The Hounds of Devotion

by Eva Chase

  “If it even exists.” I fished in my purse for the pen that had been among the seemingly random assortment of items he and Bash had brought back from the burnt-out commune near Dover. The tip was scorched and the body partly melted, but not so much that we hadn’t been able to make out the company logo printed on the side: Havenboard Foods. The business stocked a variety of grocery and corner stores throughout southern England.

  Sherlock nodded. “There are many ways that pen could have ended up in the commune other than by the theft of a shipment. Businesses give out promotional materials of that sort in large quantities. It’d have been easy enough for a cultist who temporarily left the settlement to happen to pick one up any number of places.”

  He spoke evenly, but his expression was darker than usual. A bit of a cloud had been hanging over him since we’d rounded up the group this morning. I hadn’t seen him in one of his morose moods since that first week we’d spent together when he’d been temporarily stumped by the case I’d presented the trio with.

  It didn’t make sense for him to be withdrawing in frustration now. We had plenty of leads and had hardly exhausted any of them.

  “Have any other cases come up while you’ve been working on this?” I asked, taking a roundabout route to getting at my real question. Sherlock had ego to spare. If I suggested that he was behaving irrationally or overly affected by emotion, his kneejerk reaction would be denial.

  He gave me a look that was almost a glower. “Don’t worry, all my attention has been on these operations.”

  I was a little stung by his assumption that I’d meant to question his dedication. “That wasn’t the point I was getting at. You seem… more preoccupied than usual this morning, and I wondered why.”

  “I’m merely eager to gather more information so that we can arrive at clearer conclusions,” Sherlock said.

  Eager wasn’t at all the word I’d have used to describe his demeanor. Apparently Watson was on my side. “Perhaps we both had a restless night,” he said in his gentle way. “Everything we’ve seen and had to think about involving these creatures—it can stick in the mind in unfortunate ways. I had a couple of horrible dreams.” He grimaced and rubbed his forehead as if he could wipe them from his mind that way.

  Sherlock snorted. “We’re in a sorry state if we let mental flights of fancy distract us from our cause. Let’s keep our focus on what’s real, shall we?”

  The reprimand came out sharp rather than teasing—enough so that John winced. I frowned, eyeing the consulting detective. I might be wrong, but I thought I detected a whiff of “thou doust protest too much” in that abrupt dismissal. Perhaps Sherlock had been troubled by bad dreams too, and it was irritating him that he was bothered at all.

  Something troublesome had clearly gotten into the air lately. Garrett and Bash had both seemed more hot-tempered than usual the last few days. Garrett had gotten outright cruel in some of the comments he’d made about his colleagues, and Bash… I’d never seen Bash come anywhere near losing his cool, so even the small hints of temper he’d shown made me concerned.

  I’d managed to stay in Sherlock’s presence, or at least no more than a room or two away from him, for most of the time since the shrouded one had marked him, and I hadn’t detected any of them nearby since then. Had one of them gotten to him—to all of them—somehow anyway? My stomach twisted at the thought.

  It could very well be simply the stress of our current mission. I had to remember that the shrouded folk had been an undeniable part of my reality for my entire life. These men had only just been introduced to the idea of monsters far beyond anything they’d have considered possible. They’d witnessed horrors and seen evidence of more beyond that. I’d told them terrifying stories.

  They might be experts in their fields, but nothing could have prepared them to face an enemy like this. I’d just keep an eye on them in case the emotional fraying appeared to get any worse.

  John started pacing again. His mood had stayed warm and enthusiastic as usual, but he’d definitely been restless. Now he grabbed a chair by the other laptop in the room and flipped the computer open with a click to peer at the screen. “Maybe I can do some digging too.”

  “I think it’s rather better if you didn’t, John,” Sherlock said, confusion as well as alarm crossing his face. “You don’t have the best track record with computing devices, as I recall. I’m sure Marissa can handle it without leaving any traces that might come back to haunt us… so to speak.”

  John let out an impatient huff. “I just—”

  “I’m in!” Marissa chirped, stirring us all into action. John sprang up, and we hustled around the table to look at the hacker’s screen.

  I knew my way around a computer, but not on the level this girl obviously did. The various windows with their lists of text didn’t mean a whole lot to me. Marissa looked up at Sherlock. “What do you want me to bring up first?”

  “Financial records,” he said quickly, intentness focusing his gaze and wiping away some of his earlier melancholy. “We want to see if they had to compensate for a missing shipment any time in the last several years—and if so, exactly what and when.”

  Our hope was, if the pen had gotten to the commune via a theft, that we’d learn more about the commune’s habits from the details around that theft. I didn’t like the fact that they’d slipped out of our grasp so easily. If we could figure out their usual area of activity, where they might have gone from their original settlement…

  “Let’s see,” Marissa murmured to herself, her hands flying over the keyboard again. “Here, these look like the right set of statements. What kind of numbers do you think we’d be looking for?”

  “Fairly large, in the thousands of dollars at least,” Sherlock said. “And the same value twice close together—one shipment dispatched that never reached it’s intended destination, and a matching one put together shortly after.”

