Raven's Shade (Ravensblood Book 5)

by Shawna Reppert

  Raven’s Shade

  shawna reppert

  Contents

  RAVEN’S SHADE

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Other Books by this Author

  RAVEN’S SHADE

  Copyright Shawna Reppert 2021

  Cover design copyright 2021

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Lyrics quoted from the song I Go Like the Raven are (C) David Robert Carter (BMI) admin. by Tracy Grammer Music and are used with permission.

  Created with Vellum

  Author’s Note

  Readers from the Pacific Northwest and in particular Portland will find the setting quite familiar. The Blue Moon and the Barley Mill are real pubs owned by McMenamins and both Fireside Port and Terminator Stout are among the offerings. (I particularly recommend the port.)

  Of course, there are differences. The Ravenscroft house in the Nob Hill district of Portland does not exist since the Ravenscroft family as I have written them do not exist. (There are other Ravenscrofts, certainly. One is a hatter in the UK, and one was a collector of folk ballads in the manner of Childe, though not as well known. To the best of the knowledge there is no relation.)

  The song Tony is singing along to is I Go Like the Raven( (C) David Robert Carter (BMI) admin. by Tracy Grammer Music. David Carter is sadly no longer with us, but his music lives on. He was an amazing singer and song writer and I strongly recommend you check out the albums he released with Tracy Grammer as well as Tracy’s solo work. (As an aside, they used to live and perform in Oregon and still have a strong following here.)

  Wilhelm’s Mausoleum, which gets a brief mention in the book, is a real place. It is historic and full of beautiful stained glass and statuary. They have occasional open houses with tours, and I highly recommend you take advantage if you are in the area. The sexton Simon Reeves, however, is a fictional character of my own invention.

  The town of Devil’s Crossing and the butte known as Devil’s Boneyard are fictional locations loosely based on the geography and small towns in the high desert regions of the Pacific Northwest. Likewise, the particular petroglyphs mentioned in the book do not exist. This was a deliberate choice as I did not want to appropriate or misrepresent the culture of any existing tribe.

  There are, however, ancient petroglyphs in the Pacific Northwest. The most famous of these is She Who Watches in the Columbia Hills Historical State Park, Washington. Though I have yet to have the privilege of being in her presence, my experiences with the other petroglyphs in the park inspired, in part, this book.

  I mean only the greatest respect to those who brought the petroglyphs into being and to their living descendants.

  To the memory of the late Mary Rosenblum. More than just an editor, she was a mentor, a coach, a supporter and a friend. My writing would not be what it is today without her. I hope always to do her proud.

  And, as always, to all the people who believed in me even at those times when I didn’t believe in myself. These are as much your books as they are mine.

  In Memoriam

  For Eddie Osborn, reader and an early and constant supporter. The world is diminished by your loss.

  Chapter One

  Raven should have been suspicious the moment that his wife’s work partner asked to meet up even though Cassandra was not herself home from work. In fact, as the conversation unfolded, he began to suspect that the timing was deliberate. And yet he found himself sitting at the Blue Moon, sipping a glass of Fireside Port, watching Rafe make abstract designs in the condensation on his pint of Terminator Stout. On the table by Rafe’s elbow was a manila folder of the type Cassandra often used to bring home files for the cases that she was working on.

  “You’re the only one that I can ask,” Rafe wheedled. “You know I wouldn’t ask otherwise. When have I ever asked you for a favor before?”

  Raven sat back against the wooden backrest of their window booth and closed his eyes. The warm, salty scent of the house-made fries that Rafe had ordered rose up from the basket between them. Raven had never developed the fondness for pub food that Cassandra and her colleagues shared, but the scent was appetizing.

  Raven took a sip of the strong, sweet port as he contemplated Rafe’s request. In the back part of the pub, pool balls clacked gently.

  In truth, he could never recall Rafe ever asking for a favor. Their acquaintance had gotten off to a rocky start—Rafe had attempted to frame Raven for a crime that would have seen him locked behind magic-dampening fields for the rest of his natural life. But in the intervening years, Rafe had become a solid friend to Raven and Cassandra both through good times and bad. Raven felt better knowing Rafe had Cassandra’s back no matter how dangerous things got at work. Hell, the man had even babysat Ransley when they were truly strapped for a sitter.

  The waitress stopped by their table to ask if there was something else they needed, though they were barely halfway through their drinks. The way her eyes passed over Rafe betrayed the reason for her attentiveness. Rafe, like most Guardian International Investigations agents, took fitness seriously and it showed in both his frame and his carriage. Combined with his stylishly disheveled black hair and roguish grin, the man caught his share of attention from both men and women.

