Deadline

by Jennifer Blackstream

  I almost didn’t get the words out—my heart pounded so hard that it stole my breath, made it hard to speak. I wished with every fiber of my being I had a can of Coke, something to wet my dry throat, to hold in my trembling hand. Peasblossom held on to my finger in silent support.

  “What do you want?” Dabria asked finally, her voice deadly calm.

  “I don’t agree with the way I suspect Anton deals with thieves,” I responded, trying not to collapse with relief. “I’ll give you a chance to walk away. Bring the book to the Suite Dreams hotel. Room 704. Eight o’clock. I’ll return it to the vampire.”

  “And you think he won’t punish me just because you returned it?”

  “I won’t tell him who returned it.”

  She barked out a laugh. “You say that as though he couldn’t reach into your mind and pull the information free as easily as plucking a rose.”

  “Not if I bury the information first. Anton isn’t the only one who can repress memories.”

  “That won’t stop him from trying. You’ll end up like Helen Miller.”

  I clutched the phone, fingers turning white. “You know about that. It was you, then.”

  There was a pause, but this time I couldn’t interpret it.

  “I will see you at eight o’ clock, Mother Renard.”

  She hung up before I could ask any more questions. I fell back in my chair with a shaky exhale. Peasblossom climbed onto my stomach and crawled until she perched on my chest, staring down at my face.

  “I don’t like this,” she said. “I don’t like it at all.”

  If I were honest, I wasn’t feeling so invulnerable anymore either. I had a good plan. And Dabria had as much as admitted her guilt. But something about that last pause, when I’d asked about Helen, felt wrong.

  I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the sudden unease rolling over my skin. No time to second-guess now. Cupping Peasblossom in the palm of my hand and giving her a smile filled with confidence I didn’t feel anymore, I searched my phone for Andy’s number.

  He answered on the first ring. “Agent Bradford.”

  “Hi, Agent Bradford. This is Shade Renard. Bryan’s friend?” I considered adding “the witch,” but then figured he didn’t need the reminder.

  There were a few seconds of silence. “Yes, Ms. Renard, what can I do for you?”

  He didn’t sound like he was having a mental breakdown. A promising sign for someone who’d just learned of the Otherworld. “Please, call me Shade. And I was hoping you could help me with a little…errand.”

  “What do you need?”

  “An escort.”

  Another long silence. “An…escort?”

  It wasn’t until he said it that I realized what it sounded like. “Not that kind of escort,” I mumbled, cursing the heat in my cheeks. “I mean an FBI escort.” I huffed out a breath. “Look, I just need you to come to Suite Dreams with me at four o’clock. All you have to do is walk me inside.”

  “You want me to walk you inside the hotel and just leave you there?”

  When he said it like that, it sounded ridiculous. “I need the owner of the hotel to see an FBI agent with me, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  This wasn’t supposed to be the hard part of the plan. I bit my lip. “Because she doesn’t care what happens to me, but she’ll care what happens to you.”

  I waited for more questions, but to my pleasant surprise, there were none.

  “All right. I’ll see you there at four o’clock.”

  “Thank you so much, Agent Bradford. I’ll see you then.”

  Peasblossom watched me tap the end call button, a suspicious look on her face. “He was awfully agreeable for a nosy human who wasn’t given any details.”

  “He’s a professional—he doesn’t waste time demanding details he doesn’t need.” I tucked the phone into my pouch and stood up, careful not to dislodge Peasblossom where she perched on my shoulder. “We need to make a short trip to The Cauldron.”

  “Again? You always said The Cauldron was too expensive. Now you’re making the second trip in as many days.”

  “Because I can afford it,” I pointed out.

  “The vampire was rather…generous.”

  I paused in the middle of snagging a celebratory Coke from the fridge. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “The vampire isn’t stupid. You would have done this job for a lot less than what he’s giving you.” She snorted. “You were doing it for free when Bryan asked for help.”

  “That was a business move,” I said. “Prove my worth and then become a paid consultant.”

  “Wonder how that would appear on his paperwork.”

