Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore (essential reading txt) 📕

remove the passwords and change them to something you can remember. I have also left a list of things for Harris to try out. Some magic that she may or may not have already. I can come back at any time to answer questions. We have an established link, so we can talk that way as well.”

Jason stood up. So did the rest of them.

“You don’t have to leave. She’ll be all right, I’m sure of it.” Jason said he’d been up much too long as it was. Shep shook his hand. “Thank you, Jason. I don’t know how we’re going to handle this, but we really do appreciate you figuring it out for us. At least we know a great deal more than we did before with this.”

“As is always a good thing. I was going to go and see your grandfather later tonight. The two of us have been hanging out, sorting through photos and things that his wife had made. The two of us, we get to be like sad old men together, remembering Jill Ann and his wife as well.” Jason smiled. “I would never hurt the older man, but I must say, he is in a better place than I knew him to be even a few months ago.”

“Harris.” Jason nodded. “She loves him as much as we do. I believe all the family does. He certainly loves Dru.”

“As do I. The young, they can bring out the best in a person. Most of the time anyway.”

After telling them goodbye, Jason disappeared. Rebel had a moment to wonder if he could tell her much more about the witch she might have come from, but she’d save that for later. She didn’t have any idea what was in the home she was going to be staying in, and then there was the trap to catch Cort. That, she thought, would be a wonderful thing for her.

Chapter 3

Rodney waited in the lobby for Rebel to be looked over. The emergency room had been expecting her to come in, and they’d taken her right back to the cubical she was in. Nothing much had happened to her. However, she’d been covered in blood from her head to her feet. He wasn’t sure how he was feeling about that, but he did sit out in the lobby where he was told to sit. Messing up now would cost them a great deal more time than they’d already invested in this guy being out of their lives.

“Are you all right, son?” He nodded, then shook his head at his grandda when he sat down beside him. “Yeah, I have to tell you, I feel the same way. I wanted to go back there with her, but Harris told me they had to do this by the books, or a lot of people were going to be upset with them. I don’t know that I care about other people so much as I do that little girl in that room back there.”

“I know. But she’s right. The law is the law, and if we start making it look like we’re above it, there is no telling what sort of things will begin to happen to us.” He thought about the blood that had been all over the room Cort had been killed in. “If I hadn’t been there, Grandda, I don’t think I would have believed it from someone telling me about it. Even with Shep telling me what happened in there, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it. Do you understand?” Grandda said he did and agreed with him on that.

The night after meeting with Jason, the plan had been set up. Rebel had made a big deal out of going in and out of the house. Even Angie had been a part of the plan. But she was taken out the back, where Cort couldn’t see her, and taken home.

Just like he had all along, apparently, Cort let himself into the house, entering the house about an hour after the lights had been turned off. Rodney and Heath had been hiding in the room where Angie was supposed to be sleeping. Shep and Harris, in her official capacity as an agent for the FBI, were in the room Rebel had used as her own when they lived there. Surrounding the house in the back and front were other agents, all of them armed and wearing night vision glasses. It was, he thought, a huge undertaking. Rodney thought at the time that they were making too much of a deal just to make this man pay for his crimes. He would, for the rest of his life, be ever so grateful to his family for treating the night like it was a huge ordeal because it turned out to be just that.

Cort had been released just that afternoon. All they had him on was a smaller charge that would only see him paying a fine and getting to go on doing what he’d been doing. Entering the property without permission wasn’t good, but it was a start. Getting him caught at trespassing since Harris had bought the house and land yesterday had him in some major trouble. The man and his wife had been notified that they no longer owned the place, so he had no excuse for entering the home tonight.

The man had entered the room Angie should have been in before going to the one Rebel was in. He didn’t reach out to touch the pillows that were made to look like Angie in any way. Nor did he make sure it was her under the blankets. Cort simply pulled out a gun and woke her up by banging it against her head.

“Get up, you bitch. I’m going to take care that you never fuck with me again.” Shep told Rodney he’d wanted to end it right then and there, but Harris had stopped him. Something about he had only pulled a gun and