Shade Chaser (City of Crows 2)

by Clara Coulson

  Not Erica, I know. She ran off after dinner to look into Halliburton’s ICM connections, in search of possible co-conspirators.

  Not any of my teammates. They worry about me, but they aren’t fearful enough to camp outside my home overnight.

  Not Charun or Tuchulcha. (I hope.)

  And not Donahue either—can’t be. The risk of coming here would be too great.

  So…?

  With a deep breath to calm my racing pulse, I raise my gun, release the bolt, and haul the door open. The dimly lit hallway is empty.

  Peeking out, I check each end of the hall, but I don’t spot anybody scuttling away. And I don’t sense any fresh magic in the air either, so no one veiled themselves a split second before the door moved. I loiter there in the doorway, gun in my hand, for fifteen seconds, thirty. Nothing happens.

  It was your imagination, Cal, I chide myself as I turn to head back inside. You got worked up by your nightmare, and the fear carried over into the waking world. Put the gun down and go back to sleep, you—

  The gun slips out of my hand and clatters across the foyer.

  Not because I’m clumsy. But because I’m stunned.

  Clinging to the front of my door, in the exact same place it was last time…is a yellow sticky note.

  But it can’t be. It can’t.

  The sticky note that led us to the occult website during the Etruscan case—that was from one of the kids. Wasn’t it? And all of those poor kids are either dead now or severely disabled from the injuries sustained when Tuchulcha blew up the boathouse on Lake Contessa. Last time I checked, a couple weeks ago, none of the survivors had been released from the hospital. Two of them had even been moved out of state, to a special burn victim facility.

  So how can I be staring at another, identical sticky note?

  That could only mean…the first note didn’t come from one of the kids.

  It was left for me by someone else. By someone outside the Etruscan case.

  Or someone whose involvement we never discovered.

  I reach up with a quaking hand and snatch the note off the door. This time, the message is longer, more detailed. Instead of a simple URL, there are three lines:

  BACKUP CLOCK SUPPLY

  TWO DAYS TO SUMMONING

  5786 PRIMROSE AVENUE

  I reread the note twice before the words sink in. And a cold far below the ice outside freezes the blood in my veins.

  Because those three lines mean three very important things:

  First, the summoning I supposedly thwarted by releasing all the souls in the clocks in Slate’s basement? It’s still possible because the Jameson trio had more than one storage room full of sacrifice fuel. Somewhere in Aurora, right now, there are hundreds more clocks containing hundreds more shades, trapped and awaiting their doom—awaiting the moment Ammit, Devourer of Souls, swallows them whole on her ascent from the Egyptian Underworld.

  Second, McKinney was partially right. There is at least one other ICM conspirator involved in the summoning plot, and they are planning to perform the summoning in Halliburton’s stead. Two days from now.

  And third—5786 Primrose Avenue? That has to be Halliburton’s second secret house. Where the summoning is set to happen.

  I clench my fist around the sticky note, crumpling it.

  I don’t understand. Who could be in such a prime position to know these key details about multiple murder cases and yet remain totally unknown to DSI? And furthermore, why are they relaying these details to me, Cal Kinsey, rookie detective? Why not Riker, the famous elite captain? Why not Commissioner Bollinger, who runs DSI, for god’s sake? I’m a relative nobody in the office hierarchy, so who would pick me, above anyone else, as the recipient of this critical information? A witch? A wizard? An owl man? I…don’t have time to wonder.

  Forty-eight hours until the summoning of Ammit.

  The identity of my mysterious “benefactor” will have to wait.

  “Cal?” Cooper, dressed in a faded pair of sweatpants and a rumpled white tank top, leans against the doorframe of the living room. He rubs his bleary eyes and blinks at me a few times, like he’s not sure if he’s awake or still dreaming. “What’re you doing up? Did something happen?”

  Dropping my hand to the doorknob, I softly close the door and relock it, then stumble over to the half-asleep archivist. I hold the sticky note in front of his face and flick the switch for the hall light so he doesn’t have to squint to read it. He takes the paper in his hand and smooths out the wrinkles as he skims the message.

