Stone Chameleon (Ironhill Jinn #1)

by Jocelyn Adams

  “Good morning, Lou,” Rachel said, petting Olivia’s hair. Judging by the redness of the nurse’s eyes, she’d been told about Dom. “You look exhausted.”

  “Rachel, I’m sorry about Dom. I tried to—” Emotion choked off the rest of what I wanted to say.

  She smiled, a mere shadow of her usual one. “I’m sure you did all you could.” The melody of her voice almost made me believe it, but the guilt had burrowed deep into my psyche.

  “We need to talk to Olivia alone for a while. Why don’t you get some rest?”

  The sweet girl rose with exquisite poise, her translucent hair flowing like water over her shoulder. “Grandfather needs me to run the labs on the shifter. I don’t sleep much, anyway.” On her way by, she shot me a wary glance. The thought of her losing faith in me, or harm coming to her, ran razors through me.

  I had to stop Celeste one way or another. Everyone I cared for would be in danger as long as both of us lived.

  Once Rachel closed the door and disappeared, Olivia began sobbing.

  “My name is Lou Hudson,” I said in a soothing tone, “and this is Amun Bassili. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  She peered through a tangle of bleached tresses, black mascara smeared most of the way down to her dimpled chin. Her denim-blue eyes widened, and she spoke through hiccupping breaths. “You. It was you…last night…in the hallway.”

  “Yes. I chased Celeste away, or she might have done to you what she did to your friend with the shaved head.”

  “Devin?” She sat up, her fingers fisted into the sheet. “What happened to Devin?”

  Bloody hell. “I’m sorry, but he didn’t survive.” I sat down and put my arm around her while she wailed into her hands. “You can help me stop her.” Making shushing sounds, I rubbed my hand up and down her slender arms. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t hurt anyone ever again.”

  “She’s crazy,” Olivia said between sniffles.

  Amun went into the washroom and returned with a box of tissues, which he handed to her before sitting in the arm chair.

  She pulled out a few tissues, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. “She can disappear like a ghost, just turns into water and slips through the nearest crack. You can’t stop her. Nobody can.”

  “Let me worry about the how, what I need from you is where I might find her.”

  “She’s always at the aquarium.” Olivia shrugged. “Why don’t you just look there?”

  “Because she’s not that stupid as to go back there,” Amun offered.

  Angling my body more toward her, I took her trembling hands in mine. “You must have heard her mention something about a home somewhere. Maybe somewhere she likes to visit? Family? Friends? A special place? Somewhere she holds dear?” I hadn’t meant to issue rapid-fire questions at her, but it was all I could do to not shake her and demand she speak.

  “I can’t.” She covered her eyes with her palms. “She’ll k-kill me.”

  “You’re safe here, and you can stay until I finish this. I promise no more harm will come to you.” My voice of reason hoped I’d be able to keep that promise.

  Amun must have read frustration in my body language, because he crept forward and crouched in front of the girl. “How did you get involved with Celeste?”

  And out came the future politician with his bag if distractions. Making it personal might loosen her tongue. It was actually a brilliant idea.

  She focused on him, clutching a tissue to her throat. “She came into the pet store a few months ago looking for a filtration system for a large tank, but we didn’t have one big enough.” Olivia smiled, as though remembering something pleasant. “She was so beautiful, and there was just something about her, you know? She made me feel…I don’t know…”

  “Special?” I said.

  “Sounds corny when you say it like that, but I guess. We started hanging out, and she started asking me to do stuff for her, run errands and stuff. Made good money, ten times what I make at Pete’s, and she took me shopping for clothes I can’t afford.”

  “Do you feel some obligation to her?” Amun rubbed his thumb against the back of her hand in soothing circles. “Is that why you’re reluctant to tell us where she is?”

  The girl squirmed in what appeared to be a partial shrug mixed with an urge to run away. “I dunno. Maybe.”

  I shifted toward Amun, wondering where he was leading her.

