The Hermetic Detective (A Riga Hayworth Paranormal Mystery Book 7)

by Kirsten Weiss

  Morgan Verdun, her short, silky black hair swinging, strode toward her. Riga adjusted the twins’ blankets and studied the woman through her peripheral vision. The administrator’s sky-blue, embroidered satin jacket made her appear even more like a dragonfly.

  Riga frowned. What was Morgan doing here? Tourists came to casinos. Most local residents stayed away unless they worked in the casinos or had gambling issues. Donovan worked hard to keep the latter out.

  Morgan whisked past them, her chin high.

  Riga turned the carriage and followed.

  “The elevator’s that way,” Ash said in a low voice.

  “Surveillance. Shush.”

  “Did you just shush me?” he hissed.

  “Sorry. I’m a mother now. It’s hormonal.”

  Morgan turned left, down a corridor of poker slot machines.

  Riga paused, watching, turned, followed.

  “We could surveil her from the security room,” Ash said.

  Riga stopped. He was right. She didn’t need to chase the woman. All she had to do was go upstairs and watch the video screens.

  Arwood Wilde cut in front of her, his full lips pursed, blueberry eyes intent. He wore his facility’s manager uniform, shades of brown and tan.

  Was Sunset Towers having a management meeting at Donovan’s casino?

  Arwood strode toward the elevators.

  “All right,” she said, following the facility manager.

  Kayley Jalonik, in sensible white shoes and a yellow cardigan walked past in the opposite direction. Her jaw was tight, blue eyes narrowed.

  Bemused, Riga shook her head. The dementia nurse was here too? Was anybody left to manage the Sunset Towers? And if they were meeting here, why were they all headed in opposite directions?

  A woman bumped past her, jostling the carriage.

  Morgan Verdun turned and smiled, apologetic. “Whoops. Sorry!” She hurried down the corridor of slots in the direction she’d just gone.

  Riga’s brow furrowed. Morgan had walked down that corridor a minute ago. Had she looped around only to bump into Riga?

  Jack pointed. “Ba!”

  “Wait,” Riga said to Ash and hurried forward.

  Arwood strode down the corridor toward her. She glanced toward the elevators. He stood there as well, glancing at his watch, shifting his weight. Two Arwood Wildes?

  Slowly, she pushed the carriage forward. A woman seated in front of a poker slot glanced at her purse on the floor and then to the carriage. She straightened her yellow cardigan.

  Riga blinked. Kayley Jalonik, playing poker slots. But she’d just…

  Emerging from the corridor, Riga turned the stroller at a roulette table. Her hands clenched on the carriage handle.

  Kayley Jalonik spun the wheel, her yellow cardigan brushing the green-felt table. Seated around the table, two Arwoods and a Morgan Verdun watched the spinning wheel, their chips stacked in front of them.

  Riga’s scalp prickled. “Ash…” She turned.

  Arwood Wilde stared down at her, his blueberry eyes impassive. “Yeah?”

  She recoiled. “Gagh!”

  Arwood’s brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?” His voice belonged to Ash.

  So it was an illusion. It had to be an illusion. But to what purpose?

  “Nothing.” Swallowing, she strode toward the bank of elevators, past gangly Arwoods and elegant Morgans and yellow-cardiganed Kayleys. It wasn’t real. If she pushed out her awareness, tapped into her inner sight, she’d see through the illusion. But all she wanted was to get the children out of there, to Donovan, to safety.

  “We need to take the other elevator to get to the security office,” the Arwood/Ash said behind her.

  “Forget it.” The other elevator was too far away. Riga pushed the up button. The doors slid open and a Morgan and Kayley exited, chatting excitedly about a pair of cowboys they’d had drinks with last night.

  Riga wheeled the twins into the elevator.

  Arwood/Ash nodded to the ladies and followed Riga inside.

  A hulking Arwood in a forest green uniform smiled at her. “Where to?”

  “Office,” she choked out. How far did this illusion extend? She glanced down at the twins. At least they hadn’t changed. A tiny Arwood and Morgan, kicking their booties, might send her around the bend.

