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“Bespelled?” Christian asked indignantly. “When? I don’t remember being bespelled!”

“I think that’s kind of the point of the whole thing.” I almost laughed and Christian seemed to see the humor in it too going by his grin.

“Why’d Drake let us go? And where’s Sven?” Caleb asked, as usual getting to the point.

“Sven wasn’t incapacitated as you were because apparently Drake was able to speak with him while you guys were just trying to, ya know…”

“Stabby stab and pew pew,” Christian finished, making shooting and stabbing motions with his hands.

Good to see he was unfazed by the whole thing.

“Yes, that,” I agreed. “Do you guys remember anything at all?”

Caleb shook his head. He looked very fazed by the whole thing. “Nothing after we got to the location. I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it either, but luckily Dom was able to negotiate your release using Tianlong as leverage. He set four slayers up outside of our meeting and basically held him hostage until we got what we wanted.”

“That’s so Dom,” Christian remarked. “He’s always been a thorough wanker.”

Caleb stayed on task. “What else did Sven learn from talking to Drake?”

“He thinks Lynn is unharmed, and I’m meeting with Drake in a day and a half to ask about her and hopefully find a path to getting her back.”

“I’m coming,” Caleb said.

“I want to come!” Christian said at the same time.

I felt bad for some reason. “Only Dom and Sven get to come. It was part of the negotiations.”

“We’ll wait close by,” Caleb said. “If it goes sour, maybe we can kill Drake.”

I didn’t point out that he seemed to be too much for them to handle going by their last meeting. I was uncomfortable with the notion of someone that powerful, especially when that something was holding my sister prisoner, harmed or not.

The day of the meeting, Caleb and Christian tailed us to within a few miles of the location and parked on the side of the road to wait impatiently.

There’d been no stipulations about what weapons we could bring, and I found that unsettling. It implied that Drake wasn’t even worried about it, like there was nothing we could bring that would faze him.

I brought a still quiet Torst and a small arsenal of whatever I could strap to my body. Everyone else was similarly armed. We were ready for a fight.

Drake was already there when we arrived. He was dressed all in black, the top half of his gorgeous black hair pulled up into a bun, the lower half moving with the breeze. He was set against a stark desert background, no means of transportation in sight. He was standing straight and tall and just watched us approach with a serene expression.

The whole thing felt like a scene from a movie.

He had a flair for the dramatic. It was no wonder he was infatuated with Lynn.

I didn’t beat around the bush. “Where’s my sister?” I asked him with a glare.

He just smiled. “Would you like to see her?”

I was pissed off, assuming he was toying with me. “Of course I would. What have you done with her?”

He did something quick and strange with his hands that had me reaching for Torst, but everything went hazy for a heartbeat, the air around us turning bright red until I couldn’t see an inch in front of me.

I felt Dom’s hand on my shoulder as though he’d grabbed for me as soon as things went strange, but that seemed to be the end of it.

The red cloud dissipated like a switch had controlled it, and Lynn appeared out of nowhere standing in a graceful martial arts stance as though performing. She was wearing a blindfold but was clearly unbound.

Her hair was still black, shoulder length now, half of it pulled back into a little bun. It was the short twin to Drake’s hairstyle. Even their clothes were nearly identical.