His expression darkens and he just shakes his head. “Too much potential collateral damage.”
“So we need to bring him somewhere without people.”
“That’d be optimal,” Javy says.
“How’d you trap him back in the day?”
“That was a long time ago,” he says.
“Still could be relevant.”
“It was a different era. The rules have changed.”
I don’t press the issue further, as he’s clearly not interested in revisiting his previous approaches to Marius wrangling. I suspect it’s related to his concerns about collateral damage. Perhaps there was a time when that was less worrisome to him.
And his conscience is now paying the eternal price.
“Then what? We can’t shoot him.”
“We can knock him out.”
“Okay, and what about a more permanent solution?” I ask.
“That’s proven elusive to date,” he says.
“Doesn’t sound like the same thing as impossible, though.”
“There’s only one being that I know of who can kill something that cannot die. That can destroy matter itself from the universe.”
“Who’s that?”
After a moment of hesitation, Javy says, “Rayna.”
“Doesn’t ring any bells.”
Javy grimaces. “The Shade I came here to escape.”
“Oh. Shit. Really coming full circle here.” Then I’m suspicious. “So all that talk about waiting and making sure Marius didn’t have something else planned. Was that really about this Rayna chick?”
I expect him to vigorously deny it, but he just stares into space and says, “I honestly don’t know.”
Almost every major problem in the world starts with a relationship. It’s like a law of the universe.
I say, “Well, do you think you could get in contact with her?”
Javy’s lips pucker like I just asked him to drink cyanide. “That’s not a good idea.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Javy gnaws on his lip, looking perturbed and anxious for the first time I’ve ever seen. Finally, he lets out a long sigh and says, “She has an email address.”
I laugh. Ancient problems, meet modern technology. “Well, you know what to do.”
“It’s not that easy. She has to agree to it.”
“Then take that sweet whiskey-soaked voice of yours and bat your eyelashes and make it happen,” I say.
“Your friend isn’t going to like it.”
“Buddy, I think Catalina will get over your whopping two dates,” I say. “Especially when it’s for the good of the town.”
Javy opens his mouth to protest, then closes it, apparently out of excuses. Without another word, he pulls his phone from his jeans, writes out a short message, and, after a forlorn glance at the email, gives the screen a final emphatic tap.
“It’s done.”
“Good.”
“Don’t celebrate yet,” he says. “We might both live to regret it.”
“That’s a problem for tomorrow.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Javy says. “Tomorrow always comes.”
“You figure that out after thousands of years, or is that some sort of new revelation?”
Javy’s face smolders with annoyance, but he manages to say in an even tone, “You joke now, but you might not be laughing soon.”
“I have confidence in your silver tongue, partner.”
His phone chimes. With trepidation, he pulls it out again and says, “Rayna is already in town.”
“You’re off your game,” I say. “You said she wasn’t here. Unless that was a lie.”
“Wishful thinking isn’t the same as lying.”
“Look on the bright side.” I nudge him in the ribs with my elbow. “You get a second chance.”
Javy, for his part, doesn’t seem particularly enthused about that possibility. “So what now, Tess?”
“If we’re going to kill Marius, we need to know if he took Emmy.” I pull the surviving evidence box closer. “Because otherwise she’ll be gone forever.”
Thirty-Three
While most of the files might have been destroyed in the warlock attack, we don’t have any better options on tap at this point. It’d be nice to know what was inside the buried treasure that Sherlock stole, but the chances of recovering that are probably about the same as Emmy waltzing through Javy’s front door.
No. Our best shot at finding a stray breadcrumb lies within this scorched hunk of cardboard.
So I push the Glock, shard scroll, and the rusted safety deposit box key aside, and take out one of the surviving papers. It’s an email conversation between Delia and her manager about who she should date next to maximize her marketability.
“Anything useful?” Javy asks as he fills up another cup of coffee.
“Not unless you want to know more about the branding plans for the DESire 2019 makeup line.” DESire being the cleverly named lifestyle brand co-owned by Delia, Emmy, and Stacey.
I’ve already gone through hundreds of pages of emails detailing product launches, branding strategies, investor meetings, and other snooze-inducing stuff over the past couple days.
All leading nowhere.
I pull out the remaining papers as Javy returns with two cups.
He sets a mug in front of me, and I hand him half of the singed stack. “We’re looking for anything to do with Project Ghost or the Great Reveal.”
“Got it,” he says.
We get to work, the only noise the occasional clink of a mug against the granite countertop.
It’s more of the same on my end: assorted business invoices and marketing plans. A few of the papers I’ve already read, since the finished and unfinished stacks got scrambled during the warlock’s uninvited interruption. No leads on where Emmy might have disappeared to. I finish with the last sheet—a brief social media exchange between Emmy and an up-and-coming actress—and put it into the finished pile.
“Find anything?” I ask.
Javy glances up and taps a couple sheets he’s set aside. “See if anything stands out in these two.”
I take a big sip of coffee and dive into the first one. It’s the same conversation about Project Ghost between Rosie and Emmy that I found yesterday.
