by E. M. Moore
His fingers curled into fists at his side. “I want to know what it felt like.”
I ground my teeth together and gave Randy an ‘I told you so’ look. “It felt like fucking menstrual cramps. Randy told me to see if they were taking me anywhere and they led me here.”
His nose turned up, effectively looking down on me, which I was sure was exactly his intention. “I didn’t get them.”
I shrugged, not knowing what to tell him, or any of them. “Not anything?”
He shook his head.
Liam and Gabe glanced at one another. “We felt a little something, but not anything to go on.”
“Same here,” Randy said. “I probably would’ve passed it off as something else, but Norah was hurting.”
I explicitly didn’t look at Travis after Randy said that because I knew what I would see wouldn’t have made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Besides, I should be having delicious sex with Randy right now and not standing out in the cold ass weather with the rest of these guys and getting shit on top of that.
I squeezed Randy’s hand, and he squeezed mine right back.
“Which house?” Liam questioned.
I turned, pointing toward the blue one. It had nicely cut shrubbery beneath the front windows and a white picket security fence that went around the whole front yard and disappeared around the back.
He closed his eyes, and almost immediately, the house’s facade began to shimmer and slowly, the exterior gave way, giving us a look inside.
My mouth dropped. “You’re going to have to teach me that one.”
He blushed, pink deepening the hollows of his cheeks. “Any time, Sweetie.”
Travis rolled his eyes and made a gag face, but it didn’t last long because we were too busy staring inside an empty house. No one. At least no one we could see was inside.
“False alarm?” I asked, tentatively.
Travis scratched his chin. There was a few days’ old stubble there I didn’t want to admit to myself made him look sexy as hell. “Likely.”
Gabe gave Travis a look, then gave me a sly grin. “Search inside yourself, right into your magic. Do you feel anything? Maybe like a push against the edges? I don’t know quite how to describe it, but there’s some definite trace of something. I don’t want to explain too much because I want you to feel it for yourself. Close your eyes.”
I did as he said. The world fell away around me and I looked inward pulling at my magic from everywhere inside. Now that I knew it had a color, it was easy to find. Purple glow emanated through me and I poked at it. It spilled out like a drip of water in a pool and rippled toward the edges. There. I got it now. A little tinge on the edge. It didn’t really look any different, it just had a feel. A feeling of…not good.
I opened my eyes and the first ones I saw staring back at me with peculiar interest were Travis’s demanding green ones. “I see,” I told him. “I feel it, anyway. Something just feels a bit off. Does it always feel like this?”
“It can feel worse,” Travis said, the green intense as he stared straight through me. “Depending on the severity.”
Gabe looked both ways down the street and then started for the house. “Let’s take a look inside. The visibility spell didn’t give us much, so we’ll have to look around ourselves, Mates.”
“Mate?” I asked, my eyebrows raising.
He looked back and wiggled his eyebrows at me. “I have other names for you, but we don’t need to get into them right now.”
“Speaking of spells,” Liam said, as if he hadn’t even heard our exchange. “Travis, where’s our guy Seth Hartle right now? Anywhere near here?”
Travis stopped for a moment in the middle of the road before continuing as if nothing had happened. “No, he’s on the other side of town.”
“With the faint trail, he could’ve done it and been gone by now,” Randy suggested.
“I haven’t been looking after him all the time, but I’ve got a feel for him enough that I don’t think he was involved in this.”
I looked at all of them, unsure if that was good or bad. If it meant there was something else going on in Salem, that wasn’t a good thing, per se. But it also meant that perhaps we, personally, weren’t in danger with this case. For me, I could always count that as a good thing.
Ha. This case. Listen to me talking like I was a straight up Hollywood detective. “What do you call these, anyway?” I asked, curious.
Liam peeked back at me. “These?”
“Like these things, I mean,” gesturing toward the house. “Cases? Problems? Instances? Evil Magic Predicament number two-thirty-three?”
“It’s actually more like four hundred and something,” Travis said.
I gaped at him. Had he just made a joke?
The rest of the guys laughed, as if this wasn’t the most abnormal thing in the world, but I was still in shock. Randy had to tug on my arm to get me to keep up with them. When we got on the porch, Randy waved his hand over the doorknob and we just waltzed right in like we owned the place. It was nice to have the visibility spell on so we would know what waited for us on the inside. Thankfully, none of us had the inclination to do bad things with our powers. Could you imagine the damage you could do if you were a robber? Or something worse even? A disgusting, evil rapist or murderer?
My skin crawled.
Once we were all inside, we split up. Gabe and Liam ran up the stairs while Randy, Travis, and I checked out the downstairs. I checked the laundry room and the glass room off the side of the house, but didn’t feel any pull to that area. I’d been about to turn around to head up the stairs when Gabe’s British accent sounded. “Um, guys. Up here.”
A little waver punctuated his usual sure tone.
“If you get queasy, maybe stay outside? I’m in the bedroom.”