  For some time, he stands there with a blank expression on his face, uncomprehending. But suddenly, his brain finds the on button, and concern races over his expression, tightening his lips and widening his eyes. His back and shoulders straighten, muscles tense.

  “Oh, my god,” he whispers. “This is bad, Cal. Ammit is a powerful Egyptian deity. If somebody summons this thing and gains control over it…”

  “They’ll have an unstoppable weapon they can use to fight the enemy.”

  Cooper swallows hard. “We’ve got to call this in. Riker and Ella need to know.”

  “Agreed.” I hold out my hand. “Can I borrow your phone?”

  He backs into the living room and finds his backpack, which he left sitting on one of my chairs. After a second of searching, he produces the phone and offers it to me. While I’m scrolling through his contacts to find Ella, Cooper scrutinizes the note again. “Say, Cal, where did this info come from exactly?”

  “The invisible man who leaves helpful sticky notes on my front door.”

  Cooper gawks. “What?”

  “I’ll explain later.” I hit the dial button, and the phone rings three times.

  Ella picks up, yawning into the microphone, and mutters, “What’s up, Cooper? Did Cal escape out the window?”

  My hand falls to my hip, and I scowl, even though Ella can’t see my body language through the phone. “Is that really what you think of me?”

  A pause. “Cal? Why do you have Cooper’s phone?”

  “My new one’s still updating.” I click my tongue. “You know, I was going to be a nice, obedient child and stay in tonight, but since you have so little faith in me, I might as well fulfill your expectations.”

  “Wait, what?” An air of panic filters into her voice. “What do you mean, Cal?”

  I rattle off an address. Not to Halliburton’s second house. But to a diner. “Get the team together, and meet me and Cooper there in half an hour. We’ve got some revelations to discuss.”

  “Cal—!”

  I hang up.

  Cooper stares at me, open-mouthed. He would never talk to Ella that way, and he’s stunned that anyone else would. I have to admit, if I wasn’t tired and aching (oh, and terrified), I probably wouldn’t have. Because she’s going to ream my ass later, and her punishments will not be swift. They will be long and tedious and mind-numbing. Imposing stacks of paperwork. Endless hours glued to the useless DSI tip line phones. And probably a few dirty toilets, paired with an inadequate scrub brush.

  Eh, I’ve had worse.

  “Um,” Cooper says, “you’re supposed to stay at home for the next week.”

  “You going to stop me from leaving, Coop?” I offer him his phone. “Going to take a few good swings at me, knock me out cold and drag me back to bed? Or maybe you have a taser in that backpack somewhere?”

  Cooper snatches his phone and glares at me, the way a puppy would if you took his favorite toy away. Then he drops the tension in his shoulders and sighs. “Give me a few minutes to get dressed.”

  I smack his arm playfully. “That’s the spirit, buddy.”

  “Careful, Cal,” the archivist replies as he retreats into the living room, toward his backpack. “You keep acting like that, you really will become the asshole everybody thinks you are.”

  “Ouch!” I laugh, half offended, half amused. “Where’d that sass come from?”

  Cooper, on his way to the bathroom, now with clothes tucked unde
r his arm, peers over his shoulder and gives me a withering look. “From the holes in my politeness filter you just poked. Keep prodding me, Calvin Kinsey, and you’ll soon learn exactly how much sass I have stored inside my petite blond ass.” He smacks the sticky note against the wall, where it stays, and slams the bathroom door behind him.

  “Wow,” I murmur in his wake. “Now there’s a temptation.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Since my last visit to the Mom and Pop diner, the abandoned bowling alley next door has been torn down and replaced with a toy store under construction. So the cab driver drops us off in the parking lot of the Laundromat, grumbles about the low visibility in tonight’s snowstorm, and peels away down the street, flinging slushy ice behind him. With Cooper close by me, we trudge through the deep white drifts and enter the diner, bells jingling on the door.

  The same older waitress who served Erica and me before recognizes my face as I tug down my scarf. After a brief moment of shock at the extent of my bruising, followed by a Bless his heart look, she smiles and tells us to sit anywhere.

