He winked at me. “Promise. Here you go. Remember, keep your head down and I’m right behind you.”
He pushed me through, and I had to blink because it was very dark. Even without being able to see anything, I knew we weren’t in Daniel’s office. His office smells of old leather and pine and books. This place smelled like gun oil. And it was rather chilly.
“Hey, hold on,” Kelsey was saying. “I’m trying to find a light. It’s like we’re in some kind of storage shed. It’s big, but I think we’re alone.”
A flame flickered. “Got it. This should help.”
I felt Danny at my back as he came through.
Dean had a smile on his face as he held up his hands. There was a flame coming from his fingertips. “Simple fire spell.” It flickered out. “Damn it. I’ll work on that.”
Lights flickered overhead and the room was illuminated by bright LEDs. I looked around because the room seemed familiar.
“This is the armory,” Dev said with a frown. “But someone moved everything around. I haven’t been down here in months. I’m going to have a talk with Zack.”
“He moved the painting.” I looked back and the painting sat there except now the canvas was blank.
“Come on.” Kelsey opened the door. “We need to move out of here. My phone’s dead because I couldn’t charge it in a faery forest. I need to find one. Trent will know what’s going on. He won’t have left the kids.”
“There’s one in my manager’s office,” Dev offered. “It’s down the hall from here. God, I’m going to tell Albert to make all the food. I’m starving.”
“I didn’t even get to try pizza again,” Daniel complained.
Something was wrong. I could feel it. It was an instinct deep inside me, one my father had told me to always trust. “I think we should stay here for a moment.”
“Holy shit.” Dean was standing by a desk that I was pretty certain hadn’t been here before. There was a printer I knew hadn’t been in the armory and a bunch of stacks of papers all around it.
“What is it?” I moved toward him.
“This might be easier than we think. Who’s this guy?” Dean held up a poster. “Because I’ve been dreaming about this dude at night. Him and a gorgeous blonde. Didn’t you say your kid’s name was Lee?”
He turned it around and my jaw nearly dropped.
It was a wanted poster.
Wanted for crimes against our good King Myrddin
Lee Donovan-Quinn, outlaw, traitor, and thief
Dead or alive
The face staring back at me was my son, but he was at least twenty years old, and something had happened to his eye. He wore a patch and his hair was loose around his broad shoulders.
“Oh, god.” Kelsey picked up another and her hands were shaking. “It’s Fen. This is Fen? It can’t be. He’s only nine.”
He wasn’t nine in the picture. Fenrir Owens was wanted for the same crimes as Lee. We found one for Rhys and one for Evangeline. My little girl was now a gorgeous young woman who was pointing a bow and arrow at whoever had taken the photo.
“What’s the date?” I asked, panic rising.
“It’s four calendar days after we left,” Dev said, looking at the system that secured the armory. It had a time and date stamp on the computer interface. “But according to this, we’ve been gone twelve years.”
“And Myrddin is the king now,” Kelsey said, holding up the last of the wanted posters. It was Trent Wilcox, one of her husbands. “It says he’s wanted for sheltering enemies of the king.”
Time. That was what we had lost.
And I found myself once again in the middle of a war I had to win.
* * * *
Zoey, Daniel, and Dev will return in Outlaw.
Author’s Note
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