Barbed Wire Heart: Oona Goodlight book two

by Alexes Razevich

  I’d hardly slept, but in the light of day, thin as it was this early, and with him under my roof, the tension and fear that had agitated me through the night slowly began to drop away.

  I peeked in the bag as we walked toward the kitchen: yogurt with strawberries for me—he knew my tastes—and plain for him. The coffee was vanilla latte. I didn’t have to ask what was in his cup. I knew it was espresso.

  I sat at the oak table, pushed the drawings still lying on the table aside, and took a sip of the coffee. Dee glanced at the drawings before he sat, took the lid off his cup, and sipped.

  “So,” he said, “Bridget was right about a messenger coming.”

  I shot him a ‘how could you know that?’ look.

  He glanced over his shoulder toward my front door. “There are a couple of crow feathers stuck between the planks on your porch.”

  I grimaced. “I’ve always liked crows. Maybe not so much anymore.”

  Dee leaned across the table and took my hand. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Scared some, but I trusted your wards and they didn’t let me down.”

  He knew his wards would hold. He didn’t need me to tell him that.

  “Did the crow deliver a message before it died?” he asked.

  A chill ran through me. I eased my hand away from his and rubbed my arms. “After.”

  He frowned

  “I know that crow was dead,” I said. “I don’t know how it could speak to me.”

  Dee set down his coffee. “Necromancy. I can think of only a handful of people who could reanimate a dead crow to deliver a message. None of them are very nice.”

  A frizz of nerves roiled in my belly.

  He pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket and frowned. “Dead battery. Can I borrow your phone?”

  I nodded and went to fetch it from my purse. We had the same brand phone, so he used my charger to rejuice his.

  I gave my phone to him and he punched in a number. He repeated the highlights of the story to whoever had answered the call. Dee listened and then said, “That’ll be fine,” and then, “Ten-thirty.”

  I gave him a ‘what was that about?’ look.

  “We need to talk to a friend of mine. We’ll meet him at Del Amo Mall.”

  “The mall?”

  Diego hated malls, and I wasn’t all that fond of them myself.

  He shrugged. “He has to pick up a birthday present for his niece at Nordstrom.”

  “Not a magical then?” I said.

  “No, he is. Even the magical shop, you know. We don’t always just conjure whatever we need from thin air, not if we want the thing to last. We’ll meet him in the café.”

  “Good,” I said, “More coffee.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You look like you need sleep more than coffee right now. I wouldn’t mind an hour or two more myself.”

  Sleep was an enticing idea. The idea of sleep with Dee beside me was almost impossible to resist, but the reality was I had too much on my mind to lie down and try to rest. If it hadn’t been so early in the morning, and the stores nowhere near opening hours, I would have been happy to go to the mall now, just to get out of the house and work off some nervous energy.

  “I don’t think I could sleep,” I said. “Too much going on.”

  My mouth was talking, but my mind focused on other things, something I felt Dee should know. Or more to the point, something I needed to tell him and get his take on.

  “Something else strange happened last night,” I said.

  12

  Dee leaned forward and nodded for me to go on.

  I swallowed. “The crow left a mess on my porch. Blood and feathers everywhere. Once I’d stopped being terrified, I knew I needed to clean everything up. I needed a broom and a dust pan but even though I knew the bird was dead, I didn’t want to turn my back on it.”

  I stopped talking and ran the events of last night through my mind one more time. Yes. I was sure about what had happened. Dee waited for me to continue.

  “I was thinking about needing the broom and dust pan. The broom closet door opened itself and the broom flew down the hall to me. I was facing the other way. It hit me in the back. The dustpan followed a moment later.” My voice dropped to a whisper. “I did it. I called them to me.”

  He thought for a moment before speaking. “You’re sure you called them? They weren’t propelled by whoever sent the crow? One last trick?”

  I did the nod your head yes and shake your head no at the same time thing. “I’m sure.”

  His forehead furrowed. “You didn’t know before that you could call and move things with your mind?”

  I shook my head firmly this time. “Like probably everyone, I’d wished I could when I’d misplaced my car keys or cell phone or whatever. But it never worked. I swear, until last night I didn’t have that power. I don’t know if I could do it again.”

  Dee hiked up a shoulder. “Telekinesis is a good ability to have.”

  He was probably right about that.

  “But why would it manifest now?” I said. “Why not when I was a kid. That’s when abilities usually start showing themselves. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know I was psychic and empathetic. I’ve never heard of anyone getting a new ability in her mid-twenties.”

  He stood and pushed the chair up to the table. “I don’t know. Either it was dormant in you or something’s changed and you gained a new ability somehow.”

  A thought seemed to strike him. “Do you not want that power?”

  I drummed my forefinger on the table. “I’m not sure how I feel about it. I can see where it would be a handy talent to have. I’m just a little at a loss as to why I suddenly acquired it, and that makes me nervous.”

  He laid his hand on my shoulder.

  “See if you can do it now.” He glanced at the things on the table. “Try to call that pencil to your hand.”

  I focused on a blue pencil I’d shoved to the back of the kitchen table, wishing I had it in my hand so I could draw.

  Nothing happened.