  I laughed a little, my good mood returning as my plan moved even more smoothly than I could have hoped. By this time tomorrow, the case would be solved, Helen Miller’s ghost would be able to rest in peace, the vampire would have his book, and I’d have my first case under my belt.

  I rode my bike back to my mentor’s, flying over the road and actually enjoying the wind in my face. Mother Hazel’s house shifted on its foundation as I stepped onto the porch, and I halted my march inside to stomp on it.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I warned.

  The house paused, like a child considering making a break for it with a stolen cookie. Wood creaked as it shifted on the chicken legs that grew from the foundation, hidden from sight for now, but waiting, always waiting for an opportunity to stretch. Past experience taunted me, reminded me of the house’s penchant for straightening its legs suddenly, flinging the house into the air above the trees with enough speed to drop your heart into your stomach. It had done that to me once or twice, and the experience had left a mark. Several marks. And bruises. Apparently, now that I wasn’t running in a blind fury, it was considering having a bit of fun.

  “Don’t. You. Dare.”

  I felt more than heard the cottage capitulate, the tingle of restrained energy fading as its legs relaxed beneath me. Quiet, peaceful. Sulking.

  I rolled my eyes, even as I patted the shingles beside the front door. I didn’t have time for this.

  I was feeling so good about my plan that I was almost disappointed when I found my mentor wasn’t home. My bowl of soup and Peasblossom’s honey still sat on the table, and I winced at a stab of guilt. I took a few minutes to wash my dishes and wipe down the sticky traces Peasblossom had left, and only then proceeded to the Door to All Places.

  “Back so soon?” the gargoyle asked. Apparently, like the house, the gargoyle was feeling more interactive now that I wasn’t stewing in a blind fury.

  “The Cauldron, please,” I said.

  The gargoyle drummed its claws on the shelf above the door. “An expensive shop, The Cauldron. And this is your second trip.”

  Everyone has an opinion… I counted to ten before answering, careful to keep the irritation from my voice. Rudeness to a gateway gargoyle was never wise. One was apt to find themselves dropped in the middle of the frozen tundra as a subtle reminder of the importance of good manners. “Yes. I hope I’m not being a bother?”

  “Oh, not at all. I just find it…interesting.”

  I held my breath, hoping the beast didn’t ask any more questions. The gargoyle didn’t have to let me pass, didn’t have to take me anywhere. It was an independent creature who stayed here because it pleased it to do so. It also shared Mother Hazel’s irritating habit of refusing help if it thought I was getting myself into trouble.

  Finally, it smiled. “You may pass.”

  I didn’t let out the breath I’d been holding until I walked through the doorway and into the magic shop. As the relief wore off, I blinked.

  The place was in chaos. Brownies scurried back and forth across the floor, their aprons full to bursting with multicolored Post-its, and pens held in their small grasps. Dominique stood in the center of the room arguing with a cat on the highest shelf of a bookcase. Something about a flea. When she saw me, she gave the furry beast one last scowl and m
arched to the counter, the thick skirts of her red dress swishing madly around her legs.

  “It has not been twenty-four hours yet,” she snapped. “And we’re in the middle of inventory, so I don’t have time to argue.”

  I cleared my throat, resisting the urge to retreat through the door like a child who’d come to ask for a cookie and found Mum in a poor mood. I forced myself to approach the counter. “I’m not here for a scorpion,” I managed. “I just need a stone of protection.”

  “From vampires, wizards, sorcerers, and leannan sidhe?”

  I flushed. “No. Just something to give my willpower a boost. All I need is an edge, a few seconds of clarity when it matters.”

  Dominique studied me, those green eyes probing deeper than my skin, seeing more than I wanted to show her. Whatever she saw there softened the lines around her eyes and mouth. “Isn’t that what we all want?”

  She smiled and I forgot what I was doing. Dominique was gorgeous, but when she smiled…she was radiant.

