Read Online Heartache (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 5) by Annie Bellet - Free Book Online

this. He would keep doing this, or maybe worse. I had to stop him, and I clearly wasn’t going to be able to do it alone. Keeping the truth from Hattie and Salazar would just get them hurt if they went after Samir without knowing. I could almost hear Alek’s voice in my head telling me that the truth was a good thing, and suddenly I missed him like hell. He’d know what to do; he’d have stood here with me, solid and warm and smart.
    And he’d have told me to trust, to take the leap and give these people whatever information I had. To save lives if I could.
    I pushed back my longing for Alek, and nodded slowly. “Let me explain,” I said with a slight smile. “No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”
    Not Princess Bride fans, these two, because neither gave any sign they recognized the line. So much for trying to smooth things. I sighed.
    “Samir, the man who did this? He’s a sorcerer. And so am I.”

We moved to the kitchen and sat on Peggy’s chairs. There was a cold cup of tea with the bag still in it on the kitchen table. I tried not to think about her last moments and instead let the words spill out of me as I gave Hattie and Salazar a rough sketch of what I thought was going on and who the players were.
    My story summed up was pretty thin and sad, even to my own ears. There was so much I had to leave out, partially because a lot of it would implicate me in a metric butt-load of crimes, and partially because that stuff might be a distraction. The important thing was that they understood how dangerous Samir was, and that he wasn’t going to stop.
    “Summers!” I said, breaking off what I had been saying about Samir in mid-sentence as I remembered the name of one of the women in Peggy’s coven. “Joyce Summers. She runs a no-kill shelter, Pet Haven. I saw her at the coven meeting. She’ll know who the rest are. Do you have Peggy’s phone? They’ll all be in there, I bet.”
    “One moment,” Hattie said. Both she and Salazar were sitting on the edge of their chairs, not writing anything down, just staring at me with grim faces. “The heart-eating thing, it’s real? It really works that way?”
    “Yes,” I said. “All the horror stories you might have heard about sorcerers? They are probably all about Samir. If he’s decided to gain power and knowledge by eating the witches, he’s going to keep going until we’re down thirteen women.” I didn’t know why he was doing it. They hadn’t been that powerful, but maybe it was more than what their magic could add. Memories and experiences, I knew firsthand, were powerful things in their own right.
    “How many hearts have you eaten?” Salazar asked, his tone deceptively light compared to the intense look in his eyes. His gaze was very eagle-like, now that I thought about it, and I felt like a mouse under it.
    I was no mouse. “How long have you been beating your wife?” I shot back, folding my arms over my chest.
    One corner of his mouth lifted and he inclined his head. “Fair enough,” he said in a way that told me this wasn’t a conversation either of us wanted to have. “It was a poorly phrased question.”
    “Look,” I said, relenting a little. “Hypothetically and off record and all that, if I did kill anyone ever in my life? It would only be because they were trying to kill me first.” Which was mostly true. Ignoring the times it hadn’t been true. But partial truth was still like being honest, right? Baby steps.
    “I have to call my boss,” Salazar said. “If it is as you say, this is going to get much worse.”
    He rose and walked up the stairs, leaving Hattie and I sitting, staring at each other.
    “I never thought your kind were quite real. Even living in Wylde all my life. I guess this place attracts all things eventually.” She shook her head.
    “Thank you for not freaking out and hating me just for being what I am,” I said. Which wasn’t exactly what I meant, but she seemed to understand.
    “You haven’t given me