Thrall

by Jennifer Blackstream

  “What?” Rima looked down, then noticed she was still wearing her student ID on a lanyard around her neck. “Oh. Yes.”

  “What are you studying?” I asked.

  She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Pediatrics.”

  “For example, if someone offered to pay for your schooling, but only if you got a degree in pediatrics, instead of the degree in forensic anthropology you really wanted.”

  Renee’s earlier question floated back to me. I tilted my head. “Pediatrics is an important field. New life. But there are other fields that can offer great satisfaction as well. For example…forensic anthropology.”

  Rima’s eyes lit up. “Oh, I know. I was reading about the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation. They do such amazing work. Giving names to all those people, giving their families closure.” A shadow passed over her face. “Too often those lost in times of war are forgotten. Reduced to a number on the news.” Her gaze drifted to the window. “Even here there are too many buried without a name in Highland Hills. It’s not right. No one should ever be forgotten.”

  “Like Jamila?” I asked gently.

  Rima flinched. This time when her gaze landed on the window, I knew where she was looking.

  “You knew Jamila was dead, didn’t you? You… You heard her.”

  “You have to leave,” Rima said, her voice so low I almost didn’t hear her. “You have to leave now.”

  I took a step closer, trying to move slowly despite the adrenaline pouring through me. “Can I see your right shoulder please?”

  She jerked back so fast she nearly fell over. “You need to leave.”

  Peasblossom vanished from sight. Rima’s eyes darted around, looking for her, but I took another step, drawing her attention to me.

  “I want to help you. Please, let me help you.”

  “You can’t help us,” she rasped. “We won’t let you. We can’t. Or—”

  Her body stiffened, her eyes locking onto me, unmoving, unseeing. I had a split second for my brain to remind me this is what Renee had looked like. This was the warning I’d failed to heed before.

  Scath moved faster. Even as my magic roared to form a shield before me, Scath dove into the space between me and Rima, claws protruding from her fingertips, feline snarl curling up from her chest. Just before my shield spell gathered into solid energy in front of me, I felt a chill roll outward from Rima. A second later, she tilted her head, studying Scath for only the briefest of moments before finding me.

  “Who are you?”

  The words were formed with Rima’s lips, spoken with her voice. But it wasn’t her. Someone had borrowed her body, used her mouth and its muscle memory.

  “I’m Shade Renard. Mother Renard. Who are you?”

  “You may call me the Emperor. Why are you stalking the women in my care?”

  My heart pounded so hard it was difficult to hear myself think. Or maybe that was the sickening aura of evil soaking the room around me.

  “I’m trying to find the person responsible for Jamila Samaha’s murder.”

  Rima frowned. “Why?”

  “Because finding murderers is what I do.”

  Scath rolled her shoulders, shaking herself the way cats do. I could almost see her feline form, fur standing straight up.

  “Is it?” Rima narrowed her eyes. “But you’re a witch.”

  I drew myself up to my full height, fixing the Emperor with a witchy look honed over years of dealing with people taller than me, creatures that would eat me given half a chance and a skipped lunch. “Everything is a witch’s business.”

  “Not this.” Rima took a step closer, but stopped when Scath hissed and flexed her fingers, making her claws click together. She wrinkled her nose at the sidhe, then turned back to me. “Go home, witch. If you continue to threaten what is mine, I will bring suffering down upon you and those you love, the likes of which you have never seen before.”

  I gritted my teeth, but before I could tell the Emperor exactly what he could do with his threat, he was gone. Rima slumped, stumbling a step forward. Scath caught her, but I thought it looked more like she wanted to make sure Rima didn’t try anything than any real concern.

  Footsteps pounded on the stairs. My brain spun a mile a minute. I had seconds before we were interrupted. Seconds to try and get information out of a woman whose master could take over her body at will, possess her mind. Rima put a hand to her head, brows furrowed in disorientation. Now was my chance.