  Once, Rafe would have noticed the waitress’ appreciation. Pre-Cam, it would have won her a flirtatious grin, if not an invitation to dinner. Raven hadn’t suspected that he would miss the old Rafe. He liked the man Rafe had become when he had been with Cam even better. Rafe had already begun learning to see shades of gray that fell between black and white before he had met Cam, but Cam had changed him further still. Rafe had become softer, somehow. Not in any way that would interfere with his job. But he had been more willing to see the good in people, more ready to see the value in giving people second chances. Those changes had not gone away with Cam’s death, but Rafe had become more somber. Less spirited. Stuck to business instead of lightening the mood with his dark humor. Raven missed that, even if Rafe’s jokes had often been at Raven’s expense.

  Raven was not the man he would have been without Cassandra, and his life was infinitely better for it. He had wanted that same happy ending for Rafe and Cam, but that fairy tale had been cut short by a madman’s knife. Raven could only hope Rafe would someday find someone—not to replace Cam, as Cam was irreplaceable—but someone to be to Rafe what Cam would have been in the fullness of time.

  “I may consult with GII from time to time,” Raven said. They both knew that Guardian International Investigations called him in whenever it found itself dealing with magic more complicated, powerful, or dark than it could handle on its own. “But you know I’m no trained investig
ator. And the more time I spend working with GII, or even the local Guardians, the more I respect what that means.”

  Rafe chuckled. “Never thought I’d hear you admit it.” He toasted Raven with the microbrew in his hand before taking a swig. “But seriously, I think you’ve picked up more than you realize. I’m not asking you to do much. Just go up there and poke around a bit. Just a few days. If you find anything of interest, you can turn it over to the local Guardians and be on your merry way.”

  Rafe was probably betting on the possibility that if he found anything of interest, he’d be too intrigued to leave it alone.

  Raven selected one of the soft pretzel sticks from his own appetizer and swiped it through the cheese fondue. “What is your interest in all this?” he hedged.

  Rafe blushed, the flush evident even over his golden-tan complexion. “There’s a guy I know who asked me to look into it.”

  “Wait, so you’re asking me to look into this case because you have a personal stake in the outcome, or because you’re doing a personal favor for a friend?”

  “Um, a little bit of both?”

  Raven raised both eyebrows and waited.

  “So I met this guy.”

  “Go on.”

  Raven fought a smile. The more Rafe hesitated, the more Raven suspected there was more to the story. He enjoyed teasing the man, of course he did, but he was happy to see him take some interest in someone again. Cam wouldn’t have wanted Rafe to stop living his own life just because Cam had died. He had been too kind and too in love with life to wish that for Rafe.

  “I was—oh, God, this is going to sound weird, but I had gone out to put flowers on Cam’s grave. It was a year ago last week that—” Rafe broke off and took a deep, steadying breath.

  A year since Cam had been struck down by a killer with a grudge against Rafe’s and Cassandra’s boss at GII. Raven had nearly lost both Cassandra and their infant son to the same madman.

  Rafe scrubbed his hands over his face as though washing away the memory, and Raven knew he was as trapped as a suspect in a sting. He would do whatever would help the man find a new shot at happiness. Gods help him. And Cassandra wasn’t even here to talk him into it, so he couldn’t blame her for it later.

  “Start from the beginning.” Raven sighed. “You may as well tell me everything.”

  Two weeks earlier.

  The memorial, dedication, and ribbon-cutting ceremony had been excruciating. Rafe was glad that so many people remembered Cam—the man deserved to be remembered. He had been the finest human being Rafe had ever met, had changed Rafe’s life so fundamentally that he knew he would never be the same man he was before, didn’t want to be the man he was before. And this—a newer, bigger facility for the troubled kids that Cam had dedicated his life to helping, with a better gym and recreational facilities, private consulting rooms that were both better sound-proofed and more comfortable, and an animal-assisted therapy program. A few blocks away was a shelter for kids that had either run away or had been kicked out of their homes. By fall there would be an out-of-town equestrian program with a shuttle running between. How much of the funding came from the Ravenscroft Charitable Trust, Rafe could only guess, and Raven would never tell.

  It was bittersweet, seeing Cam’s family again for the first time since the funeral. Mrs. MacEwan had been the one to do the ribbon cutting, although she had first offered Rafe the honor. He declined, not because he didn’t support the project with all his heart and soul. But he felt that the woman who had brought Cam into the world and raised him to be the man that he had been had far more claim than the man who had been his lover for less than a year. Lover, not husband. Rafe had just been waiting for an appropriate period of time to ask Cam to accept a ring to follow where Rafe’s heart had already been given. A year seemed like the right time, in fact the absolute minimum. Now he wished he hadn’t waited.

