by Keri Arthur
“Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice was wont to say.”
“Indeed. I’ve asked Jackie to keep digging.” She glanced at her watch. “We’d better go. I’ll head down to pay the bill and meet you outside in ten minutes.”
I shifted shape, then grabbed my knives and flew out the window. While I waited for Mo, I drifted in lazy circles, enjoying the freedom of the skies and the ripple of wind through my feathers. Even on a cold, dull day like this, it was a glorious sensation.
Mo appeared below and strode down the pavement, no doubt looking for an empty side street before she took to the wing. While it was no secret the De Montfort line were shape-shifters, there were still some humans who got freaked out by the whole process. Which was weird, given the magic involved basically hid all the gory details of the shift. Thankfully, it also took care of the pain the process involved. I didn’t think many of us would be switching forms too often if it didn’t.
Once she’d joined me on wing, we flew on. By the time we got to Thornaby, it was drizzling. Jules’s house was a small two up, two down situated in a cul-de-sac close to a meandering river. The small front yard had been concreted over, and there was a blue Ford parked in front of the attached garage. I flew over the tiled roof to check out the backyard; it clearly hadn’t been mown in some time.
I swooped around and followed Mo past the trees lining the end of the cul-de-sac before landing beside her. Once I’d strapped on my knives, we climbed over a wire fence and walked to Jules’s house. The place was quiet; dust and dead bugs lined the windowsills on either side of the door, and spiders hung between the glass and the net curtains.
Mo pressed the doorbell. The chime echoed inside but drew no response. The door was locked.
“Maybe he’s out.”
“Maybe.” She stepped out from under the protection of the porch and peered up. “The curtains are drawn. It’s possible he’s asleep.”
There was something in her tone that had my eyebrows rising. “But you don’t think so?”
“No. My trouble antenna is quivering.”
And that was never a good thing. “Should we enter via the back door? We don’t need to be seen breaking in—”
“It’s hardly breaking in when the door is left open.” She pressed her fingers around the deadlock. Power surged, a brief flame that spoke of a power I’d not seen her use before. With a soft click, the door opened.
I gave her a long look. “And where did you learn to do that?”
“I once had a brief liaison with a king’s thief. He taught me more than a few tricks.”
Some of which weren’t magic based, if the smile twitching her lips was anything to go by. “Why would a king need a thief?”
“How else was he to uncover the court’s secrets? Courtiers weren’t exactly known for their honesty or their piety.”
I snorted and followed her inside. The small entrance hall held a coat stand under which sat a pair of well-worn brown boots. Beside it was a kitchen chair, and directly ahead a set of carpeted stairs. To our right lay what looked to be a sitting room.
The air smelled musty, suggesting it had been locked up for a while. But there was something else here, too, something I’d smelled before.
Death.
I swallowed. “Mo—”
“Yes.” Her voice was heavy. “You check this floor. I’ll go up.”
“Be careful.”
She smiled. “I don’t think what lies up there is a threat to either of us.”
While the smell suggested she was right, demons had been known to use the dead as lures. I shoved the thought away; if there were demons here, we would have sensed them by now.
And yet, a heartbeat of energy was now pulsing through Nex’s blade. There might not be demons here, but there was something—someone—connected to them in the near vicinity.
As she climbed the stairs, I went into the sitting room. It was small but neat, with one lonely-looking armchair positioned in front of a massive TV. There was a radiator beneath the window, but the chill in the air suggested the central heating hadn’t been switched on for a while. The kitchen was small—little more than a galley—with just enough room for a two-person table at the far end. Again, it was neat, with only a cup and plate sitting on the sink drainer. Jules, it seemed, lived a fairly solitary life.
I headed upstairs. There were three doors off the small landing. One was a bathroom, the other a box bedroom. Mo was in the third one.
“Did you find—” The rest of that sentence died on my lips as I entered the larger bedroom.
She had found the source of the smell.
It was a man.
An old man.
One who’d obviously been dead long enough for his stomach gases to release and his skin to discolor.
I wrinkled my nose and tried not to breathe too deeply. Even so, the smell was bad enough to have my stomach churning. “I’m guessing that’s Jules Okoro?”
She waved his wallet. “According to this, it is.”
“He’s not what I expected. I mean, he looks to be in his mid-seventies, and that, in turn, begs the question—how old was the nurse Jackie spoke to?”
“She’d been retired a few years, so at least late sixties.”
“Which makes her younger than him, and that’s impossible if she was working at the hospital when he was born. What’s his age according to his license?”
“Thirty-six.”
I blinked and looked at the figure on the bed again. “Either he had some sort of degenerative disease, or something else was going on.”
She dropped his wallet back onto his bedside table, then squatted beside his bed. I remained exactly where I was. Getting any closer might just have last night’s pizza making a grand reappearance. “Well, that right there could be part of the answer.”
“What right where?”
She motioned toward his head. “His ears have a very slight point.”
