Nolan went beet red and Oswald snorted, clearly having known about the incident. Emmett raised an eyebrow, but wasn’t too surprised. Caspian tended to be sexually interested in everyone and he was used to it.
“How could I possibly forget?” Nolan said bitterly, crossing his arms over his chest.
“The reason I was feeding him so much then was because he’d killed people. There’s something about his dual nature that causes him to feed on killing, but it’s a temporary fix. He needs to immediately follow it up by a lot of sex, or he goes feral, as he called it. Cas said it had only ever happened once, but he mindlessly killed a ton of people.”
“Fucking angels, I didn’t know that was possible,” Nolan said.
“Neither did any of us. Caspian didn’t even know until the first time it happened. I can’t imagine Grey and Kylan are going to be anything short of thrilled when they find a feral hybrid in their dungeon.”
We all went silent, the implications of that statement settling.
People like Kylan would experiment on him. They’d want to figure out if they could create mindless killing machines at will by interbreeding, or if it was a result of the specific genetics of his parents. He’d no longer have the sole purpose of drawing me in, which theoretically kept him alive. The downside was it kept him alive and being tortured, used, and abused.
Maybe it was a good thing he couldn’t feel emotions in this state. I wouldn’t be bombarded with his pain and fear. If I was… I might not be able to hold out until the plan was solid, despite knowing a less than perfect plan would get us all killed, anyway.
“We need to go see Joanne,” I said to break the tension.
At this point, her opinion didn’t matter. Caspian being in this state changed everything and made the need to get to him so urgent I wanted to test my memory manipulation on someone right now. However, it was too early. We didn’t know who to use yet, nor did we have the help of Julian. The bastard needed to call Nolan the fuck back.
Joanne could help despite my decision being made. She was still my best chance of not royally fucking it up and accidentally killing myself.
“Are you rested enough?” Oswald asked.
He was staring at me, probably noting the bags under my eyes. My sleep hadn’t been long or especially restful, but it would have to do. I didn’t have time to waste, and my magic was mostly replenished.
“I’ll manage.”
“Be careful with yourself, little fin. We can’t have you wearing yourself down.”
I released Emmett to go over to Ozzy, rising up onto my toes to press a kiss to his lips. “I don’t get worn down,” I murmured.
He refrained from calling me out on my bullshit, tugging me closer by the waist and extending the chaste kiss I’d given him. When he released me I was panting and mildly aroused, slick dampening my panties. My hormones wanted me to get knotted and take the edge off of my stress, but we didn’t have time and they would have to wait. Oswald released me hesitantly with a final peck to my lips, and I stretched my arms over my head and grabbed the belt holding my wand and weapons.
“Let’s venture out and hope we don’t get killed or caught.”
* * *
I’d underestimated how draining it would be on my magic to cover so many people in disguising spells.
Realistically, I should have brought only one of my mates with me. However, telling two of them that they had to stay behind? Not a conversation I wanted to have.
So here we were, wandering down the streets of downtown looking and smelling like a group of perfectly normal Nulls. No silver hair, no strong scents, no distinguishing markings. Slight changes to our normal appearance, except for Oswald. No one knew what he looked like on account of him being a cat up until quite recently. I could have used an invisibility spell for while we walked along the street, but the magic expenditure would have been the same and we would have had to switch to disguises when we got to Hex Sisters Kitchen.
Assuming they were open.
I couldn’t imagine Clara and Elodie would have fled when Mabel was kidnapped, not when they knew she may come back at any time. They were strong enough to ward the place to the fucking nines, making it the safest place for them.
“So Joanne is like an honorary family member?” Emmett asked. “Yet you have no idea what kind of supernatural being she is?”
“Yes,” I confirmed, peeking down the street in both directions before stepping out onto the road to cross it.
My mates hurried to follow, more concerned with the traffic than I was. They shouldn’t be. This was downtown, and it was nighttime. Most of the drivers were ferrying people from location to location, and even the ones who weren’t knew to watch for drunken Nulls stumbling in front of cars.
“How are you so close to her without that information?” Emmett asked as we approached the neon sign of Hex Sisters Kitchen.
They were open, a group of teenagers streaming out the door as we watched.
“She’s open about all sorts of other things. The woman uses dating apps and tells us about her exploits, she chats about magic despite never showing any indication she can practice it in the same manner we can. Joanne is skilled at making talking about yourself interesting as fuck, too. She listens and comments and gives advice. She’s like the grandmother I never had.”
