “If my intuition is right, we may have been presented with an unexpected opportunity.”
“Oh good!” She relaxed visibly. “You had us worried, especially after last night.”
He glanced around. With four members of his coven present, he had no doubt the area was clear of potential threats, but some habits never died. “Let’s get inside before I say more.”
“You bet. Do you need some supper?”
“I’ve already eaten, thanks. The sooner we get to business, the sooner I can get back to town. I’ve got to be in the office at eight in the morning.”
She gave him a quick, rueful glance. “Have you ever had to punch someone else’s time clock before?”
“No,” he said drily.
“It’s quite different from working for yourself. And you’ve been burning the candle at both ends these days, haven’t you?”
“Story of my life until this is over.”
“Maybe so, but the rest of us will do what we can to share the load.”
She led him in the back door and directly into the basement where Anson, Henry, and Richard waited. Some part of Josiah that remained on perpetual high alert relaxed when he felt surrounded by the protective spells on the basement’s ceiling, floor, and walls.
The group kept their greetings brief. While Anson drew a pentagram on the floor, Maria established a FaceTime connection with Steven, setting the phone where he would stand in person, and everyone stood in a circle.
Josiah took a moment to look around. Richard had been in the armed forces and still carried the demeanor of a soldier in his long, straight body. Henry was a numbers guy and Harvard educated, while their designated geek Steven was a graduate from MIT who specialized in the intersection of technology and magic.
Maria, the strongest seer of the group, appeared to be an attractive thirty-year-old, but in reality she was closer to sixty, and at two hundred years of age—twenty-six years older than Josiah himself—Anson was the oldest. He looked exactly like what he had been when his Power had awakened, a kindly grandfather with graying hair.
Covens were created for any number of social, political, and financial reasons, and some lasted for generations. Josiah had created his to fulfill a single purpose. He had painstakingly researched each member before recruiting them in a careful process that could take months. In Anson’s case, it had taken two years.
The coven members weren’t friends. He and Richard could barely stand one another, but in some ways they were closer than family. As he considered Henry’s whip-smart, icy gaze, Josiah wondered what would happen once the coven had finally accomplished what they had set out to do.
He could see some taking off, never to be heard from again, but other connections, like possibly his relationships with Maria and Anson, might last longer.
In any case, none of that mattered. They were united now, had been for decades, for the sole purpose of destroying one man.
After Richard lit the candles positioned at each point of the pentagram, Josiah raised his Power and extended it out to Maria on his left and to Richard on his right. The others did the same until their Powers merged with a snap and the circle was completed.