Travis and Randy were already headed up the stairs two at a time when I rounded the corner. I was the last to push in around the bed, and when I did, my heart nearly stopped. My mouth dried out, and I sucked in a breath, my hand coming up to cover the lower half of my face. A naked body lay limp in the center of the bed. Too pale to be anyone’s normal color. A lot of people were paler compared to me, but this one was unusually pale, deathly pale. A bright red trickle of blood came from the side of her mouth. “Poor thing,” I said, my stomach feeling every last heartbreaking thing my eyes caught on. The fact that she was middle-aged, most likely very pretty when not pale as death and with no life inside her.
“This is a first,” Liam said.
“Yeah?” I asked.
Travis rubbed his forehead. “Yeah, usually we can get here before it gets this far.” He turned, his skin darkening as he looked away. A shadow fell over his green eyes as he pretended to search the room.
We all gravitated out from the bed now, unwilling to look at the ghastly scene any further. It wasn’t that it was that macabre or bloody or gory. It was just gut-wrenching. Underneath everything, it had the stink of evil magic.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Someone used magic to kill this lady? Why?”
“That’s what we’re going to have to find out,” Travis said.
I sniffed the air and Randy nodded his head at me. “You smell it, right? Rotten meat?”
My stomach turned. I hadn’t quite placed the smell, but yeah. I guessed it was rotten meat. It was certainly disgusting.
“It’s not her,” Liam said. He’d noticed me glance back toward the body on the bed, her one hand angled behind her hip. “She hasn’t been gone long enough to…smell yet. It’s the magic.”
“Right,” I said. I knew that. I should’ve known that. It was just the whole dead body thing that was throwing me off.
Travis was right. I thought we did this to prevent this kind of thing from happening. I hoped our magic wasn’t that far broken that we weren’t going to get any early warnings other than after the fact. I could already tell this was the last time I wanted to see something like this.
It turned my stomach to think any
body could do this to another human being. Disgusting, and disturbing, all wrapped into one what-the-fuck-was-wrong-with-humanity sandwich.
9
Well, this was royally messed up.
My first pull. My first dead body. And Travis was actually being decent to me.
What in the actual hell?
When we left the blue house on that quaint street, Gabe steered me toward the big Jeep. I hated leaving that person there. It seemed almost cruel. When I asked Gabe what we were going to do about it, he called and had a conversation with Randy on his cell phone. Randy would take care of it. He was going to stop on the way to the tattoo parlor and use a phone somewhere to call it in anonymously even if he had to make himself invisible to do it. We couldn’t get caught up into a normal, everyday murder investigation even though that was the furthest thing from what was actually happening around here. That whole room was tinged with bad magic. But nothing, and I meant absolutely nothing because we scoured the place, gave anything away as to what exactly happened there.
So, as Randy headed off toward the tattoo studio to make up some excuse about being late, we headed back to Liam’s parents’ house.
Gabe nudged me in the ribs. “You okay?”
I nodded. What was there to say, really? I’d be the first to admit the dead body had thrown me for a loop. I’d adapt though. That’s what the human body did, right? There were defense mechanisms upon defense mechanisms so we could still continue to perform even when faced with the ultimate challenges. Humans—all we did was persevere. It was our one true magic, inherent in all of us.
Liam leaned over and said something to Travis. I watched their exchange even though there wasn’t much to go off of. Afterward, Liam looked over his shoulder from the passenger seat and said, “We’re heading to The Order headquarters. I’m going to need books.”
“Books? Headquarters?” I stared at the back of Travis’s head. Someone should really check his temperature because he sure as fuck wasn’t feeling well. I remembered a time when he didn’t want me anywhere near The Order with all their important books and historical things. Or maybe now he was just giving in to the fact that I was one of them. He’d certainly been going with the flow more often than not lately. Not that he didn’t get his jabs in, but he wasn’t directly challenging about my position in the coven either. Perhaps this was progress?
Liam took off his glasses to rub his eyes and then put them right back on. “I’m not sure exactly what I’m looking for yet. Demons that kill? Supernatural beings? Something?”
“We don’t know what it was yet, Mate,” Gabe said, leaning forward and taking me with him. “It could’ve been Dupre or this Jay guy.”
“Or something else altogether.”
I scowled at Travis’s dark head of hair. I was about to say that exact same thing. I caught his gaze in the rearview mirror and then looked away.
“I’ll drop you guys off there and then head back into town, see if I can’t figure anything out with the ambulance or coroner to get some more information.”
“Yeah, I’m going to need a cause of death,” Liam said. “It’ll help narrow my search down, anyway.”
I ran my hands through my hair. “I’m not exactly sure what you guys are all saying. Are we seriously going with the fact that something other could’ve done this?”
“And Jay using demon’s blood isn’t something other for you?” Travis asked.
“Well, yeah, it is. I guess that’s a lot more believable than what you guys are trying to explain this away with though. It’s probably not Dupre or Jay, anyway. You said yourself that Seth Hartle wasn’t anywhere near the scene and since they’ve used him several times to do their bidding…”
Liam turned around in his seat. A small smile played over his lips, automatically relaxing me. “We really don’t know what it is yet, Norah. This is all just speculation. We’re just throwing out ideas until something clicks, or until we get more information to make the puzzle pieces fit.”