  “On it.” She opened up another window and typed something into that, and the spreadsheets of data started whipping through the rows of their own accord. She paused a couple of times on spots that looked like a possibility, but one turned out to be an identical order for two different stores, and another was a swift restocking after the initial order must have immediately run out, with full payment for both.

  “That’s five years,” Marissa said after several minutes of scanning. “Do you want me to keep going back?”

  John shifted his weight, standing at a bit of an angle to reduce the pressure on his weaker leg since he hadn’t brought his walking stick. “There might not be anything. This could be all a red herring.”

  “We told them we’d be here an hour,” I said. “We might as well make use of it. Who knows when that pen was last used. Let’s try another five, just in case.”

  Sherlock motioned for Marissa to continue, and I let my eyes linger on the screen as she continued her search. A word jumped out at me that made my pulse stutter.

  “Stop!” I said, grabbing her shoulder.

  Marissa stiffened, and I immediately let go, but she’d halted the search. “What?” she said.

  “Go back up. Slower this time. I saw something.”

  “What was it, Jemma?” John asked.

  “Just—let me make sure.”

  The entry came into view. “There,” I said. “Leave it there.” I pointed to the line, my heart still thumping faster than before. In the column that labeled the sources of the payments or expenses, that row simply said SHROUD.

  John drew in a startled breath. Sherlock leaned closer, his eyebrows drawing together. “You don’t think— A regular company wouldn’t be doing business with this cult, would they?”

  “I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought so. I’ve never seen it happen before, but I’ve been pretty out of the loop since I left.” I rubbed my mouth, still staring at the line. It was an expense—something provided to SHROUD from Havenboard Foods. “Are there any stores or other companies with a name that includes ‘Shroud’ they might
have been dealing with?”

  Marissa opened an internet search window in a flash. “I don’t see anything like that,” she said after a moment.

  “I’ve never heard of one,” Sherlock added. “But it could have some other meaning.”

  It could. Why on earth would this company be giving anything to the cult? What would they have been giving it in exchange for?

  I wet my lips. “We might be able to get a better idea. Search and see if any other expenses like that come up.”

  Marissa tapped the keys. In a matter of seconds, another item came up, from about six months later. Then six months after that. Regular intervals, all the way up to a few months ago. My chest had constricted. I pulled out my phone. “I’m going to check those dates.”

  I looked up one and then another and then a third, my stomach sinking farther with each confirmation. After five, I decided I had proof enough.

  “It’s them,” I said. “I don’t know why, but this company has some kind of an association set up with the cult.”

  “Would they really label it so plainly?” Sherlock protested.

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Who would it be plain to? Other than the members of the cult, the five of us are the only people who know the shrouded folk even exist. Well, us and whoever decided on that label, apparently. What better way to keep it secret than to use a name no one knows about?”

  “It could be a coincidence,” John ventured, but he looked uncertain.

  I shook my head and waved my phone. “All of the deliveries or payments or whatever Havenboard provided were made on the dates of the full moon. That’s when the cult prefers to arrange any business where they have to involve outsiders. The folk can stay more active on the brightest nights—the commune would want to have them around for protection as need be.”

  Silence filled the room for a moment. Sherlock’s jaw worked. “It seems this situation is even more complex than you anticipated.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yes. Apparently it’s not just the cult and the folk we have to contend with. They have at least one real ally in the wider world as well. And someone with enough clout that they could arrange these expenses without any questions being asked.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Jemma

  “I just had eyes on the meeting,” Bash said through my earpiece. “They’re still jabbering away.”

  Sitting next to me in the car, Sherlock raised his eyebrows in question. I shook my head and pressed the button on my mic to reply to Bash. “Keep watching them and let me know as soon as they look like they’re getting up.”

  “Aye, aye, Majesty.”

  A smile touched my lips at the fond if teasing nickname.

  Sherlock gazed out the window at the brick building across the street where MP Harvey Tillhouse had his office. His hands were clasped tightly together in his lap, and a shadow crossed his face. The moroseness I’d noticed in him at Havenboard hadn’t lifted.

  He turned back to me with a slight jerk of his arm. “This fellow is a talkative one, isn’t he?”

  “I have no idea how long is normal with these strategy meetings.” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll be ready when he’s leaving.” We were decked out in new disguises—a blond wig for me and dun brown for Sherlock, colored contacts for both of us, a false beard straggling across his chin. I held a larger microphone on the seat next to me, ready for action, and Sherlock had a video camera with a doctored TV channel logo sitting on his lap.

  My nonchalance didn’t appear to alleviate Sherlock’s gloom. He sighed and tipped his head against the headrest, his eyes going distant behind the bright brown lenses. His fingers squeezed tight enough around each other to turn his knuckles white.

  I considered and decided to bite the bullet. It was just the two of us right now—he didn’t have to feel he was admitting weakness to anyone else. We had time. And if my most brilliant crime fighter had a problem, I’d like to know about it sooner rather than later.

  “What is it about this case that’s bothering you?” I asked.

