Page 27 of Mating Season
“Well, I’m not a pharmacist, Cooper, but I assume whatever drugs were used to transport her to him.”
I start to pace. Marcus. I don’t have to ask if it’s the same Marcus. I push down the growl bubbling in my chest.
“I thought that motherfucker was in Europe?”
Selene sighs. “He’s a vampire. You know how nomadic they are. Maybe he got bored.”
“Where’s Rosalie?”
She shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Selene…”
“I can give you a general area, maybe within a few miles, but I can’t do better than that. He’s got wards, Cooper. Good ones. He doesn’t want to be found.”
“Then how could you see all the rest if you can’t see where he is?”
“Because finding a conscious being is energetically easier than finding a physical location.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why, Cooper, they didn’t cover it in witch school. Why is the sky blue?”
“Because the sunlight is scattered by gases and particles in the earth’s atmosphere,” I say.
She rolls her eyes.
“Can’t you just… break the wards?” I say.
“Let me put it to you this way, Mars needs to be in retrograde, and I need virgin tears. That’s six weeks away, and it’s also assuming I could find a virgin. Do you want to let your mate wait for me to be able to break his wards? What all do you think Marcus could come up with to do to her in that time? The imagination practically buckles under the possibilities.”
“You don’t need all that to do magic.”
“Correction, I don’t need all that do to magic unless there’s another powerful witch involved… then I need to break out the spooky rah rah. I’m sorry, Cooper, I don’t write the rules of magic, I just live by them.”
I’m not entirely sure I trust her. And I wonder if she’s just doing this shit to spite me. Maybe she’d prefer both Rosalie and I die, than to have to live with the idea of me with someone who isn’t her.
She sighs. “I really can’t pinpoint the house, Cooper. I’m sorry. But I can find the general location. Just give me a minute.”
We wait as she goes into another room. A drawer opens and shuts. Another drawer opens. There’s the sound of papers rustling.
“Ow, fuck me!” she hisses after she bangs into something.
Finally, she returns with a folded paper map of the city. She unfolds it and places it on the floor then holds her hand out to Nikki.
“What?”
“The necklace, dear. I need it.”
Nikki digs the locket out of her pocket and passes it to Selene.
“I have to brew tea.”
“Selene…” I growl.
“Cooper. Enough! I told you, he has wards. They’re strong enough that I know I can’t pinpoint his exact location without much stronger magic which requires celestial alignments we don’t have right now. I’m so sorry this inconveniences you, but to even get in the general neighborhood, I’m going to have to do a little more, ritually speaking. Now be useful and go downstairs to the shop and get me a bloodstone, some ginger root, and mugwort.”
Selene dismisses me and goes to her own kitchen cabinets to pull several amber glass jars from the shelves.
