As my hands trembled, I realized how in shock I was. It was not even so much their sudden arrival, nor what they had said about Josh. I just could not get over the fact that they had been so ready and willing to walk right into such danger. They knew how deadly our security was. They knew we were equipped with an army of dragons, jinn and witches who could take them down from the sky. And yet they had come to aggravate us anyway.

We didn’t know exactly what they had done to Josh, but whatever it was, their actions confirmed to me that we were definitely right to keep him here. The fact that they were willing to risk the lives of God knew how many dozens of men for the sake of one young man who was supposedly at death’s door spoke volumes. They were desperate to get him back. And if they were desperate enough to launch such a fatal attack, they were certainly desperate enough to fabricate wild lies.

And that was what we had to believe the hunter’s statement about Josh was. Nothing but a lie.

Once the fire-breathers’ business was done, the witches allowed the dragons back into the island. They soared down and dumped themselves into the ocean, mists of steam releasing from their bodies.

Lethe descended to the ground with me, along with Shayla and the other witches who had been hovering in the air to witness the scene up close.

“All right,” Shayla called out to everyone—there really was quite a large crowd by now. Vampires, werewolves, humans, even Brett and Bella had trundled out of their caves. “Nothing to see here anymore.” Then she took my hand. “Let’s go to Josh. The first thing I want to do now is get that tracker out of him. Should have done that the day we brought him here.”

“Good idea,” I agreed.

She vanished the two of us and we reappeared on my veranda. As we entered the apartment, we found Josh still sitting by the window. He would’ve witnessed the entire battle from this height.

“They’re gone,” Shayla said, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Now, I would like to take you back to the hospital.”

Grace

Returning to Meadow Hospital, Shayla took Josh to the X-ray room. A full-body X-ray, she said, would be the fastest way to determine where the tracker lay. She entered the room with him and closed the door behind her, leaving me to wait nervously outside. I hoped that the tracker wasn’t lodged someplace horribly intrusive.

I wasn’t left to wait long. Shayla emerged about a quarter of an hour later and allowed me inside. My heart lifted at the look of relief on her face.

“This should be an easy job,” she said. “They put it in his right heel. Just a minor surgery is required…” I read the rest of her thoughts. Since Josh couldn’t feel anything in his legs anyway, there shouldn’t be any pain.

We took Josh to the surgery room, helped him out of his chair and laid him flat on the operating table. Shayla decided to give him a mild anesthetic anyway, just in case. Beginning the procedure, she dug into the back of his heel and within a couple of minutes she had pulled out a long, thin, metal tracking device. It was so slim and small, it could have been mistaken for a needle.

Shayla destroyed it before healing his foot. Then she allowed Josh to slowly sit up.

“You feeling all right?” Shayla asked.

“Yes,” he murmured.

“You are now tracker-free,” I informed him.

The witch helped him back into his wheelchair and we returned him to his bedroom. He didn’t want to lie down, so instead we positioned his chair near the window, where he could look out at the sunflower meadow. Shayla drew up a chair opposite him, indicating that I do the same. Then, clearing her throat, she began, “Now that we’ve got the tracker out of the way, we really, really need to try to find out who you are. Why those hunters want you so much.” She paused, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ve been thinking that, even though our first attempts failed, I, my fellow witches and the island’s jinn should keep trying. Different potions, different methods of magic, perhaps even the same ones repeatedly could get through to you. Would you be all right with that?”

He met her eyes, his expression dead serious. “I’ll drink any damn thing you feed me. Trust me when I say that I want to discover my identity more than you.”

“Good,” the witch said, rising to her feet and clasping her hands together. “So it’s back to the drawing board for me. I’m going to call a meeting with both witches and jinn. I think you can expect us to start with our various procedures within the day.” Shayla turned to address me. “I suspect that this will be a process that lasts several days. We should experiment with Josh as much as we possibly can, even though it may be overwhelming—we must get to the bottom of this.”

I couldn’t help but sense a deeper meaning to her words, a more chilling meaning. I sensed, more than burning curiosity to find out about his background, an underlying fear that I still had myself—that there could be something fatally wrong with him.

But whether that was or wasn’t the case, either way, we needed to unravel Josh’s mystery.

“So,” Shayla went on, “you will still have free periods together, of course, in between our calls. But I don’t want you to be gone too long at one time. Always take a phone with you and keep it switched on, because we could need him back at the hospital at a moment’s notice if one of us thought we were on to something.”

“Okay,” I said.

And so passed the next few days. Basically they became a constant bombardment of appointments with various jinn and witches—not just Shayla and Safi—and crazy numbers of potions swallowed, along with other magical procedures that were quite mystical to me. In between the appointments, I managed to take Josh to his new gym every morning, where his routines were gradually becoming more daring. After about a week, I noticed a pronounced difference in his arm muscles. Slowly, they were starting to take shape again. His appetite also remained steady, and he was able to continue eating solid foods.