“It’s just that,” the boy swallowed. “It’s just that my own mother, my biological mother, signed me away before I was even born. Insisted on a closed adoption. Walked away from the hospital as soon she recovered from the delivery and never looked back. If she even knew who my father was, she wasn’t saying. The only thing I know for sure is I’m a mix of English, Spanish, and Native American, and I only know that because my parents bought me one of those 23 and me DNA kits for my eighteenth birthday since I kept on asking questions that they didn’t have any answers for. There’s no way even to know what tribe. I could be local or who knows.” He waved at the air to indicate a universe of possibilities.
“I know it’s ridiculous, but I always wondered if there was something wrong with me,” Morgan continued. “Something so bad that even my own mother didn’t want me. And after I screwed up with the, well, you know, I wondered if somehow she had sensed it about me, in the womb, that I was just no good from the start.”
Raven had wondered something similar as a child, when he had grown just old enough and experienced enough to realize that other fathers didn’t discipline their children by tormenting them with dark magic. Wondered if there was something in him that caused his father not to love him. Wondered if he was somehow the reason that his father had killed his mother. His uncle had certainly acted as though he were somehow at fault, even if he never explicitly said. Raven spoke from those memories, from that old pain, combined now with the knowledge of a new father.
“If your biological parents failed to cherish you as you deserved, it was their failing, not yours. If you want to believe anything, believe that you are so special that your real parents, the ones that raised you, picked you out of all possible choices to claim you for their own.”
“I didn’t—I wouldn’t—I didn’t even know that they were dead until I heard it on the radio,” Morgan said. “I nearly drove off the road. I had to pull over. And in the next breath the news was saying that the police thought I’d done it. Nothing was making any sense, and I knew if I went to the police they wouldn’t tell me anything. I slept in the truck that night, out on the desert. Collapsed might be a better word. My brain just shut down, like reality had become more than it could handle. The next thing I remembered was the sun rising, just like it was any other day. Like my whole world hadn’t just ended.
“The morning news didn’t have much more in the way of details. The only new information was that Harvey the hay man had been the one to find them. I drove on up to his place. Harvey’s known me since I was just a kid. I even worked for him a few times when he needed extra help getting the hay in before rain. I heard the gunshots as I was coming up the driveway. I thought maybe wild dogs. We get those around here. People from the city just take their dogs and dump them out here in the middle of nowhere. The ones that survive pack up and go after the livestock. I drove up and I saw the two bodies in the front yard, and Harvey was reloading the revolver. I should’ve turned around and taken off. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I thought maybe whatever happened to my parents had got Harvey’s family, or maybe it was wild dogs that got them. By the time I got close enough to see what looked like gunshot wounds, to realize that Harvey was ranting like a madman, it was too late. There were police sirens in the distance, Harvey grabbed me, put the gun to my head, dragged me to his truck, and, well you know the rest.”
The boy broke down in sobs, curling up in on himself, pulling his feet up onto the chair to make a tight ball. He seemed strangely small for a tall young man with a lifetime’s worth of muscles from fieldwork. Raven froze, not knowing what to do, hoping his silent, non-judging presence was somehow a comfort.
Eventually Morgan uncurled, looked him in the eye. “I didn’t kill them.”
“I never thought you did,” Raven said. “And I’m sure the sheriff no longer believes you did, either, or you’d be in a jail cell instead of this hotel room. Look, I know this is probably the bottom of your list of worries right now, but the hotel room is paid for through the week.” That part would be true enough, once he stopped at the desk on his way out. “I’ll contact Scott, he’ll know what resources are out there. If you need anything else from me, the lawyer will know how to reach me. You don’t have to figure this all out at once, and you don’t have to face it alone. I promise you that.”
Morgan studied him now. “Do you have kids?”
“Just one son. Ransley. He’s just a baby. He’s back in Portland with my wife, Cassandra.”
“He’s lucky to have you.”
