Dangerously Divine

by Deborah Blake

  Elisabeth handed Gregori a couple of rolls, still warm from the oven. “Here,” she said. “One for you and one for your friend.”

  A plaintive meow came from the direction of the floor, and she leaned over the table. “Did you actually bring a cat out in this?” Elisabeth aimed a fierce scowl in his direction, and for a second, he thought she was going to grab the roll right out of his fingers.

  “The cat brought himself,” Bella explained calmly. “He is amazingly difficult to argue with. Also, he wanted to know if he could have one of these too. They smell fantastic.” She held out a hand. “I’m Bella, an old friend of Gregori’s. My large companion is Koshka, and he’s a Norwegian Forest Cat. He’s considerably more at home in this weather than we are.”

  At her feet, Koshka muttered, “Wanna bet?” Fortunately, to anyone other than Bella and Gregori, it would merely sound like meowing.

  “Elisabeth,” the other woman said, reaching across to shake. “I’ve got to say, that’s the biggest cat I’ve ever seen. Do you think he’d rather have a bowl of milk than a roll?”

  Koshka growled and Elisabeth raised one gray eyebrow. “Okaaaay, then,” she said. “One roll, coming right up.” She looked at Gregori and said, “Have you eaten anything? We could spare a couple of bowls of soup to go with those rolls.”

  “Thank you, but no,” he said. Any appetite he might have had had fled when he discovered that Ciera was still gone. “Have you tried calling Ciera, by any chance?”

  Elisabeth shrugged, handing out more soup, her attention already mostly elsewhere. “I don’t have a phone number for her. She doesn’t socialize with the rest of us. Philip might have one in his office at the shelter, but he lives in St. Paul and didn’t make it in today.” She turned sharp blue eyes in his direction. “You clearly have a vehicle that’s getting you through this storm, although I can’t imagine how. Maybe you could swing by her apartment and check to see if she’s there?”

  “I believe I will do that,” Gregori said. “Thank you for the rolls.”

  As they walked toward the door, Koshka leading the way with his fluffy tail held high, Bella turned back to Elisabeth and said in a stage whisper, with a wink, “He has a magic horse.”

  The gray-haired woman laughed and muttered under her breath, “Now, that I’d like to see.”

  The black woman dishing out slices of ham next to her said, “Hell, I’m just happy to watch him walk away. That is one fine man.”

  Elisabeth stared after him. “I suspect he is,” she said, but she wasn’t looking at his butt.

  • • •

  GREGORI, Bella, and Koshka got back on the motorcycle and headed for Ciera’s apartment building. It was a good thing it was only a couple of miles away, because the going was even rougher than before and night was beginning to fall along with the snow. Streetlights glittered off powdery piles of pristine white, mostly unsullied by the presence of man as yet. Gregori had to admit that there was a certain crystalline beauty to it, if you could ignore how treacherous and deadly it was.

  Wary of snowplows, Gregori wheeled the bike up onto the sidewalk using the mounded snow as a ramp and parked it right next to the brick wall. He wasn’t too worried about it being in the way of the mostly nonexistent passersby, and even in this somewhat dubious neighborhood it was not as though anyone could steal it. The Ducati had been known to bite, if necessary.

  The front door to the building was locked, of course. Gregori could have picked it, given the right tools and less-frozen fingers, but Bella simply waved her hand and the lock clicked.

  “After you,” she said, pulling the door open with a flourish.

  “Witches can sometimes be handy to have around,” Koshka commented smugly as he walked into the tiny lobby.

  They climbed up the three flights of stairs to Ciera’s apartment. Gregori knocked on the door and listened hopefully, but there was no answer. He tried again, with the same result.

  He didn’t want to think about Ciera out in the storm somewhere, either by herself or trying to shepherd three scared and possibly high teenage girls. He also refused to think of the various things that could have gone wrong besides the weather.

  “Earth to Gregori,” Bella said quietly. “What’s the plan now?”