  “Little Red Riding Hood,” I said quickly. “What was the name of the wolf that killed the little girl and her grandmother? He was a werewolf, what was his name? What was his name?!”

  I pushed a little magic into my voice with the last sentence, a hint of charm. Rima’s eyes widened.

  “Connor,” she blurted out. “His name is Connor.”

  Chapter 6

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  Rima scurried out of the doorway until her back hit the hallway wall. Dr. Fakhoury crested the stairs, heading straight for me, and Rima took advantage of the opening to flee down the stairs. Aubrey fixed me with a look that would have felled a lesser witch and jabbed a finger toward the stairs.

  “Now, please,” she said stiffly. “You’re upsetting them, and I’ve already told you I don’t have the answers you want. Please go.”

  Liam came up the stairs, blue eyes meeting mine briefly before locking onto the other woman. “Dr. Fakhoury, we need—”

  “It’s fine, we’ll leave.” I sidled around the startled doctor and took Liam’s arm. “I didn’t mean to upset Rima, really I didn’t. If you could tell her that for me, doctor? Tell her I’m sorry?”

  Aubrey smoothed her hands down her skirt. “Yes, well… Yes, I’ll tell her. But you will leave now?”

  I nodded, tugging at Liam to come with me down the stairs. Scath followed behind us, and I didn’t miss the way Aubrey gave the sidhe a wide berth. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, Liam’s muscles tensed in my grip.

  “Detective Stafford, we’re leaving,” Liam said sharply.

  I looked up to see Stafford standing in the kitchen near the table. He had his hand on a black leather purse hanging from the nearest kitchen chair.

  “What are you doing?” Dr. Fakhoury rushed into the kitchen, looking like she intended to slap the detective’s hand away.

  Stafford dropped his hand as he watched her approach, but there was a blank expression in his eyes, as if he were looking at something else. I paused with my hand on the knob to the front door. Was he getting a vision?

  “Sorry,” Detective Stafford said, shaking himself out of his reverie. “My apologies.”

  I looked around for the other women and Rima, but they were nowhere to be found. Probably hidden away to wait until we left. It didn’t matter. I had a new lead. And now that I knew there was a guard-doctor at Foundations, if I needed more information from the residents, I knew it would be better to approach them in public. Away from doctors and lawyers.

  Stafford and Liam followed me back to our vehicles, and I waited for them to gather around, peering around them to make certain no one from the house was watching.

  “You saw something,” I said, turning to face Stafford. “What was it?”

  The detective leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I think I caught an image of the werewolf that killed Jamila. It wasn’t clear enough for a description, but I got a…a feeling. I think the werewolf that was involved in Jamila’s death was military. Or ex-military.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “That’s probably not specific enough to be helpful. I’m sorry.”

  My pulse sped up. “Actually, that may be the other piece I needed. Liam, can Blake look up werewolves who’ve served in the military?”

  Liam rolled his left sleeve up a little higher, then reached for his cell phone. “Yes. The Vanguard requires shifters to register with them if they join a human law enforcement agency, including all military branches
.”

  “Perfect. Have him look for a werewolf with the first name Connor.”

  Stafford tensed.

  “Do you know Connor?” I asked, pointing at Stafford.

  The detective relaxed and shook his head. “No, sorry, I don’t. I don’t have much cause to spend time with werewolves.” He snapped his fingers. “But I could check arrest reports and crosscheck them with the Vanguard’s military files. It’s possible if I can see this guy’s mug shot, it might add clarity to my vision, or even trigger another one. Can’t hurt, right?”

  He backed away from me, heading for his car.

  “You’re leaving?” I asked.

  “My vision was too muddled to be helpful, but there are things I can do to try and make it more clear. Meditation, things like that. Most of it requires quiet and a little solitude.” He opened his car door. “I’ll call you. Keep me updated?”

  He closed the door before I could answer, and I blinked as he pulled out of the driveway and took off down the road.

  “Well, that’s not suspicious,” Scath murmured.