Raven didn’t feel good about Morgan being all alone in the hotel room to deal with his grief, but no alternatives came to mind. He’d given up on getting any additional useful information from Morgan. Morgan had never even gotten close to his parents’ farm, and by the time he got to Heilman he’d been too wrecked to know the difference between a soul stealer and a sunshade, let alone in a position to parse out information on some phenomena he had never encountered before. And yet this visit felt like anything but a wasted trip.
Chapter Seventeen
Raven stopped back at the bed-and-breakfast just long enough to pack his dirty clothes into a carrying bag and let the host know that he might be gone for a day or two, but that he wanted to continue to use the rental for a week and would pay as though he were there. Jasmine was more than happy to extend his stay. The last thing Raven did before leaving was using the crystal to reach out to Scott.
“You have a lot of damned gall messaging me,” Scott said without preamble.
It was the second time in almost as many days Raven had been greeted this way, and he didn’t particularly like it. “Why? What do you think I did?”
“Your buddy the sheriff had an APB out on Morgan.”
“What? That was lifted almost a day ago. And it was a mistake from the beginning.” And Raven was not feeling particularly happy with being accused of malfeasance toward the boy he had gone out of his way for as he had Morgan.
“And when Schmidt shot poor old Harvey? Was that just a mistake, too?”
“Harvey shot himself. It was a tragedy but—”
Scott interrupted him. “Yeah, buddy, you just keep telling yourself that.”
“I don’t need to tell myself anything. I was there.”
“And of course you’re going to stick up for your cop buddies.” Scott snarled.
“You’re conveniently forgetting that one of my cop buddies, who is also your cop buddy, is the whole reason that I came to help Morgan in the first place. Look, I don’t have time for this. I was hoping that I could get some help for Morgan. He’s on his own now. I guess you heard about his parents. I was just hoping there would be some group that might be able to help him out.”
There was a long pause. “Yeah. I’ll ask around. See what I can do.”
Raven thanked him and ended the link, not feeling terribly confident that there would be any help coming for Morgan. Well, the boy should be set for the week at least. Hopefully by then the crisis with the darkness would be over, one way or the other, and Raven would have time to follow up and make sure that he was all right.
Although Cassandra was almost certainly at GII this time of day, he teleported home first, both to drop off his clothes and see Ransley.
“Oh, hey, boss,” Tony, baby on his hip, greeted him when he materialized in the parlor. “I was just about to put Ransley down for his nap.”
“Give me a moment to take my bags up to my room, and I’ll take him for a bit,” Raven said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to disrupt his schedule too much. I just want to hold him for a while before I start on the research I need to do.”
“No arguments from me. Gives me a chance to start on laundry.”
Though Cassandra and Raven had both told Tony that he was not responsible for household chores beyond childcare, he seemed content to pick them up anyway, and Raven wasn’t going to complain. With the baby in the house, the twice-weekly visit from the maid service wasn’t quite enough to kee
p order otherwise.
Ransley blinked at him sleepily as he carried the child to the nursery. He sat in the rocking chair with him for a few minutes, staring into green eyes so like Cassandra’s. “Were you good for Tony and your mother while I was gone?”
Ransley smiled and gurgled something that might have been “da.”
Raven smiled back at his son. “That’s right, I’m your dad.” Raven had scarcely imagined being a father in his lifetime. Now, he found that he was a dad. It was a strange turn of events, but a welcome one.
He hugged his child closer, thinking of the Jansens. Thinking that they must have held Morgan just like this, almost two decades before. A child theirs by choice rather than by blood, and possibly all the more precious for that. He owed it to them, and to the young man their baby had grown into, to discover what was behind their deaths. He was certain now that Heilman was more the tool than the true killer.
A crime wave in Bend. A crime wave in Portland. A crime wave even in little Devil’s Crossing with scarcely enough people in it to make up a wave in the first place. The timing could not be coincidental. Was the darkness roiling out of that cave just a part of what was going on, or the cause of it? Whatever it was, he needed to talk to Cassandra, and to Sherlock. They needed to try to fit all the pieces together if they were going to view the bigger puzzle picture.
