Moment of Truth (The Potentate of Atlanta #5) - Hailey Edwards Page 0,3

as I could attest, a kid wasn’t any better off being born to someone with those proclivities.

“The coven didn’t reveal themselves until after Liz got pregnant.” I indulged in a brief fantasy. “Just think, if she had gotten knocked up sooner, this could have all been Linus’s problem.”

Midas kissed my forehead, right between my eyes, and he smiled while he did it.

I chose to view it as his endorsement of me as the better candidate to handle this situation, and not that he was laughing at me.

“Liz no longer practices.” Midas rubbed his jaw. “Yet it took her years to conceive.”

The timing worried me too. Had it really taken that long? Or had they planned it that way?

Why here? Why now? Why me?

Okay, so the last one made me sound like a whiny brat, but I was genuinely curious if this was personal, or if the stars had finally aligned for them.

“If she comes from an old bloodline, there’s a chance her infertility battles were genuine. The taint is passed down to children of dark practitioners. With her fae blood, it might have been enough to make conceiving more difficult than she or the coven predicted when they placed her.”

“Liz hasn’t once wielded magic against us since she was captured,” I realized. “She can’t, can she?”

No wonder she hadn’t worn a more powerful adversary’s skin when we cornered her at the clinic where Ares held my family after kidnapping them. She couldn’t tap into that magic without risking the baby. She was forced to resort to glamour, a cheap trick in comparison.

The wonky bombs started making more sense too. Liz must have tried her hand at spell crafting without drawing on the dark powers she had been taught to wield.

Thankfully, those results had also sucked, and we caught her before she got the hang of it.

Mix in Ares actively working against her, and you got an operation that appeared to be amateur hour.

“Not if she wants her baby to survive.” Remy squinted. “Are you sure you didn’t see her use magic?”

Thinking back, I couldn’t say for certain. Things had moved so fast, and I admit I had tunnel vision then.

All that mattered to me in those moments was recovering my family and getting them to safety.

“Aside from the glamour…” I scrunched up my face, “…I don’t think so.”

“Then she had help.” Midas thought along the same lines. “It’s not like she doesn’t have the resources.”

“With the archive nearby, and the coven able to use it as their private transporter room,” I agreed, “Liz had access to any number of people who could have done the heavy lifting for her then gone back to wherever they came from without leaving a trace.”

By using the coven for her dirty work, she kept her hands clean and her scent untainted by her magic.

“Look on the bright side.” Remy winked. “This means she can’t hurt you without hurting the baby.”

“Plenty of people murder the old-fashioned way,” I reminded her. “Stabbings, shootings, poisons. All those kill without the benefit of magic.”

“Oh, to be mundane.” Remy’s expression twisted with pity. “Those poor suckers.”

With a firmer grasp on the situation, I texted Bishop the details from Remy’s report.

“The OPA is now aware of the situation.” I chewed my bottom lip, worried Bishop hadn’t mentioned this when we talked earlier. “We’ll send eyes in the field and give the Remys a break.”

“What’s the point in having seven selves if you don’t put them to work?” She jutted her hip then planted a fist on it. “They get cranky otherwise.”

Thumbs hovering over the screen, I pondered that. “Aren’t they just extensions of you?”

Head tipped to one side, she eyeballed us. “Have you met me?”

“You’re not cranky so much as homicidal,” Midas informed her. “Violence always improves your mood.”

“Eh.” A shrug rolled through her shoulders. “We can’t all be chocoholics.”

An incoming message vibrated the phone in my hand, and Bishop’s update left me cold.

>>All the cameras are down. A citywide video blackout. We can’t see a damn thing.

>How long ago?

>>Five minutes. Maybe six. I would have called you at the ten-minute mark.

Without knowing the Faraday had been targeted, the OPA had no reason to alert me unless the blackout spread or lasted longer than routine maintenance or a power surge could excuse.

>>Milo is hitting the streets and heading your way. Reece is running a diagnostic.

The OPA’s network of cameras, both our mounts and surveillance we mooched off the city, gave Reece a bird’s-eye view of Atlanta. Right now, he was