  “Forget him,” Peasblossom said.

  I jumped as she dropped her invisibility an inch in front of my face. Her pink features twisted into a self-satisfied grin that made me smile without thinking. I knew that look.

  “You’ve found something, haven’t you?” I guessed.

  Peasblossom beamed. “Rima has the same tattoo.”

  “That’s two out of three for sure.” I circled the truck and climbed inside while Liam called Blake, my mind whirling a mile a minute. I stared in the direction that Stafford’s car had disappeared, then twisted to talk to Scath in the backseat. “Is it just me, or did it seem to you that Stafford knew the name Connor?”

  “Oh, he recognized it,” Scath confirmed. “And he wasn’t happy to hear you say it.”

  “That’s what I thought. Why do you suppose that is?”

  Scath shrugged.

  “Maybe he lied about his vision being muddled,” Peasblossom suggested. “Maybe he did recognize the werewolf, and he wants to be the one to solve the case.”

  “Saying he got the impression he was ex-military wouldn’t exactly have narrowed it down,” Scath agreed. “As far as clues go, it wouldn’t have done you nearly as much good without the name. And he couldn’t have known you’d get that from Rima.”

  Liam opened the car door and slid inside. “Well, he did give us the name, and now he’s not going to beat us there. I have an address.”

  My mouth fell open. “Already?”

  “I called Blake to have him run the name, then I called Kylie to tell her to be ready to run the DNA when we got it. I told her the name, and she recognized it. Apparently, there’s a group of shifters that comes into a bar near her house. Three of them, all ex-military. One of them, Connor, has a bad habit of starting trouble and usually has to be carried out by his two brothers, Toby and Kurt. Kylie says if it weren’t for Toby and Kurt, someone would have turned Connor over to me by now.”

  “Worth a shot,” I agreed.

  Liam pulled out of the driveway, and I couldn’t help but look back at the boarding house, imagining Rima inside. She’d heard Jamila die, I was sure of it. That’s why the Emperor had killed Jamila where he had. So he could make sure his other victims heard her die.

  “Did you learn anything about Foundations?” I asked, forcing my attention to Liam.

  The alpha didn’t take his eyes off the road, as if he could will the traffic in front of us to move faster. It was after seven so the sun had set, and every streetlight chased back the shadows darkening his face.

  “Mariam and Kaila and Rima are from Damascus, and all three applied to the US Embassy for a travel visa within the last year.”

  “All three were denied?”

  Liam nodded. “Then a week later, they received a letter from Foundations offering them a work visa. According to the offer, if their application was accepted, they would travel to Ohio and stay at Foundations. They’d be assigned jobs, improve their English, and eventually be fitted to an occupation that suited their skills. All of this with the promise that eventually they would earn a green card, and permanent citizenship.”

  “Sounds a little too good to be true,” Peasblossom observed.

  “It didn’t escape my attention that they were all beautiful women,” I added. “And I have a hard time believing that it would be that easy for them to get permission to stay here permanently. The United States isn’t exactly welcoming new immigrants right now.”

  “I asked if they could point me to anyone who’d graduated the program,” Liam said. “But Dr. Fakhoury told me the program was too new.”

  “Did they give you any names? Anything that would help us find the people in charge?”

  “No. And what’s more, they all claimed to have signed a confidentiality contract. They can’t discuss details of their arrangements. No names. And, that same contract requires them to remain at Foundations until they graduate the program.” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “And they were also not able to legally disclose what that graduation entails.”

  “Rima has the same tattoo as Renee,” I told him. “Peasblossom saw it.”

  “I tried to ask the others to show me their shoulders, but Dr. Fakhoury put a quick stop to that.”

  “Well, I don’t think we need any further confirmation. Not after my little visit from the Emperor.”

  Liam quirked an eyebrow at me. “The Emperor? Who—” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Wait a minute. You’re talking about the person that dragged Jamila to the astral plane, aren’t you? The one who had her killed.”

