Angel Falls (Cassandra Bick Chronicles Book 3) by Tracey Sinclair Read Free Book Online Page B

though?’
    ‘Well, correct me if I’m wrong…’ Exasperated at my picking, he moved his sandwich pile out of my reach and shoved a bacon-slathered wedge of bread at me, because obviously angels don’t understand that it’s OK to eat your boyfriend’s sarnies because food on other people’s plates doesn’t have calories. Then again, I’m pretty sure angels have no concept of calories at all, so I suspected the contents of my fridge after his shopping spree would be heavy on the heart attack fuel. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ he repeated, playfully slapping my hand away as I feinted at his plate again. ‘But Wicca is a positive religion, it’s all about life, yeah?’
    I nodded, mouth too full of bacon to speak.
    ‘So Celice corrupted her magic over years – a slow, steady process. But Medea went all gung-ho after the witch/Were conspiracy when Katie got hexed. So maybe she… flipped a switch or something. Overloaded her system, shorted out her abilities. Or she’s suffering some kind of psychic PTSD that’s blocking her without her knowing it.’
    ‘But she didn’t kill anyone,’ I protested, then realised I wasn’t actually sure if that was true. By the end of the battle there had been an awful lot of bodies, and nobody was keeping score. ‘I don’t think.’
    ‘Maybe it doesn’t matter. She was willing to kill – and to kill other witches. Perhaps that’s enough.’ Another shrug. ‘Honestly, Cass, I’m just guessing. Magic has been around as long as I have, and humans have harnessed it from the earliest times, but I don’t think even its most skilled practitioners know exactly what it is, or how it works. It could be she’s permanently poisoned the well of her magic, or it could be like Katie’s increased need to shift, something she’ll likely be able to work through with a little time.’
    ‘So you’re saying we’re in exactly the same position with them as we are with Laclos? Wait and hope?’
    ‘Well, I think the situation with Laclos is a little more pressing, babe. I feel for Medea, but we’ve got bigger problems right now.’
    I almost pointed out that Medea was part of that – that given what we faced, we needed everyone on top form, but I worried that doing so might remind Cain of how very far off his own game he was at the minute. Not that it wasn’t obvious he knew that. I watched him as he made more tea. Although superficially he was dressed as usual, in his hunter garb of jeans, dark t-shirt and thick-soled work boots, a gun tucked into the small of his back even in the house, there were other tell-tale signs he was being careful. A man who usually shunned any sort of adornment, there was a silver chain at his neck – I could see the outline of a sharp-looking pendant under his shirt – the buckle on his belt was silver, and he wore plain silver rings on both hands, a heavy-looking double ring spanning a couple of knuckles of his right hand. It wasn’t quite bling – it would be subtle enough if you didn’t know how plainly he was usually attired – but it was clear, if Laclos was coming after him, he wasn’t planning on being caught literally so naked again.
    ‘So, any thoughts on what we can do?’ I asked, when he handed me a fresh mug of tea.
    ‘I spoke to Leon and Mariko.’
    ‘How? Weren’t they sleeping?’
    ‘Woke ‘em up.’
    I boggled slightly at that. I didn’t want to contemplate how an out-of-shape angel – whose blood was catnip to Vampires of a Certain Age – had wandered into one of London’s biggest nests and pulled two of its occupants from their day sleep, something I hadn’t even realised was possible. This is the problem with dealing with races about whom most of your knowledge is learned from fiction. Even now, there were lots of things I didn’t know about vampires, lots of things that I’d assumed were myth and turned out to be true, or vice versa. Maybe I needed to start giving my clients a more thorough