Chaos Burning by Lauren Dane

“Hang on, let me get something to write on.” Luckily her pad and pen weren’t far so she was able to get back to Gage quickly. “Okay, go.”
    “Just got off the phone with Toronto. Two witches have gone missing. Both fairly high up in the clan. A bonded couple.”
    “Shit.”
    “Yes. Toronto was one of Gloria Ochoa’s feeding grounds back when she was alive. Some of the earliest disappearances of witches who turned up drained and dead were around there.” He paused. “They need some help. Are you up for it? It shouldn’t be a long trip, but they don’t know much about the mage situation and they could use the expertise. I can go if you can’t.”
    Now that she’d left home, she wasn’t so lonely for it. It’d been a busy two weeks since she’d arrived in Seattle. The whole point was to be useful so why not? “Nah, it’s why I came up here to begin with. I can be on a plane in a few hours.”
    He gave her all the pertinent details and contact info and she was out of bed and in motion.
    IT took her pretty much all day long to get there, but when she did, she was greeted by Dray Carter, the hunter for Clan Septiem and his second in command, Portia.
    “Appreciate the help. Nell has been singing your praises.” He looked her up and down. “You’re not going to last long with that coat. We’ll stop by the house and get you something better.”
    They hadn’t been kidding. Though she’d acclimated to Seattle’s far chillier weather, this, well, Toronto’s November was a whole different universe of cold. They hustled her through any open-air situations as quickly as possible and as promised, provided her with a far warmer coat when they dropped her bags off.
    “What do you need?” Dray asked as they headed back out.
    She needed to put it all together. Like a puzzle. So she’d start gathering the pieces. “I need some hot coffee. They were a bonded couple right?”
    Dray nodded. “Together for nine years.”
    “I read the file on the plane.” And she’d been convinced it was indeed the work of these turned witches. They’d been at this long enough to have patterns. And the pattern here wasn’t one that boded well for the witches who’d been taken. “I’d like to see where they work and where they live.”
    Brandy and Ernie Pollard had disappeared three days before. At first no one really noticed. The two had gone out to dinner with friends on Tuesday evening. The last time anyone had seen them. Wednesday came and neither showed up for work. Which was so unusual people suspected a problem right off and sent someone over to the house to check on them. That’s when they found signs of a struggle. Portia and Dray had gone out looking right away and had come up emptybut for the smudge of magic that’d been used. Enough to know to call Owen.
    “We’ll take you to the house first.”
    Brandy and Ernie’s house wasn’t too far from Dray’s, but Lark used the time to get herself and her magick centered. She couldn’t afford to miss a single detail. In the last several disappearances, the only times they were successful at getting their people back alive had been in three days or less. They were right on that deadline and she had no plans to let these mages kill any more of her people.
    Getting out of the car, Portia plopped a big hat on Lark’s head and handed her gloves, which she took quickly and stepped away from them to open up her othersight. They left her alone as she reached down deep inside and threw the locks on her magick. The filters she used fell away and she saw the world on an entirely different level. Colors popped to life, the energies and magickal signatures of those Others in the area settled into place.
    The cool, focused blue of witches. Some green. “Weres around here by any chance?”
    Portia nodded. “Yes, across the street. This is an Other neighborhood. At least five other families on the three blocks around us. Werewolves, a vampire and some witches.”
    Lark