  “I think so.” I told him about my impromptu meeting, including how shaken Rima had been afterward and how horrible the being’s aura had felt.

  The vein in Liam’s temple bulged, and the air in the truck heated up as his aura responded to his temper. “Was he the one who gave you Connor’s name?”

  I shook my head. “It was a spur of the moment idea. I had the thought that if the Emperor was possessing these women, there was a chance that some of his memories lingered in their memory. In which case, Rima could have known more than she thought she did. Since the Emperor, whoever he is, had just left her, and she was already shaken, I thought I might be able to get an answer she didn’t know she had.”

  Liam frowned. “I’m not following.”

  “She asked her to name the killer wolf in Red Riding Hood,” Peasblossom told him. “After dropping the word ‘werewolf.’”

  “The idea being, if she tried to think of a name quickly, with the context clues of being a killer and a werewolf, her subconscious might supply a name that fit even if she wasn’t aware why it fit,” I explained.

  Liam fell silent. I left him to his thoughts and stared out my window at the dark sky. My stomach knotted, and I couldn’t seem to shake the chill clinging to my skin. It had been one thing to know the Emperor was likely spying on the women he victimized with the tattoos. That had been bad enough. But to know he could possess them as well. Take over their bodies at will. That was disturbing on a new level.

  And what did that mean for our investigation? What did it mean that the killer might be hiding in our witnesses, ready to strike at any time? How would I ever get them to talk to me, how could I help them, if they knew as well as I did that their abuser could be listening? That he could not only hear their conversations, but take them over?

  Liam pulled over to park on the side of the road. I tore myself out of my own thoughts to see an apartment building looming in front of us. Streetlights illuminated the brick and aluminum siding combination that made up the exterior, and since it was after sunset, most of the occupied apartments had their lights on. Sadly, none of them had a sign saying “Werewolves Live Here.”

  Liam’s aura hummed with enough energy that I was surprised the engine didn’t keep running after he pulled the key out of the ignition. “We need a DNA sample from Connor. Vincent found his fur in one
of the wounds on Jamila’s body, and if we can get something for him to match it to, I can bring Connor in and find out who hired him.”

  Scath sat forward in her seat. “And Kylie said he has two brothers. So we’re going to talk to three rogue werewolves?”

  There was something a little too eager in her voice. I glanced back to see her slide out of the truck, careful to hold onto the small bag with a perma-kitten peeking his fuzzy grey head out of it.

  “When was the last time we set him off?” Peasblossom demanded. “Maybe we should make him go before we go inside.”

  “Make him go?” Liam echoed.

  I closed the truck door behind me. “Scath thinks if we ‘set him off’ on purpose, then he won’t do it by accident.”

  “Go off?”

  “Summon elephants,” Peasblossom explained.

  It wasn’t until that moment that it occurred to me Liam didn’t know much about Majesty. He hadn’t been around for most of the kitten’s chaos—that had been Andy’s privilege. I winced. That was something I probably should have mentioned before now.

  “I’ll explain later,” I said, infusing my voice with as much confidence as I could.

  “He’s fine,” Scath said shortly, absently petting Majesty on his soft little head. She considered it, then took off the pouch and handed it to me. “You carry him. If things go south, I’ll need freedom to move. You can fight just as easily with him strapped around you.”

  I started to protest, but Liam was already half-way to the apartment building’s front door and I had to run to catch up.

  “So, how does this work, exactly?” I asked as we entered the building.

  “How does what work?” Liam asked, reading the list of names near the door.

  “Rogues. You mentioned once that you allowed shifters who came to New Moon to decide to live on their own if they want to. But when you mention rogues… Well, it sort of sounds like you’re expecting trouble.”

  “Wolves are pack animals,” Liam said shortly. He jabbed at one of the names. “Apartment 32B.”

  “Well, yes, but what if they form their own group?” I asked. “Not a pack, per se, but a group of friends. Or family?”