Raven's Shade (Ravensblood Book 5)

by Shawna Reppert

  He was not anyone Cam had introduced him to, not even in passing. Cam had a lot of friends, but this interloper was not someone easily forgotten.

  Rafe narrowed his eyes at the stranger. “Knew Cam well, did you?”

  “Well enough to know he wasn’t the type to consort with Guardians.”

  “Really. And where did you know him from?”

  “Undergrad. We both did a psych undergrad at Reed. We were close as brothers, once. But he went on to PSU to get his Master’s in social work and I dropped out and went backpacking through Europe. I’ve never been good at staying in touch. I eventually finished up my Bachelors and then took some time off to decide what I wanted to do with my life. I was on a retreat, hiking in Iceland when Cam was killed. I didn’t hear about it until six months after. There was a letter from his mother in my held mail.”

  “I was in the waiting area down the hall from the operating room when he died.” Rafe said.

  “Oh.” The stranger’s voice softened a little, lost some of the challenge that had edged it. “He was working with one of your suspects?”

  “He was my lover.”

  The man flushed bright pink with embarrassment. “Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. You must think me a total ass.”

  “You could say that.” Rafe wasn’t in the mood to mince words.

  The stranger ran a hand through his unruly hair. “Oh, gods, Cam would give me hell for this if he were here.”

  Rafe couldn’t help but smile a little. “Probably. But a very quiet, reasonable, supportive hell.”

  “That makes you feel worse than if he hauled off and ripped you a new one.”

  “So you did know Cam.”

  The look of bittersweet nostalgia that crossed the stranger’s face caused a reluctant swell of fellow-feeling. “I did. And every time we met up, or even talked on the message crystal, it was like the months, the years since we last got together just vanished. But each time more and more time passed between, and I kept meaning to reach out, but something always came up, until three years had gone by and I was looking at a letter from his mother inviting me to his funeral and the postmark was six months old.”

  “Damn.” Despite himself, Rafe felt a twinge of sympathy. He’d lost touch with a lot of his friends from Guardian Academy, and the last get-together had been the funeral of a promising lieutenant.

  The stranger grimaced. “Nobody’s fault but my own.”

  “Hey, Cam was never a fan of fault and shame.” Though Rafe had never been a big believer in the idea of ghosts lingering to guide the living, he still had to blame his late lover’s generous spirit for that one. Or maybe Cam had just influenced him that much in the time they were together.

  The stranger gave a soft chuckle. “Thanks for that. Especially after what I said about Guardians at the beginning.”

  Rafe wasn’t going to rub it in; the stranger did a good enough job of that all by himself. “I’m Rafe, by the way.” He extended a hand.

  “Name’s Scott.”

  Cam’s old friend had a good handshake—firm, but not the crushing grip of a man with too much to prove, the hand itself pleasantly warm but not sweaty, the skin callused. Rafe’s wayward imagination instantly wondered what those hands would feel like in an entirely different context. Clearly it had been too long since he had gotten laid.

  “Scott—?” Rafe prompted, though he had absolutely no idea why he would want the stranger’s last name, or any other information about the man. True, he had been Cam’s friend, but sounded like a bit of a fly-by-night and he clearly had a chip on his shoulder with law enforcement.

  “Scott Mankin. Though if you plan on doing a background search, my full name’s Percival Prescott Mankin.”

  “Percival Prescott?” Rafe repeated incredulously, before he had time to consider the rudeness of his response.

  Scott laughed. “Yeah, if you think I’m a flake, you should have met my parents back in the day.”

  Caught off guard by the man’s perceptiveness, Rafe stammered. “I never said—”

  “You didn’t have to.” Scott seemed more amused than offended though. “My mom called me Percy when I was young, gods help me. I started introducing myself as Scott by the time I was in middle school.”

  Rafe grimaced in sympathy. “My parents named me Raphael Romeo Ramirez. Fortunately, I had older sisters with more sense, and so they started calling me Rafe before I even came home from the hospital.”

