Priceless

leaping to my feet and running through the house.
    Milly trotted after us. “What’s happening?”
    “Pack, come. Kill,” Alex said.
    No more questions, we piled into the Jeep and spun out as the first of the pack hit the edge of the lawn. Snarling and howling, I knew they could scent not only Alex, but the blood from my stitches too. Not to mention the pool of blood from Martins’ death.
    Alex lay in the back of the Jeep, panting with fear. Milly stared out the window as the front runner hit the side of the vehicle, almost tipping us over.
    “Milly! Do something!” I yelled, battling with the steering wheel to keep up from going over. That would be bad on so many levels I didn’t even want to consider.
    “I can’t. The pack has nothing to do with this case,” she whispered, staring straight out front.
    “And if they attack you?” I snapped, finally gaining some distance from the pack as we sped down the road, the tires squealing as they went from dirt to the tarmac of the paved road leading into town.
    Milly started to cry. “I can’t defend myself unless it’s directly linked to the case or I’ll be removed from the Coven and will be considered a rogue worthy of decapitation.”
    “Shit,” I muttered. “That’s just freaking fantastic. So you mean you’re basically just a throwaway?”
    She stiffened in her seat. “What did you call me?” We both knew she’d heard me; we’d been friends too long not to know exactly what was going down.
    I took a left and headed toward Bismarck. We needed more than just a motel to keep the pack off our scent, and I needed a place I could get some info. I didn’t have time to pamper Milly, much as she was my friend.
    “You damn well know what a throwaway is. You’re just going to get in the way, and cause more harm than good unless I’m using you for a shield. For them to put that restriction on you WAS a death sentence and you know it. Those bastards don’t care about you, Milly!” I was shouting by the time I finished.
    Alex was whispering in the back seat. “No fighting, no fighting.”
    “Stop this car right now. I am not a throw away,” Milly said, her voice as cold as a chunk of ice pressed against my skin.
    “It’s not a car, it’s a Jeep.” I glanced in the rear-view mirror. No werewolves galloping behind us. That was a plus.
    “PULL THE FUCKING JEEP OVER!”
    Well, that was a first. Both for the f-bomb, and the screaming. I didn’t pull the Jeep over. “Milly, I don’t think you’re a throwaway, but that’s how they’re treating you.”
    I drove for another fifteen minutes on the main highway doing well over 60mph, checking the mirror for a pack of werewolves galloping behind us before I pulled over, though it was still reluctantly. “If you still want to go, then go. You aren’t a throwaway.”
    She got out, her hands shaking as she held the door open with both hands, almost as if she were holding herself up. “I know that. But they’re everything I’ve fought so hard to have. And I need them. They have training techniques I can’t learn anywhere else. I need to be a part of the Coven. They need to be my family now.”
    “And if they end up killing you? What then?”
    “They won’t let me die,” she said, though her voice wavered. “Goodbye, Rylee.”
    She shut the door and started to walk down the shoulder, her thumb out. I waited until the first farm truck rumbled into view and she hopped in.
    “I wouldn’t be so sure of that, Milly.” I couldn’t deal with that loss right now. At the very least, she’d helped me to pinpoint the ‘who’ behind India’s disappearance. A rogue Coven. That only made me feel slightly better about the case. It wasn’t identical to Berget’s, but still . . . .
    Checking my mirrors for cars and rampant werewolves, I pulled back onto the road when all was clear. As I drove, I wracked my brain for everything I knew about the Coven, or Covens in general.
    “Okay, Alex. What do we know about witches?”
    He grunted and slithered up to the front seat. “Milly.”
    “Yes, Milly is a witch.” My heart ached more than a little. “Coven’s have any number of people, but the core of them is always thirteen. Which means we’re dealing with at least thirteen rogue witches. Yay.”
    Alex lifted his head and laughed. “Yay!” My sarcasm was lost on him completely.
    On the open road, fields spilling out around us, I concentrated on what I had. I needed to find a deep mineshaft, needed