  Sherlock’s head snapped down and around. He studied me with a frown. “Who says it’s bothering me?”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know you well enough to see it. Something has been dragging at your mood. If it’s not dealing with the shrouded folk, you can tell me what it is instead.” I patted his leg, letting my hand linger just long enough to take the gesture from casual to flirtatious. “It’s not as if I’m going to think there’s anything odd about finding this whole thing difficult to take in.”

  For a second, Sherlock looked even grimmer. Then he let out another sigh. “I don’t like cases where I can’t get a sense of the full picture. There’s too much about these creatures I can’t fully comprehend—that I can only barely believe in the first place. And it certainly doesn’t help that this latest development takes us beyond even your prior experience with the creatures.”

  “I can’t say I’m particularly happy about that either.” I made a face at the building across the street. We’d spent the last few days tracing various leads to try to figure out how Havenboard was connected to the shrouded folk. Our investigations had led us through a winding path of sign-offs and corporate shells to Tillhouse, a politician out of Yorkshire who owned the company that owned the company that owned Havenboard.

  We’d determined that Havenboard’s warehouse had been dropping off a large supply of nonperishable food and other supplies at a secluded storage building not far from the abandoned commune on a biannual basis. We’d also determined that the chain of commands to place that order had come from one of the few people with executive power over the company. Yesterday we’d eliminated the president of Havenboard from consideration. Now we were going to scope out Tillhouse.

  “I suppose there are all sorts of benefits a politician planning on running for party leadership might get out of a paranormal ally,” Sherlock said, following my gaze. Tillhouse might be only an MP now, but he was in the process of campaigning to take over as head of the Conservative Party. “The bigger surprise might be that it hasn’t happened before.”

  “The shrouded folk don’t like anyone outside their cult knowing about them,” I said. “They expressly forbid revealing themselves to non-worshippers. How the hell this guy or anyone else in the company could have found out about them to even try to set up some sort of arrangement… I don’t even know.” All we’d been able to determine for sure was that the arrangement had been going on for nearly seven years.

  “It won’t matter anyway,” I added. “We’ll continue taking down the cult piece by piece, and there’s nothing this guy can do about that. And when the cult’s gone, the shrouded folk won’t have the power left here to do anything for him. We just need to know who we’re up against before we do anything else.”

  “Yes.” Sherlock’s solemn expression hadn’t budged. He rolled his shoulders with a twitch of his neck, seeming to sink even deeper into the gloom in his head. Then, abruptly, he unclasped his hands and reached to touch my face. “Jemma?”

  Even with the disguise hiding his familiar features, a flutter passed through my chest having this man train his gaze on me that intently. “Yes?”

  He didn’t say anything else, just drew me in for a kiss. A determined kiss, so hot it was dizzying coming out of nowhere like that. I didn’t know what had gotten into him, but I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to kiss him back just as enthusiastically.

  Sherlock pulled back with a frown that wasn’t at all the reaction I’d have wanted to provoke. “I thought perhaps— A different sort of stimulation— But I don’t think that’s the right route. I just need more answers.”

  “I don’t know.” I gave him a playful nudge. “Maybe we didn’t try hard enough. You know I can offer plenty more ‘stimulation’ than just a kiss.”

  Even though he’d declared the kiss a failure, a faint flush of heat colored his skin at that remark. The sight of it lit a little fire in me. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the tim
e or place for any sort of deeper intimacy. As Bash helpfully reminded me with his voice carrying into my ear.

  “They’re getting up. That’s your cue. Good luck!”

  “Luck has nothing to do with it,” I said smoothly, and shoved open the door.

  Sherlock followed me out without needing any further prompting. We crossed the street and went down the alley to the building’s back entrance. He already had his lockpicks in hand when we reached it. It took all of five seconds for him to force the deadbolt over.

  If we’d gone in the front, the receptionist would have stopped us. This way, we slipped down the hall and up the staircase just in time to catch Tillhouse coming down the second-floor hall from the meeting room.

  He looked like the kind of guy who would own companies that owned other companies. Square-jawed and flinty-eyed but with his silver hair slicked back in a posh style and his suit cut in the latest fashion. His staff flitted this way and that around him. One guy stopped beside him when Tillhouse stopped, the assistant giving us a cold look. “What’s this about?”

  I focused all my attention on the MP with a cajoling smile. “Mr. Tillhouse, we were just hoping to get a few comments on your suggested policy updates. It’ll only take a minute or two. We’ll give you the chance to review any clips before they air.”

  “I don’t know how you got in here,” the assistant started, but Tillhouse halted his complaint with a hand on his shoulder. He gave me a smarmy smile in return.

  “I think we should reward ambition, don’t you, Philip? All right. You have a minute or two. Everyone else, carry on with what you’re supposed to be doing.”

  Any staff lingering in the hall dispersed. Sherlock raised his camera and started recording while I held up my microphone. I wanted the man’s reactions on video so I could study them at my leisure afterward to make sure I hadn’t missed anything—or to analyze what I did see in the moment more closely.

  “You’ve said you’ll campaign for legislation that allows more opportunities for businesses to expand without restriction,” I said, jumping in with the talking points I’d prepared. “What sorts of checks and balances would you keep in place?”