Free Cold Burn of Magic by Jennifer Estep

concerned.
    â€œAnd now, if you will be so kind, miss.” Reginald gestured at the SUV. “We have a schedule to keep.”
    Grant stepped even closer to me, and his hand drifted down to the hilt of his sword, as though he thought he was going to have to draw his weapon to not-so-gently persuade me to go with them. Yeah, I might have put up a fight, if I thought I had a chance of getting away—but I didn’t.
    Not from them. Not from this. I’d never had a chance.
    Not since my mom had been murdered.
    So I stomped over to the car. Reginald scooted ahead of me and opened the back passenger door, and I had no choice but to step inside.
    Reginald shut the door, then climbed into the front passenger’s seat. Felix went around the SUV and got in on the other side, next to me, while Grant slid behind the wheel. The three of them shut their doors almost in unison. The sharp crack-crack-crack sounded like the lids on coffins banging shut.
    My coffin.

CHAPTER SIX
    G rant cranked the engine and away we went.
    He left the high school behind, steered the car onto one of the main streets, and circled around the Midway. Nobody in the SUV spoke, and the radio was turned off.
    Felix kept staring at me, his dark brown gaze steady and level as though he thought I was going to start babbling to fill the silence. Please. I knew better than to do that. I thought about returning his stare and using my soulsight to get a clue as to what was going on, but I decided not to bother. He wasn’t in charge here. Grant and Reginald were. Too bad Grant was busy driving, and Reginald was staring out the windshield, so I couldn’t use my magic on either one of them. Whatever was happening, they were going to make me wait to find out what it was.
    I trusted Mo, well, as much as I trusted anyone, and he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. But I still clutched my belt, my fingers resting on top of one of the throwing stars, knowing that I could get to the weapon if things went bad. But that was a bridge I’d cross when I got to it.
    Speaking of bridges, Grant left the highway behind, turned onto a side street, and steered the SUV over the lochness bridge I’d crossed the night I stole the ruby necklace. But instead of slowing down and tossing a few coins out the window and into the river, Grant accelerated over the cobblestones. Thirty seconds later, the SUV was on the other side.
    â€œYou didn’t pay the toll,” I murmured.
    â€œToll? What toll?” Felix asked.
    â€œFor the lochness.”
    I twisted around in my seat and peered out the back window. Perhaps it was my imagination, but the surface of the river seemed to ripple a little more than usual, like something wanted to rise up out of the water and take what it was due. Yeah, I was betting the lochness was pissed. I would have been. Territory was everything in this town.
    Grant laughed. “You don’t actually believe in that old fairy tale, do you?”
    â€œWe all should,” Reginald said.
    Grant frowned at the older man’s stiff tone, but Reginald turned around in his seat and gave me a sharp look, as if he were surprised that I even knew to do such a thing.
    But my mom had taught me all about the old traditions. I knew which monsters lived where in town, in the forests, and on the mountain, and what small tributes you paid them for safe passage through their territories. In fact, I’d always thought of the monsters as my own sort of standoffish pets. If, you know, you thought pets that could eat you were cool. Which I totally did.
    But Reginald kept staring at me, as if my monster knowledge was absolutely shocking. Did these guys think I was some tourist rube who’d wandered into the Razzle Dazzle by accident during the attack? That I’d somehow picked up a sword and managed to kill two men with it without any sort of training?
    Surely, Mo had told them . . . Well, I had no idea what Mo had told them, but whatever it