  The speeches had all been made, the ribbon cut, and if Rafe had thought the worst of it was over, he was wrong. The MacEwans came to surround him like a warm blanket of strawberry-blond and auburn familial love, asking why he’d made himself a stranger and when was he coming over to dinner and no, they wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  “You’re still part of the family, you know,” Mrs. MacEwan had said, and that hurt worst of all. Because he had wanted to be part of this family, wanted there to be huge family gatherings where the rose-pale MacEwans and the golden-dark Ramirezes mingled like chess pieces that had declared a permanent peace in order to talk about grandchildren and football and the best dishes to bring to church potlucks. But that would never happen now. Oh, the families would still get on like puppies in a playpen, but it would be a shared grief, not a shared joy, that united them, and it would never be as he had dreamed.

  Still he hugged her. “It’s so good to see you, Mom MacEwan. I promise I’ll be by for cake when that rascal Erin graduates from film school.”

  “That won’t be long now, and I’ll be sure to hold you to it.” She kissed his cheek before dashing off to snatch a chubby fair-haired toddler in a Hello Kitty dress who was trying to stuff a handful of leaves into her mouth.

  He had thought he had healed, moved on. But now he wondered if reminders of what he had shared with Cam, of all he had wanted to share in their futures, would ever fail to knock him flat.

  He walked two blocks to a florist shop on the corner, one owned by a Craft person of literary bent. Rafe hadn’t figured out yet if the man practiced shamanic magic, Wicca, or something else entirely, but he could feel that he was neither an Art practitioner nor a Mundane. Rafe bought from him a bouquet filled with rosemary (for remembrance, according to the proprietor, who quoted some line from some play that Raven would probably recognize instantly), sage (sweet-smelling and used for cleansing and consecrating, though Rafe declined to ask what exactly was supposed to be cleansed or consecrated) and a half-dozen blanketflowers. The name of the flower had probably come from the bright-colored Pendleton trade blankets, but Cam had liked them because they reminded him of tie-dye, and Rafe liked them because they reminded him of Cam.

  With all the times he had been there, it took him less than a thought to teleport to Cam’s graveside. He knelt and laid the flowers against the stone. “Hard to believe it’s been a year,” he said as he said as he straightened up. “I thought we’d have forever. I meant for it to be forever. Did you know I was looking for rings?” He sighed, half in fondness, half in sorrow. “Probably you did. Knowing you, you were just giving me the space to do things in my own time. I thought there was no hurry. Now I wish I’d gone down on one knee that morning after the very first night, right after we had that disagreement about forgiving youthful offenders involved in death magic, and you forced me to admit that you might have a point. By the way, that kid we were arguing about just turned nineteen. I wrote him a reference letter for Guardian Academy last week.

  “Anyway, I should have asked you right then. Or if not then, then after I messaged you drunk after we lost too many good men and women taking down William and for some reason I thought that a crazy, bleeding-heart social worker was the only one who I could talk to. Well, I was right. You came over, got me sober, and held me until I fell asleep.” He laughed softly, shaking his head. “You might have just been crazy enough to say yes, even though we’d just met.

  “I think I knew, even then. It just seemed kinda crazy, you know? And by the time we’d been together long enough for me to trust it was real, well, I was just trying to find the right time. The right place, the right way. Did I buy the ring first? That’s always how it goes in the movies. But then it seemed like you should have a say in picking out the rings. We’d have been wearing them for the rest of our lives.” He paused to swallow, trying to rid himself of the lump in his throat. “And then, in an instant, I realized that none of that mattered, and then it was too late.”

  He put a hand on the rounded top of the tombstone, letting the cool solidity of the granite ground him. Granite, not marble. The MacEwan
s had been Portlanders from way back, and they knew that granite stood up to the Pacific Northwest rains where marble melted over time. The breeze picked up, ruffling his hair. He tried to imagine it was Cam’s fingers combing through the short strands, tried to imagine Cam there with him, but he lacked the ability to lie to himself like that.

  “You needn’t bother. There’s no one here to impress.”

  Rafe stood and turned in one movement at the words spoken behind him, startled to be disturbed in so private a moment and too confused by the words to immediately find the anger they deserved. “Excuse me?”

  “You made your token show at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. You’ve demonstrated—for any that will believe you—that you Guardians aren’t just waiting for the center’s kids to screw up so you can lock the kids away for good. At least leave Cameron’s graveside to those who knew him best.” The man who spoke was about Cam’s age, which made him only a little younger than Rafe. Shoulder-length hair, tightly curled, sun-bleached. Eyes ice-blue; cheekbones high and prominent; nose long, sloped, and slightly pointed; skin Nordic-pale. In different clothes, he might make an extra in that Vikings show one of his Mundane friends demanded that he watch. Not a warrior— he didn’t have the bulk of someone who routinely swung a battle-ax. Maybe a villager, a potter or some sort of craftsman. Easy enough on the eyes that, in another time and place, Rafe might have considered trying to pick him up.