  He took a deep breath, clearing his mind of too many possible grim realities.

  “Now you repeat your trick from downstairs, and we use Ciera’s apartment for your quiet space to do magic. Hopefully, she’ll forgive me if she comes home and discovers unexpected visitors.”

  He would even be happy to deal with her anger, if that meant she was standing in front of him, safe and sound.

  Once inside the small space, they gratefully shed their layers. Gregori turned on a dim lamp by the door, and Koshka shook himself and went to perch on the windowsill, gazing down on the sidewalk below.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for your friend,” he said. “If I see her, we can always duck back out and pretend we were waiting for her.”

  “Good idea,” Bella said. “What does she look like, Gregori?”

  “She’ll probably be wearing a dark leather jacket with a hoodie underneath it and jeans,” he said. “And she is astonishingly beautiful, with kinky black hair and striking hazel eyes. You will know her when you see her, I am certain.”

  Bella and Koshka stared at him.

  “What?” he asked.

  Bella hid a smile behind one hand. “Nothing,” she said. “I’ve just never heard you talk about a woman like that.”

  “I just said she was beautiful. It is a factual description. Nothing more.”

  “Uh-huh,” Koshka said, and turned back to the window.

  Gregori decided to ignore them both. “What do you need?” he asked Bella.

  “Well, a scrying mirror would help,” she said. “But unless your friend Ciera is a witch, I doubt she would have one. Look for a bowl with a dark interior, something like that. Not plastic.”

  Sun rooted around in the kitchen cabinets, finally turning up a dark blue ceramic dish that looked like it was meant to hold pasta, or maybe fruit. There was a tiny chip on one edge, and a scratch across the outside finish.

  “Will this suffice?” he asked, holding it out. “It is not perfect, but it seems to be the closest thing she has.”

  Bella turned it around in her hands. “I think so,” she said. “We’ll have to make do. This is why I like traveling in the caravan; all my magical tools are right at hand.”

  Koshka snorted, making tiny puffs of smoke come out of his nostrils. “If we were in the caravan, we’d still be stuck somewhere on the edge of town,” he said without taking his eyes off the street. “It may be as enchanted as the Riders’ motorcycles, but no amount of magic would have gotten something that size through all these blocked roads.”

  Bella couldn’t argue with that, and simply filled the bowl most of the way with water and set it on the table next to a chunky candle she’d found on the simple dresser in the bedroom.

  “Both Barbara and Beka are better at this than I am,” she admitted, “but I have a certain amount of experience with unnatural storms.” She snorted ironically, remembering her own adventures. “If there is something wrong with this one, I suspect it will be pretty obvious.” She slid into a chair and then looked up at Gregori.

  “Not that I’m not happy to help, but why do you need me for this? Barbara said you were having visions, and precognition and such. I’d think you could do this for yourself.”

  He pulled up the only other chair and sat down next to her. It creaked ominously. No doubt another one of Ciera’s curbside finds.

  “I have no control over what I see, or when I see it,” he explained. Or anything else. “All I have to go on right now is a gut feeling, based on years of dealing with the arcane and unusual. No proof, nor, for that matter, any idea of what to do if in fact the storm is supernatural in
origin.”

  “Ah,” she said. “I’ll just do my thing, then.” She lit the candle with a snap of her fingers and moved it over a half inch until its tiny light fell onto the surface of the water just the way she wanted it. Then she put one hand on either side of the bowl and gazed into its depths, so still she was barely breathing.

  Gregori sat just as still, not wanting to disturb her concentration. Scrying was a difficult art, but it had the benefits of being simple and requiring nothing much in the way of tools. If Bella had to do something truly magical, they would have to make do with whatever she’d thrown into the bag she’d worn slung over her jacket—at a guess, a few herbs, some stones, and maybe a charm or two. It was hard to plan ahead when you had no idea what you were dealing with. Or if there was anything to deal with at all. Maybe he was wrong, and this was just a storm like any other.