  “Yes, ma’am.” The security guard slid his key into the lock and turned it, pressed a button.

  She wheeled the stroller against one wall, her gaze flicking to the two Arwoods. One had to be Ash and one the elevator guard. At least they were back in their own clothing, the illusion was dissipating, but they still had Arwood’s face.

  “Ash, did you notice anything unusual in the casino?” she asked.

  “I noticed you were getting tense.”

  So she was the only victim of the spell. “Stop,” she said. “I need to go to the security room, see the casino videos.”

  The elevator guard pushed a button, and the elevator glided to a halt. “You can cut across to the other elevator here, seventh floor.” The doors slid open on a corridor of hotel room doors.

  “Thanks.” She knew the way.

  The redecorated hotel was all wood beams and geometric rugs, stonework and antler chandeliers. Lengthening her strides, she whisked down the hall, turned, turned again.

  “What’s going on?” Ash/Arwood asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, “but I want to see the security footage of the casino for the last ten minutes. Something’s not right.”

  “Not right,” he said, voice flat.

  She glanced at him, shuddered. “It’s… hard to explain.”

  At the next elevator, they waited, Riga edging away from him and telling herself it was just Ash. But his bulging blue eyes chilled her.

  Just Ash.

  The doors slid open and another Arwood in a green uniform smiled. “Where to, folks?”

  “Security,” Ash/Arwood said.

  There was no way a spell could encompass the entire casino. And that meant Riga was the one under a spell. She needed to get it together and clear her vision. Leaning against the elevator wall, she closed her eyes, imagined energies from the above and below moving into her heart. A glowing ball of white expanded in her center with each breath, pushing out coils of dark energy. The light filled her, expanded beyond her.

  She opened her eyes.

  Ash stood in front of the elevator doors, arms crossed, frowning. The elevator man scratched his jowls, his green jacket tight across his broad chest.

  Relieved, she smiled. “Frank.”

  He glanced at her, and his gaze cut to the elevator buttons. “Mrs. Mosse.” The elevator slowed, stopped. Its doors slid open. “Here you are.”

  “Thanks.” They stepped into a corridor lined with office doors. It was simple, stark. Donovan hadn’t gotten around yet to remodeling the casino offices, though he’d told her he planned to. Ash followed her to a door marked, SECURITY. She knocked and stepped inside.

  Three guards straightened away from a bank of monitors. “Mrs. Mosse,” one said. “How can I help you?”

  “The security footage of the casino…”

  The men glanced at each other, paling.

  “I’d like to see it for the last ten minutes,” she continued. “There was a woman…”

  They shifted their weight.

  “There is no footage,” the oldest said. “The monitors went haywire. We only just now got them back online.”

  “Wrong with all of them?” she asked.

  “Just the ones on the casino level and in the basement,” the older one said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what went wrong. Tech support is on its way. We reported it upstairs as soon as the monitors went down and put extra security on the floor. So far, it seems to be just a glitch.”

  The basement. If Mrs. Norton was right, that’s where the bad guys had been working their dark mojo at the Sunset Towers. Riga’s jaw clenched. “It wasn’t a glitch. Ash, we need to check the basement.
”

  “We?”

  Riga clawed a hand through her hair. She couldn’t take the twins into this. Pulling her cell phone from her pocket, she called Donovan.

  “Are you at the casino?” he asked.

  “In the security office. I saw our three friends from the Sunset Towers downstairs, around the same time the ground and basement floor videos went offline.”

  “Meet me in my office.” He hung up.

  Frustrated, she took the elevator upstairs and wheeled the twins to Donovan’s office. He and his assistant, Ellen, met them in the carpeted hallways outside his paneled wood door.

  “Hello, Riga,” Ellen said, her smile tight. A streak of Bride-of-Frankenstein gray cascaded from the left side of her straight, ebony hair.

  “Ellen,” Riga said. “Sorry, it’s—”

  “Security is sweeping the basement and the first floor,” Donovan said. “So far they haven’t found anything. Let’s check it out together. We might see something they can’t.”