  And why had he confessed to that? He could think of few people outside his immediate family who knew his middle name, and he liked to keep it that way.

  Scott laughed again. He had a nice laugh, deep and warm, and the skin at the corners of his eyes said that the crows’ feet just beginning weren’t all due to squinting into sunlight. It was very hard to dislike the man when he laughed.

  “Look,” Scott said after a moment. “Do you want to grab a beer or something? This isn’t a come-on,” he added quickly. “I’m not tacky enough to try to pick up a man at his lover’s graveside. It’s just, I’m not looking forward to sitting alone in my generic hotel room, staring at the generic art on the walls.”

  Chapter Two

  Raven saw Rafe shudder as though shaking himself back to the present. Raven was surprised at the level of vulnerability the man had shown him. He was more surprised still that he didn’t find it more uncomfortable than he did. Oh, they had long moved past mutual distrust. Raven could count on Rafe to have his back in a magical firefight, and he knew Rafe would return the favor. Had, in fact, on more than one occasion.

  But heartfelt talks were another thing entirely, for both of them. The day of Cam’s memorial must have been really rough on him. This Scott was the first person, man or woman, that Rafe had shown interest in. Though nothing in Rafe’s tale made the man sound particularly charming, to each his own. Just the fact that Scott caught Rafe’s attention, got him thinking about something other than his grief and his work, made him worthy of Raven’s assistance.

  He sighed. “All right, tell me everything you know.”

  Rafe smiled in relief, though there was a touch of smugness, as well, as though he’d known all along that Raven would give in. “How much do you know about the Devil’s Boneyard golf course?”

  Raven shrugged. “Idiot from the East Coast with more money than sense trying to build a golf course in the middle of high desert.”

  Rafe nodded. “And trampling all over ranchers’ and tribes’ irrigation rights in the process. Not to mention destroying an environmentally sensitive area with a lot of cultural significance. They just discovered a cave with petroglyphs that had been forgotten since long before the Mariner landed. Petroglyphs believed to be older than even the oldest found in Mariner State.”

  Raven hid a smile. Cam had certainly left his mark. The old Rafe would never have given a thought to environmental concerns, let alone heritage preservation.

  “Scott’s been working at a place not too far from the Devil’s Boneyard. Place called Second Chance Ranch. They run rehabilitation programs for troubled teens. Some of his kids were up in arms about the whole thing—not literally, but it was close. Anyway, Scott decided to use the whole thing as a springboard for teaching about civil disobedience, political activism, the pros and cons of various methods to promote one’s cause within a democracy. Even had a lawyer friend come in to teach a unit on property law, land use restrictions, the whole gamut. Some of his older kids managed a coalition that united the local tribes and the local ranchers to work against the project—something that most politically experienced adults would never even dream of.”

  “Impressive.” Why was Rafe telling him all this? If he was looking for a pledge of funds, he would have been more likely to go through Cassandra as the softer touch. Raven wouldn’t be averse to writing a check, but he had a feeling that Rafe wanted something else.

  “Magnum Lansing—that’s the chief East Coast idiot—was found dead in the cave under the butte at Devil’s Boneyard. The cave with all the p
etroglyphs. The coroner wasn’t able to determine the exact method used, but the whole cave was so thick with dark magic that even the Mundane deputies who secured the scene could feel it. Devil’s Crossing is so small that they don’t have separate Mundane police and Guardian departments. They called out the sheriff, who’s Art-trained. Guy’s a part-timer who runs the only bar in town, place called Devil’s Pitchfork.” Rafe rolled his eyes at the name.

  Raven shuddered, imagining a tacky sign with a stereotypical red devil in a cowboy hat, holding a pitchfork. Not exactly a cultural mecca Rafe was trying to send him to.

  “So, this Craig Schmidt —that’s the part-time sheriff—his leading theory is that one of the recent graduates from Second Chance is responsible.” Rafe finished. “Morgan Jansen. Kid dipped his toes into dark magic once, but he had a clean record before and was a counselor’s dream in the program. Bright kid, Scott said. Should have been in college, not doing time in juvie. Probably blew his whole future on that one mistake and he knew it, but he wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.”