  “She tried to kill you, Olivia.” He moved closer to her, his voice softening. “She would have if Lou hadn’t sent her away. Celeste doesn’t care about you, no matter what she said. She’s on a mission to get what she wants, and she saw you as a means to make her job easier.”

  The crying began again, filled with jagged grief. I took it Olivia had few friends, maybe only one. Amun sat beside her, holding her close as he rubbed her back. “Help us find her, Olivia. You owe her nothing, and innocent lives are at stake. Please.”

  A twinge of something ugly urged me to yank him away from her and bite him again, but I retained enough sense to see the insanity in it. He was using his smooth voice and charm to get what we needed, nothing more. Even if he did have an interest in her, who was I to interfere? I didn’t, after all, want to own him. If I did, I shouldn’t.

  When her tears dwindled, she sat up and blew her nose again. “I know she’s got a pool that’s underground. That’s what she wanted the oxygenators and filters for, her very own salt water pool-sized aquarium.”

  I reigned in my voice so I didn’t shout with excitement, tasting the nearness of the clue we needed. “Do you know where it is?”

  “Not exactly.” She shrugged again. “But I do know it’s in Fangtown.”

  Of course it was. Amun and I stared at one another around the girl. In his expression, I found a mirror of my own dread. Isaac didn’t allow the city to keep information on the structures in his district, so there would be only one person to ask about homes with underground pools there—the hive lord himself.

  Splendid.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I tossed my fork onto the plate, sending a splash of mashed potatoes onto Amun’s dining room table. Benny stood on my foot, squealing with agitation to match mine. “The sun’s almost down. Where is he?”

  “He’s a vampire, Baylou,” Amun said, shoving in his last mouthful of pork chop. “Don’t panic, he’ll be here, and he can take us to Fangtown himself. Until then, please eat something instead of pushing it around on your plate. If you die of starvation, this will all have been for naught.”

  “I’ve left seven messages with that grouchy woman at the hive.” A growl rumbled in my chest, and I let my fist clunk down on the wood. “The whole day! We’ve wasted one whole day waiting for that man to crawl out of his coffin, or whatever he sleeps in. How can you even think about eating when tomorrow we could be…?” I slumped back in my chair.

  “Stop thinking that way.” Amun jabbed his fork in my direction. “Just a little longer, and we’ll go.”

  “If he cooperates at all,” I muttered.

  A knock on the door sent a shock-wave through me. I beat Amun there and yanked the door open. “It’s about bloody time.”

  Harper stood on the veranda, staring at her knee-high black lace-up boots, her toe gouging at the boards. “Hey,” she said. “Can I come in?”

  I stood aside, and she entered, fidgeting with the eagle emblem embroidered on the front of her black shirt.

  “Harper, I—” I reached for her, but changed my mind and sought my pockets instead.

  “Don’t say anything.” She shook her head, sending a shock of her red and black hair spinning about her shoulders. “I get why you kept this from me for so long. I hate that you lied to me, but if you are…you know…then I get it, and I forgive you.”

  Amun came forward, the creases in his brow deepening. “Isaac will be here soon.”

  I caught the warning in his tone and hoped Harper did, too.

  “I’m sorry I took off yesterday,” she continued. “Went up to my
aunt’s cabin in the hills to think, and I heard what you all did last night. Some friend I am.” She blasted out a humorless laugh. “How many times have you saved my sorry arse, and at the first test of honor I scram.”

  I held out my arms, having to wait only a moment for her to throw her tiny body into them. “I hated keeping it from you.”

  “I know.” She squeezed me tighter. “Maybe after you kick Celeste’s head in, you can tell me everything?”

  “It’s dangerous knowledge to have, but if you want the burden, then I will.”

  “I would never tell anyone.”

  “I know you wouldn’t.” I planted a kiss on her forehead and let her go. “Now, there are things you need to know before Isaac arrives.”

  Amun and I filled in the details Harper had missed.

  “Fuckballs,” Harper said, pulling a silver pistol from her boot. “Won’t Isaac be happy Celeste has come to roost right in his own backyard?”

