Page 16 of Familiar of the Witch

‘No, for our first date I’m taking you to embrace your destiny.’ He winked.

‘Smooth,’ I complimented him drily.

He sobered, moved closer to me and gently cupped my chin, turning my head so I met his dark eyes. ‘This isn’t really a date, Bambi. I want to be clear on that. When I take you out for the first time, we’re going to do something special. Just us.’ His voice lowered. ‘And you’re going to love every minute of it.’

My heart was thundering in my chest and suddenly my mouth was dry. I licked my lips. ‘That’s a bold claim,’ I managed to reply evenly, like my knees weren’t weak at the thought of ‘loving every minute’ of being with Bastion.

‘I’m a bold man. I don’t do things by halves, Amber. When I’m in, I’m all in.’

Now there was a promise. The question was, was I ready to beallinwith Bastion?

Chapter 14

The bombed-out church was more heavily guarded than usual. Not too long ago, a rogue Seer had tried to seize control of the portal to subvert it for her own use. Not unlike how my mother hadactuallyused it, apparently.

Unlike Mum, the Seer had wanted to wrest control of the Connection from the Symposium and start her own ruling dynasty. She had hired an army of ogres and trolls and cut her way to the portal. As a result of that incident, the bombed-out church was crawling with wizards ready to kill people who wanted to use the portal without the appropriate Symposium authorisation. We just had to wade through them. Easy.

We’d driven for hours to get to Liverpool. It was knocking on midnight, my butt was numb, my temper was short and I was tired and cranky. I was also incredibly nervous.It wasn’t every day that I broke into a heavily guarded government building.

‘How are we doing this?’ I asked, crouched next to a bush and feeling ridiculous – I am no GI Jane. I had my ever-present tote bag slung over my shoulder, packed with healing potions and an illusion potion.

I would admit to no one that I was hoping that I’d somehow be able to save Melva. I had helped Jinx pull off a miracle a time or two, and I hoped that Melva had a miracle coming her way. Maybe the body I’d seen had been an illusion painted on another corpse. I hadn’t seen the illusion break while we were there with Wise, but it was still possible even if it didn’t feel probable.

‘The portal is held in what used to be the nave of the church. There’s a hidden entrance for employees to the side of it that is accessible in emergencies,’ Oscar explained.

‘And you still have a key?’ I asked hopefully.

‘No, but I know the code.’

I stared. ‘That’s your plan? Use an old code? Oscar! They will have changed that code a decade ago!’

‘It’s a master code. Different codes are generated every day, but there’s only one master code. In the whole time I worked there, they never changed it.’

‘And you’re hoping they still won’t have?’ I asked incredulously.

‘If it doesn’t work, we go to Plan B. But people are creatures of habit – the code will be the same,’ Oscar said confidently.

‘What’s Plan B?’

‘Fire and bombs.’ Bastion grinned. ‘Maybe even a Molotov cocktail or two.’ He sounded rather excited about the prospect. Someone was gunning for Plan B.

I pinched the bridge of my nose.Goddess, let Plan A work, I prayed.It was just too late in the evening for bombs; they were more of an early morning thing.

‘I’m going to make it so we can’t be seen,’ Oscar murmured.

I blinked. ‘I thought you couldn’t use the IR on yourself.’

‘I can’t. I’m using the IR on anyone that we encounter. Interestingly, it works on CCTV footage as well. Jinx mentioned that once.’

‘Huh.’ I thought about it. ‘We’ll need to be visible when we go into the past. Frogmatch saw us.’

‘You will be,’ Oscar promised. ‘I won’t have cast the spell on you in the past.’

Thewhole thing made my head hurt. Bastion laced our fingers together, so we’d be in contact even if we were invisible. ‘Do it,’ he ordered Oscar.

A moment later, we winked out of sight. I lifted our joined hands but, although I could feel Bastion’s warm skin, I couldn’t see a damned thing. It was disconcerting.

Bastion tugged me up and I took a step forward. It was horrible not being able to see my feet; the foliage was tamped down where I was standing but I was invisible. I felt ethereal and ghostly and I didn’t like it one bit. I hoped it wasn’t a sign of what was to come.

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