  “To play devil’s advocate—if you will forgive the pun—any investigator would be remiss if they didn’t even look into the possibility. Stopping the golf course is a pretty strong motivation, and at the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, one can’t discount entirely a history of dark magic.”

  Rafe shook his head, chuckling. “Who would have thought we’d come to this?”

  “It does rather seem like a role reversal of the day we met, only without the shouting and the death threats.”

  “Look, I’m not saying for sure the kid is innocent,” Rafe said. “I realize Scott is hardly an impartial source. But from what Scott said, the sheriff isn’t even looking into other suspects. There’s a whole lot of people out there who hated Lansing, for a whole lot of very valid reasons. And the sheriff has his own interest in the golf course controversy. He thinks that the resort will bring more business to the bar. Personally, I can’t imagine those fancy golfer types slumming at a place like the Pitchfork. It’s more likely that some of the local folk will start going to the nice, quiet restaurant and bar that the resort is holding up as a benefit to the community. But from what Scott says, the sheriff’s the type to latch onto an idea and not let go for something as silly as logic.”

  “And you’re afraid this tendency carries over to his investigative work.” He refrained from pointing out Rafe’s own history. The man had changed, and Raven could hardly ask people to overlook the mistakes of his own past and not grant the same grace to others.

  Rafe grimaced. “I just would sleep better if someone I trusted looked things over. One thing I learned, getting involved with Cam and the Center, is that it’s hard for a kid in with a reputation to get a fair shake, even with supposedly sealed juvenile records.”

  Raven gave an ironic smile. “You don’t say.” In his own case, his family name had been enough to damn him back in General Academy. He hadn’t even been practicing dark magic, at least not until well into his majority.

  “So you’ll go, then?”

  Raven sighed deeply. “Maybe Sherlock can let the locals know I’m on my way.”

  “Locals aren’t always terribly fond of GII,” Rafe warned. “Not so sure that’d have them rolling out the red carpet.”

  The turf wars between local Guardians and Guardian International Investigations were every bit as legendary as those between Guardians and Mundane police. “Yes, but with her reputation for protecting her people, at least they won’t be tempted to arrest me on trumped-up charges.” Sherlock was clever, determined, and knew how to leverage her team’s success rate into political capital. The recent public revelations of questionable associations of her youth may have left her reputation with a slight tarnish, but it diminished her influence not a bit.

  “Here, look at these.” Secure in his victory, Rafe pushed the folder across the table to Raven.

  The first thing he saw when he opened the manila folder was black-and-white photographs of Magnum Lansing’s corpse as it was found in the cave. The man had been fit in life; he was built like someone who had played football in his youth and still exercised occasionally, although the belly sneaking over his belt said he sat down to a good steak more regularly than he went to the gym. If the body had not splayed like someone frozen as they writhed in pain, the well-tailored suit might have hidden the extra pounds. Raven himself admired a well-cut jacket and well-fitted trousers, and Lansing certainly spared no expense in presenting a sharp image.

  A lot of good it had done him. No amount of tailoring could distract from a face so contorted by fear and pain that it looked nearly inhuman. Raven’s first thought went to soul-stealers; could even a small-town coroner miss such an obvious cause of death? But no. As he looked more closely at the photo, he realized that what he had taken for a puddle of water or even a shadow was a pool of blood, the red turned black by the grayscale image. Quite a lot of blood. Raven was familiar with how much blood the human body held and what it looked like spilled out onto a floor. If Magnum hadn’t died of terror, he’d bled out. Probably from the mouth and nose, to judge by the streaks on his face, unless the body’s position hid some sort of wound to the back. No soul-stealer caused that sort of blood loss. He could name a number of magically-enhanced poisons that might do it, but he couldn’t imagine even the most incompetent coroner missing the toxins in the blood.

