Wicked Wings (Lizzie Grace #5) - Keri Arthur Page 0,27

magic that gives them that ability, but rather DNA adaptions.”

“Yes, but it’s magic that covers the change and saves the rest of us from being grossed out.” He motioned toward the feathers. “The sooner we start, the better chance we’ll have.”

I somewhat reluctantly unzipped the top of the plastic bag and then upended it, letting the feathers float to the table. Only one held any resonance, and even that was barely detectable. I picked it up and opened the psychic gates. No images swarmed my mind, and there was no sense of where the shifter was or what she might be doing. Going deeper didn’t help; too much time had elapsed, and the connection between this feather and the shifter was all but severed.

“Anything?” Ashworth asked, a touch impatiently.

“Yes, but it’s too vague for my psi abilities. It might even be too vague for a spell.”

He grunted and plucked the feather from me. After a moment, his power rose; the protections within the room stirred briefly in response and then died down when no threat eventuated. I narrowed my gaze and watched him weave the various threads around the feather. While I couldn’t always remember the exact wording of a spell, I could generally visualize the patterns and then repeat it. It certainly wasn’t the approved way of doing things, but it had always worked for Belle and me.

When he tied off and then activated the spell, the threads sparkled lightly, an indication that the spell was not only working but also feeding him information.

“Unfortunately, the link to our shifter remains tenuous,” he said, “so we’ll need to get a move on if we’re to have hope of tracking her down.”

“Any luck?” Aiden asked as we both came out.

“Yes, but I have no idea how long the spell will remain viable,” Ashworth replied. “Do you want to drive, Ranger?”

Aiden immediately gulped down the rest of his coffee and then led the way out. Belle handed me the backpack as I walked past and then followed to lock the door.

“I’ll do some research while you’re out,” she said. “Although if shifters capable of magic are a rarity, then Gran might not have much information on them.”

“There’s always Google if we draw a blank with her books.”

Belle snorted. “Because Google isn’t at all full of all sorts of misinformation when it comes to magic and the supernatural.”

I grinned. “There’s plenty of wheat amongst Google’s chaff.”

“Yeah, but who wants to sort through chaff all the time?”

I laughed and ran after the two men. Once we were seated in Aiden’s truck, Ashworth said, “Do a U-turn and head toward Moonlight Flat.”

Aiden did so and then flattened the accelerator. “Is there any indication this shifter is up to no good?”

Ashworth hesitated. “Other than the fact that evil seemed part of its essence, no.”

“Meaning she could just have stopped in the reservation to hunt down some food.”

“Yes,” I said. “But it’s highly unlikely, given she was attacked by magic from an unknown practitioner before she got to her prey.”

Aiden grunted. “If that’s the case, why haven’t either of you sensed the presence of another witch in the reservation?”

Ashworth directed him left onto Murphy Street and then growled, “We’re witches, not radars. We don’t have magi-sensitive antenna that lets us know the minute another witch moves into the same area.”

“Besides which,” I added, “the reservation is huge. We’d sense them if they were on the same street, but anything beyond that can be haphazard.”

“And yet you can sense the use of magic from a fairly decent distance, so why one and not the other?”

“Because most witches generally mute their output,” Ashworth growled. “Makes it easier to be around each other—no power friction, if you like.”

Aiden glanced at me through the rear-view mirror. “Do you and Belle do this?”

“Yes, but not entirely successfully.”

“Which was the reason I suspected there was more to the pair of them than what they were admitting, remember,” Ashworth said.

Because he’d seen how deeply my magic meshed with Belle’s—something that shouldn’t have been possible even if she was my familiar. Not so completely, at any rate. It was certainly something I didn’t want other witches seeing, although none of the other witches who’d been called into the reservation to date appeared to have noticed.

Or maybe they noticed and just didn’t comment on it, Belle said. Maybe they simply made a side note on their reports to the RWA and Canberra. It would certainly go some way to explain your conviction that your parents will