Free Something Witchy This Way Comes: A Jolie Wilkins Novel by H. P. Mallory

personal nature from any of the victims?”
    He nodded and pulled a scrap of clothing from his pocket, which was maybe a two-inch square. It was black cotton, by the looks of it. “This was from one of the households closest to us—a vampire territory in Cambridge, England.” He glanced at the cloth as he handed it to Mercedes. “I was told it is a piece of a curtain.”
    She nodded and accepted it, clasping it in her hand as she turned to face me. “My Queen?”
    I nodded and stood up as I realized what it was we were about to do—a re-creation spell that would reveal exactly what had gone down a few hours earlier. Mathilda took her place beside me, and together the three of us touched the fabric swatch and closed oureyes, allowing our magic to unite us as one and open the great gate to our sixth senses.
    Probably due to the fact that Mercedes, Mathilda, and I together were like a magic powerhouse, the spell took shape quickly. I opened my eyes to see a white puffy cloud floating right before us, in the center of the table, maybe two feet up. Almost immediately a sound came from the cloud and it began to blink, eventually dissolving into the ether. In its place, colors began to appear out of the air, bobbing around like fireflies. The gentle glows became stronger as the colors began to meld, eventually forming an image of a house.
    It was a one-story, nondescript sort of house, and judging from the extreme shadows surrounding it, I imagined it was early evening. As everyone around the table focused on the image more intently, most of us leaning in toward the spectacle, a moving van pulled into the driveway of the house. The driver killed the engine and two burly men jumped down from the passenger door. They strolled up to the front door of the home and in a split second one of them kicked it in.
    I could feel the tension around the table as we watched these … Lurkers come for our own. I was sure they were in fact Lurkers. Even from watching this reflection of what had happened, I could feel their power—it caused all the hairs on my body to stand at attention. It was a foreign power, a magic dissimilar to our own.
    It seemed like five minutes or so lapsed before the “movers” returned, each carrying a plain pine box—about the length and width of an adult male. I feltmyself gulp as I watched them load the sleeping vampires into the rear of the moving truck. They didn’t bother closing the busted front door and instead hopped back into the front seat. The driver started the engine, and the truck disappeared down the street.
    The image made the same popping sound the cloud had and erupted into nothing but thin air.
    “They kidnapped them,” Klaasje said softly. “They didn’t kill them.”
    “It makes no sense,” Trent added.
    And that was the truth. It didn’t make any sense. In the past, the Lurkers had staged the same sort of guerrilla ambushes, but they had always finished off their victims, leaving piles of ash in their wake.
    “Every vampire household should be protected by a were, witch, or fae in the daytime,” Rand announced. “Until we have a better understanding of the nature of this threat, vampires should not be left to their own defenses in the daytime.”
    Varick nodded. “Agreed.”
    “Why would the Lurkers be kidnapping vampires?” I asked out loud, suddenly afraid for the answer.
    For the remainder of the evening, I found myself trying to understand just what the Lurker threat entailed, but it was incredibly frustrating because we still didn’t know very much about them. They were an unseen force that just picked off our kind here and there with no real uniformity to their attacks. And since their attacks were so random, it was next to impossible to prepare for any future attacks.
    With no ready solution for the Lurker problem, Idecided to focus my energy on the other dilemmas plaguing my kingdom. And currently the biggest plague went by the name of Bella. Something had to be done