“I saw the naked man again. He didn’t speak.”
“Hounds rarely do,” Tris said from her perch on the bed.
We both turned to look at her.
She arched her neatly sculpted stone brows, her angelic lips pursing. “Tut, tut. I was very specific about your education, young lady. Come on now, don’t tell me you didn’t realize he was a hellhound.”
“I may have if I didn’t already know that there are no hellhounds on the mortal realm. The Nightwatch had them all deported back to Demonica centuries ago.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “Yes, yes, so the books say. But he is a hellhound, no doubt about it.”
Henri and I exchanged glances.
And he had no cuffs because he wasn’t considered a high-level demon, never mind the fact he could chew us up and spit us out if he decided.
“It seems this place is not what we thought it to be,” Henri said.
My grandfather had sent me here for a reason, but he wasn’t answering his calls, and he hadn’t called me back, so there was no way to quiz him about it. I’d try again tomorrow night. Dawn was a mere hour away.
“Do you need me to stay?” Henri asked as I headed to the washroom. His tone was stiff and formal.
I paused. At Ravensheart, he’d shared quarters with me. He’d had his own armchair. They didn’t believe a golem needed his own space because he wasn’t classed as a person. As far as the Watch was concerned, he wasn’t alive, but Mai had a room prepared for him.
Was he excited about having his own space? Did he get excited? He’d been my companion for almost two years, and I hadn’t even known he could flirt until today with Mai. I’d neglected to think about him as a separate entity to myself. Maybe it was time to do some reimagining of roles.
“Kat? Have you fallen asleep with your eyes open?” he asked, still with that stiff tone.
I shook my head. “No, that’s fine. Get some … some rest.”
He stared at me levelly. “You know I don’t sleep.”
“Fucksake. Just go and chill, okay.”
He retreated, leaving me with an amused-looking Tris.
I gave her a glare. “What? Don’t you start.”
She shook her head. “No. Not starting anything.”
I grabbed my PJs and washbag and locked myself in the bathroom. The tub was an old-style claw foot affair, deep enough for a proper soak. But for now, I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and stripped off to change into my sleep vest and shorts. The dark mark on my bicep caught my eye in the stained mirror above the sink. I turned sideways to get a better look at it. At the birthmark that looked like a hand curled around my arm.
A shiver ran up my spine and settled at the base of my skull. I rubbed the back of my neck. It was just a birthmark, nothing more.
“Yoo-hoo, are we having fun in there?”
I rolled my eyes and unlocked the door. “You really need to get some new reading material.”
She sat up eagerly. “Can you ask Henri to pick me up some books tomorrow?”
I climbed into bed. “Oh, sure, because that went down so well the last time we did that.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a man buying romance novels.”
“Not the kind of romance novels you like to read.”
“It made him look enlightened.”
“It embarrassed the fuck out of him.” I pulled the covers up.
“Why do you even care?” she asked snidely. “He’s only a construct.”
I would have told her to piss off, but she’d been taking care of me since I could remember; it would have been like telling a favored aunt to take a hike.
I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes. “Get some sleep.”
She curled up on the pillow behind me and began to hum. The lull of her voice filled my head, and then there was nothing but darkness.
* * *
I couldn’t recall the last time I’d dreamed. For me, sleep was the absence of consciousness, and that was all. I woke just as the sun was setting. My body felt as weak as a kitten, urgh, how did humans stand it? Tris was a rigid stone figure sitting on the window seat. Whereas I was rendered mortal during the day, her stone body was rendered inert, but there was still power emanating from her. She was still there in a capacity that, although I didn’t understand, I felt.
As the sun set and the world fell into darkness, my body was flooded with power, and her form shimmered as the dull gray of rock was suffused with the warmth of life.
She stretched and yawned and turned to face me. “Did you sleep well?”
I nodded. “As always. You?”
She made a get-away-with-you gesture with her tiny hand. Gargoyles didn’t sleep in any conventional sense. They protected, and Tris was my protector. She kept the nightmares away. Although I couldn’t recall the period where nightmares had plagued me, the thought of not having Tris with me provoked dread to rise in my chest. She was my talisman, and I wouldn’t be without her.
“Call your grandfather,” she advised. “Let’s find out why he sent us here.”
I plucked my phone from the bedside table and dialed Gramps. Once again, it rang shrilly for ages before switching to voicemail. Unease prickled my scalp.
Tris joined me on the bed. “Hey. It’s fine. He’s probably busy. He probably has his phone on silent. He may even have misplaced it.”
All possible reasons for him not answering. Being the most powerful Nightblood in the history of, well, history didn’t make my gramps any good at managing technology. Mobile phones were a nuisance. I mean, he could have called me to tell me about the transfer, but he hadn’t. Instead, he’d sent a letter and then asked me to call him in that letter.
Wait. That made no sense.
Fuck. He’d asked me to call him, which didn’t necessarily mean on the bloody mobile phone.
“Tris. We need to Call Gramps.”
She stared at me as if I’d lost my last marble or offered to give her my last gummy bear. Then she looked down at the mobile phone in my hand. “Honey, are you feeling okay?”
