by T. G. Ayer
Something I should investigate further.
“So to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?” Her voice, though cool, held a smile and I knew she missed me. Lately, Steph had gotten itchy feet, wanting to go with me on cases wherever that was possible.
“Your expertise is required,” I said, returning her smile.
“Shoot,” Steph said, and I could just imagine her holding her fingers over the keyboard, ready and waiting to tap away and find whatever I was looking for. This particular task, though, would take her a little more than just tapping keys. She’d have to use that amazing brain of hers to hack stuff—her favorite pastime.
“I need you to hack into the NOLA PD case files. I’m looking for anything the FBI may have passed on to the detectives as a peace offering. Could be past cases, or details of murder scenes. Anything that the detectives would have made notes on, even passing discussions.”
“Ah yes, to get them to share. Offer a few details, show them there is a link to the FBI case, get them to exchange case interpretations then swoosh, pull the case out from under them.”
I laughed. “Swoosh? I’m not sure the FBI swooshes for anything.”
Steph popped her gum in my ear in rebuke. “Anything else you can give me as a guideline? How far back am I looking, and can I hack the FBI database as well?”
“Steph! You go wash your mouth out with soap right this minute.”
“Whatever. Not as if I haven’t done it before.”
“Well, make sure it’s as legit as possible. This info will likely end up in Carter’s hands.”
“Fine. Party pooper.” Steph rang off and promised to email details as soon as she found it.
It took her only twenty minutes to email me. I tapped the file icon and scanned the details. Steph had found the files, all marked with FBI case numbers. The feds had given Kellen’s detectives details on two other cases, one in Mississippi, and a second one two months ago in Alabama. One victim was a runaway, the other a member of a small church on the outskirts of the state, close to the Mississippi border.
From the looks of it, the killing had been kept to a specific area which implied the killer was located in one of those three states. It wasn’t a terribly informative file, and I suspected—no, I expected—that the FBI file had been stripped of most of the pertinent information, leaving only crumbs for the NOLA detectives.
Asher had better solve that case and quick.
Otherwise, he was going to have Carter on his ass, and that was not going to be pleasant.
I forwarded the details to Carter and ended with a polite, “Please let me know if you need anything else,” although I hoped he wouldn’t call me again. I had asked for personal time after all. That the cases crossed over into my personal investigation was irrelevant.
Or so I told myself.
* * *
Nerina and I walked up to the body of the dead girl. I’d fallen asleep in the car after my chats with Carter and Steph, and was glad for the reprieve. A short nap and some food had done wonders.
We stopped short, a few feet from the body. “Do we want to avoid contaminating the scene?” I asked softly.
Nerina glanced at me. “I will if you think it’s necessary, but I can’t do anything about having to breathe the air from my lungs into hers. It’s how the deathtalking works. I’m sure I’ll be contaminating her in some way.”
I nodded at Nerina’s long gray cloak, then looked over at the lab coats hanging on hooks beside the double-doors. “I think we should be as careful as we possibly can. Even if it means just ensuring we don’t leave evidence of our presence behind here.”
Nerina nodded, and we both moved toward the glass-fronted cupboard that contained disposable gloves, bootees, and hospital overalls. We pulled the garments over our clothing, tucked our hair beneath the caps also provided. I held back a smile as I studied Nerina’s more bloated cloak-covered form.
“This better be worth it,” said Drake from the far side of the room.
“Not as if you need to get all kitted out,” said Nerina with a half-smile.
“Yeah, but you two are wasting time.”
Drake had a point, which neither of us confirmed nor denied. Nerina hurried over to the corpse to take a blood sample first. She’d mentioned the need to do that before the death talking process as sometimes the connection between a DeathTalker and the dead person could be a drain on the life-sources of a person’s body—blood being the main contributor.
Sample taken and stored inside a small bag—which Nerina handed over to me for safekeeping—she crouched and began the process of communing with the dead girl. I watched Nerina as she bent over the corpse, her gray hair almost hiding her pale, colorless skin.
Somewhere beneath her neutral exterior lay a girl with a past, a girl with history but I couldn’t see it at all. Kai and I had spoken about it once. We’d come to care for the DeathTalker, and we’d realized how little we knew about her.
I pulled myself from my thoughts to focus on what she was saying.
“Where am I?” Nerina said, her voice shaking.
I pocketed the vial and drew closer, wanting to hold onto the girl. The sound of her terrified voice made me ache to spill my own tears. “You’re …safe now.” The moment I said the words I realized how dumb they were. How safe was she considering she was dead?
Nerina stared around her. “Is he still…alive?”
“Who is he?” I asked, avoiding her question. “What does he want with the girls?” There were a million questions I could ask, but I had to choose.
Tears slipped from Nerina’s eyes. “They’re all dead? Please…are they dead?”
She seemed to want to be assured that the girls were dead and all I could be was honest with her. “I’m so sorry. But, I think they are.”
“Good. Oh god. Please let them be dead. He…what he does…they are better off dead.”
“Can you tell me more?” I asked softly.
Nerina shook her head as tears spilled from her eyes.
