Don't Hex and Drive (Stay a Spell #2) - Juliette Cross Page 0,36

vision, my pulse hammering with fear that we’d be too late.

But there she was, still unmoving beneath a dirty blanket that her captives had given her. Like that would be enough to keep her from dying out here all alone.

I knelt and lifted the blanket that partly covered her face, brown hair stuck to her sweaty face. Placing my palm to her neck, which was covered with bruised and healing puncture wounds from vampires, I felt the faint birdlike beat of her heart. Her skin was far too pale, her hands tucked in a ball under her chin like she was trying to get warm. It was spring and not cold at all, but her body felt otherwise. “She’s alive.”

“St. Catherine Memorial is closest,” snapped Ruben. “Let’s bring her there. Her family will be notified right away.”

I lifted her and carried her to the SUV, getting into the backseat. Ruben sidled in beside me.

“We’ll need to leave her anonymously,” said Ruben.

“Of course,” I agreed. We couldn’t be connected with the girl at all, not even as her rescuers. It would be too suspicious. “She was too frail for the kind of abuse her body underwent with these assholes.”

“Yes. Perhaps that’s why they dumped her. That only makes me hopeful they’re intention isn’t to kill these women at all.”

“I’ll find out once I get inside that fucker’s head,” I growled.

“We need to tend to her first,” said Ruben. “Though I agree it’s best we get her to the hospital and in the care and safety of the authorities and her family, she’ll need a Conduit’s healing.”

I stared down at the still unconscious girl, knowing the paleness of her skin indicated they’d drained her too much. The fury at what had been done to her by my own kind burned through my veins.

“Isadora,” I whispered.

Gabriel pulled up to the back of the hospital. Without a word, I enveloped my body with glamour and traced through the emergency entrance where an ambulance was parked. Humans might see a shimmer or a blur but I’d be gone before they could blink. I set her right by the closed back door, placing the broken necklace in her palm. Then I punched the button on the wall that requested entry into the backdoor and traced back to the vehicle.

When I got in, Ruben was on his cell. “Yes. Plenty of time for you to finish and close the kitchen,” he was telling someone. “It’ll take a few hours for the buzz of her being found to settle down anyway. We’ll get Isadora and go after visiting hours end.”

My pulse lurched at the mention of her name. Though I wasn’t happy about the circumstances, I was thrilled at the thought of seeing her.

“Sounds good,” said Ruben into his phone before he ended the call and turned to me. “Let’s grab some dinner then we’ll pick up Jules at the Cauldron and Isadora at the house.”

I nodded. “After our hospital visit, we’re going straight back to The Green Light.”

My beast was hungry to bend that fucker’s mind to find the other assholes he was in league with. Those texts he was sending were to his ringleader, preparing to abduct one of those four girls who’d come in last at Barrel Proof. Until he made me, that was.

No matter. I was a Stygorn. And I had everything I needed. One malleable mind in my hands. He would find out soon enough what one of my kind was capable of.

But first, I would have the pleasure of Isadora’s company, whether she liked it or not. I couldn’t help but smile at that.

Chapter 9

~ISADORA~

I wiped the tears from my eyes and half-squatted on our front porch, trying not to pee on myself from laughing so hard. Tia laughed with me, though she was still standing without any difficulty. Unlike me.

“I know, right? Poor Marcus,” Tia continued. “But he handled it like a champ. Even after she used that lie detector hex to make him spill the most embarrassing moments of his childhood.”

She propped a hand on her hip, her face even more beautiful with the utter joy suffusing her expression. Her tight curls bounced on her bare shoulder when she laughed, her hair pulled back with a turquoise bandana as a headband.

I shook my head. “And he wasn’t angry?”

“That was the weird thing. He really wasn’t. He laughed after Aunt Beryl’s little test of wills was over and told her she reminded him of his own Sicilian mother. ‘Tough as balls’