Urgh. “Call with a capital C.”
“Oh, oh my, of course. Yes.” She leaped off the bed and slid across the room to my suitcase, which I hadn’t bothered to unpack yet. She returned a moment later with my compact. “There you go, love.”
I grasped the intricately designed compact and flipped it open to reveal the mirror inside. Gramps had given it to me six years ago for my eighteenth birthday, an alternate communication device to be used at the Academy, where there was no cell signal. It used to be called scrying, but they now called it making a Call. The object was enchanted and connected to a replica that my gramps carried. It was a strictly one-way device, so although I could contact him on it, he couldn’t contact me. I don’t know why Gramps had set it up that way, but the unease was crawling across my skin now.
I blew on the mirror and then said the words etched into my memory—invenient mihi heart, find my heart. The mirror misted, and then Gramps’s regal face appeared.
“Finally!” he huffed. “What took you so long?”
“Long story. But I’m here, I’m at Scorchwood. Why did you send me here?”
It was good to see his face, it had been almost six months since our last face-to-face visit, but his violet eyes, so like mine, were darker than usual, telling me he was troubled.
“Is everything okay, Gramps?”
His gaze flicked away, and his mouth tensed. “I’m sorry. I can’t talk right now.” His tone was brusque, almost impersonal. His gaze tracked back to me, and his tone dropped. “Stay where you are. Work the case and remain under the radar. Call me tomorrow night, and I’ll explain everything.”
The mirror grew dark, and then my reflection stared back at me. “Okay, that was weird.”
Tris looked worried but covered it with a smile. “Let’s get you some breakfast.”
My stomach grumbled, reminding me that if I was going to fool my new colleagues, I needed to keep the less Nigh
She clasped her hands together. “I’ll sort it. I’ll say it’s for me.”
Gargoyles didn’t need to eat, but some enjoyed the act.
I blew her a kiss. “I love you.”
She smoothed the hair from my face and pressed an actual soft kiss to my cheek. “I love you too.”
We bantered, and she pushed my buttons, but I wouldn’t be without her for all the jelly donuts in the world.
* * *
Henri entered just as I pulled on my boots, and Tris took away the breakfast things. The omelet had been delicious, cheesy with chunks of cooked ham and mushrooms. Emmet was a good cook. The coffee was dark and sweet, just the way I liked it.
Henri stood in the doorway in his action outfit—beige trench coat, dark jeans, dark shirt, and kick-your-face-in boots.
“Jay is waiting in the study.”
“Uh-huh, evening to you too. How did the day go?”
“Uneventful and bright.”
“Did you get into town? Speak to any locals? Get the lay of the land?”
“Yes. The town is quaint, but the people aren’t. They might as well be wandering around under a storm cloud. Not a real smile in sight.”
“So, grumpy townsfolk.”
“There is a darkness in the air.”
“Even though it was a bright day?”
“You know what I mean.” He gave me one of his be-serious looks.
I held up my hands. “Hey, I’m just trying to get a mental picture, that’s all. Bright day, pissed-off locals. Maybe having your fellow men and women go missing is putting a damper on people’s moods.”
“Maybe, but …”
“You think it’s more than that?”
“Yes, and so does Mai.”
My pulse skipped. “Mai was with you?” I kept my tone neutral. Damn the possessive streak in me.
“She showed me the town.”
“Really? What else did she show you?”
He gave me a flat look.
I held up my hand. “No, sorry, forget I said that. Did you tell her you were a walking GPS, and, if anything, you could show her a thing or two?”
I realized how the latter part of my sentence sounded as soon as it left my mouth. “No. No, please tell me you didn’t say that.”
He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I’m not too well versed in the nuances of Nightblood behavior, but you’re acting strange. Snap out of it, we have work to do. Mai was very informative about the town history. The day was … pleasant. The information may come in useful.”
Pleasant. He’d had a pleasant day with the kitsune. Nice. I swallowed the flux of jealousy that surged up my throat and gave him my most convincing close-lipped smile. “And you can pass on the wisdom later.”
I grabbed my leather jacket off the chair by the window. “Let’s go scan some case files and do what we do best. Investigate.”
* * *
Jay was waiting for us in the study, seated at a suitably impressive desk. He slid a pile of files across the wood.
“Take a look.”
I grabbed the stash, parked my butt in the nearest seat, and began to flip through the files. They weren’t originals, but copies made by Detective Kiran. What kind of supe was she? Nightblood? Feyblood? Moonkissed? Or maybe she was tainted—a human with supe blood in her family tree? There weren’t many of those since the Watch had passed a law to prohibit procreation between supes and humans. The tainted all had minor abilities that allowed them to see through the veil. Psychics, clairvoyants, that kind of thing.
While part of my brain pondered these things, the other part absorbed the details in the files. Males and females, old and young had gone missing. There were Caucasian, black, and Asian missing persons. No real common denominator aside from the fact they were all human and … wait …
“I assume you’ve picked up on the fact they all cite next of kin that aren’t actually next of kin, right?”