Ransley was soon asleep, barely stirring when Raven gently eased him down into his crib. He turned the baby monitor on so that Tony could hear if the baby awoke. It was a bit of Mundane technology that Chuckie had insisted on installing, but Raven and Cassandra both soon came to appreciate the peace of mind it brought. He supposed such a thing could be done with magic, but the Mundanes had thought of it first, and their solution seemed as good as any. Raven had an old-school mage’s suspicion of the encroachment of Mundane devices into Art households, but Cassandra had a more modern approach, and he was losing ground fast. He wasn’t so sure he even minded so much anymore, as long as no one asked him to get into a car, or, gods forbid, a plane.
Cassandra messaged on the crystal to say that she would be working an extended shift and not to wait up. Practically speaking, this meant she’d be at her desk or in the field until she collapsed from exhaustion and someone scooped her up and dropped her onto one of the cots GII kept for such exigencies.
He let Tony know that he was going to be busy in the home library so that the nanny would know he was back on the first line of childcare. Even though circumstances necessitated employing a nanny, Cassandra and Raven had both agreed that they, not the nanny, were raising their child. When they were home, they took care of Ransley, unless exhaustion or pressing research dictated otherwise.
Raven stayed up long past midnight reading through the Ravenscroft journal for mention of anything like the current phenomenon. His only reward for his diligence was a headache and a sincere desire to develop a time-travel spell so that he could berate some of his ancestors for their poor penmanship. At last he had to admit that continuing to push through despite his sleep deficit would only make him more likely to miss something important.
He turned out the lights and went upstairs to his cold sheets. Nuisance was already curled up on Cassandra’s pillow. The cat began purring loudly as soon as Raven settled into his own side of the bed.
“I know, cat. I miss her, too.”
Cassandra had not returned to the house by the time Raven woke. He forewent his usual full breakfast and Earl Grey, instead settling for a slice of buttered toast before turning his mind once again to research. GII had an extensive library, and if he availed himself of it he also had an excuse to stop in to greet Cassandra.
Raven materialized just outside the teleportation wards surrounding the GII building. He strode through the big double doors, and nodded acknowledgment to the greeting given by the young man at the front desk. As he crossed the lobby and followed the open staircase to the second floor, he could sense the thrum of nervous energy moving through the building. Here and there he spied signs that this was not just a typical day in Guardian International Investigations. An open door of a conference room showed empty doughnut boxes stacked by trash cans full of the detritus of takeout dinners. Empty boxes from the lunch carts were scattered in the center of the conference table. A pair of worn-looking officers in the uniforms of the Mundane Portland Police Department, mud up to the knees of their dark trousers, stood by the coffee pot waiting for their turn to re-caffeinate. The tension only heightened his own sense of unease, and he took the stairs two at a time before walking with ever lengthening strides to the office that Cassandra and Rafe shared.
Sherlock sitting in the spare chair, was the first person he could see from the doorway. Her normally impeccable tweed skirt bore a stain that might have been spilled tea from earlier in the day, or possibly even the night before. Her jacket was missing, her shirt sleeves rolled up, and her tie loose around her neck. Her normally impeccable updo was escaping its bonds, and her pale English complexion had taken on a gray tinge. Sherlock cradled a mug of tea to her chest as though it contained the elixir of life. She lifted her head when she noticed him in the doorway.
“Raven, thank gods you’re here.” Her upper-class English accent did nothing to hide the exhaustion in her voice.
Cassandra kept her desk in the corner to the right of the doorway, the better to see the trees and sky from beyond the window. She leaped out of her chair to greet him with an embrace, as though he had been gone for a few months instead of a few days. She was not usually so demonstrative in the workplace, and though he was not over-fond of public displays of affection, he put his arms around her shoulders to support her as she sagged against him in exhaustion and relief.
