Gray tidings, p.13
Gray Tidings, page 13
“That means there’s tunnel access through Townhouse B.”
“The townhouse her buddy, The Ferret, attempted to trick us into booking.”
“Do you think they’ve staked out the other four as well?”
“Depends,” I decided, “on whether those have tunnel access. I doubt she was simply guiding us to the only vacant home in the network.”
The house directly across the street from my very human friends.
How did Camber and Arden—and Nolan—tie into the tunnels, the sea monster, and the Garnier witch? The girls had no value to supernatural factions, except as bait. For me. And wasn’t that a comforting thought?
“Your dad, Nolan, the girls, and us, all in one place at one time.” Asa wiped dust off his cheek. “That’s no coincidence.”
“Don’t forget Pontchy. Tibby is mixed up in this too, which means the Garnier coven has a stake in what’s going on.” I sneezed into the bend of my arm. “They say New Orleans is a melting pot.” I rubbed my ticklish nose. “Guess that makes us the ingredients.”
If we returned the girl, the Garniers might back down, but that potential fix hinged on Dad cooperating, and I didn’t see that happening if Tibby had the power to work miracles.
Luca might not have concrete proof Dad wanted Tibby for Mom’s sake, but this convinced me she suspected it. She didn’t have to know Mom was a manifested spirit to conclude his rebellion involved searching for a means to reunite with his wife.
The timer pinged, and I blew out a breath, hoping I was equal to the task.
“We better get started.” I focused on the path ahead. “Clay will be getting antsy.”
What should have taken maybe twenty minutes from end to end took us three times that. Aside from one ensnarement charm, meant to bind our legs together at the ankles, Luca didn’t waste time or magic on seeding her escape route. That worked great for her, as far as strategies go, but not so much for us.
Hers was a quick getaway, but I couldn’t be certain she hadn’t booby-trapped the entire network, so I had to proceed as if she had or risk the consequences.
“Text Clay.” I hit the end, at least one of them. “Tell him to stand his ground.”
It would be embarrassing if Luca ran a loop around us then shot out the back door while we were inching along.
“Luca passed through there.” Asa reached over my shoulder, phone in hand, to point out an alcove. “I can scent her and Tibby, but neither smell like black magic.” He eased in front of me. “The rot I scented at the entrance isn’t here either, so there must be at least two active routes.”
This one, which we assumed led to Townhouse B.
The other, which must be used for the storage and transportation of bodies.
“You might as well go on ahead.” I shoved his backside, and not just as an excuse to touch his butt. “You’re already halfway there.”
The smile he cast over his shoulder was feline in its pleasure.
I blame fascination for my confusion over whether he was happy to guide the way or happy I copped a feel.
The climb out was gradual, more what you would expect from stairs leading from a basement into a house. About the time my thighs began to protest, Asa quit walking and placed his palm on the underside of a wooden rectangle set into what must be the floor above us.
“There’s a door here, but it’s got no hardware.”
“Let me squeeze by you.” I slid with my back against the wall, splinters tearing at my shirt. “A spell was used to lock it.” I could tell that much from holding my palm above the panel. “Do you smell that?” I breathed in. “Vetiver, green grass, and vanilla beans.”
“Luca has no signature,” Asa said, no doubt thinking of the shard. “Do you think Tibby did this?”
“Luca is hiding her power for a reason. I could see her using Tibby for small magics to avoid cluing us in.”
Except, she knew I was—or had been—a black witch. Dad too. Why hide that from us?
Unless her secret was bigger than we gave her credit for.
“There are no dark undertones to Tibby’s scent.” Asa filled his lungs. “How can that be?”
“Maybe she hasn’t been trained yet?”
Unlike necromancers who resuscitated dead humans, resulting in vampires, Lazarus witches brought the dead back exactly as they had been. Just with more sand topping off the hourglass of their lives.
That was how the dossier the Kellies pieced together from fragments of lore framed it anyway.
News of a practicing Lazarus witch in New Orleans would get around, and necromancers would come for her. They would kill her, and anyone who got in their way, in order to secure their power base. Until she was old enough and powerful enough to hold her own, her coven was wise to hide her and her abilities.
Or they had been, until Mr. Garnier decided to spread word of her talent as leverage to get her back.
“Wouldn’t Luca verify her skill set before abducting her?”
“As long as Dad doesn’t know Tibby can’t help him, she still has value to Luca.”
Drawing magic from Colby, I spread power through my fingers into the wood until a hinge groaned with the weight of the door attached to it, and the whole thing crashed open with a bang I’m sure folks heard on the next block over. Above me, blackness loomed, dark and endless.
Wand in hand, I prepared for an attack, in case Luca had decided to wait around, but as soon as my head cleared the hatch, I was sucked into a vortex and spat out into an empty bedroom on unsteady legs.
Seconds later, Asa appeared with barely a hitch in his stride on his way to check on me.
“Whoever glamoured this place is a master.” I examined the smooth wall behind us. “There’s no seam.”
A portal woven in the ether had hurled us anywhere from seven to ten feet through solid earth.
“How did we get here?” He ran his hand over the plaster. “A teleportation charm?”