“I read this one already.”
“Okay, check out this one, then.” Javy slides the other sheet over before placing his last paper into the finished stack.
It’s an email from Emmy to Delia and Stacey. The subject line is: Great Reveal 2.0?? It was sent a couple days before Emmy ultimately disappeared.
I start reading.
Hey guys, so just wanted to check what our plans are this week…we can do the thing at the park later and come back…I just really need you guys to go with me -Em
I read it again, then say, “I guess the park could be talking about Great Reveal Memorial Park.”
“That’s what I was thinking, too,” Javy says. “Sounds like the other two were getting cold feet.”
“Well, we know Stacey didn’t show up at all.”
“So maybe Emmy was trying to convince them to come with her by saying it didn’t have to be forever. Just a temporary disappearance, then a return. Like their original plan.”
“Yup, and make a big show of it by popping up at Great Reveal Memorial Park.” I spin the email around the countertop. “Gotta give them points for showmanship. Not sure it helps us find what happened to her, though.”
“Well, let’s work through everything we know.” Javy pulls a red dry erase marker out from a drawer. “Write it all out.”
“Like we would back in the bullpen?”
“Exactly.”
I scan the cavernous open-air space. “Uh, there’s no place to write.”
Javy points at a nearby wall. “You can write there.” To demonstrate, Javy takes the marker from me, walks over, and then draws a smiley face on the white surface.
“Hope you
enjoy your new piece of art.”
Then he wipes it away with his palm. “Whiteboard paint.”
“Dedicated,” I say.
“Amazon is an amazing invention,” he says and tosses me the marker back. “Can buy anything on there.”
Now I know why there’s nothing on the walls. Every square inch of space is blank in case it’s needed to solve cases. Or, I suppose, help maintain balance between the Shades and Immortals.
I choose an empty stretch of wall next to the bathroom and draw two columns: facts and questions.
Two nights ago, Ryan Jameson—possessed by Marius—invited me to investigate the disappearance of Emmy Davis. Once at the Red Whale, I was forced to Soulwalk as Delia Wolfheart to defraud her parents and continue a now-broke Hex’s search for his daughter. Presumably, Marius had other goals besides making money that involved me. He was about to drag me away, a plan thwarted by Finn’s timely arrival.
From there, he’s announced a fake fifty-million-dollar bounty and released a video making me social media enemy number one. I’m also being sued by Stacey, by way of Carrie Zane—at his suggestion.
He’s putting on the full court press.
So under questions, I put: why me?
We know that, six years ago, Emmy, Delia, and Stacey made a deal with him—then in the body of a sleazy social media manager. One favor from each of them, bound in blood, in return for fame and fortune. Two years ago, now in the body of Chief Bobby Summers, Marius returned to help them enact Project Ghost: disappearing from the public eye. By this point, Emmy wanted out of the social media grind completely; her friends were on the fence.
But the day it was all supposed to go down, Stacey got cold feet, Delia got killed for refusing to do Marius the “favor” of killing Emmy, and Emmy vanished for two years, last seen out by the town limit. But she did leave a little breadcrumb trail back to Project Ghost between the emails and the secret message on the sign.
And the metal box buried beneath it.
I scribble what was Emmy’s favor and other Great Reveal 2.0 breadcrumbs beneath questions.
Finally, I write “leads” at the bottom.
And I put a giant question mark there, to indicate that we have fuck-all left to go on.
I step back to examine the red scrawl. It covers most of the wall, running almost to the floor.
“Anything I missed?”
Javy strokes his smooth cheeks, deep in thought, then finally says, “Do we know Stacey’s favor for Marius?”
“I figure that’s the lawsuit,” I say.
“Makes sense.”
“If only we had that fucking box,” I say.
“The one Sherlock stole today?”
“Yeah.”
Ella bounds off the couch and comes over. She rubs up against me and licks my hand.
Does all this have anything to do with Toby?
I peer at the list, search for a connection, no matter how tenuous. “No, girl.”
Is he going to be okay?
“We’ll check on him tomorrow.”
She slumps down, dejected, returning to the couch.
Javy crosses his arms and purses his lips. “You sure there’s no connection to your neighbor’s illness?”
“I’m not seeing it.”
He shrugs. “Might as well walk it through.”
Without room on the wall, I just recount the details out loud. “Toby returned to Ragnarok about a week ago. He was found unconscious in his car. Catalina thinks it’s some sort of curse where he might be aging rapidly. They found this on him.” I head over to the kitchen island and take the old, rusty key out of the box. “His brother broke into his apartment looking for it. Security deposit box.”
Javy turns the key over in his hands after I give it to him and runs his fingers over the crow adorning its bow. “How long have you had this?”
“A day or two. Why?”
“And how long did Toby have it before then?”
“Uh, no idea,” I say. “Why?”
“Your neighbor never mentioned it?”
“Nope.” I cock my head in confusion. “You know what it opens?”
He scrapes at the crow. Rust flakes off, floating to the ground. “Definitely not a security deposit box.”
