Linus twisted to face him. “I’m listening.”
“We need ears and eyes on Leisha now.” Corbin nudged open his door. “You go ahead. There’s a house a block down with old newspapers piled on the porch. I’ll drop our ride there and make my way back to you.”
“All right.” Linus left Moby running. “Be careful.”
Chuckling, Corbin hopped out then leaned in across his seat. “I will, Pops.”
Shaking his head, Linus exited the vehicle and began stalking the house. Like Cletus, he was at a distinct disadvantage in the daylight when his power was less. He would have to do this the old-fashioned way.
Three houses on his left had no fences in their yards. He strolled down the sidewalk, picked one at random, and trusted the empty driveway meant he wasn’t about to prompt the owners to call the police.
The cramped backyards, defined only by their landscaping, made sneaking up on the home Leisha had entered a simple matter. The distance from the road, and prying eyes, helped too.
Once he reached his target, he crawled through a thick hedge of azaleas to a spot where he estimated the living room might be. With the modified pen in his pocket, he drew an amplification sigil with an emphasis on hearing onto his hand then held his palm facing the siding. As the magic tingled over his skin, he relaxed, shut his eyes, and relied only on his ears to alert him to anyone who might approach.
“You’ve done it now,” Leisha snapped. “Linus is on to me.”
“I did what we agreed upon.”
The second speaker resonated with a peculiar multilayered voice that rang both foreign and familiar, but no one Linus could identify beyond the eerie distortion that allowed her, for it was a woman, anonymity.
“Two weeks early. What were you thinking?”
“I have my reasons, and they are not for your ears.”
“Goddess, what a mess. I’m out. I’m rather fond of my head. I would prefer to keep it attached to my neck. I did what you asked. I seduced the Deathless vampire.”
“How bad was the sex if he ran from your bedroom never to return?”
“The sex was fine. Great even. That’s not the point.”
“You were supposed to use him to gain access to Grier.”
“He’s loyal to her. He’s a dead end. There’s no way he would get me into Woolworth House.”
Rustling drew Linus’s eyes open in time to spot Corbin belly-crawling into the hedge with him.
Noticing the sigil in use, Corbin pointed to his eyes and then to the house.
Linus nodded that he had things in hand.
Corbin retreated to a more defensive position.
“Do you feel that? The wards have been breached,” the first woman snarled. “Someone followed you.”
“You’re being paranoid. It was probably a squirrel.”
“Get out.”
“But Linus—”
“He’s your problem now.” Footsteps punctuated her anger. “Don’t contact me again.”
Smudging the sigil on his hand, Linus broke the connection to allow himself precious seconds to reorient.
The front door opened then slammed shut, and Linus glanced up in time to peer through the leaves as Corbin moved to intercept Leisha.
That left the mystery woman for him.
Easing out from under his cover, he crept to the back door. Finding it locked, he used a sigil to remedy the problem, entered the home, then began a careful sweep of the living space, tensed for confrontation.
Aside from a used coffee mug in the sink and a rumpled bed, he found no signs that anyone lived there. With online home rentals at an all-time high, he had run across more than one person who preferred a furnished home for a weekend or week, enjoying the local experience, rather than staying in a hotel.
An open window explained where the mystery woman had gone, but there was no sign of her now.
Certain he was alone, he pulled out his phone and dialed. “I’ve got an address for you.”
“Let me have it,” Bishop answered. “And then tell me what to do with it.”
Linus rattled off the address. “Find out if this is a rental and who rented it last.”
“That won’t take but an hour or two. Keep an eye on your phone. The analysis of Orin’s footage ought to be ready by then.”
“Thank you.”
“Welcome.”
There was no point in combing the space, of that much he was certain. It was too clean, too staged. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t go through the motions regardless. Drawing a sigil of Grier’s design onto his palm, he swept his arm throughout each room in search of bronze powder or filings, which was lethal to gwyllgi. The best he could hope for at this point was that Lethe could spare someone to come pick up the scent of the renter, and he didn’t want them harmed due to his carelessness or impatience.
The house yielded no answers, or further threats, but the ward, however, might tell him something.
Exiting the home, he began his search for signs of who and what had moved against them.
“Leisha is bound and gagged and waiting on the backseat,” Corbin announced. “I got a call from a friend with the SPD, who gave me a heads-up a neighbor reported suspicious activity around a rental house. She then lectured him on how the neighborhood was going downhill since the Truetts started letting strangers vacation in their home.”
A quick text to Bishop with that information halved his newest workload.
“A quiet street like this,” Corbin mused, “anyone who doesn’t belong is going to stick out. Big time.”
The reverse was also true, and it made excellent camouflage for predators. “We need more stringent guidelines for these rentals.”
“People using the human app versus the para app know exactly what they’re doing.” Corbin shook his head. “They can slide in and lay low without having to announce themselves to the local factions and go through the whole rigamarole for a lousy weekend out of town with the family.”
The problem being, a weekend out of town with a family often entailed multiple locals disappearing and investigations that stretched across state lines as the perpetrators were hunted down for prosecution.