Which suggested he was a halfling—the offspring of a dark elf and a human. Elves, I’d recently learned, had a long history of stealing human women in an effort to refresh their own bloodlines. The resulting halflings were generally hermaphrodites, and while they didn’t inherit the dark elf ability for magic, they did gain their ability to manipulate the weak willed. Like Tris, perhaps.
“Why would his being a halfling explain his advanced age? The other halflings we’ve come across didn’t appear to have this problem.”
“Because they were half human.”
“What has that got to do with it?”
“There’s been plenty of conjecture over the years as to why few witches were ever taken by the elves, but it wasn’t until the discovery of a severely emaciated corpse outside a discarded Darkside gateway that we got a possible answer. There appears to be a gene incompatibility between our two races that results in multiple autoimmune diseases and premature aging. Whether it happens to all witch-elf offspring or only some is unknown.”
“Do you think it was a coincidence—a simple matter of opportunity—that a woman from a previously unknown branch of the Okoros was taken?”
“I doubt it. It’s pretty obvious someone out there knows a whole lot more about the lineage of the Okoros than we do.”
Someone who had the missing family bibles, perhaps? “But why would they even bother? They’d have to know a halfling would never be able to draw the sword.”
“They lose nothing in trying.” She nodded toward Jules. “The price for this poor soul was a short and painful existence, but who knows how many other siblings he has running around Darkside or even here? Siblings that perhaps aren’t as afflicted as he?”
“It still doesn’t alter the fact that Darkside can’t touch the sword.” It killed them if they tried—a fact we knew from a legendary battle that happened in the days before Uhtric closed the main gate. His horse had been cut from beneath him and in the fall, his sword had slipped from his grasp. The dark elf who’d tried to claim the blade had been instantly incinerat
ed.
“Full elves, no. But half-breed witches able to trace their lineage back to Uhtric? That’s an unknown.” She made a frustrated sound. “It would, however, seem I’ve been very lax in my duty.”
I frowned. “I think if anyone is to blame for this mess, it’s the Blackbirds. They’re the protectors of King and Crown, after all, and they all but disappeared centuries ago.”
She grimaced. “That might be true, but I’m a mage. With Mryddin locked in his cave and Gwendydd in Europe, it falls to me to hinder Darkside developments as best I can.”
“Then maybe it’s time you dug Mryddin out of his cave. It’d certainly be handy to have an extra mage about if the main gate is opened.”
Her expression held a tinge of wistfulness. “As much as I’d love to, he’s a very stubborn old man. Unless and until he wishes to come out, there is nothing either Gwendydd or I can do to budge him.”
“So who was the woman who broke his heart and left him locked up and mourning in a cave?”
“Her name was Niniane, and she was his student. We did warn him that she was only after his power, but men in lust do tend to listen to the little head rather than the big.”
A smile twitched my lips. “So she bled him dry and then walked away?”
“Ran is a more apt description. He tended to be a bit ‘handsy.’”
That seemed to be a common theme amongst men of a certain age and generation, in my experience. “What happened to her after he locked himself away?”
“She attempted a spell beyond her capabilities. It consumed her.”
“Fate does have a way of biting the butts of wrongdoers.” I paused and studied Jules for a moment. “Do you think it possible that the person who drew the sword is one of his siblings?”
“Anything is possible, but I doubt it, if only because they wouldn’t have attacked you on King’s Island. It would have been more sensible not to draw attention to themselves that way.”
“I’m thinking Darkside and sensible don’t always go together.”
She laughed. “They may not see things the way we do, but their thought processes aren’t that different.”
On that, we would always disagree. “If Hanna Okoro was snatched from the hospital by her dark elf keepers, why would they leave Jules there? Surely that was a bit risky—”
“Not necessarily,” Mo cut in. “His ears aren’t pointed enough to attract attention.”
“But why not take him when they took his mother?”
“Invisible or not, it’s still much harder to get into a natal ward.” She shrugged. “Or maybe they simply did prenatal tests and knew he was flawed.”
“It’s kinda hard to imagine Darkside having hospitals and the like.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Why? The only difference between our world and theirs is the fact that night is never-ending there.”
“I guess it comes from thinking demons to be little better than rabid animals.” I waved a hand toward Jules. “Do you think he died of natural causes?”
She reached out and lifted one eyelid. “His eyes are bloodshot, and there seems to be a faint stain of blue around his lips. Whether that’s part of whatever condition he had or he’s been smothered, I can’t say. I think we need to get the preternatural boys out here to investigate.”
The Preternatural Division was a secret section of the National Crime Agency, and had some of the strongest witches on their books as advisors to help investigate supernatural and magical crime. And, right now, that meant the death of anyone connected in any way to the Witch King and the sword.
“Have you got Jason’s number?” she added.
Jason Durant was the head honcho of the team who’d investigated both Tris’s and Gareth’s murders. He also happened to be a good friend of Luc’s. “No, but I could send a text to Luc.”
She pushed to her feet. “Do it. Then we’d better get back home.”
“You don’t want to look around first?”
“I doubt there’s much here to find, and we need to get back to Ainslyn.”
I pulled out my phone; it was already past ten. “We’re not going to get back there in time to meet the insurance assessor.”
