“Yes. No. Lunch was fine. Rafe just wanted me to look into something for him.”
“Something case related? Thought he’d go to Cass for that.”
“Not official business. Just something he wants me to poke my long nose into.”
He wasn’t going to ruin anyone else’s day with the knowledge of what happened down in Devil’s Crossing.
Ransley, still on Tony’s hip, gurgled loudly, smiling and waving a pudgy hand in the direction of the stereo speakers. His son, transitioning from infant to toddler, already started to exhibit preferences in music. He preferred Mozart to Brahms, although Little Bunny Foofoo remained his favorite. Raven just hoped the child didn’t pick up Tony’s tastes, but he’d read enough parenting guides to know he’d have to grin and bear it if he did. But surely playing Ransley more classical music would keep him on track.
“Oh, I talked to Cass on the crystal while you were out. She’s stuck in Seattle chasing down a lead in that human trafficking case. Said to go ahead and have dinner without her. With luck, she’ll be home late tonight. Otherwise she’ll grab a room in a hotel up there.”
Raven had hoped for a quiet night in with Cassandra, since he was going to be gone for a few days. Still, he had known what he was getting into when he married her, and he was proud of his wife and her work. This human trafficking case was particularly grim. The traffickers had, for reasons yet unknown, turned on their latest load of human cargo, slit their throats, and dumped their bodies in the Willamette River.
He was glad of Tony’s company over dinner. Much as Raven loved his son, the one-year-old wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Left alone with just Ransley, Raven spent entirely too much time worrying about all the mistakes he might make in raising a child to adulthood. Tony took his responsibilities seriously, but he never seemed to have the same types of worries. The younger man stepped into the role of caregiver with a cheerful, casual confidence Raven felt the least bit intimidated by, though he’d never admit it.
When Tony moved in, Raven hadn’t imagined he’d have much in common with a tie-dye wearing folk music aficionado. But Tony had a brilliant mind and shared Raven’s interest in magical innovation and experimentation. His background in magically-enhanced chemistry might be different than Raven’s training in pure magic, but that just meant long discussions on comparative approaches.
When Raven had negotiated his pardon, the best he had hoped for was a quiet, solitary life in his ancestral house on the hill. Somehow, his life kept getting fuller and more complicated as he went along.
Raven woke as soon as the bedroom door opened. His past had made him a light sleeper, and the relative domesticity of his present life had not lessened the trait. Cassandra padded lightly across the polished wood floor. She must have removed her shoes downstairs in a vain attempt not to wake him. He smiled at the courtesy, even though it was useless. He continued his pretense at sleep until she had undressed and slid into bed, then rolled to face her.
“Hello, beloved,” he said, voice deepened by the dregs of sleep.
She smiled and leaned in for a kiss. “How long have you been awake?”
“Since you came into the room.” He pushed back a lock of her wildly curling hair before stealing another kiss.
In this light, her hair looked black as the night around them, as dark as his own. In sunlight or firelight her hair would glint here and there with auburn and flame-red, while his would remain the onyx-black of his Welsh ancestors.
“I had to call Rafe for some details I’d forgotten when I was wrapping up the case. I think I woke him.”
“Good,” Raven said without heat, a pretense of animosity for old times’ sake.
Cassandra narrowed her eyes at him, meaning it exactly as much as he had meant the comment. “He said you were going down to someplace called Devil’s Crossing to look into something for him.”
“Yes. You don’t mind, do you?” He belatedly realized that a good husband would have asked before making plans. He tried, he really did. He thought he was getting better.
“Of course not.” Cassandra’s tone said he was being silly. “After all the times I’ve gone dashing up and down the coast chasing a lead, and with little or no notice?”
He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Their marriage was anything but normal, but he doubted normal would have worked for them. He shifted himself closer to her naked warmth. She snuggled into his chest and he wrapped his arms around her.
“I’m still not sure this is a good idea,” he said into her hair. “I’m only a consultant, not officially GII at all.”
