Page 111 of The Diamond in the Rough

That still made sense to him, but now he wasn’t so sure that this was the right way to go about keeping people from having magic they didn’t deserve, anymore than he’d have approved of killing homeless people to keep them from taking hard-working taxpayers’ money. Put them in jail, sure. But not kill them.

He frowned.

Maybe this wasn’t for him.

I pushedmyself back into my own head, wondering which one of them was the guy who wasn’t Gennaro or Mulrooney. Because if I was going to somehow get out of this, that was the guy who was most likely to help me.

Or at least hesitate before killing me.

I tried to keep my breathing slow and even, to pretend that I was still unconscious. If they ignored me, then maybe I could recover enough from whatever they’d put over my mouth and whatever other thing they’d injected into me to use my death magic.

Assuming they didn’t know about that.

From the thoughts I’d read from the zip ties and the moving blanket—which was definitely stained with blood—I understood that they were likely sympathetic to the original anti-witch, anti-Arcane ethos of Tranquil Brook. And that meant that they wanted to take my magic from me. I could only hope that they were assuming mine came from Arcanavirus—that I might have a chance with death magic because they didn’t know I had it.

If I could convince them I was asleep for long enough to recover from whatever they’d given me.

“We sure this is the right kid?” asked an uncertain male voice with a rural Virginia accent. I had the feeling this was probably the more uncertain man.

“Yeah, we’re sure,” said a more assertive voice. “Little shit’s sister led us right to him.”

Shock hit me.

Violette had led them to me?By now, you would think I’d be used to the feeling of betrayal. But apparently not as much as I’d needed to be, given the feeling of being punched in the solar plexus that accompanied it.

A third voice—coming from the front of the van, so the driver, presumably—jumped in. “Easy enough to get a tracker on her phone.”

So Violette hadn’t actually known. Relief flooded me. It was still bad, but at least the sister I was really starting to like hadn’t actually given me to these horrible people.

“How?” the assertive voice asked. “You get in her pants or something?”

“Jesus,” muttered the uncertain voice.

“Nah,” came the reply, and the assertive one sounded proud of himself, I thought. “Sent her a free sticker with the wires embedded. Kids’ll put stickers on anything these days.”

I wondered if it was the cowboy-hat-wearing panda bear, the angry sun face, or the blushing peach.

“Less fun than fucking her,” the driver said crudely. “But probably easier for your gnarly ass.”

“Fuck you, asshole. Your momma didn’t think my ass was gnarly last night.”

The conversation devolved from there.

I still felt unmoored—detached from my own brain, my magic distant and hard to reach.

I was angry, frustrated, and utterly terrified.

Without magic, I was also helpless.

We’d been drivingfor about an hour, give or take, after I awakened, but I couldn’t tell if that was in a single direction or whether they were trying to confuse me, just in case I woke up, so that I didn’t know where we were. Not that they’d have any reason to keep it from me, as it was abundantly clear that they had no intention of letting me go.

They were going to kill me. Or try to, anyway.

It was taking a lot longer for my magic to feel present than felt normal—and definitely a lot longer than I wanted it to. At least there was something there now.

Not that I knew what todowith it.

Should I use what little I had to call out to Sylvia andbeg for help? Keep energy in reserve so that I could attack one of my attackers? If so, which one? And when?