  I relaxed, waiting there as she disappeared into the chaos of her shop. When she returned, she was holding a green stone that looked like a cloudy emerald. She put it on the counter for my perusal. I extended my magic senses, and excitement rose as I felt the sleeping power inside the stone. Touching it with my magic gave me a faint but reassuring sense of calm.

  “Do you know how you’ll wear it?” Dominique asked.

  “Oh! Let me help!”

  I blinked as a woman fell off a shelf in a swirling cloud of black taffeta and hot-pink lacy skirts. Arms and legs akimbo, she floundered on the floor for a second before shoving herself to her feet and lurching toward me, brandishing a wand of what looked like melted black metal.

  “Where did you come from?” Dominique demanded. She leveled a dark look at the intruder, and the shelf she’d fallen from. “It’s Inventory Day.”

  She said “Inventory Day” in a manner that gave the words a lot more significance than I’d ever heard them have before.

  “If you broke anything, I’ll have your thumbs in jars,” Dominique promised.

  The woman—a witch, I gathered—waved a hand. “Charge it to my account. Now, hush, I have work to do.”

  She heaved herself over the desk, her head bobbing up and down to look me over from head to toe. When her gaze hit my legs, her eyes widened. “Someone’s painted your legs?” She paused, squinting. “Oh. No, you’re wearing leggings.” Her eyes glittered. “Do you want your legs painted? I could fix it so you could go around naked and people would think you were properly dressed. Wicked fun, that.”

  My cheeks burned at the idea. “Um, no thank you?”

  “She’s going to see a leannan sidhe,” Dominique snapped.

  The witch blinked bright blue eyes. “Oh, well, then, it doesn’t really matter what you wear, does it? Won’t be wearing it long in any case.”

  “She’s here for this.” Dominique gestured to the green stone, her voice thick with exasperation.

  The witch’s eyes flicked to the stone. “You plan on resisting? Why?”

  “I’m sorry, if I could just take the stone…?” I said.

  “Oh, don’t be silly. You have to let me do this.”

  The woman waved her wand, pale brown curls dancing around her face as she trailed her wand in waving lines around my head. A disturbing sensation washed over my scalp, then concentrated in my hair. The dark waves writhed like a nest of snakes, rising in my peripheral vision and tugging here and there as they entwined with one another. The stone floated off the counter toward my head, and was ensconced in a knot of complicated braids.

  The witch gazed at me with her chest puffed out with pride. “Damn, I’m good.”

  “How much do I owe you?” I managed, afraid to move lest I disrupt the hairstyle. I didn’t want to know how ridiculous I looked with hair that looked like it’d been done up for prom and a shirt and leggings that could double as pajamas.

  “Not a cent. I was happy to do it,” the witch assured me.

  “She’s talking to me, Betsy,” Dominique said, rubbing the bridge of her nose the way I did when Peasblossom used one of my bras for a hammock.

  I paid for my purchase and left, walking like someone on a tightrope. I didn’t get my hair done a lot.

  “Dominique, you have to come out with us tonight,” Betsy whined behind me. “It’s the night of the full moon! Everyone lets their guard down on the full moon.”

  I froze. The full moon. It was tonight.

  “You have three days.”

  Three days. The full moon. That was it—that was the connection. Anton must have spelled the book so it could only be opened the night of the full moon. Which meant at sundown, the thief would be able to open Anton’s book.

  Chapter 16

  Andy could not have looked more like an FBI agent if a wardrobe guru from Hollywood had chosen his clothes for him. Dark blue suit, starched white shirt, black sunglasses. For Pete’s sake, there was even just enough of a breeze to blow his jacket open to flash his FBI badge as he walked. I got out of my new rental car and stared at him as he approached, long, even stride screaming authority.

  “Good evening.” He took off his sunglasses to meet my eyes. “Bryan said witches have a special title. I’m supposed to call you Mother Renard?”

  “Please, don’t,” I said. I gave myself a sharp mental kick. Wasn’t this what I’d been regretting before? Abandoning protocol and the safety it offered? The reputation it built?

