Blood and Blade (Goddess with a Blade #6) - Lauren Dane Page 0,77

a run-of-the-mill witch in prison for ripping off elderly people for their pensions. Again.”

Rowan heard the past tense in the things Genevieve was saying. Understood it meant a death sentence for Patrizia when they were finished with her. Looked like she and Genevieve weren’t headed for their first fight after all.

“You stole power from someone else. It’s not yours. It won’t stay. You know that. No matter how many pretty lies Lyr told you, you had to know. Just like you knew your magic was harming innocents. And,” Genevieve said as she bent in front of Patrizia, “just like you know every bit of this is a violation of our rules.”

“And the Treaty,” Rowan added.

“Search the house. I’ve undone all her protections and traps. You’re safe. Patrizia and I will be here chatting while you do.”

Rowan shrugged and got up, starting her examination there in the living room. Behind a stone in the fireplace she found a small strongbox full of money and more spells. Rowan just began to pile it all on the table near where Genevieve had settled.

There were two bedrooms. The master was a mess but Rowan didn’t find anything more secret than a vibrator. She grabbed the journals she found inside the guest room, which looked more like a workspace than anything else. Rowan doubted that, other than Lyr, Patrizia had many guests way out there in the boonies.

In that room she found a shoebox full of crystals and stones, some parchment that’d already been spelled to ready it to be used in a working of some sort.

The shoebox didn’t get much reaction from Patrizia when Rowan brought it out, but the journals sure did. Her eyes widened and she began to struggle anew against the spells that had bound her in place.

“She can’t get free,” Genevieve told Rowan. “Let’s get a look at the things she’s so passionate about.”

Rowan flipped open the journals to find page after page of neatly written entries. Decades’ worth of crimes, grifts and then, when she’d met Lyr, there’d been more. More descriptions of the Vampire. Lovesick commentary about how they were going to start a new era where paranormal beings took their rightful place at the top, over humans who Patrizia had a deep loathing for. He’d slept with her and taken her blood to keep her compliant. But she’d seen it as romantic. She’d seen it as sharing power with him.

“Do you hate humans because despite not having any magical talent they still manage to lead successful lives full of ambition?” Rowan asked.

“They’re nothing. They breed faster than they can handle, faster than anything can handle and they ruin everything because of it. We’re doing the planet a favor by taking over.”

“You’re not taking over shit, Pats. Your boyfriend is true dead. I watched that happen with my own eyes. I can promise you it hurt. The Blood Front is destroyed—my husband and his father did that part. There’s no one left in your conspiracy except whoever is at the very top. If he or she were going to save you, it’d have happened by now. And all I see is a lonely old woman who bet on the wrong horse her whole life and fucked it up time and again. You’re the only one who is nothing.”

Chapter Twenty

As they got back out on the main road, the glow of mage fire in the rearview mirror, Genevieve spoke. “The magic here and at Lyr’s house, in the blood that spelled Clive, it all has similar elements.”

Patrizia was dead and the fire that consumed her house would also clear out any evidence of their presence and any magic involvement.

Rowan kept driving, knowing her friend wasn’t finished yet.

“The spells she’d written to siphon power to herself? I told you I’ve studied magic all over the globe for centuries. I don’t recognize key elements of the working. And yet there’s something familiar on some level. I must have read about them or seen something familiar from a working I witnessed.” She blew out a frustrated breath. “Yes. It could be that because we’ve been so involved with these spells since this mess started I feel as if I’ve seen them before.” Genevieve broke off with a quiet curse. “I might speak to my father about it. Or contact the archivist at the Senate offices to see if she knows what it might be.”

“Do you think it has anything to do with Enyo?” Rowan asked, referencing the Vampire sorceress who nearly