“Please. We need to find him. If we are going to stop him, we need to find him. You’re the only person that can help us.” I hated to heap responsibility on her shoulders at a time like this, but I had little choice.
“I…I don’t know. He wants the girls for the sacrifices. That’s all I know. But…what he does to them…to us…it’s terrible.”
“Can you tell me where he is keeping the girls?” I asked, keeping my tone low. I’d almost asked her where he’d kept her and stopped myself in time. I knew from past experience that sometimes you can say the wrong thing to the newly dead and it can send them into a place of perpetual terror, reliving the horrors of their horrible death over and over again.
“Kwalasha,” she said, her voice breaking on the word.
Nerina’s eyes widened and then she sucked in a breath. Taking a few steps back she stumbled, and Drake lunged forward in time to catch her before she hit the tiled floor.
“What happened?” I asked her, helping Drake to support her until she was sitting upright. So much for not leaving DNA in the morgue.
Nerina shook her head. “I saw a little more than I had expected to see.” Her face was pale—paler than normal— and her jaw was hard.
“What do you mean?” I asked, worried now. This was new, Nerina seeing more than what the dead told her with their voices.
Nerina swallowed and looked away from me for a brief moment. Then she inhaled. “In her thoughts. I’m not sure why, but I could access her thoughts. At least I could for a short while.” She fell silent then looked around the morgue, as if confused as to how she’d ended up on the floor.
“Are you okay though?” I asked even as she boosted herself to her feet.
Nerina nodded, straightening the collar of her coat. “Not really.”
I let out a short laugh, then saw that she didn’t look in the least bit amused. In fact, the expression on her face was one of fear.
“What else?” I asked.
; “Kwalasha.” She said the word, then headed for the corner where Drake hovered now, as if impatient to be gone.
I scurried after them. “The girl said that’s what he calls the place he’s keeping them. I assume it’s the name of the building, or the area in which the building is located?”
Nerina shook her head. “No. It’s a name of a place.”
“What place?” asked Drake, his tone a mix of concern and impatience. “What could it mean that it could be that bad?” He almost rolled his eyes, and I was impressed when he didn’t. He just looked super ready to get out of there.
Nerina lifted her eyebrows. “What it means is bad. It’s very bad.”
I sighed. I’d had a gut feeling that the killer was linked to the warlock persecuting me. If it was him killing all those girls, then his reasons were steeped in black magic, and had everything to do with the dark arts.
“I’m guessing I know what you’re about to say,” I said.
Nerina nodded and swallowed hard. Though I could feel her fear even from a foot away, Nerina’s face was devoid of emotion when she spoke. “Yes. It means Hell.”
Chapter 18
I may be a mage, and I may belong to the supernatural world—one that existed beyond that of the human earth—but I was never the type to be comfortable with the darkness, nor with the evil that lived within it.
Perhaps it had a lot to do with the way Ari had been taken when we were kids.
I’d been so distracted over the last few weeks, so worried about the blood-loss and the hauntings, about case after case, about Samuel and Drake and Saleem, that I’d barely taken time to think about where I was at, how I was dealing with my own deep-seated horrors.
My memory of that night—way back when I was a kid, and my little sister had been taken from us—had been blocked out for a long time. I’d believed, or perhaps I’d convinced myself that I’d believed that she was dead. Simply because the alternative was all the more terrifying.
If she was still alive, what were they doing to her, what had they done to her after they’d taken her away? Why had they taken her?
For so long, I’d teetered between hoping she was dead to hoping she was still alive. Had it been my guilt that I hadn’t saved her that had fueled the hope she’d be alive? The tiny niggling fear that if she were dead, I’d have a heavier burden to bear.
My mind took me to the hooded figure in the demon plane, the one who had seen me when I’d followed Samuel’s feedback thread. There had been something about that figure, something familiar in that aura that sometimes when I think back to that projection I’d imagine the scene play itself out. I’d imagine the person turn toward me and drop the hood. I’d imagine seeing this pretty young woman who I’d recognize as Ari. I’d imagine that Samuel was watching out for Ari. I’d imagine her smile as she opened her arms and called out my name. Tears of joy.
I let out a soft laugh.
Survivors guilt is a thing.
I was making things up to make myself feel better because of my own failures. And added to my self-loathing because I’d been the one they’d left behind, I’d had Detective Fulbright on my tail all these years as a constant physical manifestation of that self-blame.
Fulbright had been scarce for a while now. I hadn’t seen him since I’d crossed paths with Darius, the Ancient.
Not that I was longing for the creepy detective’s company. It was just that I knew how the man thought, I knew what made him tick. He lived each day in the hope of putting me away. There was little that could stop him short of my death.
Or his.
I sighed.
Thinking of death made me think about Samuel, and I made a mental note to visit him as soon as I got back to Chicago. Samuel was holding on by a ragged silken thread. There was no telling how long he would last.
My phone buzzed, and I was very grateful that it had distracted me from my morose thoughts. Thinking about Samuel sometimes made me physically ill.
I answered the phone, glad to see that it was Natasha, responding to my text I sent her an hour ago.