He drew back a little to look at her. She looked haggard, with dark circles like bruises beneath her eyes. Cassandra held to him a moment longer, then slipped from his arms. He let her go reluctantly, and noticed how she stumbled as she returned to her chair. Had she been eating since he was gone? Sleeping?
Across the room, Rafe held a paper cup from the espresso stand outside, rather than a mug filled from the office coffee pot. Rafe was a dyed-in-the wool drip-coffee drinker. When he moved onto the fancy stuff, it meant he had been awake for at least a full day.
Rafe tipped two fingers up from his coffee cup in a tired greeting. “Hey Raven. If I’d known how badly we were going to get slammed with work here, I would never have sent you off to sunny southern Oregon.”
“The situation in Molalla?” he asked.
Sherlock shook her head. “That’s been resolved. So to speak. Mass murder-suicide. Even the kids.”
Raven winced, saying nothing. Ever since they had Ransley, he found crimes involving children hit him much harder.
“It’s like the Portland metro area has lost its collective mind,” Sherlock said. “No one can explain it. If senseless violence and dark magic were viruses, then I’d say we were running an epidemic. It would make as much sense as anything.”
“Regardless of everything happening here, it might have been a good thing that Rafe sent me down to Devil’s Crossing.” Raven said. “Whatever’s causing the problems there, it’s big. I’d say it has to be part of what’s going on. Perhaps even the cause of what’s going on, only it doesn’t make sense. Nothing really makes sense.” Raven grimaced. “I’m afraid I come bearing more problems and no solution yet.”
“Nu-unh.” Rafe wagged a finger at him. “You’re a consultant. You’re supposed to solve our problems, not bring more.”
Raven couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Cassandra’s partner punch-drunk with exhaustion. Given what GII faced on a normal week, that was a dire sign indeed.
“I’m sorry,” Sherlock said. “I do believe your analysis is correct. The laws of probability don’t stretch far enough to cover this many coincidences. Under ordinary circumstances I’d let you take Cassandra and Rafe and anyone else you wanted out to Devil’s Crossing. But even if all we’re doing here is putting out fires, we
still need to put out those fires. Portland Guardian Bureau is completely overwhelmed. So are the Mundanes. The most I can do is leave you to it, rather than trying to drag you into the front lines here. Gods know we could use you.”
Raven wanted to argue, but he understood her point. “I’ll be around for a day or two anyway. I need to talk to Mother Crone, and I need to do some research that’s best done here.”
Footsteps running down the hall heralded the arrival of an intern who stopped at the open doorway, knocking once on the doorjamb. “Sherlock, ma’am, I’m glad I found you here.” He paused to nod to the others in the room. “Ma’am, Sirs.”
A new intern, then, one who was not yet familiar with the informality of GII.
The intern took a moment to catch his breath, then continued. “There’s been an incident at Wilhelm’s mausoleum. Someone tried to use dark magic to break through the wards. The wards held, thank god. The local Guardians want us in on it.”
Not surprising. Wilhelm’s was the oldest facility for cremains on the West Coast, and remained one of the most prestigious mausoleums in the area. Many powerful mages were laid to rest there, and their ashes would be immensely powerful in any number of dark magic rituals Raven could name. The wards had been created by the famous wards master James Braxton and were monitored and upkept by his heirs. The mausoleum was at least as secure as the GII headquarters and the Joint Council building. It was nearly as secure as the Ravenscroft properties.
“The mausoleum wants to get the Braxtons in as soon as possible to check the wards for damage,” the intern continued. “But they figured we’d want to send a forensic mage in first to look for clues as to the perp. After all, it’s a slim chance that they might get lucky next time.”
“Or have success with a less well warded target,” Raven said. “In any case, the people behind this are dangerous and need to be stopped.”
Cassandra and Sherlock exchanged glances. “Tell Wilhelm’s we’ll be there,” Cassandra said.
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