“The two apps ought to be integrated, on our end, so that we can crosscheck renters by ID and photo.”
“Punt it over to Bishop,” Corbin suggested. “He loves that kind of thing.”
“That’s another item for our to-do list. We need to find our own Bishop. We can’t depend on Atlanta’s resources forever. Hadley has been generous, but she needs them focused on their own work.”
“I would volunteer for duty, but I can’t even remember my password for online banking.”
The surprise of learning Grier was pregnant, and the concerns of what, exactly, she carried had stalled out much of their plans for the year. They had put off assembling her a local team in favor of leaning on his former Atlanta team to see them through. With the baby—their son—due in two weeks…
“Two weeks,” he murmured. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
When Corbin raised his eyebrows, Linus filled him in on what he had overheard.
“It sounds like they wanted your mother out of the picture before the baby made his debut.”
Though he agreed, it made no sense. “What does one have to do with the other?”
Aside from the obvious, that it would have ruined their son’s birthday and shifted the focus from him onto the Grande Dame’s disappearance, much as the shower had been ruined for the same reason.
“I’m not sure.”
The doll was another riddle to solve, but Lacroix was dead and gone. How that related to his mother, he had no clue. Unless they were dealing with two separate incidents? A taunt for Grier and the abduction.
“I hate to bail on you.” Corbin rubbed his eyes. “I’ve been up going on thirty-six hours. My brain is mush.”
“I need to check on Grier.” The tenuous connection between his mother’s kidnapping and his wife’s pregnancy spooked him e
nough he wouldn’t be able to think straight until he saw her again. “I’ll take you to Woolworth House. I can coordinate with the Atlanta team until dusk.”
“That works for me.” They started the short walk to the van. “What about Leisha?”
“We’re bringing her with us.”
They couldn’t risk locking her in a public cell at the Lyceum until dusk. Furious as she was, she would talk to anyone who would listen. The longer his mother’s disappearance went unnoticed, the better for the stability of their community.
Corbin connected the dots quickly. “Lethe?”
“She can spare guards to keep an eye on Leisha until dusk. Grier can question her then.”
“You’ve changed.” Corbin grinned his approval. “I didn’t realize I’d been gone that long.”
The endorsement puzzled him. “What do you mean?”
“There was a time when you wouldn’t have let Grier anywhere near this. Yet here you are, letting your very pregnant wife interrogate criminals.”
“Marriage is, among other things, an agreement to share your entire life with someone.” Linus cut him a look. “I don’t keep secrets from Grier.”
“Still impressive.”
“It helps I can go weeks without sleep, that our property is regularly patrolled by a gwyllgi pack, its alpha pair among them, and the wards on Woolworth House are all but impenetrable.”
Corbin chuckled under his breath. “I feel like I should be taking notes.”
“Imagine the wisdom I will have amassed by the time you decide to settle down,” Linus said sagely, amusement thick in his voice. “I could keep a notebook to record my wisdom.”
“I’m not sure settling down will happen, but you keep that notebook.” Corbin flashed a smile. “I’m sure Grier would laugh herself silly reading it.”
Beneath the joking, Linus sensed real sorrow. “Your situation is complicated.”
“I’m going to live forever. I didn’t want that. I didn’t expect it. I’m going to outlive everyone and everything I know, and that includes girlfriends or wives or…”
Children.
“It’s widely believed your offspring will be like you,” Linus offered. “There are no guarantees, of course. Not enough is known about your breed of vampire.”
An edge crept into his voice. “I’m not willing to sire a child out of curiosity.”
“I’m not suggesting you do.” Though once he might have, given his own lack of empathy when gripped with overwhelming curiosity.
All that kept him from becoming another Leisha was Grier’s humanizing influence. He had been cold, and he had been clinical in the past. He endeavored to leave both behind going forward to embrace a warmer worldview, one he could share with his empathetic wife.
The trip home always took too long, each mile stretching double that, but Linus made it in record time.
“I’m starving,” Corbin complained as he slid out his door, “but I want sleep more than food.”
“We’ll have breakfast delivered.” Linus exited the van and locked it. “Any requests?”
“Do you mind if I cook? I owe Grier an apology, and she prefers them calorie dense.”
Since he wasn’t wrong, Linus nodded. “The fridge is fully stocked. Help yourself.”
Once Corbin left, Linus waited on the lawn for the gwyllgi on patrol to find him and report before he too called it a day. Given the circumstances, he wasn’t surprised it was Hood who ambled up to him on all fours then embraced the change and took a seat on Woolly’s bottom step.
“All’s quiet on the home front,” Hood announced. “Find anything useful?”
“We have a lead.” He pointed to the van. “I would appreciate it if you could accommodate her today.”
“No problem.” Hood whistled, and a pair of gwyllgi rounded the house. “Take our guest to her suite.”
The gwyllgi changed, accepted the keys from Linus, and went to fetch Leisha.
“She’s a necromancer,” Linus warned them. “Keep her hands bound and pat her down for sharp objects.”
