Page 81 of Moody as a Minotaur

“I wish we’d caught the rest of them too.” I frowned. “But we would have needed a fuck ton more backup to contain that many people.”

“Sorry about that…” Nelson rubbed the back of his head.

“Not your fault. We couldn’t have anticipated this turn,” Gage said. He squeezed Nelson’s shoulder. It reminded me of how Hayden calmed people in the pack.

“Nothing is going right lately.” Nelson’s dark eyebrows tilted down in a frown. I got the sense he was talking about more than just tonight’s events.

Gage met Nelson’s frown with one of his own. “This isn’t your fault.”

Nelson’s jaw tightened like he was clenching his teeth. “I should have been down there when the shit hit the fan. I was following the older guy with that jewel they used toidentify supernatural magic. If I hadn’t taken it when I did, I doubt he would have gone back down there.” Nelson shook off Gage’s hand. “We should interview those kids and see what else they know.”

“The shifters might not be much help about what happened tonight. The hoods the hunters made us wear fucked with our senses.” I wrinkled my nose at the mention of that damn hood. The stink of it was still clinging to my nostrils. “But they might know more about the other students who’d been recruited. Is the SC searching the professor’s belongings? If he was teaching there, he must have an office on campus, right?”

“Not sure they’ll find much. Hunters tend to be paranoid bastards,” Nelson muttered.

“But you got the amulet?” Gage asked.

“Yeah, I did. Picked it out of his pocket when he was standing in line for some fancy coffee, right after I emptied the bullets from his gun. It wasn’t five seconds later that he tapped his empty pocket and discovered it was missing.”

“Can I see it?” I asked, curious about the object that had likely been used to destroy many supes in the past.

Nelson nodded and pulled a pouch from his pocket. “I was going to give it to Teague. He has a vault where he keeps dangerous shit.” Nelson glanced at Teague after he said that, like he might have let something slip that he shouldn’t have.

When the death mage didn’t react, Nelson upended the pouch, and a dark stone bound in an elaborate gold filigree rolled onto his palm. The stone was mostly blue, but hints of green and yellow flashed over it as it moved.It was mesmerizing. As it rested on Nelson’s hand, a midnight blue glow pulsed through it. It was picking up on Nelson’s magic. Teague stepped closer.

“Labradorite,” Teague muttered as his fingers fluttered across the amulet. The blue glow transitioned to a deep purple under the death mage’s touch. “An interesting choice. Magic has been woven into the setting, which fine tunes its use. Generally, the stone allows some people to see through illusions, but it’s often used for protection as well.”

“Protection against supes? As if we’re the problem.” I stomped my foot. “And then they used it as an instrument of war too. What hypocrites.”

Nelson passed it to Teague.

“I’ll keep it safe,” Teague said as he tucked the gem back into the pouch. “Things like this show up on the magical black market from time to time, but I haven’t seen one in a long while. It suggests that these hunters are willing to use magic if it helps them. Not all hunters are.”

“The professor’s cohorts will be pissed when they discover the stone is missing,” Isaac mused.

The centaur had been unusually quiet since we arrived at the inn. The guy looked like a surfer with his long blond hair and sun-kissed skin, and his laid-back attitude usually matched his looks. He’d been doing most of the renovations at the inn, though, so I wasn’t surprised to see him here. The guy rarely left the inn these days.

Everyone nodded.

“If it was their only one, which it sounds like it mighthave been,” Nelson said, “they will probably be on the hunt for another one. If the hunter group on campus relocates after tonight, I’ll keep an eye out for them when I check out the black markets.”

“Why are you going to places like that?” I asked. Events like that were full of all the wrong kinds of supes. Had I misjudged these people?

“I’m looking for…” Nelson frowned as his words trailed off. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll keep an eye out. That’s all I’m saying.”

“He’s looking for that unicorn that disappeared,” Carter whispered in my ear. “You heard about that, right?”

“A unicorn? A real unicorn?”

“Yeah,” Carter said. “His name is Morgan. I don’t know how you didn’t hear about that.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Remember how Ogden was abducted a few months back? Well, the unicorn was caged there too. Nelson’s been looking for him since then.”

Wow. A unicorn. No wonder Nelson was stressed all the time. He was trying to find a supe that most people thought only existed in myth.

If Nelson was checking out black markets, did that mean he thought someone was going to sell the unicorn? Or the unicorn’s horn or something? I thought the kidnapping ring had been stopped.