“If the charm is original to the time period, then the tunnels were never connected to the houses via mundane means. Magic bridged the gap the whole time.”
The mystery of the pentagram shape was solved, if my theory was correct.
“What does that mean for the wargs?”
“Either white witches were working in concert with the wargs during the outbreaks, or they were acting as gatekeepers.” I left the room to wander the space. “The wargs couldn’t have gotten from the houses into the tunnels with the bodies without help.” I checked the fridge and found takeout containers from where Luca had been squatting in the house. “Though I’ll admit, I don’t see how they got dead bodies…”
“Patients,” he finished the thought for me. “To lower the number of deaths reported in hospitals, they could have taken the infected poor off the street to treat them.”
In 1853, the worst plague year on record, eight thousand or more people died, earning New Orleans the grim nickname Necropolis: City of the Dead.
“Except there is no treatment. It’s wait, hope, and see.”
And if the worst happened, which it often did, they stored the bodies under the houses then carried them out the tunnel to the river where they were taken to a mass grave on a barge. That was my new working theory, based on what we had learned so far. Too bad learning the past wouldn’t help us in the present.
A soft buzz had Asa fishing his phone from his pocket. “Clay is demanding an update.”
“Tell him to shut the hatch and make sure it seals. We don’t want people wandering around down there. The illusion will fade within a few minutes of him leaving, so he doesn’t have to worry about that part.”
A text lit up my screen, and I thought for a second Clay must have gotten impatient.
>>Boys have been sent home.
>>Except Aedan.
>I’m sorry it didn’t work out like you hoped.
>>The weekend’s not over yet.
>>Cupid might have one last arrow in her quiver.
>Good luck.
If her aim was true, then we would all need it.
11
With the clock ticking, we needed to locate Dad. Fast. But I didn’t have the bottle with me, and it was an oddly faithful servant to Aedan. That left me with one option before I got the type of magic involved that Dad would see coming and, no doubt, evade in order to avoid the confrontation that came along with it.
“Clear,” Asa called on his way down from the second floor of Townhouse B.
Until Clay arrived, we might as well be productive. That meant Asa searching the residence for evidence and me updating Colby on everything Luca told us.
“The scent path leads from the bedroom to the kitchen and from the bedroom to the front door. There’s nothing on the stairs or in the rooms on the other two floors.”
Without magic to track, he was reduced to the human options of deodorant, soap, lotion, or perfume.
“Luca is using this as an entry point to the tunnels, not as a base. Or she was. I doubt she comes back.”
True to her word, she had been waiting here for us to get with the program, nothing more.
“That leaves us one other potential basement that must be where the corpses are kept.” He glanced back the way we came in. “Luca might have kept Tibby down there too.”
“We would have to explore those tunnels to be sure.”
“I can do that while you touch base with Aedan.”
“You’re going to let Blay run amuck down there, aren’t you?”
“We need to bait him to the surface if you’re ever going to confront him.”
“Confront is a harsh word. I want him to know I forgive him, but if he ever does it again, I will delete his Mystic Realms and Mystic Seas profiles and make him start over from scratch using a freebie account.”
“Cruel and unusual punishment indeed.” He sounded approving. “We’ll be back.”
“I’ll be here.” I took a seat near the door. “You didn’t think I was going to leave you two alone, did you?”
The smile growing on his face told me that yes, he would have expected it. From anyone else. But not from me. He was learning to trust I was his safety net. To believe I would catch him or break myself trying, no matter how far the fall.
Battling his inner daemon, Asa returned to the tunnels with his phone in hand to begin mapping.
Dread coiling in my stomach, I forced myself to relax before dialing Aedan. “Hey, coz.”
“You heard about the boys?”
“I did.” A swell of pride filled my chest. “The girls handled it well.”
“Better than I would have,” he agreed, an edge of violence in his voice. “What’s up?”
“I don’t suppose you brought the secret message bottle with you?”
“I wasn’t sure if you would need it, so yes, I did.”
“I knew you were my favorite cousin for a reason.”
“The only other cousin you’ve met tried to kill you…”
“Minor detail,” I assured him. “Any ideas on how to send it? Sink? Bathtub? Toilet?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of the lake or the river. They’re more creeklike than a toilet bowl.”
“Dad would probably appreciate it more too.”
“What’s the message?”
To guarantee his immediate response, I had to risk sharing information that might prove dangerous.
“Tell him I found his Lazarus, but she’s only available for twenty-two hours.” I touched the pendant at my throat, my palms going damp. “He’ll know how to find me.”
The note, he might ignore to avoid a confrontation.
The grimoire, and its boundless magic, he would not.
Raised voices in the background interrupted our conversation as the girls found where he had gone.
“Party time,” Camber yelled as Arden laughed and plastic beads clacked near the phone.
“I’ll let you know how it goes,” Aedan said under his breath then ended the call.
A hard rap on the door kept me from stewing over the Luca problem, and I shot to my feet. Careful not to make a noise, I crept to the door and peered through its peephole to find a glowering golem. With a sigh, I opened the door and let him in.
“Good thing you’re so stealthy.” I crossed my arms. “Otherwise, people might think we broke in.”