  I scan the options and choose the largest booth in the back corner, which seats roughly eight. The waitress raises an eyebrow when Cooper and I sit by ourselves at the huge table, but she doesn’t say a word.

  “You hungry?” I ask Cooper, tugging out my wallet to make sure I brought cash. “I’ll pay.”

  “As an apology for dragging me out here in the middle of the night?” He side-eyes the front counter and gives me a shy grin. “Or because you want the waitress to think we’re on a date so she won’t flirt with you?”

  “God, Cooper. That’s awful.” I slap myself in the face with the wrinkled menu. “No. She knows me. Sort of. I came here two months ago with Erica.”

  “Oh.” He draws out the sound. “So she already thinks we’re on a date.”

  I cover my mouth with my hand and speak through my fingers. “I get it. You’re pissed that I made you fail your babysitting duty. I’m acting like a petty child and putting myself in unnecessary danger and pain.” On cue, my ribs ache. “Now please choose an expensive breakfast platter of your liking so I can empty my wallet to make it up to you.”

  “If Ella beats you up”—he peruses his own menu—“it’s not my fault.”

  “Acknowledged.”

  The waitress shuffles over and takes our orders. Cooper asks for a large pancake platter, while I pick another hearty meal of bacon and eggs, plus a big waffle on the side. I have a feeling I’ll be spending more than usual on food for the next few weeks, to make up for my systematic starvation while under McKinney’s “care.”

  If Cooper notices I’m eating a lot more than normal, he doesn’t point it out.

  About six minutes after the waitress disappears into the kitchen with our orders, a DSI SUV pulls into one of the street-side spaces in front of the restaurant. My team empties out of the vehicle, all four of them immediately spying Cooper and me through the wide windows.

  Riker is the first one inside, knocking snow off his boots before he heaves the door open. Ella and Amy enter next, with Desmond bringing up the rear. All four of them survey the tiny diner, wondering why on earth I chose here of all places for a critical meeting.

  I chose here because it was the first thing that popped into my head.

  I’m crafty like that.

  My captain ominously clack-clack-clacks his way over to the booth, his fancy new cane striking hard against the tile flooring. When the overhead lights cast his threatening shadow across my face, he says, “You better have a damn good explanation for being out of your apartment after I explicitly told you several times to stay there.”

  I fetch the folded sticky note out of my coat pocket and hold it up.

  He rips it from my fingers and reads the message. Ella, Desmond, and Amy peer around his shoulders to do the same. Riker’s brows draw together in confusion, scowl softening into a disturbed frown, and Ella’s lips part, a hushed gasp passing through her teeth. Amy and Desmond both look baffled, as if they think I wrote the message. (They weren’t here for the Etruscan Incident, so I don’t blame them for missing the reference.)

  Riker sets the note on the table and wriggles his fingers like he touched something poisonous. “This looks suspiciously like the note you received during the Etruscan case.”

  Patting the seat cushion as a signal for them to sit, I flash my boss a stiff smile. “Yeah, I picked up on that, Captain. And in case you’re wondering, it was left in the same place, around the same time, by who I assume was the same sneaky person.”

  “You didn’t see who left it?” Ella asks, sliding into the booth next to Cooper.

  “Nope. Woke up. Found the note on the door. Nobody in sight.”

  Ella looks to Cooper, who nods. “I didn’t see or hear anything either,” he says. “I was asleep.”

  Amy shoves herself into the open seat beside me. “So, what? Someone’s passing you valuable intel, Kinsey?”

  “Do tell, Calvin,” Desmond adds, plopping down next to Amy.

  “Well, about that…” I gesture for Riker to sit down as well before I continue.

  Grumbling, he takes his place to Ella’s left.

  “Okay,” I pick up. “First of all, we’re waiting for someone else to arrive. The person who has been passing me intel, from the ICM’s side of the playing field. I sent her a text about twenty minutes ago.”

  Riker stammers out, “Cal, hold on—”

  “And here she is now.”