Jay sat forward in his seat, his dark hair falling across his forehead. “What do you mean?”
“Friends and colleagues, and this guy has a number for someone in a different town altogether. They’re all people who don’t have close family here in Scorchwood.”
Jay made an annoyed face. “I can’t believe I missed that.”
I shrugged. “It’s easily done. You’re so busy looking at similarities between the actual victims that you neglect to look at the bigger picture.”
“They were chosen because they don’t have someone who cares,” Henri said. “No one close.”
“But they were still missed.” I rubbed my chin. “So, they’re not nobodies. Whoever took them obviously picked them to have no close family, but at the same time didn’t care that they might still be missed.” I stood and placed the files on the desk. “I need to get out there, hit some bars, some diners, chat to the locals, get a feel for the land.”
“Mai and Kris are already patrolling,” Jay said. “I’ve given them your number so you can link up, if necessary.”
“You have my number?”
“It’s in the file the Watch sent.”
Of course it was. “So, you wouldn’t mind if I did some sleuthing?”
Jay smiled, and something in his eyes shifted. “Maybe you can uncover some information we’ve failed to. We’re usually confined to dealing with the ghouls, and the rogue supes and minor demons that wander through town. Kiran’s job is to cover for us. This is the first time something like this has fallen in our laps.”
I tapped my fingers on my thigh. Should I ask him about the ghost activity? Would he even have noticed? Supes saw ghosts but not in the same way I did, and they certainly didn’t pay them attention because everyone knew that was like begging to be haunted.
No, best to deal with that side of things myself. “I’ll brief you on what I find later.”
Tris intercepted us outside the study. “If there are any late-night bookstores …”
Henri froze, and I bit back a chuckle. “Don’t worry, Henri, you don’t have to buy anything. I’ll take the hit this time.”
Tris smiled slyly up at me. “Yes, so you can pick books you’d like to read once I’m done?”
My cheeks heated. “I do not—”
“You like the contemporary ones.”
Dammit, how the heck had she found out about that? I’d been very careful to only read them when she wasn’t about. Like in the bath or on the loo, and now Henri was staring at me.
I crossed my arms. Fuck it, so what? “Yeah, I read them, they were entertaining.”
She grinned. “In that case, you can pick up a couple of contemporary ones too.”
* * *
“Did you speak to your grandfather?” Henri asked as we climbed into the Ford.
“Yes, for about two seconds. Something’s not right. He was acting odd and had to cut the Call short. Call as in with a capital C.”
“Ah.” Henri started the engine. “That makes sense.” He swung the car around and up the driveway to the gates. “He’s a busy man. Maybe he was interrupted.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
A huge, dark shape shot across our path, and Henri slammed on the brakes.
Motherfucker!” I stared at the figure, heart pounding, hands on the dash. I rolled down the window. “Do you want to get hit?”
Ember eyes blazed at me from the side of the drive, and I swear they slow-blinked before being obscured by darkness.
“Idiot.” I wound the window up and looked to Henri. “You okay?”
“Are you?” he asked.
I nodded. “Let’s go hit the town. Find a club, pretend to get drunk, and talk to some loose-lipped revelers.”
Henri started the car with a groan. “I am so not dressed for this.”
I shot him a sidelong glance. He wasn’t wearing his glamour for supe eyes, and his metallic jaw and the aquiline nose were caressed by moonlight. He had a handsome face even when cast in metal, as if the weaver who put him together had just finished reading a bodice ripper of her own.
“Oh, don’t worry.” I patted his hard thigh. “We’ll fix you up when we get there.”
* * *
Ten p.m. and the town was coming to life on Reverie Street. Bars and late-night diners flashed pretty signs to entice the night owls. But according to Henri, there was only one club in town worth checking out. Cryptic Gods sat at the center of the street, doors lit up like heaven and people lining up to enter as if desperate to taste the rainbow.
I stripped off my jacket and tied a knot at the back of my top to expose my midriff, shook out my hair to give it a tousled look, and then turned my attention to Henri.
“Off with the trench, top two buttons undone, and sleeves rolled up.”
He complied.
“Okay, hit me with the glamour so I can check the effect.”
His form rippled, and then he was staring at me with intense sapphire eyes and a smirk that was way too knowing.
Sometimes, I wondered exactly what the weavers had put in the potion that made this one.
“You’ll do.” I turned and walked across the road toward Cryptic Gods. The queue wound down the street. Women in heels and short skirts, men in shirts, jeans, and smart shoes, the aroma of various perfumes and deodorants, it was almost too much olfactory information. I breathed through my mouth, waiting for my senses to adjust to the overwhelming smells.
It took a few seconds, but then the aromas muted, and the heady scent of blood and the sound of pulses replaced the favored brands of L’eau de parfum.
Henri moved closer, so his chest was touching my back. The contact instantly grounded me, muting the thud of blood that surrounded me. Like any young Nightblood, I was still learning to control the bloodlust that could arise in situations like this.
Henri gripped my upper arm. “You’re all right.”
And just like that, I was.
I filtered through snippets of conversation.
“—hear about the guy from the library?”
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