Bait N' Witch (Brimstone Inc. #3) - Abigail Owen Page 0,63
the ultramodern building where the Syndicate apparently held their meetings. She’d gone from mountain cabin to alien spaceship, though in the Sierra Nevadas now. Maybe she was still a ghost, and this was all a weird vision?
Delilah stopped at a mahogany door and rapped her knuckles sharply against it. Before Rowan could collect herself, a deep male voice called to come in, and Delilah dragged her inside.
A group of witches and warlocks of various ages, their faces all cast in blank judgment, sat at a long metal and glass table facing the doorway. Behind them a wall of windows showed the mountains in all their splendor. But she couldn’t appreciate the view over the treetops when her life hung in the balance. She sought and found Grey, seated off to her left beside a man with black hair and eerily piercing blue eyes so pale they appeared almost white, reminding her of dragon shifters from the White Clan. Glacial. Her heart shriveled at the hard stare Grey directed her way.
Okay. This wasn’t going to go well, then. She tried not to let the crack splitting her heart break it wide open. Not here in front of everyone.
“Ms. McAuliffe?” the man beside Grey asked, his deep tones almost bored.
Rowan nodded. His unusual gaze shifted to the woman at her side. “And you must be Ms.?”
Rowan glanced over to see Delilah give him a cool smile. “Delilah.”
“First or last?”
Delilah said nothing, merely held her polite smile and the man’s stare. There was someone in a position of power who didn’t know her? If Rowan wasn’t terrified, she’d have been more interested in that byplay.
After a long, intense moment, he let it go, turning back to Rowan. “I’m Alasdair Blakesley, current head of the Syndicate. Greyson has filled us in on the situation and”—he flicked a glance at Delilah—“supplied us information provided by various witnesses.”
Okay. She chanced a glance at Grey, who regarded her with zero expression. What had he told them?
“Now we’d like to hear from you.”
Right.
She took a big breath, ignoring the way her hands shook uncontrollably, and tipped up her chin. “My name is Rowan McAuliffe. As a child I took on the last name of Tanya McAuliffe, the woman who raised me after my parents died. My birth parents were Cormac and Evelyn Balfour.”
A ripple of movement shifted through the group before her. No surprise there. Balfour was one of the oldest names among their people.
“That’s not possible. Your file lists a low-level magical couple named the Campbells.”
Rowan turned her attention to Persephone. What was she doing here anyway? She sat there, in a deep red dress, her hair coiled in an elegant chignon, with an expression of suppressed glee.
“Then your files are wrong.” Rowan glanced at Delilah, who smiled serenely, not fooling Rowan. The woman had somehow managed to alter the files.
“Cormac and Evelyn Balfour…and their daughter…were killed in a car crash,” Persephone insisted.
Rowan shrugged a shoulder. “The woman who raised me found the wreck. She used a unique brand of magic to fake my death and took me away, passing me off as her own.”
Alasdair flicked his finger over a tablet. Looking at paperwork? “This is Tanya McAuliffe? A common witch with limited powers?”
Rowan’s mouth kicked up in a smile, despite the way cold fear spread though her. No going back after this. “Tanya McAuliffe, a demon posing as a witch.”
Even Delilah sucked in a breath, though Rowan doubted the Syndicate members caught the sound. Rowan, meanwhile, tried not to take a step back, anticipating the spell that would end her life.
But none came.
Her gaze flashed to Grey’s to find him watching her closely. Surely, he would warn her if death were imminent? Even if he hated her right now.
Into the void of silence, Rowan continued hesitantly. “Tanya believed the crash that killed my parents wasn’t an accident. She claimed someone was after me and thought maybe someone in the Syndicate. She hid me in plain sight as a”—she glanced at Persephone, chin going up—“common witch with limited powers. In secret, she taught me magic. A different kind from what you know. More powerful, using ancient words to power the spells.”
“Impossible,” an older gentleman hissed from the other end of the table.
Rowan ignored him. “It’s only since living with…Mr. Masters that I’ve started to question Tanya’s assumption. My guess now is that Kaios, the ancient werewolf who took me, was the one after me all along.”
It made sense, once she’d been able to see past that lifelong