  Erica the witch strides into the building, wiping snow off her coat and hat. She stops short when she notices the bizarre sight of a whole team of DSI detectives, plus an archivist, crammed into one booth in a small diner in the wee hours of the morning. I may have neglected to tell her this would be a group meeting.

  She shoots me a venomous glare and then trudges over to our table.

  Ella, Amy, and Desmond, who are all aware Erica and I occasionally hop into bed together, look from her to me to her to me, so many times it starts to make me dizzy. Before anyone can start ranting about the spying outfit I just admitted to being a part of, I blurt out the whole story. Starting with Riker’s years of working with Erica in secret. And finishing with the passing of the torch, to me, after Erica and I booted up our sorta-kinda relationship. At the very end of my tale of intelligence operations, I tack on the side story about the sticky notes, so Amy and Desmond won’t feel left out.

  After the last word rolls off my tongue, Ella Dean slowly—very slowly—turns her head toward her captain and says, in an ominously dainty tone, “You did what now?”

  Riker’s lips flap for a second before he manages to find words. “Can we discuss this later, Ella? According to Cal’s note, we’re running on the clock here.”

  Ella produces the angriest smile that has ever graced the surface of the Earth. “Oh, yes, Nick. We will discuss this later. And what a discussion it will be.” She quickly throws a not-so-nice look Erica’s way, but she doesn’t openly antagonize the witch. Ella might not like being kept in the dark about her captain’s untoward behavior behind the scenes, but even she can’t deny that having Erica freely hand over ICM intel is a huge boon. Ella runs her tongue across her teeth, clamping down her anger, and nods at me. “Okay, then. Let’s talk about this note.”

  “Note?” Erica spots the sticky note and leans over to read it. “What the…? Is this the address to Halliburton’s secret house?”

  All four of my teammates blurt out together, “What secret house?”

  “Um, hello,” says a voice behind Erica. It’s the waitress, bearing two hot plates of food. She stares at the people in the booth, and the witch loitering in front of the table, most of whom were definitely not here a few minutes ago, when she took our orders. For a second, she seems totally mystified, blinking over and over and over. Then she shakes herself out of her stupor, places the two plates in front of Cooper and me, and claps her hands cheerfully before she takes out her order pad again. “So, what can I get for th
e rest of you?”

  At first, no one says anything.

  Then Desmond shrugs and snatches one of the menus out of the holder in the middle of the table. “Let’s see…I think I’ll take a Number Ten, with the sausage patties.”

  Everyone else quickly follows suit, picking a meal almost at random.

  When the waitress finishes jotting everything down, she smiles brightly and scuttles off back to the kitchen.

  “Why did we come here again?” Amy mutters to me when the waitress is gone.

  Erica, now seated next to Desmond, snorts. “Probably because I brought him here once.”

  “Ah,” Ella says. “Now I see.”

  Riker smacks his palm against the table, startling everyone to silence. “All right. Let’s put the personal problems aside for the time being.” He glowers at us until we all murmur in agreement. Then he continues, “Now, according to Cal’s sticky note—and the last one was reliable—the remaining co-conspirators behind the summoning plot will be meeting in two days at the stated address in order to attempt the summoning of...?”

  I elbow Cooper, and he perks up. “U-Um, sir, I believe it may be Ammit, the guardian of Duat, the Egyptian Underworld. A lot of the original texts surrounding her lore refer explicitly to her devouring ‘sinful souls’ after those souls fail to pass a test of integrity conducted by Anubis in Duat’s Hall of Two Truths.”

  Riker interlaces his fingers. “And this Ammit is a powerful creature?”

  “Extremely.” I shovel some egg into my mouth. “If we don’t prevent that summoning, we’ll have another Charun on our hands.”

  “Except this one could be even worse,” Erica says as she unbuttons her coat. “Charun was acting under his own free will, in the best interests of the underworld he protects. If these rogue practitioners gain control over Ammit’s actions, as part of the summoning process, they could use her for surgical strikes against their unnamed enemy. Assassinations. Worse.”