  Like traces of magic.

  Twin lines appeared between his assistant’s brows. “I’ll be happy to watch the twins,” Ellen said.

  “Thanks, Ellen,” Donovan said. “Would you take them to the penthouse?”

  “Of course.” She wheeled the carriage down the hall.

  “Let’s go,” Donovan said.

  They took the elevator to the basement and stepped into a cool, concrete corridor.

  Riga extended her senses and longing rushed into her heart. Tensing, she pointed down the hall. “That way.” Her voice shook, and she hurried forward, eager, trying to follow the trail without letting the magic invade her.

  At a junction, she stopped, turned, cast about. “Here.” She shivered. There was power in this spot. Dark. Lingering.

  Donovan studied the rough floor, the walls. “I don’t see anything unusual.”

  “Neither do I, but magic was cast here.” She took his hand. “Donovan, he was here.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Riga sat, her back against the headboard of the king-sized bed, the twins in their rompers on either side of her. The twins had calmed since the doctor’s appointment, though she suspected they’d be up much of the night.

  Sun glowed through the windows, warming the faded kilim on the hardwood floor. Eyes shut, Oz sprawled across the rug.

  The lake sparkled through the glass doors, snow-capped mountains rising above the water. Blind to the alpine glory, Riga read from a colorful, hardcover children’s book of animals. True, Jack was more interested in crumpling the pages and Emma in eating them. But Riga read on, because reading was important, and she loved this time.

  She had vague memories of her mother reading to her, of learning to sound out the words. In the not-too-distant future, the twins would begin to understand.

  Emma leaned closer to the book, grasping its corner, her mouth wide.

  Riga laughed, pulled her daughter closer. She still couldn’t quite believe their perfection was a part of her life.

  So why couldn’t she shake her lingering restlessness? There’d been no sabotage at the casino. She’d put out all the feelers on her investigation that she could. Now, like the man on the Three of Wands card, she had to sit and wait for the results.

  Her holstered gun pressed into her back, and she laid the book on the coverlet. Three of Wands. Tarot. Was it too early to start the twins on Tarot? If they were magic, they’d need to learn.

  Jack leaned forward and face-planted onto the open book.

  “What the heck.” Looping one arm around Emma, Riga reached across her daughter and grabbed her satchel. She rummaged deep inside it and drew out her deck. Riga shuffled it on the open book, the cards’ soft riffing noises soothing. The twins fell silent, watching. She drew a card.

  The Tower, a harbinger of disaster, upset, lives turned abruptly upside down. Not the best omen, especially since she was working in a building called the Sunset Towers. But this was a lesson, not a prophetic reading. She laid the card atop the book. “Once there was a King and Queen, and they lived in a beautiful tower.”

  Emma pointed at the card.

  “That’s right, the tower,” Riga said. Emma had no clue about towers or kings or queens. But at this age, it was all about the interaction, and the Tarot deck was in baby-friendly primary colors. “The King and Queen were very proud. They wanted things their way, and said there would be no change in the kingdom.”

  “Bah!” Jack said, smacking his bare thigh.

  “That’s right.” She deepened her voice. “Change kept pushing and pushing at the King and Queen, and the King and the Queen kept pushing and pushing back, and then snap! Lightning struck their beautiful tower and down, down, down they fell.”

  Emma rolled onto her back and tried to stick her foot in her mouth.

  “And that’s your first lesson in Tarot.” She laid the card face up on top of the deck, out of their reach. “My work here is done.” Or it would be in another eighteen-odd years.

  Perhaps there was a lesson for her in the card. Jack and Emma had irrevocably changed her life. There was no sense in fighting it, trying to hold onto the past. So what if her life wasn’t quite her own anymore? The twins had added so much more to her universe than they’d taken. She pulled them into her lap and kissed the tops of their heads.

  There was a rustling sound, and she glanced up.

  The Tarot deck lay where she’d left it, but the Tower card had vanished.