  He flipped forward to look at the tox report. Yes, they’d run a full panel using both forensic magic and Mundane toxicology, and there was nothing remarkable in the blood, not even alcohol. And, gods, when had he started talking like a Guardian in his head? Cassandra and her friends were clearly a bad influence.

  Raven itched to get out to that cave before the last vestiges of a magical signature faded. He’d have to get permission from the local law enforcement if the cave was still taped off as a crime scene. He sighed. Sherlock would never forgive him if he broke the law without a damned good reason, and he didn’t think she counted impatience and inconvenience as a good reason.

  “You’re welcome to come to dinner,” Raven said. “I know Cassandra would love it. You haven’t been by in months.” Not since they’d hired Tony Borzoff as a male nanny. (Raven refused to use the ridiculous modern slang, manny.)

  “Will he be there?”

  No, I thought I’d just leave Ransley all alone in his crib while I popped down to meet you. “Considering that he lives in my house and cares for my child, I should think so.”

  “Then thank you, no.”

  “I know you don’t like him—”

  “Look, I get that he saved Cassandra’s life. I understand why you felt obligated to give him a hand up. Personally, the idea of him alone with Ransley makes me shudder, but I accept that being an honorary uncle doesn’t give me a vote in your child-care decisions. Believe me, I sincerely hope that you’re right and I’m wrong. But I refuse to sit down at the table with the man who threatened my life.”

  Raven didn’t bother to point out that the threat had come years ago, and had been the empty bluster of a desperate young man in an emotionally fraught situation. That Tony had admitted that he’d been stupid and impetuous and had never had any intention of carrying through. That Tony had only turned to the manufacture of illegal magically enhanced pharmaceuticals because he’d been caught in a financial quagmire not of his own making, that he had served his time and was doing his best to turn his life around.

  It was not a long walk back from the Blue Moon, not long enough for Raven to get those images in the folder out of his head. What kind of magic did that? Dark magic, obviously, but he’d never seen anything quite like what the pictures had shown him. Dark magic that even he didn’t know. Frightening indeed. He entered the door to hear—was that that fiddle music? Tony was dancing around the parlor, bopping Ransley up and down to the music and singing along. Shine the merlin moonbeam eye, set my dancing feet to fly, o’er the dark and dervish sky I go like the raven.

  What in the world
?

  He must’ve said something out loud. Tony turned around, snatched up a remote and pointed it at the stereo Cassandra had insisted that they needed. The music muted but did not stop. When they hear my bowstring strings tightenin’, angels gay, devils frightenin’. Come on fire and midnight lightning to the garden gancy.

  Garden gancy? What even was that? And what did the singer have against final g sounds?

  “Oh, hi, boss,” Tony grinned cheerfully. His feet had stopped, but he still bounced the baby up and down. “Dave Carter and Tracy Grammer. Heard them before?”

  It took Raven a moment to realize that he was talking about the music.

  “No, I don’t suspect they’re your kind of music.” Tony grinned as he answered his own question. “Should give it a listen though. Carter was classically trained, believe it or not. Though on cello, not guitar. Tracy is the one on fiddle. Dave wrote all the lyrics.”

  Raven merely nodded. He was not going to be one of those heads of household who insisted that the help be seen but not heard. He refused to be anything like his father.

  Besides Tony wasn’t exactly a typical nanny, having been less than a semester away from a degree in magic/chemistry fusion when his arrest forever destroyed his hopes and dreams. Very much overqualified to be a household servant, but his criminal record meant no lab would ever hire him. But Raven had his own personal reasons for believing in second chances. Not to mention, with Tony living in the house, they had a ready consultant whenever GII had a scientific issue that needed to be dealt with. At least one that wasn’t computer related; for that they had Chuckie, Cassandra’s former partner and self-styled techno-mage.

  “You’re looking a little grim,” Tony said. “Thought you were just going for lunch with Rafe. I know you guys snip at each other all the time, but I thought you enjoyed it.”