Page 46 of Magic Betrayed

One, I guessed, must be the fire elemental who’d already made his presence known. His hand was raised—ready to call more fire—and his lips were curled in a completely irritating smirk. One of the others was tall and slender, with long limbs, mottled gray skin, and green hair that tangled wildly around his face. Like Faris’s bouncer, Oliver, he was a drus—the male counterpart of a dryad—and would have significant physical strength, as well as possessing power over the trees that loomed in a dark mass on my right side.

Great. Just great.

One of the remaining two was clearly fae—a woman with gray skin and silvery hair—and the last appeared to be a goblin. His skin and hair were dark, but his eyes gleamed gold in the darkness as he looked down on me with a patronizing sneer.

Was this the trap Callum had been looking for? Had the kidnappers used the van to lure us in and now intended to ensure that we never lived to report on their identities?

If so, it was a strangely diverse group of kidnappers, and all of them were Idrian.

Unless…

“The van is ours,” the goblin said. “We found it first. But we’re in the mood to be reasonable, and since there’s only one of you, we’ll show mercy and allow you to leave unharmed.”

Wait, what did he mean onlyone?

I risked a glance over my shoulder, expecting to see a certain auburn-haired dragon shifter preparing to unleash the fullest extent of his wrath.

“If you’re looking for your hulking friend, he won’t be joining you,” the fae woman said smoothly.

I somehow managed to conceal the ripple of fear that shot down my spine when I spotted the huddled shape lying limp in the middle of the dirt road behind me. It was too dark to see details, but it had to be Callum. What had they done to him? Why wasn’t he moving?

“Why do you even want the van?” I kept my voice small and a little whiny. Couldn’t afford for them to figure out how desperate I was.

“Same reason as you,” the fire elemental retorted. “There’s a big fat bounty on that half-fae woman, and we plan to be the ones to collect.”

They were following Kes’s trail. Which meant that either they’d been at our apartment that night and seen her get into this van, or…

Grandma Pearl was selling information to whoever was willing to pay for it.

Siren magic or no, my hunches insisted it was the latter.

But now I was stuck—confronting five determined Idrian mercenaries, with no backup and not much idea how to use my own magic to defend myself.

The wisest course of action would probably be to back down and let them have the van. But how could I let them leave with my only link to Kes and the kids? How could I give up when I knew someone was hurting Kes and this might be my only chance to find her?

There had to be something I could do. Some way to stall the mercenaries while I figured out what they’d done to Callum…

Water. We were surrounded by it—in the river, the nearby lake, and even underground. When I reached out with my elemental magic, I could feel it pooling beneath me, like a sleeping giant, wide and deep and shimmering with potential.

“I don’t even want the money,” I protested, only half my attention on the enemies in front of me. “Maybe we could work together? I bet I know some things you don’t.”

The fae woman didn’t bother to hide her derision. “Like what? And if you don’t want the money, why are you out here ankle deep in the mud in the middle of the night?”

Ankle deep…

“The target has something that belongs to me,” I complained, staying crouched close to the ground, my profile low and my posture submissive. “I just want it back.”

But even as I crouched there with my hands in the dirt, I reached deep, deep beneath the surface and stretched to the fullest limits of my senses. Threw a silent call into the darkness, pulling the sleeping giant towards me in a slow but inexorable rise, forcing the ground water higher and higher—letting it soften the dirt and seep into cracks in the rock as it came.

There was so much of it. A bit of panic crept in as I realized what I risked should I lose control, but it was too late to stop now. The mercenaries were eyeing me with a combination of suspicion and greed, and I had to hold their attention.

“I know that the person who took them is a human,” I blurted out, only for the fire elemental to let out a burst of scornful laughter.

“What would a human want with this bounty?” he scoffed. “How would they even know it existed?”

“I don’t know.” I was practically babbling now. But the water was still rising, and I sensed faint movement beneath my feet. There wasn’t much time left before my opponents noticed, and I needed to get closer to Callum. Needed to be able to pull him to the relative safety of the parking lot in case I lost control.

“But I know other things too! And I’ll help you, if you’ll just let me go with you when you find where they took her.”

---