  What reputation? Mother might have been an appropriate title in the Old Kingdom, but here in the modern setting of the Blood Realm—America, specifically—it sounded outdated at best and ridiculous at worst. I curled my hand into a fist. I would make my own reputation. Without the title. “Call me Shade. Please.”

  If he’d noticed my mental tug of war, he was kind enough not to comment. “All right, Shade. Now, why don’t you tell me why we’re here?”

  I waved a hand to brush off the question and walked toward the hotel. “The details don’t matter. I just need you to—”

  “I’m sorry, I think there’s been some confusion.”

  His tone stopped me in my tracks. “What?”

  He planted his feet on the blacktop of the parking lot, shoulder width apart like a man prepared for battle. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on. Everything that’s going on.”

  My stomach dropped. “I thought you understood that I can’t go into detail. I just needed—”

  “An escort, I know. You want me to be a prop that you can discard when it’s time to face the real danger because you don’t believe I’m capable of facing the threat head-on.”

  The first stirring of anger started in my gut. “When we spoke earlier, you seemed all right with that.”

  “And I gave you that impression for a reason.” He stepped forward, a ferocity in his eyes that didn’t match the polite expression or the dry business suit. “This is my case. I’m the one who’s been searching for a body for two months just so I can tell Helen Miller’s husband he can mourn her. I’m the one who had to tell a grieving husband that it was possible his wife just left him and didn’t care enough to tell him. I’m the one questioning scum day after day, trying to figure out if my missing person was a victim or if I might have to tell her husband his wife wasn’t the woman he thought she was. I haven’t worked my ass off on this case just to bow out when answers are in reach. Especially when we both know you may not share any answers you get.”

  I started to speak, to tell him I would get him those answers, but the muscle in his jaw tightened, and he continued before I could open my mouth.

  “You gave me a glimpse into something strange. It’s insane, and mostly I know it can’t be real. But I have worked too long and too hard to hone my senses, my reasoning, to doubt them now, to doubt the…impossible things they’re telling me now. So I believe you that there’s…magic. Witches.” His eye twitched. “Pixies. I believe those things exist. And somehow, they’re inv
olved in my case.”

  He took a step toward me and I almost fell back. Almost. I readied my witchy look, reminded myself who I was—what I was.

  “I’m not a chess piece,” he said evenly. “I’m here to help, and I can’t do that if you keep me in the dark. So unless you can devise an alternative plan in what can’t be very much time, you’d better start talking.”

  I let the witchy look fly. The force of it straightened my spine and made the well of power inside me roil like a leviathan-churned sea. I had studied for years. Decades. Blood and bone, for all I knew, it could have been centuries. Hard to tell in a multidimensional house. I was a greenhorn when it came to investigating, and even spellcasting. But I was still a witch. An educated witch. I could deliver a baby, set a compound fracture, and send a demon running back to its mother. I would not be cowed.

  Andy tensed, but to his credit, he resisted taking a step back. Some of the ferocity bled from his eyes, and he relaxed his stance, no longer using his size to bully me. He didn’t back down, though. His jaw lifted in stubborn defiance. A gesture I knew all too well.

  Frustration pulled my skin taut. A charm would fix this. And I could do it. It would be nothing to pour a little power into my voice, sweet-talk him into following me inside like a sheep. Heck, I could daze him and just drag him along the way a designated driver might lead an inebriated comrade. I didn’t need him to talk. Arianne or her people just needed to see him with me.

  But I admired his resolve. He’d had a peek at the Otherworld, and like Bryan had said, he’d gone home, he’d thought about it, and he’d faced it. If I wanted to start a detective business, be a proper private investigator, then having another FBI contact would come in handy. Having another FBI contact who knew about the Otherworld would be priceless.

  “All right,” I said. “So be it.”

  I told him everything, the condensed version that left out any mention of Anton, or any specifics that would violate the confidentiality agreement. Someone killed Helen Miller because they needed information from her to steal an object. I was hired to recover said object. Said thief was inside waiting for me. I needed Arianne to see Andy with me so she’d use her magic to keep the thief from using hers.