  The candle flickered once, twice, and then grew distinctly brighter for a moment, its flame doubling in size for no obvious reason. Bella started, sitting up so fast she caused a ripple in the water, so fast Gregori had no chance to see whatever image had temporarily crossed its surface. But he could tell that whatever it was had alarmed her; her eyes were wide and her cheeks flushed, and her slim hands had tightened on the sides of the bowl as if to hold back the vision she had seen.

  “Bad news?” he asked in a calm voice.

  “Holy goddess,” she said. “Are we in for it.”

  CHAPTER 21

  CIERA hadn’t found the girls at the overpass, but there were another two teens there, a scrawny, dreamy-eyed couple who clung to each other for warmth as they toked on something they tried to hide when she came up to them. With their long, straggly hair and nearly identical attire, only the shadow of stubble on one dirty face let Ciera know which one was the male and which the female.

  “Hey,” she said, as gently as possible. “I’m not here to make trouble. I’m just looking for three of my friends. Maybe you know them? Their names are Kelli, Julie Ann, and Shannon.”

  The girl looked at her with a pinched, shut-off expression. “Don’t know nobody by that name. You a cop?”

  Ciera laughed, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “I’m a librarian. I volunteer over at the soup kitchen, and we were worried because they hadn’t come in.” She tried to project an aura of benign concern. “By the way, you guys should check it out. There’s homemade chicken soup today.”

  “Chicken soup.” The boy breathed the words out like they were a mantra. “Man, my mom used to make the best chicken soup.”

  “I don’t know if it is as good as your mom’s,” she said. “But it is pretty damned good. Just tell them Ciera sent you.”

  She started to walk away and then turned back to add, “Oh, and if you happen to come across my friends, ask them to go on over to the shelter, okay?”

  As she took a couple of purposely slow steps, she could hear muttered whispering behind her, then rustling noises as the two teens rose and hurried after her.

  “Hey! Hey, lady,” the girl said, pulling what looked like an old military sleeping bag around her shoulders. “Wait up.”

  Ciera stopped and turned around. “Yes?”

  “We might have seen them,” she said, kicking the snowy ground with one sneaker-clad foot. “Like, right when we got here. I know Kelli a little bit, not much, but one of the girls had hair that looked like hers.”

  “Do you know where they went?” Ciera asked, expecting the answer to be no.

  The boy shrugged. “Somewhere better than here, I guess. They got into this big, fancy car. One of those ones that looks kind of like an SUV and a tank mated and had a baby. Those suckers cost a mint, man, so they must have way classier friends than we do.”

  Ciera tried to think who on earth the girls could have known who would have a car like the one the boy described. She hoped they hadn’t gotten so desperate they’d taken up prostitution, which was about the only reason she could think of for girls like them to be getting into a rich man’s car. But what kind of crazy man would be riding around picking up underage hookers in weather like this? Maybe whoever it was had simply taken pity on them and driven them someplace warm?

  “Did you get a look at who was driving the car?” she asked. “Or any idea of where they were heading?”

  “No idea where they were goin’,” the boy said. “But they didn’t seem all that happy about it. There was a couple of guys talking to them and kinda shoving ’em into the back. Not nice guys, if you know what I mean.”

  Ciera suddenly felt even colder, and pulled her coat in close around her. Big, expensive car plus thugs could only mean one thing in this neighborhood—a drug dealer. But what the hell would a drug dealer high enough up on the food chain to have a Hummer, if that’s what it was, want with Julie Ann, Shannon, and Kelli? There was something strange going on here, and she had a bad feeling about it. One that was getting worse by the minute.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “Look, I’m going to walk back to the shelter. Why don’t you come with me and get some of that soup?”

  The two teens exchanged looks and then nodded in unison, grabbing up a couple of backpacks that they’d been using as seats. They trailed along behind her as she slogged back over her own tracks in the snow, making her feel a little bit like a mother duck and her ducklings. She tried to feel good about at least bringing in someone, even though it wasn’t the someones she’d been hoping for.