  I tried again, and again the pencil didn’t so much as rock gently in place, much less fly to my hand.

  I sighed. “I guess it was a one-time thing.”

  “Maybe,” Dee said. “Keep working at it though. You’re meant to have that skill.”

  “What does that mean? How can you know I’m meant to have it?”

  He half shrugged as though it were obvious. “Because of what Bridget said. ‘Learn the lesson the messenger brings.’ How to use a new power could be the lesson.” He paused. “Being brave enough to use it.”

  It was one thing to learn spells and how to cast them. It was another to have a new ability suddenly manifest. An ability that so far had worked only once, not when I wanted it to. It was like the knowledge that way—a thing that was useful but not dependable.

  Dee yawned and stretched. “If we’re not going to get some sleep, I could use a shower. I was at the airport trying to get to San Francisco or San Jose—anywhere within driving distance of Palo Alto—until I gave up and came here. I feel grimy and I need to brush my teeth.”

  Sleep was definitely out of the question now. I put Dee’s phone on to charge and thought about what he’d said. The lesson of the messenger was that I could make things move by thinking? That didn’t make a lot of sense when put against the actual message delivered: to not pursue the hunt. The hunt for Aunt Mich I’d thought at the time. What if it meant the hunt for more and new power? Maybe the lesson was to be happy with my psychic powers and stop trying to learn the sort of magic Dee did.

  I heard the water turn off in the shower. A few minutes later he emerged from the room, steam flowing out with him. He had a towel around his hips and was using another to dry his hair.

  I had a question that had been scratching at me about the magic Dee did. This seemed as good a time as any to ask it.

  “Will you tell me something honestly?”

  Dee stopped toweling his hair and looked ask
ance at me. “I’ve never not been honest with you.”

  Okay, that wasn’t the best beginning.

  I tried again. “You know your traffic trick—how you make cars move out of the way for us and lights turn green when we approach?”

  He cocked his head and looked at me. “Yeah?”

  “How do you do that?”

  His expression didn’t change. “Magic.”

  “I know magic, but yesterday when we saw The Gate and Bridget on the street, a girl ran out of a store and moved her car just in time for us to pull in next to them. Did you make her do that?”

  He sat near me on the bed. “No. There aren’t a lot of rules in the magic community. Well, there are, but there aren’t a lot I pay attention to. One that’s firm is, you don’t mess with people’s minds or their free will. You do, and it’s game over, lights out. The Magic Police and The Council have no tolerance for that, and no pity.”

  I took that in. Seemed like a darn fine rule to me.

  “Then how did you do it?”

  He blew out a breath. I knew he was trying to figure out how to say in words something he did so often and automatically that it was like trying to explain to someone how to walk.

  “I cast a general spell asking for what I need—a parking spot on such and such a block, for a car to clear a space in a lane, whatever. It’s a request. People can grant my request or not as they please. There’s usually someone who says yes. You just don’t notice when there isn’t.”

  I could see that.

  “But how do you make the traffic lights be green?”

  “That’s different. That’s machinery. I make it bend to my will.”

  He was grinning as he said it and I wasn’t quite sure if he were teasing or telling me the truth. I decided not to press it. The towel around his waist had come loose while we were talking. I suddenly had a rather good idea about how to fill the time between now and when we needed to meet his friend.

  The mall’s official name is Del Amo Fashion Center and it’s one of the largest shopping malls in the United States—a distinction that left me a little cold, frankly. I had to admit, as we walked through it, the Nordstrom was gorgeous, all white with gleaming spaciousness and some pretty nice clothes, shoes, and handbags. My shopping gene was clearly underdeveloped, but I am a woman and a few things did catch my eye as we walked through the store.

  “So, who is your friend?” I asked as we rode up the escalator.

  “He’s high up in the magic police,” Dee said.

  “Not good,” I said.

  He shot me a look.

  “The Magic Police grabbed me off the beach yesterday,” I said, “and flat out accused me of Sudie’s murder. They aren’t my favorite people right now.”

  At the top of the escalator, Dee said, “Why would they think you had anything to do with it?”

  We headed toward the café. “I’d been there that morning. And—"

  “And?”

  I blew out a breath. “And she’d evidently written my name in blood on the floor before she died.”

  He was clearly stunned by that but kept walking with no visible change of pace. No one casually watching us would ever have guessed I’d just given him news that threw him completely.

  “Why your name, do you think?” he asked when he’d recovered slightly.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it wasn’t my name. Maybe she was trying to write something else and it wound up looking like my name.”

  “Jack might have an idea about that,” he said, and we entered the café and took a table in the back, away from the other two occupied tables—one with a blonde woman with two young girls dressed in glitter T-shirts, and another woman with short brown hair sitting by herself.

  Jack bustled in a few minutes later, a large Nordstrom bag dangling from his right hand. A medium-sized man, in his forties I guessed, with sandy brown hair and blue eyes, and handsome the way all magicals seem to be. He wore a dark gray business suit and didn’t look or feel at all like the two Magic Police goons who’d accosted me on the beach.