“It’s a rental,” he countered. “Neighbors are used to strangers traipsing in and out.” He scanned behind me. “Where’s Ace?”
“Blay is in the tunnels.” I gestured toward the bedroom with the portal. “He’s mapping them.”
“Still hiding from you?”
“Yup.”
“Smart man.” He chuckled. “Remember that time I hid from you for a whole week?”
“I still haven’t figured out how you did it.” I leaned against the wall. “We were sharing a hotel room. You were there. I saw the takeout containers. You even baked apology cruffins. Cinnamon ones.”
“Ah, cruffins.” His eyes grew wistful. “The love child of muffins and croissants.”
“All that drama because you mixed a bleach kit for your wig in my shampoo bottle and left it in the shower.”
“I lost the little squirty thing that came in the kit, okay?” He huffed. “I didn’t mean to turn you blonde.”
“You should have thrown it away when you were done with it.”
“I didn’t want to toss it until I was sure I had the color right.”
Usually, our bickering soothed me in a way few things did. Clay was one of the constants in my life. He had been the only thing I could count on for a long time. But I was being yanked in so many directions, I didn’t have the energy to be snarky.
After a moment of silence, Clay dragged us back onto the real topic. “He’s not going to be happy.”
“If that witch is a dud? No. He’s not.”
“I meant with Luca for approaching you. She’ll be lucky if he doesn’t kill her.”
“She didn’t threaten me.” I heard the throb of hurt in my voice. “She threatened his wife.”
Even if she didn’t grasp the nuances of Mom’s condition, her actions put Mom at risk of a more final death than her current state. That was how Dad would see it. And if Luca cost him the opportunity, no matter how slim, to bring Mom back to life, Dad would kill her. Of that, I had no doubt.
“Rue…”
“Let’s check on Blay.” I shoved to my feet. “See if he needs help.”
Before Clay could assure me Dad cared about me too, I brushed past him to the bedroom and used a spell to pry the unmarked doorway open. Expecting a cyclone to slurp me up, I was surprised by the stairs I was given instead.
Clearly, there were different rules for entering versus exiting the tunnels.
Far below me, Blay sat on the lowest step, elbows on his knees, staring at the grungy floor.
“How long have you been waiting?” I took the stairs at a clip. “Did you need help getting back in?”
“Blay sorry.” He curved his shoulders inward. “Rue mad at Blay?”
Joining him on the cold concrete, I rested my head on his shoulder. “No, I’m not.”
“Rue screamed.” He glanced over at me. “A lot.”
“I was surprised.” I looped my arm through his. “I would appreciate if you didn’t trick me like that again. I might have agreed to the jump, if you had asked.” Probably not. “But you didn’t, and it scared me.”
“Blay sorry.” He nuzzled the top of my head. “Rue forgive?”
“Of course I do, big guy.” I petted him without prompting to show we were good. “Did you have any luck?”
“Yes.” He stood in a rush. “Room there.” He pointed down the tunnel. “Stinks like death.”
“We’re already down here.” Clay weighed in from behind us. “We might as well check it out.”
A hesitant smile on his lips, Blay offered me a hand up, which I took.
The fit would be tight for Clay, but if Blay could squeeze through, then he could too.
“Rue pet more.” He passed me a section of his hair. “Blay lead.”
For this, I had no one to blame but myself. “Did you pick up on anything else?”
“Magic.” He nodded. “Black magic but not. Death magic but not.”
These days, it was a given that black magic would pop up in our cases. I was the specialist, after all. Promotion or not, it made sense for me to be here. Even if I suspected the director had dispatched me for other reasons. Namely to track down his son.
That made two people who expected me to deliver Dad to them with a cherry on top.
But a face-off with the director would end with the director dead, and the animus vow killing Dad.
And a meeting with Luca would only accomplish the same thing, if in a more roundabout way.
“Luca didn’t mention the bodies or Pontchy.” I should have pressed her harder. “Any guesses how they tie in?”
“The bodies are a handy food source.” Clay mirrored my thoughts. “I’m shocked she’s going through the effort of stealing when she could just kill someone.” He caught my look and frowned. “What? I didn’t say I condoned murder for a pet’s raw diet, just that it’s a lot of extra work for a black witch.”
“We don’t know that Luca is a black witch,” I reminded him. “The Ferret might be the practitioner.”
Between the two of them, it made more sense she was the cause of the occasional stink we encountered, given Luca carried a shard with her.
“This it.” Blay stepped into the rectangular chamber. “Bodies go there.”
Inside the cramped room, I caught a whiff of formaldehyde, but there was no lingering decay odor.
Unless Pontchy was like a tiger shark, known as trash cans of the sea, preserved bodies would give it an upset stomach. If not outright kill it. Likely the chemical remnants came from storage in the morgue.
“The bodies don’t spend much time here.” Clay walked the perimeter. “The scent is too faint.”
“They’re fresh,” I reminded him, “and the temperature down here has to be mid-sixties.”
“What do you think, Blayer the Slayer?”
I ought to have known that along with a name came a plethora of, often terrible, nicknames from Clay.