Gabe squeezed me to him and kissed my ear lobe. “It’s okay,” he whispered. To the rest of them, he said, “The good news is, now we can tell Walter that we got a pull. The bad news is—”
“We didn’t actually get the pull?” Travis offered. “Norah did. And since we’re not telling him about Norah, maybe we should keep our mouths shut.”
“Okay, I guess there are two bad things. I was hoping they wouldn’t be all that interested in this ‘case’” Gabe said, squeezing me, “because we don’t want them to find out about Norah quite yet until we figure things out for ourselves. But, I absolutely think we should tell them about the pull. It will get them off our backs for a little while. If not all together.”
His voice quieted toward the end of his sentence, causing Liam to turn. His brows drew together as he regarded us, but instead of saying anything, he turned back around to look out the front windshield. I swallowed, clamping my lip down around the smile I’d given him. It felt false, fake—just plain off. I hated that we were still keeping what Gabe’s grandfather said from them. Gabe and I were going to have to have a talk soon about what we should do with that information. I also wished to hell I could get Granny to come and visit me soon. I needed her to answer some questions for me. Maybe she’d show up now that something else was going on around me. She was all for the dramatics.
Travis pulled up to a road that led into the woods. The big Jeep bumped and rattled as it rolled over ancient ruts and tree roots before pulling to a stop about a half mile down the road. Gabe, Liam, and I jumped out of the car. Before Liam shut his door, he told Travis, “Let us know.”
Travis nodded. “I’ll be back as soon as I find something out.”
Gabe pulled me close to him and we watched as Travis backed down the road. Liam turned first, and I followed him further into the woods. I remembered being in a similar place in the woods with Randy when we’d done magic together for the first time. He’d said at the time that we were close to The Order main headquarters. “So, where is this place?”
Gabe faced me away from him until he was behind me. Then, he slid his hands over my eyes. “Tell me where your magic takes you.”
I tilted my head, trying to see around his hands, but he maneuvered them back into place. “It’s probably going to take me right into a tree,” I whined.
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t let you walk into a tree. Besides, I want to show you how cool the magic is. It’ll pull you there. No trees, I promise.”
I blew out a breath and decided to play along. Even though Gabe’s fingers covered my eyes, I closed them anyway. I searched through my magic and waited until I got a pull. Then, I stepped forward. I walked on dead leave and broken branches. Thankfully, no trees popped up in my way as I stepped straight ahead, then right, before taking a left again and stopping. I opened my eyes just in time to see the air in front of me shimmer. What once was forest with leaning limbs and the bit of sunshine streaming through the canopy above us, now turned into a door.
“Open it,” Gabe whispered in my ear.
A thrill shot through me. I did as he said and a pair of stone steps leading down appeared in front of me. We walked down the dimly lit corridor until a circular room opened up before us. Liam snapped his fingers and torches on the wall sprung to life, fire sputtering out from them immediately, making the room glow in the firelight.
An etched pentagram stood out in the middle of the room with five stone benches flanking it. From the side, they looked like the symbol for Pi, two stone slabs held up by a curved bench stone. Immediately, I gravitated toward one on the right. I walked right up to it, my fingers playing against the cold stone.
“It’s probably a good thing Travis isn’t here for this,” Liam said.
His voice was far away. I turned to find him in another alcove. “Why?”
Gabe shrugged. “That was Jax’s seat. You know, he’s weird about it and all. He’ll get over it though. If he hasn’t already.”
He most certainly wasn’t over it al
ready. No matter what desire flashed in his eyes when he saw me buck naked with Gabe, he certainly wasn’t over the fact I’d taken his best friend’s spot. I hoped one day he would, but for now, all we had to do was wait for that time.
“Travis is smart,” Liam said. “He probably knew he’d have a reaction and that’s why he went back into Salem alone.”
Yup. Travis. Smart. Those were words I’d use together in a sentence.
I bit my lip. That had been mean, and it was just my defense mechanisms popping up, anyway. I needed to tone it down if I ever wanted to have any type of relationship with Travis at all. It was just hard when he was so strangle-worthy most of the time.
“So, this is it, huh?” I spun around in the middle of the pentagram and took everything in.
“This is it,” Gabe said. “I know it doesn’t look like much, but when you think about how long this has been standing and the people who stood here before us, it’s impressive.”
I turned toward Gabe to find his gaze landing on all the little nuances around the room as if he were seeing them for the first time, too. More than anyone else in The Order, I knew how much being a member meant to Gabe. It was like me keeping voodoo alive for Granny. It was the same for him with his grandfather.
Liam came out of the alcove with a stack of books. I would’ve thought they’d be dusty or dirty, but no, they were practically immaculate. I didn’t think it was magic either. They were just very well taken care of. Liam was halfway to being a superb librarian.
I grabbed a few off the top and took a seat on the floor. “Okay, where do we start?”
“We start,” Liam said, sitting down himself and peering through the pile in front of him. “By looking for any references to death in these volumes.”
“So, you guys usually have to look up stuff on your cases?” I made a face. I’d much rather be out there doing the fun stuff than any of this research business.
“Sometimes,” Liam said.
“And yes,” Gabe started. “If you’re wondering if Liam always gets this way, he does. He just loves looking stuff up.”