  She frowned. Perhaps she’d… No, if she’d accidentally knocked the deck with her foot, it would have slid sideways. More cards would lay scattered across the rumpled bedspread.

  She rose, the children heavy in her arms.

  Face-up beside Oz, the Tarot card lay on the white throw rug. The card’s zigzag of lightning aimed its warning finger at her.

  “Okay,” she said, “that’s weird.” Setting the children on the soft rug, she picked up the card and returned it to the deck, setting it on the bedside table. She turned to her children.

  Jack scooted toward a stuffed elephant, fallen on the floor.

  There were quite a few toys lying about for her to trip over. How had things gotten so out of control? “Let’s play the putting away game.” For the twins, watching her throw things into the yellow toy bucket was second only to a good tickle.

  Something grazed the back of her head, and she whipped around.

  The Tower card lay at her feet.

  What the hell? She frowned at the deck, stacked beside a lamp.

  Emma laughed, clapping her chubby hands.

  “Funny, funny.” Riga replaced the card in its stack.

  The cards blasted into the air.

  She leapt backward, nearly stumbling over her daughter. “Shit!”

  Emma rolled to her side, giggling.

  Oz started to his feet, the ridge on his back rising, stiffening.

  And then she felt it, a creeping chill that weighted the air. The sunlight streaming through the windows changed, flattened, harsh as a winter’s day.

  The dog crept toward the glass balcony doors, his tail low, paws dragging.

  Oz was afraid.

  Dread seized her, dizzying. Closing her eyes, she reached out with her other senses, probing with the boundaries of her aura. Their home was clear of dark magic. She pushed her aura further onto the grounds, through the pines, to the lakeshore, to the magical barrier of her wards. Dark magic battered against them, freezing waves that shook her limbs.

  Crouching, she hefted the children into her arms and sat upon the bed.

  The twins squirmed.

  She sent her energy toward the wards, visualized them glowing, hardening. A bead of sweat trickled down her forehead.

  The wards were strong. Whatever was attacking them, it wouldn’t get through. But her heartbeat rolled, grew sluggish. “You won’t get through.”

  The freezing tide receded.

  A bird chirped outside, and warmth returned to the room.

  Riga released
a shaky breath. It was over. She’d won.

  Oz growled.

  The red light above the door blinked, and she swore.

  Ash appeared in the doorway. He pointed at her. “Stay.” He darted out of her line of vision, his footsteps fading down the hall.

  “Only one of us is a doggy,” Riga said to the children. “But we’ll stay.”

  Oz stared out the glass doors to the balcony. His lips peeled back in a snarl. He barked, rising on his hind legs, battening at the glass.

  “Oz, down!” She lurched to her feet. The dog would break the window if he kept at it.

  But Oz ignored her, his barking frenzied.

  She set the twins on the carpet. “Oz!”

  The glass doors rattled beneath his paws.

  Swearing, she grabbed his collar.

  He lunged, and her fingers slipped on the leather.

  “Oz!”

  The glass doors shuddered beneath his weight.

  Jack wailed, and Emma picked up the chorus.

  “Christ!” She opened the balcony door.

  The dog charged out, racing from one end of the wooden deck to the other, howling.

  Drawing her gun, she edged along the inside wall, peered out the open balcony door. No one crept beneath the pines. No one she could see.

  The dog raced, barking, down the length of the balcony. He barreled toward the railing and showed no sign of slowing.

  “Oz, no. NO!” She ran outside.

  He leapt, hurtling over the railing.

  She leaned over the balustrade. “Oz!”

  The dog landed, his hips twisting, paws skidding on dried pine needles. He tore off into the pines.

  She rubbed her forehead, dazed. Oz could jump from second floor balconies. Good to know. And let’s make ourselves less of a target. She edged inside.

  The twins had gone beat red with their shrieking.

  A gunshot cracked, echoing across the lake, and she started.

  Heart slamming against her ribs, she waited. What the hell was going on out there? She paced, glancing at the alarm clock by the bed. On the floor, the twins, bawling, reached for her, but she couldn’t go to them now, she couldn’t be holding them if someone…