a few moments, I knew that their assumptions had been on point. “These really are plans for a school, aren’t they? These boxes are classrooms. This is a cafeteria, and those are dorm rooms.”
“Yep.” Zayne returned to the island with a laptop. “Gideon did a quick records search and he couldn’t find any permits linked to the senator and a school, but I want to see if I can find anything online referencing it while he’s still searching through different databases.”
“Sounds good,” I murmured, staring at the plans.
“Listen to this,” Zayne said after a few minutes. “We know that Fisher is the majority leader and that he’s known to be a God-loving and wholesome man, all about 1950s-era family values.”
“How ironic,” I muttered.
“I can’t even tell you how many websites are coming up, dedicated to him from religious folks. Even ones from the Children of God.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, that right there should tell you something.”
He snickered. “According to their website, they believe he’s some kind of prophet or a savior who is destined to save America. From what, I have no idea.” Fingers moving over the touch pad, he shook his head. “Luckily these people seem to be a very, very small minority.”
Thank God. There was a twisted irony to the situation with the senator. The man was definitely not a fan of God, considering he was hanging out with an ancient Upper Level demon and going to witches to get enchantments that turned humans into walking cannon fodder—the very same coven that had betrayed us by telling the demon Aym, who was super dead. Thankfully.
Man, I wished I could cast spells, because I’d curse the coven with a pox and then some. “I doubt whatever he’s planning is anything good.”
“Agreed.” Zayne’s fingers tapped away on the keyboard. “Looks like the fire made the news.” He tilted the laptop so that I could see a picture of a gutted, charred house with the headline “Overnight Fire Destroys Senate Majority Leader Fisher’s Home.” “It doesn’t say much beyond blaming faulty wiring.”
I snorted. “I may not be an arson specialist, but I seriously doubt anything about that fire would make anyone think it was due to electrical failure...” I trailed off as I saw the unholy red flames in my mind, saw Zayne, who in his Warden form was almost indestructible, burned and near death—
“Fisher probably has people working with him in the fire department,” Zayne explained, snapping me out of my thoughts. “When demons infiltrate human circles, it becomes an epidemic, with the demon as the disease. The first human they corrupt becomes the carrier and brings others into it. Like a virus that spreads from contact to contact, and the farther the source gets from the carrier, the more the humans don’t realize what or who they’re truly working for.”
“But the senator knows he’s working with a demon. He went to the coven and got that enchantment.” I frowned. “And he also promised parts of a Trueborn—of me—in return. Jerk.”
A low snarling sound raised the tiny hairs all over my body, and I looked around the kitchen to see where the sound was coming from. I’d never seen a hellhound, and I imagined that was the kind of noise they made, but that sound was coming from Zayne.
My eyes widened.
“That’s not going to happen.” His eyes flashed an intense pale blue. “Ever. I can promise you that.”
I found myself nodding slowly. “It won’t.”
He held my gaze and then went back to his internet search. Muscles stiffened as a burst of fear spiked me in the chest, followed by the sudden clarity that Zayne...he would die for me. He already almost had, and that was before we were bonded. He’d pushed me out of the way when Aym had made a run at me, and nearly paid for that with his life. Aym had been horrifically talented with Hellfire, which could burn anything in its path, including a Warden.
As my Protector, giving his life for mine was in Zayne’s job description. If I died, so would Zayne, and if he died protecting me, I would live on, and I guessed another would replace him—another like Misha, who was never supposed to have been bonded to me.
“You don’t need to be afraid,” he said, staring at the laptop screen.
My gaze shot to him. The glow from the screen lit his profile. “What?”
“I can feel it.” He placed his left palm against his chest, and my shoulders tensed. “It’s like an