“And this isn’t an official investigation,” she mumbled sleepily into his chest. “You’ll do fine.”
The casual way she gave the assurance, as though she didn’t have to think about it, gave him confidence.
“Not like you to doubt yourself,” she said.
“Not like me to play detective.”
“Hey, you’ve worked with the best.” Cassandra looked up at him with a sassy grin. “I’m sure you’ve picked up a thing or two. Besides, it’s—”
“Not an official investigation,” he finished with her.
“You know, Ana says she still feels bad about not helping you more when you applied for the Guardian Academy after General Academy. You would have been an amazing Guardian. You could be an agent with GII, not just a consultant.”
“She gave me a letter of recommendation. That’s more than any of my other teachers would do. And she negotiated the terms of my pardon when I decided to turn away from William, despite my years of dark magic at William’s right hand. I owe her my life.”
Ana could have done more, though. She had smoothed the way for her nephew, despite his questionable academics and disciplinary record throughout General Academy. Raven’s only sin at that time had been being born a Ravenscroft.
“If I had become a Guardian back then we wouldn’t have had someone on the inside to stop William,” he said. “The Three Communities could be on its knees to him. Things worked out for the best.”
“But at what cost to you?”
“It’s all in the past now,” he said after a moment.
It wasn’t, not really. He still had nightmares about the screams of those he killed at William’s behest. But nothing he could do could ever change what he had done. Perhaps, if he lived long enough and worked hard enough, he could come close to balancing the scales. But this was not the topic he wanted either of them to be thinking about as they drifted to sleep.”
“I’m glad you’re home,” he said. “I’m glad I had the chance to see you before I left.”
“Mmm,” she agreed. “I just wish I weren’t so tired.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Sleep. We have our whole lives ahead of us.”
Chapter Three
Raven had arranged to use the hostess of the AirBnB as an anchor to teleport. The rental included the entirety of a small cottage separate from the main house. Raven usually preferred the reliability of a commercial, five-star establishment, but this particular lodging came recommended by Cassandra’s aunt Ana. One of Ana’s old school friends, a Healer-turned-artist, rented the place out for additional income. Raven disliked using a stranger as a teleport anchor—it felt too intimate. But given that he had never been to the place before, his only alternative would be hiring a Mundane car and driver, and he preferred to avoid those fast-moving Mundane death traps whenever possible.
When he fully faded back into existence, he found himself in a clearing at the center of a sweet-smelling herb garden. He stood face-to-face with a woman of athletic build with pale, straight hair that hung nearly to her waist. She wore a gauzy, embroidered blouse of pale rose and a faded denim skirt with paint splotches down the front. Looking closer, he saw a bit of blue paint on the ends of her hair, as if she forgot to put her hair back before starting to work on a canvas.
“Hi, I’m Jasmine. And you must be Raven. Let me show you the cottage.”
He followed her down a path of mosaic stepping stones to a small yellow house trimmed in robin’s-egg blue. The interior of the cottage was done in finished pine and still smelled faintly of that wood. It had an open floor plan; no wall between the bedroom and the living area and only a short half-wall between the living area and the efficiency kitchen. The cathedral ceiling exposed the support beams that held up the roof. The hand-woven tapestries and soft knitted throws made the place cozy in a way that reminded him of Ana’s own home. The place was clean, and the distance from both the main house and the road meant that it would be quiet as well.
Raven agreed that the cottage would do nicely for his purposes, and Jasmine keyed the wards to him so that he could feel secure and yet still teleport directly into the cottage if he chose.
He stared at the wall, or rather at the landscape painting that hung on the wall, a beautiful acrylic of a sunset behind the Devil’s Boneyard done in gorgeous purples, oranges, and reds. The boldly scrawled signature on the bottom declared it the work of his host. Raven wondered if it was for sale. Cassandra would love it.