  Dee made introductions and sketched my talking dead crow story to Jack. I tuned him out. I knew the story and didn’t want to be thinking about it right now. Now I wanted to see what I picked up from Jack. What I got was he was a serious man who took his work even more seriously. He counted Dee as a friend and vaguely worried Dee would step over the legal line one day. Jack was curious about me as a psychic and a person.

  “Not too many wizards could pull that off,” Jack said when Dee finished. “I can think of six or seven. Three are currently serving time—why is it that the powerful ones seem to go rogue? One is in South America.”

  “Who does that leave?” Dee said.

  Jack held up two fingers. “Natalya Vasiliev, who’s not as Russian as her name would lead you to believe, and Heather Brown.” He thought for a moment. “I’d add Cameron Jones to the list, too. He’s upped his game recently. None of them live locally. They’d have to commute in or cast long-distance.”

  I had my phone out and was typing the names into Notes.

  Dee’s phone vibrated on the table where he’d set it. He picked it up and read a text. He frowned, then put the phone back face down on the table.

  His vibe was suddenly both cool and angry hot. This was another of those times when I wanted to pop into his head and see what he was thinking. He and I really were going to have to talk about him letting me into his thoughts once in a while.

  “If you had to pick one,” Dee said, hardly missing a beat “who’d be the most likely?

  “One of the women,” Jack said. “Of the two, I’d go for Natalya.”

  I made a mental note to Google the two women’s names when I got home, in hopes there was a photograph, and I’d at least have a face to watch out for.

  Jack seemed to think all of this could be coming from a distance, but that wasn’t right. Whoever had sent the crow had been nearby. I’d felt them. And Sudie hadn’t been killed by some long-distance curse. Her death had been up-close.

  The MP turned his attention to me. “I recognize your name, Oona Goodlight. You were questioned about Sudie Wakanabe’s death.”

  It was my turn to shrug, and to worry I was about to be hauled in again, or at the very least interrogated right here in Nordstrom.

  Jack leaned close to me.

  “You be very careful when you’re outside the protection of Diego’s wards. In fact, you’d do well to not go outside your house at all.”

  13

  “Do you know those people?” I said as we drove down Anza Avenue, back toward my house. I glanced at the names in my phone. “Natalya Vasiliev. Heather Brown. Cameron Jones.”

  “I know Natalya. I met Cameron once when I was back east on a case. I only know Heather Brown by reputation.”

  There was something in the way he said Natalya that made me think he knew her rather well. I shot him some side-eye.

  Dee laughed. “Not like that. We’ve met a couple of times. She’s a bit too tightly wound and fond of drama for me to have been interested in. Not to mention that she’s old enough to be my grandmother. Maybe my great-grandmother.”

  His mouth curved into a slow grin. “Were you jealous there for a moment, Oona?”

  “Would you like me to be?”

  He shrugged. “A little, maybe. Good for the ego to have your girlfriend be a little jealous once in a while.” He paused, thinking. “No. I’d rather you felt confident enough in us to never be jealous.”

  “Good,” I said. “I’d rather that, too. Both ways.”

  We didn’t talk much about us, our relationship, what it was, what it might be, where it was going. We just were. It was a new experience for me. I liked it.

  “Which one of the three would you tap as the killer?” I said.

  We were approaching the intersection of Herondo Street and Pacific Coast Highway. The light turned green and we breezed on through.

  “I can’t see it being any of them.” H
e thought as he drove. “If I had to pick one, I’d agree with Jack on Natalya.”

  “Why her?”

  He thought again before answering. “Like I said, she’s tightly wound. Very intense. She’s not cruel, I don’t think. And not the kind to murder for money or anything tangible. I wouldn’t be all that surprised, though, if someone told me she’d just snapped one day.”

  I tried to feel if that could have been what happened, a wizard who’d snapped, but nothing came. My abilities were like that—sometimes a feeling would come, sometimes not. Sometimes the knowledge hit me. Sometimes not. A little more consistency would have been nice.

  “Is it worth finding out if she knew Aunt Mich?” I said. “Could we find out?”

  Dee shrugged. “I can ask around. I know people who know her much better than I do. Which isn’t to say they’d know the names of everyone Natalya knows. Jack might be a better resource for that.”

  “Even if she knew Aunt Mich, why would she murder Broadhurst and Sudie?” I said.

  “Sudie’s in the community. She might have known about a connection between Natalya and the missing woman.”

  “Or seen Aunt Mich’s abduction,” I said. “Getting rid of witnesses. But why Broadhurst? He was killed months before Aunt Mich disappeared. How does it all fit together?”

  Dee pulled up next to my garage and switched off the engine. “We should probably stay at my place for a while.”

  I nodded. He knew I preferred my own house, but I knew that no matter how strong the wards on my place were, or how good Sudie’s personal protection spell had been, his place was the smarter choice. The stalker knew where I lived. He or she might not know where Dee did.

  “We?” I said. “Don’t you have a plane to catch?”

  He tsked his tongue against the backs of his teeth. “It seems the wedding is off.”

  The text he got while we were talking to Jack. It was probably the news.

  “Why? What happened?”

  He shook his head in that ‘don’t want to talk about it’ way. Dee was a private person in general and close to secretive about his family, despite his wanting me to meet them.