as if she were trying to communicate through osmosis.
“I’m not the dog whisperer,” Raye muttered.
“Not a dog,” Bobby pointed out.
“Henry!” Raye shouted.
Everyone waited.
“Anything?” Bobby asked, and she shook her head.
“I could do a spell to bring him here,” she began, and Pru snarled. “Calm down. I won’t.”
“Why not?” Owen demanded. “Wouldn’t he know where Becca was, if she were in trouble?”
“He might,” Raye said. “Henry’s attached to me because we share the ability to speak with ghosts. Pru’s attached to Becca because of their shared affinity with animals.”
“Then why is she here when Becca isn’t?”
“Pru’s not a supernatural wolf.”
“She isn’t a natural wolf either.”
Case in point. She was sitting in a motel room with five people and a dog.
“True,” Raye agreed. “But she can’t morph in and out.”
“Like Henry.”
“Right.”
“Get him to morph in,” Owen ordered.
“Henry comes when I call if he can. If he doesn’t that means he’s involved elsewhere. For all I know he might be saving Becca’s life. If I do a spell that drags him here then…” She spread her hands. “Bad things happen.”
“So we do nothing?”
The unnatural sensation of helplessness nagged at Owen. In Afghanistan he always knew what to do. He was the guy who did it. He saved lives. He had a plan. He was the man. Or at least Reggie was. Unfortunately, as talented as the dog was at finding people and things, he wasn’t going to be able to find a Bronco the way he found an insurgent.
Pru got to her feet, her gaze on an empty corner. Reggie growled in that direction.
“Henry,” Raye said. “Thank God. We can’t find Becca.”
She listened. Pru glanced over her shoulder, a worried expression in her green, human eyes.
“What is it?” Owen asked.
“He can’t find her either. He was looking, trying, which was why he didn’t come.”
“How can—”
Raye held up her hand, and Owen fell silent. “The only way to keep him from finding her would be to ward the place where she is.”
“Why would she do that?”
“She wouldn’t,” Raye said. “She couldn’t. Becca only discovered who she was yesterday.”
“It’s not that hard to ward against ghosts,” Bobby said. “Rosemary does the trick just fine.”
Owen cast him a glance. How did he know that?
The man lifted his chin toward the invisible Henry. “There are some things a father shouldn’t see.”
He had a point, and the idea that Becca’s real father might have seen even more than her adopted—or whatever Dale was—father made Owen cringe.
“Rosemary,” Owen repeated. “Thanks.” He put buying some on his mental to-do list.
“Have you come to the dark side?” Cassandra asked. “You believe?”
Owen wasn’t sure when, or how, or why that had happened—beyond Becca’s needing him to—but …
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“If it weren’t for the warding, I’d think Becca had gone on a call, visited a friend or family, or gone shopping,” Franklin said. “But for her location to be deliberately shielded, and not by her, indicates she’s been taken.”
Owen’s heart seemed to stop, then start again with a painful jolt.
“All right,” Raye said, but she wasn’t talking to any of them, she was talking to Henry. She faced the room. “I need to scry for her location.”
“You know how?” Bobby asked.
“No.” Her gaze met Cassandra’s. “But I bet you do.”
“Why would an FBI consultant know how to scry?” Owen asked. He wasn’t even sure he knew what scrying was.
“Voodoo priestess,” Cassandra said.
“Excellent.” The more magic, the better. Anything to find, save, protect Becca.
Anything.
* * *
The storm was heating up. Wind, thunder, lightning. The lake roiled like a cauldron. Becca could smell distant rain.
Jeremy produced a few zip ties from his fancy pants. “Hands.”
“Fuck you.”
He sliced my wrist with the athame. The way the blood sprayed, he’d hit a vein. I slapped my free hand onto the wound. Sparks flew. I steeled myself against the sickening lurch in my stomach as flesh knit together. Jeremy wrapped the zip tie around my wrists and pulled.
He was damn quick for an asshole.
He grabbed the front of my shirt with one hand, then lifted the other in front of my face and opened his fist. Green flecks that smelled pleasantly of an herb I couldn’t place sprinkled against my skin, catching in my bra, sifting across my stomach, and gathering where I’d tucked in my shirt.
“What the hell?” I asked, but he just smiled.
When he bent to bind my ankles, I kneed him in the chin. His teeth clicked together. As he fell backward, he stabbed the athame into my thigh. From the spread of