Raven introduced himself to the deputy at the reception desk for the Devil’s Crossing P.D. and she led him back to an interview room. The moment they crossed the anti-magic ward the hair on the back of his neck stood up and his heart beat faster in a flight-or-fight response. It was something he should’ve expected; after all, any jail that held mages would have one. No mage liked anti-magic wards, but Raven’s unease was specific and personal. He’d been held behind similar wards a time or two in his life, and those were some of the worst memories of his life. He reminded himself that he was there of his own free will. He could leave at any time. No one dared lay a hand on someone with his contacts without a damned good reason, even if he was not there representing Guardian International Investigations at this moment. He jumped in his chair when the door opened behind him, instantly annoyed at himself for his nerves.
“It gets to all of us, you know.”
Raven spun the chair to see a man in a sheriff’s uniform standing in the doorway behind him. He’d heard the footsteps in the hall, but subconsciously registered them as another deputy or clerk going about business.
“Beg pardon?” Before thinking Raven spoke in the cool, slightly arrogant tones that tended to set off every Guardian’s triggers.
Cassandra called it the Bad Old Raven voice, and usually trod on his toes whenever he used it. He could practically hear her voice in his head. Yes, no one’s forgotten you used to be a dark mage and William’s right hand. But forcing them to confront the fact isn’t helping. Believe it or not, the good that you’ve done recently outweighs the past in most people’s minds, even Guardians. And for the rest, why give them the satisfaction?
If the stranger minded the tone, he didn’t show it. Instead, he smiled and made a vague gesture meant to take in the room, or maybe the building as a whole. “The anti-magic wards. I think they spook everyone who uses magic. Art and Craft both. My skin still crawls every time I pass into the custody section of the building. Some of my deputies will literally trade for the worst shit patrol jobs rather than get stuck behind the wards for a shift.”
Raven took the opportunity to study the man. His skin was leathery from sun exposure and so deep a tan that it was impossible to guess the original skin tones, though the red-blond of his hair suggested northern European somewhere in his ancestry. His eyes were a warm summer blue, and his shoulders broad. Put him in a flannel shirt and denim instead of a uniform, and he’d easily pass for a farmer or rancher, a friendly type, one Raven wouldn’t hesitate to stop for directions if lost on some endless country road.
“I’m Sheriff Craig Schmidt. Call me Craig, everyone else does.” He held out a hand to shake. “Sorry to keep you waiting. The school called, and I had to go remind my sister’s youngest that, no matter what Captain America does in the movies, the proper response to seeing someone bullied is to go tell a teacher, not go beat up the bully. No matter how great the temptation. You have kids?”
“Just one. A little over a year old.” Raven had only the vaguest idea of who Captain America was—he tended to stop listening when Chuckie or some of the other younger Guardians started to ramble on about popular culture—but he hoped that if other kids tried to bully little Ransley when he went to school, he’d have friends willing to defend him.
It said something about the man that he appreciated a nephew who defended others from bullies, whether or not he approved of the methods used. It made Raven more disposed to like this sheriff, when he’d arrived prepared to hate him.
“So how did Morgan’s lawyer rope you into this?” Craig asked.
Raven stiffened. Friendly or no, Craig was, if not the enemy, then at least an adversary, and Raven’s own lawyer had taught him well over the years. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
If the evasion bothered Craig, he didn’t show it. “Ah, of course. Just making conversation. The kid definitely had a good draw from the public defender’s pool. Rita’s one of the best. Fairly young, but sometimes that’s an asset. Hasn’t had time to become jaded. Smart as a whip, too. Doing a summer of pro bono before she ships out to a high-powered criminal defense firm in LA.”
Raven smiled. “It almost sounds like you approve.”
“Of course I approve.” Craig’s voice raised a notch, the first sign that there might be a temper beneath the genial nature. “I took this job because I believe in justice, not because I enjoy steamrolling over suspects without regard to guilt or innocence. In order for the adversarial court system to work, it needs good lawyers on both sides. Good lawyers for everyone, not just those that can afford it.”
It took effort not to raise an eyebrow. Clearly Craig had more education than the average hick town sheriff. That sounded like a direct quote from a university lecture, possibly even a law school lecture.