  But every step away from the overpass made her stomach knot up even more, and the skin on the back of her neck began to itch, as though she was being watched. She had no idea what was going on, or why the three girls had gotten into that mystery car. But whatever the answer was, she had a sinking feeling she wasn’t going to like it.

  Not one little bit.

  • • •

  WHEN Ciera and her new strays got to the soup kitchen, it was almost completely dark out. Night fell early in the winter, and the temperatures were dipping sharply with its onset. Ciera knew the shelters would all be full to overflowing, but she hoped that somehow they could find room for two more. Anyone not under cover on a night like this would more than likely be dead by morning.

  As they approached the doorway, a hulking shadow detached itself from a nearby brick wall, looming up like a yeti from the mounds of snow heaped against the building. Ciera stiffened, every instinct screaming out in alarm. The shadow manifested into a large man dressed in a well-cut ski jacket that did nothing to disguise the massive muscles underneath, or the nearly invisible bulge that shouted gun to anyone who knew what to look for.

  “Ciera Evans?” he asked. “My boss would like a word, if it isn’t inconvenient.” Despite the perfectly polite tone, the man radiated menace like a second skin.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, equally civilly. “But I have a lot on my plate tonight. I don’t know who your boss is, but I’m afraid he’ll have to wait for some other time.” She gave the young couple a subtle nudge in the direction of the door.

  “If you’re looking for something you misplaced, my boss might be able to help you,” the hulk said. He turned his right hand and opened it quickly, revealing a glimpse of a small, circular piece of metal before his meaty fingers clamped shut on it again. “He’s a very helpful man, my boss.”

  Was that Shannon’s lip ring? There wasn’t anything truly distinctive about it, but why else would this guy be showing her such a thing? Her instincts told her this was a trap, but her heart said it might not be one she could walk away from.

  “I’ll bet,” she answered. She considered her options, which were sadly limited. What she really wanted was to go inside, where there were crowds and she’d be safe. But if this guy knew something about where the girls were—or had something to do with their mysterious transportation away from the overpass—she couldn’t just walk away. She wondered if Gregori had ever returned. If maybe he was waiting for her just on the other side of that
door.

  As she hesitated, a huge black Hummer with darkened windows glided out of the gloom like a great white shark. A rear window slid down without a sound and a smooth, familiar voice said, “Will Miss Evans be joining us, Roy?”

  Terror shivered down Ciera’s spine and froze her feet to the ground. She could feel the prickle of sweat inside her shirt and the pounding of her heart like drumbeats of warning. She glanced from the car to the soup kitchen’s entrance and back again, gauging the distance. She could make it inside. The two kids she’d just picked up were already almost to the door. She could run for it, make it to safety. If he’d found her, she’d have to pick up and move again, reinvent herself, but she’d done it before. She just had to make it through the next few minutes.

  She could do it.

  And then a single word from the interior of the vehicle narrowed her choices to one: her name, uttered by a high-pitched female voice that sounded uncertain and a little scared. “Ciera?”

  Roy opened his hand and showed the nose ring again, along with the hint of a predator’s smile.

  Ciera sighed. The teens she’d brought back from the overpass were poised to enter the warmth and sanctuary of the soup kitchen, and the boy had turned back to wait for her, a questioning look on his thin face.

  “Go on in,” she said. “It’s okay.”

  “Hey,” the girl said. “Isn’t that the car—” The boy, smarter, or with better instincts maybe, made a shushing noise and shoved her inside. Maybe he’d tell someone about the Hummer. Maybe he’d just sit down and eat some chicken soup. It probably didn’t matter. Ciera suspected her fate was sealed either way.

  Roy opened the middle door of the Hummer and gestured courteously for Ciera to get in. For lack of a better option, she did, knowing it probably meant she would soon be dead. Or worse, that she wouldn’t be.

  • • •

  “SO, I take it there is indeed a problem?” Gregori said to Bella.