“Okay. Look, I really don’t care what the two of you do. I just want to know if she might be open to my asking her out on a date.”
Michael looked at Daniel. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
Daniel shrugged. “If it were someone else, I’d discourage it. But if anyone can handle her, it might be the major… and vice versa.”
“I agree.” He smiled at Payne. “Good luck, sir.”
“Thanks, I think. Now, let’s get back to the matter at hand.”
“Yeah, are you thinking someone else might be extraterrestrial? Is that why you have the disk?” Daniel asked.
“Maybe. Look, I wasn’t completely on board with this, but my superiors demanded answers, and I didn’t have time to assess much of anyone or anything.”
Daniel scratched his head. “Whatever. My point is, if this backfires?—”
“It won’t,” Payne said. He tapped the disk, and it responded with a pulse of red light. “They took the bait. They’re inside the net. Now we see who else shows up.”
Daniel exchanged a look with Michael. “And if it’s not just the witches?”
Payne smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Then we make history.”
The abandoned lot smelledlike rust, ozone, and something worse. Something metallic and wrong, like scorched magic. The witches crept along the edge of a broken chain-link fence, staying low, their protection grid shimmering faintly in the twilight.
Lioness had stuffed her sketchpad under one arm, her fingers twitching like they were still dying to draw. Rayna led the way, her palm glowing, smoothing the way just enough to keep them from tripping over debris.
“There,” Joell whispered, pointing.
The SUV was parked in the center of the lot, alone. No sign of Jasper. No sign of the figures Lioness had drawn. No movement. Just a faint red glow pulsing from something on the asphalt, about the size of a dinner plate.
“Oh, hell no,” Rayna said. “Is that a summoning circle? A glowing one? That's like a horror movie prologue waiting to happen.”
“It’s not just a circle,” Brianna said slowly. “It’s atrap.”
The moment she said it, the air around them shifted. It became warm. Too warm. Lioness stumbled and grabbed Rayna’s arm.
“They’re watching us,” Lioness said. “Through something that’s not here.”
Joell crouched beside the red-glowing object. “It’s not just a locator. It’s more than that. They’re trying to read our energy signature.”
“Then let’s fry their scanner and get out of here,” Rayna said, sparks already dancing across her knuckles.
“No,” Joell snapped. “We don’t tip our hand unless we have to.”
“Too late,” Brianna said, stepping back. Her boots scraped asphalt but made no sound. “The sound field’s been dampened. Maybe our powers have been too.”
The witches froze.
“Okay,” Rayna said, forcing her voice through the rising silence, “how bad is that?”
“No echoes, no ambient noise,” Joell said. “That’s not just stealth tech. That’s nullification. They’re prepping to lock us down.”
Lioness pressed a shaking hand to her temple. “They’re already trying to separate us psychically. I can feel it.” Her shout sounded like a whisper.
Joell stood and turned, scanning the shadows. “Then we don’t give them time to finish. We pull back, regroup, and?—”
A low hum filled the air. Not loud, but something theyfeltin their bones, in their teeth, in the back of their eyes.
The red glow flared, and the SUV blinked out of sight.