Angie Fox - ADS 03 - A Tale of Two Demon Slayers

“Too bad,” Talos answered. I resisted the urge to shove him down the last two steps. The griffin needed an edit button.

“Answer me this,” I said, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. “What can someone else do with Diana’s Skye stone? You told me yourself you couldn’t use it for anything but to see where their magic had weakened.”

“Yes,” he said, like I was the slow contestant on Jeopardy! “But if our enemies can’t use it to gain power, they can still use it to make Diana lose power. The end result is the same. I’m strong, but I can’t defend this entire estate by myself.”

He saw my shock and it only urged him on. “Make no mistake, we will die for this place. We pledged ourselves and we shall go down fighting.”

“Frankly, I’d like to find another way,” I said, heading for the back hall. I wasn’t optimistic enough to think I’d survive this if Talos didn’t.

“I agree,” he said.

Too bad I still didn’t trust him. I wasn’t about to take his word that he couldn’t do anything with a stolen Skye stone. If only Dimitri were here. He’d know whether Talos was telling the truth.

I thought about calling him and realized my Sprint calling plan didn’t include Greece, much less ultrasecret griffin clan meetings. Maybe Diana or Dyonne would know how to reach their brother.

This was the second break-in since I’d arrived. We had a traitor among us, and I was willing to bet he’d just yanked me out of bed, pretending to help.

I pushed my way out the doors to the patio. The garden looked almost serene in the early-morning light. Birds chirped and hopped over the muddy hole where the sundial fountain had been. The witches had also cleared out a large swath of rosebushes that had blocked the stone house, and installed a barbecue pit made from half a wine barrel. Classy.

Maybe they’d know what to do with Talos. “Where were you last night?” I asked him as we approached the armory.

He walked with me through the remains of the rose garden as if he expected to step on dog poop. “Believe it or not,” he said, with no small amount of disgust, “I spent the night with your biker witches.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I wish I were. A woman named Ant Eater shoved homemade whiskey under my nose. Being hospitable, I tried it.” He winced at the memory. “The next thing I remember was a man named Bob rolling his wheelchair past my head this morning, asking if I’d like bacon.”

“So they know what’s going on?” I asked. Good.

“No, I’d returned to my room when Diana sounded the alarm. I came straight to you.”

Lucky me.

Frieda threw back the wooden front door so hard it bounced against the wall. “Talos! How ya doing?” she waved. “Your head feeling any better?”

“No,” Talos said.

She wore lime green leather pants and a zebra-print halter top. “Would you like a hangover spell?” she asked, chomping on gum. “We got plenty brewed up in the house.”

“No,” he repeated.

There was no time for Talos’s headache anyway. “We need to talk to Grandma and Ant Eater. We have a situation.”

Good thing the biker witches were used to things going wrong. Grandma and Ant Eater rushed right out, along with the half dozen or so other witches who liked to eavesdrop. They munched on bacon while Talos and I explained the situation.

“Who did it?” Grandma demanded, tossing the last of her breakfast to Pirate. Sneaky dog. I thought I’d locked him in the room.

Ant Eater shook her head. “Talos was with us, Dimitri and Amara are gone, our witches are clean, the sisters are clean.” She tapped a finger against her gold front tooth. “Nothing from the outside came in through the wards last night.”

“How do you know?”

She gave me a look that could tan leather. “I know.”

“Fine.” I believed her. “So we don’t know who took the stone or where it is now.” It was completely unacceptable. We needed a plan.

Frieda patted her stack of blonde hair. “We could work up some magic traps, and unlike the time in Little Rock—”

The witches glared at her.

“What happened in Little Rock?” I asked.

Scarlet, the red-haired witch, winced. “Frieda got eaten.”

Frieda shook her head, remembering. “Lost a perfectly good pair of hot-pink platform shoes, rhinestone buckles and all.” She sighed wistfully. “But never you mind. This time, we’ll make sure our magic is immune.”

“You’re forgetting about the wards around this place,” Grandma said. “Traps would pull them down.”

We were interrupted by a wide-eyed Diana rushing out onto the patio, followed closely by Dyonne.

“It’s gone!” Diana announced, tears in her eyes. She sank into a wrought-iron patio chair. “I thought if we did some meditations, focused our remaining strength, we could sense where it is. But…” She gestured helplessly.

“This won’t do,” Talos said. “Diana, you must try to track your magic.”

“I can’t,” she wailed. “One minute it was on my dresser and the next minute—poof!”

Grandma shook her head. “It can’t just disappear.”

“It did!” Diana insisted, clutching at her pink silk nightgown.

Grandma inspected Diana’s pupils, then started looking under Diana’s fingernails for who knew what.

In the meantime, I tried to think of something, anything, that would help us look. The Skye stone was no bigger than a billiard ball. I could see it disappearing to a safe place. It glowed with an inner magic from the moment Diana touched it during training. It shone even brighter in my dream. I remembered it now. It had been so real.

The facts clicked into place in my mind.

I had a logic teacher who always said you should never discount an answer simply because you didn’t expect the data to lead you there. And boy, did I love logic.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, backing away from the group.

“Lizzie, are you on to something?” Grandma asked.

“Maybe—just give me a minute,” I said, heading down the stone path and into the garden. “Alone,” I added, before I had a herd of witches and griffins following me.

I didn’t want to try to explain where I was going. I didn’t even know if the hazy place in my mind existed in real life. Pirate’s nails clicked on the slate path behind me as I made my way toward a spot at the very edge of the gardens. Subtle he was not.

“I’d rather do this alone, Pirate,” I said, searching for the overgrown trail leading into the thick of the garden.

“Um-hum,” he said, his nose tickling my heels. “I saw how you looked when you took off, like you’re about to go get the mail without me.”

I dug around one of the pink flowering bushes invading the walkway. Yeah, well getting the mail with Pirate took twenty minutes. He had to sniff every rock, tree and blade of grass within twenty feet of the curb.

“Stick close,” I said. “This could be nothing or…” I didn’t know what, but I wasn’t about to ignore anything that could help me find Diana’s stone.

“Um-hum.” Pirate huffed, his hot breath tickling my leg. “You need a watchdog.”

We made our way down the tangled path together. Pirate kept his nose to the ground while I searched the thick garden foliage for anything out of the ordinary.

“You know I asked Ant Eater about the ASPCC,” Pirate said, leaping over a prickly branch like it was a track-and-field hurdle.

Sweat trickled down my back. “Pirate, buddy. We don’t have time.”

“She said dragons are wild animals and they don’t take wild animals. So see? That dragon needs me.”

This trail, overgrown as it was, seemed so familiar. Yet I knew I’d never been here before. “If dragons are wild,” I said to my dog, trying to make sense of this place, “then you can let him go. He’ll be fine.”