“Then what?”
Javy holds the ancient key up to the light. “Yup.”
The suspense is killing me. I dance back and forth, one foot to the other, like a dog who’s just been told they’re going out. “Come on, man, share.”
Javy tosses me the key back. “Read the inscription.”
I tilt the key out of the shadow. Hidden amid the rust adorning the crow’s beak, I can see the faint outline of two letters. The others are illegible, ruined by rust.
But the two that I can see are pretty damn distinct.
RA
I glance at Javy. His grimace means it can only be one person. Or not a person.
A Shade.
“Is that…”
“Rayna.” Javy leans against the kitchen island. “The crow is her mark.”
“What’s it open?” I ask
“That, I don’t know. But I do know why your friend is sick.”
“And that is?”
“It’s cursed with a temporal spell called The Widowmaker. So that if anyone ever steals the key from her, they age rapidly and die.”
I fling it into the box like it’s on fire. “Could’ve led with that.”
“You’re immune,” he says. “Only humans are affected. And they have to possess it for more than an hour. Too many problems if it curses everyone immediately.”
He relays this fact like it was a lesson learned from direct experience.
His phone chimes, interrupting the conversation. He pulls it out and stares at the screen. “Rayna wants to meet.”
“Where?”
“At Great Reveal Memorial Park.”
“Then let’s go.” I head over to the stairwell and start putting on my boots.
But his face is serious, and he doesn’t move.
After a long pause, I say, “What’s the problem?”
“She’s working with Marius.” Javy swallows hard. “And she wants me to bring you along.”
“Okay, but you two have centuries of love and history. You can flip her.” I shoot two finger guns at him. “I believe in you, partner.”
“Maybe.” He tosses me the phone. “But there’s a complication.”
My heart almost stops when I look at the screen.
Because I’m looking at the first new picture of Emmy Davis anyone’s seen in a couple years.
The caption beneath the photo says: You have thirty minutes to make the trade mi amour. Don’t be late.
Without hesitation, I start down the stairs, taking them two at a time.
“Where are you going?” he calls.
“To meet your crazy ex-girlfriend.”
Thirty-Four
We reach the center of town, where Great Reveal Memorial Park is located, in under ten minutes. There’s no time to put together a master plan, but sometimes you just gotta take whatever opportunity presents itself and deal with the consequences later.
Javy cuts the car’s lights as he pulls in beneath some trees on the dark street. It’s quiet this late at night. He rolls down the window and leans his head out to scan the empty park. “I don’t like this one bit, Tess.”
“Hey, it checks the boxes. No one’s around. No collateral damage.”
“Besides you,” he says.
“I can handle myself.” I check the magazine of my Glock 22. Fully loaded. “You got yours?”
“Right here.” He taps the holster on his waist.
“Then let’s get to it.”
Before Javy can protest, I’m out of the car and jogging across the street to the park. The grass is crackly and dry beneath my boots thanks to the sparse rain. I search the darkness for danger, but the park is movement free and silent, save for the hum of some unknown insect chattering in the nigh
t.
I hear Javy slam the door, his boots slapping against the asphalt, then crunching through grass as he hurries to catch up with me. We reach the fountain at the park’s center in about a minute.
“See anything yet?” I ask.
“Nothing.” His shoulders are tensed like a jungle cat hunting its prey. I take that as a good sign.
Always better to be the hunter, rather than the hunted.
I peer up at the fountain. A vampire, werewolf, and human clasp in a three-way embrace, symbolizing the allyship between creatures of various lineages. The water at their feet is still, the flow turned off thanks to the lack of the rain. Leaves and sand mar the water’s usually clear surface.
Back more than forty years ago, this was the site of the Great Reveal: when the paranormal revealed itself to human eyes. Before then, Ragnarok was just a sleepy town, known for little other than being flooded a few too many times before the dam was finally built.
Afterward, it was known as the place where everything changed. Tourism and interest picked up, this park being the main attraction. But Ragnarok, despite its new notoriety, remained much the same. More money in the local economy. Some new resident coming to live at magic’s origin point.
Not that this is actually where magic was born. But that’s the funny thing about history: it’s not the first person to do something who gets the credit. It’s the person or place with the best story.
And Mayor Jenna Malcolm, taking the lectern in the park for a special press briefing, then shifting into a fox before the stunned collection of local media on live television…yes, I’d say that qualified as a story with a hell of a plot twist.
Even forty years on, the archival clips on social media sites receive comments like fucking baller move.
Ever since, the world’s been scrambling to catch up to its new reality. And as with all change, some are more on board than others.
Javy raises his gun and whispers, “Look.”
I follow the barrel of his pistol. Just beyond the fountain, Marius—still in Hex’s body—strolls across the grass, a slender woman with waist-length red hair beside him. Rayna, one would presume.
And stumbling between them is Emmy Davis.
Looks this place might have a sequel left in it. The Great Reveal 2.0, starring the long-lost social media sensation.
Smoke Show (Tess Skye Book 2) Page 15