Craig chuckled. “I guess whoever fed you your background information failed to mention that I was two-thirds into a law degree when my dad had a stroke and I had to come back home and take over the farm and the pub.”
“I’m sorry,” Raven said. “I didn’t mean to assume—”
“That I was a dumb hick from the sticks who has a hard-on for busting kids?” The humor in his tone softened the harshness of his words. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Listen, how much did they tell you about the kid?”
“I know he dabbled in dark magic as a younger teen. I know that he did time in juvenile detention for manslaughter-by-magic. Not a stellar beginning, I’ll warrant you. But I’d be the worst sort of hypocrite if I didn’t believe in second chances.”
“Understandable,” Craig said equably. “But when someone blows that second chance, only a fool would offer them a third.”
“If Morgan did, indeed, blow his second chance, then I agree with you. But I also have intimate experience with how easy it is to blame the nearest available dark mage, reformed or otherwise.”
“Ah, the thing with the last Archmage. We got the APB.”
Raven smiled. “Among other occasions. That was the one time things actually went as far as a warrant.”
“Yet you stayed on the straight and narrow. Surrendered yourself to Guardians. You and I both know they’d never have taken you otherwise.”
“I only surrendered after I knew I’d proven myself innocent of the charges levelled against me.” Even then it had been very much against his instincts.
“Look, I know a bit more about your history than you might think.” Craig looked down, the tip of his ears turning pink. “I try to keep up on my Continuing Education courses as much as I can. I know that Devil’s Crossing Regional Guardians and Police might not be much compared to GII, or even the Portland Guardians Bureau, but I’d like to think we do the best we can with the resources at hand. Anyway, I took a course on dark mages, what makes them become what they are and how to prevent young people from going down that path. You, uh, were one of the examples I used for my research paper.”
“Indeed.�
� Raven drew himself up straighter, crossing his arms over his chest. “I never imagined myself the topic of an academic paper. My work, maybe, but not my person. And what conclusions did you come to?”
“That if you had a better support system, and someone to advocate for you when your application to Guardian Academy was rejected without due consideration, you might never have sworn to William.”
Odd that a wound so old could still ache when prodded. Ruthlessly he shut down any thoughts of might-have-beens. “Nothing can excuse what I did.”
“Not saying it’s an excuse. Just a contributing factor.”
“Is there a point to this, beyond dissecting my past?” Raven asked darkly. He wasn’t here for this local Guardian to take him apart to see what made him work. “You almost sound like you should be working for the defense.”
“My point is, Morgan doesn’t have any of those excuses. Yeah, sure, he’s adopted, but his parents raised him from infancy. They’re good people.”
“Oh?” Raven thought of Adam, and how the hell his stepparents put him through had practically pushed him into the arms of William and Bloody Eric.
Raven had utterly failed to save him. Another wound that reopened just as he thought it had finally healed.
“Not what you’re thinking,” Craig said.
Raven opened his mouth to protest that the sheriff had absolutely no idea what Raven was thinking, but Craig cut him off.
“I can see it in your face. The Jansens aren’t like the families you hear about in the news that adopt a whole pack of kids to prove to their Church what righteous people they are and then beat the snot out of them. Sam and Lucy wanted a kid, but didn’t want to contribute to the overpopulation problem by having one of their own. Back-to-Earthers, but not in any fanatical way. Drive a pick-up truck to haul feed and supplies, just like everyone else out here. They even have a satellite on the roof for TV, even though about half the folks around here don’t bother, Mundanes excepted. Didn’t want Morgan to feel isolated from the rest of the world, growing up out here in the middle of nowhere. Made sure that Morgan had the best laptop they could afford for school. Lucy raises and trains cutting horses, so when Morgan joined 4-H, he got the best little buckskin they had on the place, no matter that Lucy had to turn down an offer for her that would have paid the mortgage for six months. Yeah, they weren’t ski-trips-to-Tahoe rich, but Morgan had everything he needed and a good bit he wanted, and he was loved.”
Raven's Shade (Ravensblood Book 5) Page 3