  Amun perched a hip on the back of the sofa. “I’ve been wondering how it would even be possible for her to be there without his knowledge.”

  “You aren’t suggesting he brought her here, are you?” I asked. “But he insinuated that he knew I was innocent from the beginning.”

  “Yes, yet he continued to make it seem like he believed you were guilty. Maybe this whole mess is his doing.”

  I shook my head. “I refuse to believe it. It makes no sense unless he knows—”

  “Knows what?” Isaac’s deep tenor sent a tremor straight to my heart. He stood in Amun’s open doorway.

  “Isaac. Finally.” A nervous giggle wanted to escape, but I composed myself in time to squash it. “You need to take us to—to your district.” Calling it Fangtown to his face would have earned me a fierce rant.

  “You didn’t answer me.” His sculpted arms crossed over the broad expanse of his naked chest. Did the man own no shirts? “Unless I know what?”

  “That you figured out Celeste killed one of your vampires to take his home because he had an underground pool?” It was a long shot I hadn’t realized I’d been considering before it came out of my mouth. Hands wringing together, I erected a smile that felt too forced to convince anyone, let alone Isaac.

  “She’s in my district?” He did that invisible morph into a more imposing figure, and his fangs slipped down beneath his lip. “Where?”

  His reaction seemed genuine, and I let out a silent shout of relief in my head. He hadn’t set me up with Celeste. I wasn’t sure why it mattered, but it did.

  “We’re hoping you can tell us,” Amun said. “Last night, she decapitated one of your eldest before our eyes.”

  “I know. I felt him die.” Isaac’s red firework stare landed on me. “Did you do it?” He felt it when his minions died? I filed that away for later.

  “I think you know I didn’t.” I went on to give him the evening’s events, excluding how I’d broken free of her hold, and finished with the conversation with Olivia. “Won’t the council take Amun’s word, that he saw her, too?”

  “They’ll accept nothing but the creature herself, or her cold, dead heart, and my word that the matter is closed.”

  Knowing the reaction I’d get didn’t stop me from asking. “Then why can’t you find a heart in a morgue somewhere and lie for me? Give me a few days more to find her for you?”

  As I suspected, his eyes said it well enough, that he thought I was insane. “A lord does not lie to the council without facing dire consequences.”

  Why not? How would they know? His rigid stance suggested the topic was closed, so I didn’t press further. “Time’s short, Isaac. I’m pretty sure Celeste doesn’t know Olivia survived, but if she does, she won’t linger in one place for long.”

  Isaac begged us forward with a curl of his finger. “I’ll drive.”

  * * *

  The moment Isaac stopped my car inside Fangtown, I jumped out of the passenger seat, shaking. I considered kissing the ground. If I hadn’t been such a solid agnostic, I’d have considered taking up religion and praying my thanks to the heavens I’d survived the trip. Never again would I let a vampire drive my car, especially an angry one.

  “So, are there any of your lost ones who might have had a pool?” I asked, forcing breaths out my nose to control my rapid pulse.

  “Vampires doona swim.” Isaac surveyed the damage left over from the previous night’s creature invasion of his district. “Most of those killed were living at the hive. All but Gregory.” Although Isaac’s face pointed away from me, his sadness came through his posture and soft tone.

  “The one I met last night. That was Gregory?” I chastised myself for considering an offer of comfort to the lord, but my conscience demanded I say something. “He tried to fight her up until the last moment, as we all did. He was very brave.”

  Amun and Harper joined us on the sidewalk in front of the cuff shop where I’d found the dragon bat. Both seemed as pale as I felt after the ride.

  “You’re sure this Celeste is here?” Isaac asked, turning to me. Red flame spilled into his eyes, the only hint of anger simmering within.

  “According to Olivia.” If she’d misled us, I’d be breaking my promise of no harm and cracking her skull myself. “So, Gregory lived here in the district, but she killed him last, so it couldn’t have been his home she’s squatting in. Is there anyone else missing from here we haven’t found? Someone who might have had a reason to have a pool?”