The shorter of the two, an older male Linus recognized, nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Can you spare someone to get a read on a house where we lost a suspect?” Heat prickled Linus’s neck in the promise of a burn if he didn’t go in soon. He ought to design a sigil to mitigate sun exposure on necromancers, but he could never seem to find the time. “I checked for bronze contamination before I left, so it should be safe enough.”
“Now that you’re back, I’ll go.” Hood stood and stretched. “I can compare it to what we found on the grounds at the Lawson manor.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet.” He grimaced. “The last time I checked on our wives, they were unconscious in your bed and covered in chocolate wrappers and potato chip crumbs.”
Linus had grown used to the crinkle and crunch but… “I’ll take my old room if they’re still sleeping.”
“Might be for the best.”
With a soft laugh, he climbed the steps then paused on the threshold to pat the doorframe. A kiss of warm air swirled around his face, and he relaxed into the feeling of being home, of having a home.
“I’m going to check on Lethe and Grier,” he told Woolly. “Anything worth reporting?”
The curtains in the windows flicked in a shrug, and he took it to mean everything had been quiet, as Hood had told him.
An incoming message alerted him that Bishop had already dug up the rental’s owners and their recent tenants based on the address Linus had given him. He included a link to the app listing, which showed the home in the exact condition Linus found it in and confirmed his suspicions it hadn’t been used long.
A Norma Jean Oppenheimer, likely an alias, had secured the property for a week, but Bishop hadn’t pinned her down yet to confirm. Stolen identities were also popular tricks employed by any paras hoping to conceal their trail with human IDs, and they were equally time consuming to trace.
Once Linus reached the top of the stairs, he ducked his head into the bedroom he shared with Grier and found her curled around a tray of Double Stuf Oreos. Lethe sprawled across his pillow, and the fistful of Pixy Stix she clutched near her mouth left pink and purple stains where they mixed with her drool.
The tightness in his chest made breathing impossible until the slightest flicker from the hall light made him worry Woolly might wake them.
After taking one last look at his sleeping wife, he padded down the hall to his old bedroom and started calling in favors.
Ten
Lethe woke me with her flailing limbs, and once I registered that, it came as no surprise Linus had chosen to set up camp in his old bedroom. She bit him once for waking her, and he never forgot it. Though bedroom wasn’t accurate these days. Over time, we had transformed it into an upstairs office. There was a sofa, for the rare occasions when Linus catnapped while I was at work or on patrol, but he didn’t require much sleep. He tended to save those hours to spend with me, and I wasn’t complaining.
Hovering in the doorway, I watched the muscles flex in his back as he bent over his laptop.
“I can feel you watching me,” he murmured, glancing over his shoulder. “How did you sleep?”
“I can’t tell if LJ or Lethe kicked me in the bladder, but tonight is already off to a rocky start.”
Sliding back from his desk, he rose and crossed the room to me. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“It’s not your fault.” I looped my arms behind his neck. “I never sleep well without you.”
Even when he stayed up all day, his fingers clicking softly on his laptop’s keys, I rested better knowing he was safe beside me.
“Lethe looked comfortable.” He ducked his head. “I thought it for the best she remain that way.”
Tickling his ribs, I grinned when I stole a laugh from him. “You’re not chicken, are you?”
“Chicken implies I’m afraid. I prefer to consider it due caution.”
“Ve
ry wise.” I drew him down for a kiss. “How did you spend your day?”
“Let’s head downstairs for breakfast, and I’ll give you an update.”
“That’s an offer I can’t refuse.” I rubbed my hands together. “What did you make me?”
“The smoothie is from me,” he admitted. “The rest will be Corbin’s doing.”
Taking his arm, I let him help me down the stairs. “Since when does Corbin cook?”
“He wanted to apologize,” Linus explained. “He’s not being evasive on purpose.”
“Let me guess.” I exhaled. “He signed an NDA.”
“Yes.”
“Even though your mother promised to exempt him?”
“So it would seem.”
“I really, really hate those things.”
“Trust, unfortunately, can’t be bought.” He guided her into the kitchen. “NDAs, magical or otherwise, are a requirement to work in sensitive fields. The contractors must accept the terms.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “They are, however, headache-inducing if you find yourself on the wrong side of one.”
“Have we ever been on the right side of one?” From their time working for Lacroix, Lethe and Hood had learned firsthand more about my mother and the father I had never met than I would ever piece together, but they couldn’t tell me a thing. “Every time we bump into this, it’s like smacking face-first into a brick wall.”
“That’s what happens when you make friends who work in law enforcement and personal security.”
We entered the kitchen, and he settled me at the bar before opening the fridge to retrieve my smoothie with an extra dose of Vitamin L that had me wetting my lips in anticipation.
Exercising my extreme maturity, I stuck my tongue out at his back.
“Your kid is so lucky to have you as his mother.” Corbin ducked into the kitchen and kissed my cheek on his way to the stove. “Just think how much you two will have in common.”
“Linus,” I whined and stomped my feet for effect. “Corbin is being mean to me.”
“Grier is a crybaby,” he singsonged. “Grier is a crybaby.”
“All right, children.” Linus sat beside me. “Are you going to cook or antagonize Grier?”
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