“No, which is why I rang your brother before I left the Lodge and asked him to get over there.”
I grinned. “I’m sure he would have been absolutely thrilled to be woken at that hour.” Especially if he and the entertainment had been partying all night.
“He did sound a little miffed, but that’s not unusual these days.”
No, it wasn’t. I sent Luc a quick text, then shoved my phone back into my pocket. “If Jules has been murdered within the last forty-eight hours, does that mean Max is still in danger?”
Mo pursed her lips. “If Jules was murdered after the sword was taken, yes, because it suggests the heir is still taking out rivals.”
“Meaning Max had better go back into hiding.”
“Being hard to find didn’t do Jules much good.”
“Well, no, but our family is small enough.” My voice was edged; worry and concern, rather than anger. “I don’t want to lose anyone else.”
She touched my arm lightly. “We won’t.”
I hoped not. I’d had more than enough grief in my lifetime already. I followed her down the stairs and out the front door. The drizzle had turned into a full-on storm, which meant it was a damn miserable flight home.
Max’s Jag was still parked next to my red-and-white Mini when we finally reached Ainslyn, and there was a nondescript and unfamiliar gray Mazda next to Mo’s Nissan Leaf. Which meant that maybe the insurance assessor was still here.
We shifted shape behind the cars and then walked across the road. Healing Words—our store—was situated in a three-story, single-fronted building squeezed in between two larger terraces. Externally, at least, there wasn’t much evidence of Darkside’s attempt to collapse the building down on top of us. The red bricks might have a new layer of grime on them, but the heritage green-and-gold woodwork surrounding the front window and inset, half-glass door had been untouched. It wasn’t until you looked up and saw the heavy tarps covering a good proportion of the roof that it became evident there’d been a problem.
The small bell above the door made no sound as we stepped through; a quick glance up revealed the clapper was missing. Which was odd—why would someone steal something like that? Unless, of course, they didn’t want to be heard entering the building sometime in the future …
I ignored the trepidation that rose with the thought and looked around. Aside from the dust and grime that lay upon absolutely everything, nothing else seemed to be out of place or missing—not at first glance, at least. There was certainly no sign of the destruction that lay above us.
Mo peeled off her coat and slung it over the hook to the right of the door. “You might want to lose those clothes, as the rain seems to have intensified the demon scent. I’ll head upstairs and see what’s happening.”
I nodded and dripped my way through the various shelves containing books, Mo’s healing potions and pretty soaps, and all the other oddities we stocked for the tourist trade, heading for the sectioned-off rear of the store. There were a number of smaller rooms here—an office, a storeroom, and, in a separate, magically shielded rear room, an old boiler and laundry. It had once provided the hot water for the building, but these days we basically used it to get rid of the occasional spell paraphernalia that couldn’t be thrown out with regular rubbish.
I stripped off and chucked everything—including my shoes—into the boiler, then lit it. Once I’d cleansed my daggers, I grabbed a towel from the stack and wrapped it around me as I padded barefoot up the stairs to the first floor, running my hand under the banister as I did so. The bug Tris had placed was gone; hopefully that meant Ginny had cleared out the rest of them as well.
This level was divided into two areas—Mo’s bedroom was at the rear of the building, and an open kitchen-living area lay to the front. The kitchen was filled with a colorful
array of art deco cabinetry, and the upright stove came straight out of the sixties. But where the sofas and the big-screen TV had once stood there was now a large pile of plaster, wood, and roof tiles, as well as the remnants of what had once been my bed. I glanced up. The tarps over the roof were visible, and doing a good job of keeping the water out. At least we weren’t getting water damage on top of everything else.
Aside from Mo, there were three others in the room—Max, a bald man I presumed was the assessor, and Luc.
Even though he wasn’t looking at me, I felt the impact of his presence. It was fiercer than a punch to the gut, an indefinable force that was far deeper than just awareness and desire. It was almost elemental in feel, and spoke of a connection that stepped far beyond the physical, far beyond the emotional. It whispered of destiny and age, and of a bond not just days in the making, but decades.
According to Mo, it was the result of something called anima nexum, which basically meant soul connection. Apparently there were three different types—while it could sometimes refer to the type of soul connection that was little more than a meeting of gazes and a recognition of fate, it generally meant either souls that were doomed to battle each other through time eternal, or souls who were destined to keep on meeting until whatever had gone wrong in their initial relationship was rectified. Luc and I were supposedly the latter. Which was the pits, as right now it seemed highly unlikely we’d fix that wrong thing. Not in this lifetime, anyway.
He turned at that moment, and our gazes met. Just for an instant, something flashed across his expression—a heated mix of relief, joy, and desire—but it was very quickly shut down. While he might have admitted his attraction, he’d also stated he had no intention of getting involved with the sister of a suspect. And he still did consider Max that, thanks to the fact he’d been in the area the day the coronation ring had been stolen from the British Museum.
Luc’s gaze flicked down my length; it felt like a caress and had heat stirring in all the right places. Or rather, wrong places when it came to this man.
