and pulled against the men’s grips, but she couldn’t budge them. What the hell was going on? What was in that blanket that it could take Torin down like that? “Who are you people?” she shouted. “What do you want?”
“That’s enough of that, missy,” the older woman said, shaking her head. “Keep your voice down. No point in shouting—no one’s going to come to help a witch!”
Shea’s stomach sank. Oh, God. They were here for her. To take her who knew where. Maybe there were prison guards waiting in the parking lot. Maybe . . . no. She deliberately stopped her imagination from racing ahead of the situation. The woman had said no one was coming to help her. Which probably meant that no one was coming, period. These people, whoever they were, were most likely doing this on their own.
“Just look at you.” The older woman clucked her tongue in disgust. “Naked as a jaybird, and him no better!” She whirled around, faced a teenage girl and shouted, “Tessie Marie Grainger, you close your eyes this minute. I’m not going to have to explain to your mama that you saw a naked man while you were under my protection.”
The blond girl in question stared at Torin a moment longer, then reluctantly closed her eyes. But the smile on her face said the memory was a satisfying one.
Shea squirmed and futilely twisted, trying to get free of the two men holding her arms behind her back. But their grip on her was so tight, so strong, she couldn’t even snap her fingers to clothe herself. Instead, she was forced to stand naked in front of a room full of psychotic strangers. She felt their gazes on her like a caress from a dirty hand.
“Who are you?” she demanded, tossing her hair back and lifting her chin in helpless defiance.
“Watch your tone now, missy,” said the woman who was clearly in charge as she reached down to toss the edge of her blanket across Torin’s lower body. “Honestly. You magical people, not a sense of propriety among you. Both of you naked and it not six o’clock in the evening. No doubt you were having sex and it’s barely dark out. Is it any wonder God-fearing Christians have to take matters into their own hands?”
Shea snorted at the woman’s sanctimonious tone. “Don’t make this about religion,” she said. “It’s not. This is just fear. You’re afraid, so you’re striking out.”
Martha humphed. “Looks to me as if you’re the one afraid here.”
Torin groaned and struggled to sit up. He failed and his gray eyes flashed a warning that told everyone in the room they had better hope he didn’t get free.
“Don’t you waste your time there, mister,” the woman told him. “I knitted that blanket myself. There’s threads of white gold mixed in with the yarn, so it’ll hold you.”
Well, that explained why the blanket was having such an effect on Torin. It also cut short any hope of him escaping that blanket and getting them out of this. Shea’s gaze swept the room, going from one face to the next. They all looked so . . . normal, she thought. Except for the fact that they were carrying clubs and guns and were holding her and Torin captive. Her gaze swung back to the older woman standing in front of her.
“You knitted a blanket with white gold threads?”
The woman turned to look at Shea, eyes wide. “Well, of course. How else could we control him while we take you? And let me tell you, missy, white gold thread yarn is pretty darned pricey.”
Shea almost laughed. Almost. She was being held prisoner again, but this time, it wasn’t prison guards. This time it looked like a local chapter of the PTA, for heaven’s sake. “What is it you want from us?”
“Well, first things first, I think,” the woman said. “My name’s Martha Chapman. I’m the president of the local Seeker society.”
Seekers. A hard ball of ice settled in Shea’s stomach. She knew that organization. She knew about the experiments. About the tortures. About the deaths of too many women—witch and human alike—to count. She looked at the faces surrounding her through new eyes now and she didn’t like what she was seeing. They didn’t look crazy.
Just determined.
“Ah,” Martha said, giving her a pleased smile. “I see you’ve heard of us. Isn’t that nice?”
“You don’t have to do this,” Shea told her, frantically racking her newfound memories for a spell, a chant, anything