After a moment, Nigel slowly extricated himself, and his magical illumination gradually dispersed. In its absence, Jim fell to his knees on the grass, his eyes locked on the open door of the clapboard house as Adrian and Eddie started to go off on him, demanding an explanation for the halt order.

Around the fringes of his mind and emotions, the urge to fly into the path of whatever Devina had engineered still tantalized him.

Especially as he thought of Isaac’s woman in the hands of Matthias—

Oh, God . . . Rothe was going to be sacrificed, wasn’t he.

Jim’s hands sought out the earth and he dug into the lawn with his fingers, holding his body in place.

Bowing his head, he prayed that his faith was well placed and good would, eventually, prevail. But the sad fact was, doing the right thing was going to be the death of a man who didn’t deserve to die tonight.

CHAPTER 48

CHAPTER 48

Matthias had things with the Childes all tied up well before he expected Isaac to come tooling through the front door.

After he’d stun-gunned her, he’d discovered that picking Grier off the floor and putting her into a chair required more strength than he had—so he left her where she lay, tying her legs and wrists up with some duct tape he found in Alistair’s pantry.

And as for her father?

No clue what had made the man open the way in and stand there in a trance, but the distraction and space-cadet routine had been perfectly timed. Matthias had been able to walk up right behind the guy and put a gun to his head.

So yeah, getting him to sit in a chair in the kitchen had been a piece of cake; he’d all but bound his own hands and feet.

Which had been helpful, given that Matthias’s chest hurt so badly he could barely breathe.

And now, it was just a case of waiting for Isaac, all three of them together in this house with the door wide open.

There was a groan and then a shift on the floor as Grier Childe started to come around. She had a moment of confusion, as if trying to figure out why she was lying on the hardwood and why she couldn’t open her mouth. And then she jerked in a full-body spasm, her eyes peeling wide and locking on him.

“Wakey-wakey,” he said gruffly, giving her a nod as her father started to fight against his bonds and make muffled noises under the duct tape across his mouth.

Matthias leveled his gun muzzle at the guy’s head. “Shut it.”