  Face directed skyward, Isaac closed his eyes and whispered something too low and too fast for me to understand. The emotion in it resonated within my soul. It held the call of a proud father to his children. It held affection, but also command. He stayed that way long enough the three of us exchanged questioning glances.

  “Albert hasn’t responded to my call.” Isaac whirled and smashed his fist into the hood of my car, crumpling the metal down to the engine. “She will die slowly.”

  “Hey!” I shouted, thrusting both hands toward my ruined car. “I haven’t even finished paying for that yet. And how are we supposed to get around now? I can’t afford a new car, Isaac!” I wanted to ask how he hadn’t felt Albert die, too, but it didn’t seem like the time. Maybe those who rose through the ranks high enough to be set free were no longer tied that closely to him?

  It hadn’t occurred to me what we’d do if we found Celeste with Isaac tagging along. If the vampire didn’t hear so well, I’d have asked Amun his opinion. It wouldn’t be easy to ditch the ancient Scot, especially in his own district, but we’d have to try.

  A crackle sounded, and Isaac appeared in front of me. He wrapped his arms around my back, clamping me to his naked chest. The world turned upside down and spun in a sickening whirlwind that stole my vision and rendered me deaf. I’d have screamed if air made it past the crushing pressure on my lungs.

  Snippets of light flashed like a mosaic behind my eyes. Blue. Red. Gold. The hues swirled, reversing direction and rippling off in another direction, a dream twisted in a child’s kaleidoscope. The pressure in my head made me wonder if the red I kept seeing was a reflection of blood leaking from my eyes.

  All at once, a room decorated in reds and tans sprung up around us. Sound crashed upon my ear drums as if someone had thrown a switch on a thousand watt stereo system.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Ouch. What the bloody hell happened?” I covered my ears, only amplifying the sound of blood rushing around inside my head.

  “You asked how we’d get around. I showed you.” Isaac continued to hold me against his buff chest. I’d have protested if I thought my legs would have held me up. “I brought you to Albert’s home.”

  Travelling via the Isaac express was worse than riding in car with him. “Where are Harper and Amun?” Testing my balance, I pushed against him and stepped away, knowing he’d let me go. One does not escape a vampire’s grip if he doesn’t wish it so.

  “I’d imagine gawking around the street like fools, wondering where we got off to.” Isaac flashed a smug smile
.

  I thrust my hand out behind me. “Then go back and get them.”

  Ignoring me as usual, he strode off into the living room papered in gaudy oriental flowers on a deep wine backing. “There’s no one here but us. No heartbeats aside from your frantic one, and no vampires.” He curled his finger at me. “Come.”

  My back tingled, sending a shiver along my spine. He’d injected that sickly sweet promise into his voice, and that one word sent an order to my nerve center.

  I obeyed even though my brain had given no command for my legs to do so. “I hate when you do that. Where are we going?”

  “I smell the ocean.”

  “Why do you always evade my questions?” I sniffed at the air as he did, picking up nothing but fabric softener and perfume. “I don’t smell anything, but maybe you’re detecting a pool-sized marine fish tank?”

  “Aye. But why would a vampire have a pool?”

  “Why wouldn’t one?”

  Shoulders tensed, he strutted off, disappearing through a door. Was it possible vampires couldn’t swim? They didn’t breathe, so they couldn’t drown. Did they have a phobia of water as part of their curse?

  I followed him with no idea where I was, and I had no desire to be alone in Fangtown at night with vampires crawling about in the shadows. “Where are you?” I called down the empty corridor beyond the door.

  “Here.”

  I pinpointed his voice somewhere to the left. The first opening revealed a small bathroom decorated with beige Italian tiles. The second led to what appeared to be an office with a laptop sitting atop a metal desk. In the third, I found Isaac sitting on a bed in what I assumed would have been Albert’s bedroom, holding a picture frame with both hands.

  He’d gone still again, but I didn’t think it was from anger, judging by his wilted posture. I’d seen grief enough to recognize it, lending more proof that he felt emotions despite his insistence to the contrary.