“Hey. Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. I was in a meeting.”
“One of those DND meetings?”
“Huh?” asked Natasha. “A Dungeons and Dragons meeting? I’m so confused.”
I laughed. “Do not Disturb meetings.” I rolled my eyes, more than amused that Natasha even knew what ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ was.
“Oh. I see,” she paused then said, “So? How may I be of assistance?”
“I need a tracking spell.” I proceeded to fill Natasha in on what had happened over the last day and patiently endured her scolding.
At last, she took a breath and said, “Hold on. I’ll be right there.”
Then she hung up and left me staring at the phone. Nerina looked at me. We were both sitting on the floor, backs against the wall, ancient books opened before us. We’d raided the libraries of at least a dozen ancient repositories for research or detailed information on African Black magic and any mention of Kwalasha.
“What?” asked Nerina, a smile curving her mouth.
“She hung up.” I shook my head. “Said she’d be right here.”
“And she is,” said Natasha from my left side, making me jump. I let out a low shriek.
“Fuck!” I growled. “Gods Natasha. What do you want to do? Put me in my grave early?”
The white witch snorted, hitching her oversized knapsack higher up on her shoulder. Beside her stood Larsson who gave me a wink, tapped two fingers to his temple in a quick salute, then disappeared in the next instant. “Your tokoloshe is doing a bang-up job already. No need for me to help it along,” Natasha said with a smirk.
I flipped her off and got to my feet. “Sorry, but we don’t have furniture. Or plates. Or anything.”
Natasha grinned and headed for the kitchen counter. “This will do.” She spread out the map of NOLA and dug inside her knapsack for the rest of the items with which she’d done the last blood scrying spell.
I bent to grab the vials of blood we’d drawn from both the dead men and the poor girl in the morgue, and handed them to the witch.
While Natasha set about preparing for the spell, I scanned the apartment for Drake who was conspicuously absent.
Nerina got to her feet and came over to me. “I have to leave for a while, if that’s ok. You have my cell. I’ll put it on a special ringtone so if you text or call, I’ll come straight back.”
I laid my hand on Nerina’s shoulder. “Thanks for everything. And for staying. You didn’t need to do that.”
Nerina smiled. “It’s been a pleasure. I only wish I could stick around for longer. I have a few things to do. Plus, I need to look in on Logan, and on Kai. Things are a little crazy in their part of the world right now.”
I nodded. “Thanks, though. I feel bad for taking you away from them.”
Nerina shrugged. “I was able to spare the time. Barring anything else hitting the fan in a major way, I’ll be back soon.”
She leaned close and gave me a quick hug, then waved at Natasha before fading into thin air.
It didn’t take long before Natasha had a general location of where the witch-doctor’s hideout could be. “Look, this isn’t one hundred percent. If the girl mentioned Kwalasha, then it’s entirely possible that all you will find is a base.”
“And what if it’s just a base. Or the earthly location of this Kwalasha place.”
“Then there will be something on the property that will act as a tether. Something that will hold the portal to that world in one place.”
“I’m taking it that these people don’t use portal keys.”
“If only it were that simple.”
“You should know by now that I never go into anything believing it will be easy. That will just be a surefire way to make things harder.”
Natasha gave me an odd look then said, “So you have everything. I’ve marked the location. I double-checked using both the vials of blood. Both led me to the s
ame location. Let’s hope you find something more to go on when you get there.”
Larsson arrived moments later to flit Natasha, and I had all of ten minutes alone in peace when Drake arrived, his face dark with what I interpreted as worry.
“Dude. Where the hell were you? You’d never believe who popped by.”
Drake’s lips twisted. “I’m not ready to see her yet.”
“What?” I almost yelled at him. “You took off to avoid seeing her? What the hell is wrong with you?” I glared at him, intensely confused. “Wow. Aren’t you the one who’s always been there to criticize me for my non-relationship with Saleem? You claimed we never did anything to take it to the next level and yet here you are actually making a conscious choice to avoid the love of your life?”
Drake sighed and settled against the counter, folding his arms over his well-muscled chest. He wore a black tee that molded tightly against his well-defined form, making it clear to every female within a ten-mile radius what they were missing.
He looked up at me. “It’s complicated.”
I snorted. “Lots of things are complicated when it comes to you.” He lifted a brow. “One, I’m still waiting for deets on the family reunion, and two, what’s the deal with Nerina?”
“You noticed?”
“Do I look like I’m blind?”
He raised his hand in defense and pushed off the counter. “Look. I wish I could tell you, but right now we have too much else to worry about.”
I scowled. “Which of the three is that referring to?”
“Three?” he asked, his brow furrowed.
“Witch, father, or death-girl?”
“All three.”
“Goddess save me.”
Chapter 19
We huddled at the back of the property, using a small pump house as a shield as we watched the large mansion. The place was dark, and appeared uninhabited.
Until you saw the outline of well-manicured hedges, and the lack of peeling paint and cracked walls. The estate was large, probably a couple hundred years old considering its location thirty minutes out of the city.
