The Morrigan's Curse Read Online Free

lord with hero worship. At that point, between the Grunsday when they’d narrowly missed Addie at the Dulacs and this one, they had still hoped to rescue her before the enemy Kin took her from the New York City area.
    â€œResearch,” Riley said. “I’ve filled you in on everything we know about the Kin who helped the Llyrs escape Oeth-Anoeth, which I know isn’t much. Just the aircraft and weaponry they had, when they arrived in Wales, when they left . . . If you can find clues to any further sightings online . . .”
    â€œGot it,” Billy replied briskly.
    â€œBe careful,” Jax cautioned him, remembering his own online encounter with a bank robber masquerading as a Transitioner. “There are some shady sites out there and people who aren’t who they say they are.”
    â€œDuh, Jax,” Billy replied, making an
Are-you-kidding?
face. “Everyone knows that.”
    Riley shot Jax an amused look but didn’t embarrass him by mentioning Jax’s notorious lapse in internet safety. Jax consoled himself by remembering that this was a bogus assignment. Billy wouldn’t find anything about Kin online. They lived off the grid with no access to modern technology. Riley was humoring Billy so he could feel like he was making a contribution.
    The unfortunate reality was that they were going to have to depend on the Morgans—or worse, the Dulacs—to track down the Llyrs, and that worried Jax. Not only might Addie get hurt in any resulting conflict between the Transitioners and the Kin, but who knew what the Llyrs would do to Addie if she didn’t cooperate with them. He had not forgotten how Lord Wylit had threatened and injured Evangeline, trying to force her compliance with his evil plans.
    And now Evangeline’s scrying spell, their one hope of locating Addie quickly and efficiently, had proved itself very dangerous.
    As Jax stared at the motel room ceiling, the plaster tiles puckered. A small brown-and-white blur fell from above and landed on his bed.
    Jax sat up and grabbed his honor blade, waving it defensively at an animal the size of a large rat with a flat face and no tail. The fur on its body was brown, with a tuft of white that stuck up from its head. In its slender hands it held a ball of red-and-white fabric. “You!” Jaxgasped, lowering his dagger when he recognized the creature. “What are you doing here?”
    The brownie darted forward and dropped a balled-up pair of socks in Jax’s lap. Jax picked them up, lifted a foot, and compared the red stripe on the socks he was wearing to the ones in his hand. “Are these mine? Where’d you get—”
    Then it hit him. When he’d gone to New York to trade himself for Billy, he’d brought a change of clothes in a backpack. His aunt, Marian Ambrose, had searched that backpack and—because she was the strangest mix of motherliness and villainy that Jax had ever met—laundered all his clothes, balling up his socks in just this way. “Did you use these socks to track me here?”
    The brownie’s round ears rotated like radar dishes. He cocked his head, and the tuft of white fur bobbed comically.
    â€œYou’re Stink, aren’t you?” Jax’s relatives had all complained about the pet brownie his father had kept as a teenager. It had run amok in their building, turning up in people’s kitchens and digging through the trash. Jax had felt a connection to
this
brownie from the moment he’d laid eyes on him and released him from the Dulac holding pens.
    Jax reached out and scratched the top of the creature’s head. “Are you an orphan now, too?” Maybe Stink was looking for a new owner. “C’mere.” He held out his arm. Stink latched on with his spidery hands and clambered up to Jax’s shoulder.
    Outside, the pink Grunsday sky was darkening into a purple evening, and the dim light didn’t hurt Jax’s head so