to school after muttering something at Rowan about an errand before he returned to work from home.
With a word she couldn’t hear from where she stood inside, in an instant they were gone. A dusting of snow from last night—the first she’d seen since arriving—swirled and flattened in the wake of the whirlwind caused by their departure.
Is that what I look like when I teleport? More than likely her own version came off much less graceful while in her head she was like, “Nailed it!”
Pushing aside the idle thought, Rowan grabbed a feather duster she’d found hanging in the laundry room. The obviously unused thing had, ironically, collected a coating of dust where it hung. So, as she strode with purpose towards Greyson’s office, she whispered an incantation that cleaned it off.
She needed a proper alibi if he discovered her in here.
She paused inside the doorway of his office, taking stock of the room. One of the smallest rooms in the house, she found it cozy with its rustic charm, stacks of books, and big pine desk. The desk had nicks, dings, and scratches all over it, as if it had been well loved through many generations of Masterses. Closing the door behind her, she moved farther inside and ran her hand over the surface of the desk, noting the rough texture of the time-worn wood. A crystal-clear image of Greyson working here came to her. An intimate image, like what a wife might walk in on, and strangely her heart stuttered.
Giving her head a shake, she pushed the seductive image away. “You’ve got a job to do, girl. Get to it,” she muttered.
A quick incantation had the duster going to work on the bookshelves without the aid of human hands. It left a faint trail of glittering sparks as it moved, but they dissipated quickly enough that she wasn’t concerned. Meanwhile, she moved around to sit behind Greyson’s desk.
Getting into his laptop took a little time, as he’d guarded it with magical wards, though not as many as she would’ve expected, given his job. Perhaps he assumed no one would contemplate getting this close to him? Still, the wards he had bothered with, in addition to regular technological security, took some unraveling.
As soon as she breached the computer’s defenses, rather than waste time searching manually, she channeled her energy, pulling from the electricity of the device itself.
“Amaru Kaios.”
The gathered force left her body with the words. Not traditional words of magic, but words the woman who’d raised her had spoken. Ancient words. Powerful words.
The language of demons and angels.
The spell was essentially a search for any files about Kaios, the werewolf who’d trapped her and used her. Enslaved her, more like.
Greyson was sure to have Kaios’s name associated with her in the files, as the reason he hunted her was inextricably linked to the werewolf. If Greyson knew the name of the witch involved—her own name—she wouldn’t be his nanny right now. In an instant she had the files laid open before her on the screen.
Rowan stilled at the image of the werewolf who’d compelled her to do terrible things. Quickly she clicked for the next image and blanched. The pricklies hit her neck hard, chasing themselves down her back.
The woman from her memories. The one who’d been there any time Kaios hadn’t been around, had taunted Rowan with what they’d do with her. As though she’d been thrilled a witch was under this kind of control.
Rowan racked hazy memories of her time with him, when her mind hadn’t entirely been her own, of the fight when he’d been killed. Had the woman been there?
She couldn’t remember.
But he’d brought all his followers to that fight. No doubt the woman was in chains or dead.
With a physical shimmy, Rowan shook off the memories. Kaios and his people weren’t a threat to her anymore. What she needed to focus on was Greyson Masters and the Covens Syndicate.
She read with hungry eyes, searching for any opportunities to plant false clues. The good news was he didn’t have much.
“So you already tried to follow my magical trail,” she murmured.
He’d had no luck with it. Magic use left a trail of energy that a powerful mage like Greyson could track, depending on how long ago the spells had been cast. According to the files, any magical trail she’d left had disappeared in the woods just outside where the fight had occurred. Spent and scared, she’d had nothing to do with hiding it, which probably