Black hat 8 gray seas, p.14
Black Hat 8 - Gray Seas, page 14
Eyes on the mini ghost, I couldn’t help my smile as she made her report. “Does Essex Street have any security cameras?”
Her snort told me all I needed to know about that as she zipped over to her laptop.
“I downloaded the same program the Bureau uses for facial recognition a few weeks ago. This is its first real test.” She accessed a screen with six isolated photos, faces of the black witches Bangles mentioned. “Got it.” Her fingers flew over the keyboard. “Bottom left is Kenneth. Upper left is Daniel. Then we’ve got Sybille, Lesley, Mathew, and Ed.” Her wings twitched in concentration. “This is too easy.” Her chuckle was downright evil. “We’ve got them.”
“That means they’ve all got files with Black Hat,” Clay told me. “That’s the only way the program would have gone from the spinning circle of doom to bada bing bada boom, even with the help of two IDs.”
“Looks like their coven has been involved in several attacks on white witches in the area,” she murmured, “but the Bureau hasn’t intervened.”
The hunting of white witches was a coven matter, as far as Black Hat was concerned, but the Bureau was lousy with black witches. A white witch who came to us to report predation wasn’t walking out of the room alive.
Since the founder was a black witch himself, he tended to be lenient with dark practitioners as long as they confined their hunger to nonhuman victims. Since there was no power in a human heart to steal, it was an easy bargain to uphold for all but the most vicious, magically insane, or just plain stupid.
“We’ll have to visit the Lyonne coven,” I said, “if we want proof they received a handoff of king killer.”
No one believed they were meeting for a late-night lunch swap, but we needed hard evidence.
“Did you hear what Kenneth said?” Asa zeroed in on me. “They were being paid to take it off her hands.”
“They weren’t buyers?” Marita dropped into a chair. “Huh.” She tilted her head. “That’s weird.”
“They also have big dreams of a Black Hat free world,” I told them. “I got the sense they were hired to do a job that involves king killer, one that will help free them from Black Hat oversight.”
“Nan is the broker?” Derry checked with Colby. “She’s got to be, right?”
“The woman who came to the meeting wasn’t Nan,” Asa said, “but she could be working for her.”
“For Nan to ghost them,” Clay mused, “she’s likely figured out the Ogunquitch is MIA.”
“I need to touch base with Fergal, see if his team found any king killer at the candy shop.” We hadn’t known to search it, but he would have been in the thick of it, since we couldn’t involve cleaners without leaving a paper trail. “We still don’t know how the first batch of king killer ended up in Moon Water.” I couldn’t make it fit. “If it’s owned by humans, and run by humans, then…why that location? A neutral drop zone?”
“That’s the kindest possibility.” Asa pursed his lips. “Had anyone employed there gotten curious about the bag’s contents, there would have been fatalities.”
As much as I hated to say it, a bunch of dead humans cut down by an unidentifiable herb in a town that sold herbs by the pound wouldn’t affect Black Hat. It would cause a mild panic, cost the Essex Street crowd some sales, but it would look more like negligence on the part of the suppliers than stir any real panic that monsters existed. But, again, why waste a designer drug in short supply?
A call jerked me from my thoughts, and I dreaded answering when I saw the number. “Hollis.”
“We’ve got another love letter,” Isiforos informed me. “Found the poor bastard in Ogunquit.”
“Wait.” I turned my back on the others, hunching my shoulders like that might help me hear the news differently. “Another murder?” I leaned my hip against the wall. “With carvings?”
“Yep.”
“Same message?”
“Yep.”
“Do you have an ID?” I rested my head against a picture frame. “Any tie between them and Pendas?”
“Pendas, who is Madden ‘I’m a Super Freak’ Hatteras?’” His amusement leaked through. “I got your email. How is no one talking about him? A kink like that—a name like that—should have made him an instant legend in our circles.”
To keep up appearances, and because I hated paperwork, Colby often issued emailed updates and briefs as me. She had gotten her toehold in the database using my credentials to log in. But I didn’t usually see or interact with the people on my BCC list past an initial exchange of information. That would change now, with Isiforos and Fergal working so closely with me.
“Oh. Yes.” I cleared my throat. “The email.”
“Long week?” He laughed. “To answer your questions, no and maybe.”
Already dreading the answer, I asked, “Do you need me there?”
“Not unless you don’t think I can do my job.” He hesitated. “Or if you’re close.”
Had anyone else asked, I would have lied through my teeth, but I had to get better about trusting him. It only worked if I put myself out there the same as he was doing for me. “I’m in Salem.”
“You’re being followed.” His voice lowered to a growl. “Do you need backup?”
There was no reason to update the others on our conversation. They could hear both parts just fine.
“I have Clay and Asa.” I shoved upright and faced them. “And a couple of very dangerous friends visiting from out of town too.”
“I won’t be far.” He made it sound like a promise. “Call if you need me.”
“I will.” I noticed Colby pointing at her screen and read her intent. “Take your own photos and video, and I’ll compare them against what I’ve got.” Rather, Colby would do it. “Send me everything, okay?”
“Okay,” he drew out the word. “Do I send to the Kellies too?”
“Are the cleaners handling the scene?”
Definitely time to touch base with Fergal and give him a heads-up.
“Yeah.”
“Their evidence can stand as the official records in the database,” I decided. “I’m asking you for additional coverage as a favor.”
“You examined the first body,” Asa said to him from beside me. “You might see more than they do.”
“No problem.” Isiforos’s mood bounced back. “I’ll get those to you in ten.”
“Thanks.”
He ended the call, and I puffed out my cheeks, considering our options.
Fergal won out as my top priority, and I shot him a text to call me in case he needed to get somewhere private, away from his prisoner, first. Seconds later, my phone rang, and I cut the pleasantries. “The cleaners are heading your way. Another body was found, same MO as the dumpster fae.”
“We’ve left the area secure. They won’t find evidence of any wrongdoing.” I heard a smile in his voice. “They won’t find us, either. We’re en route to a safe house of mine.”
Inviting work home with him, into a protected space, was huge for anyone. It was massive for a vampire. Like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. And I was…humbled by his faith in me yet clueless why he felt I deserved the honor of his respect. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t take it and run with it.
“There’s something else,” he continued his report. “We found a lunch bag, the insulated kind, filled with a foreign herb. Smells like Faerie to me, but I secured it and brought it with us.”
All the scattershot pieces of this case were finally coming together.
“It’s a designer poison.” I weighed the good of adding it to my hoard, since there was no record to trip me up, but I had enough burdens to bear around my neck without adding another to my trove. “Send us a small sample then burn the rest. Tell your team not to touch it.” Fergal was, of course, already dead. He didn’t have to worry about poisons. “Make sure you wash your hands and ditch any clothing or fabric it might have touched, or you risk killing your people by transference.”
“I will do as you’ve asked me.”
“Has your guest had anything to say?”
“Aside from insults to my mother and her strong conviction my father was a goat, no.”
That was more than the fugue state we left her in, so the geas must have loosened under questioning.
“Call if you learn anything, or if the cleaners get too close.”
“I will.” Amusement threaded his tone. “Take care.”
After ending the call, I thumped the top of my phone against my chin, thinking on this new information.
“Whoever is hunting you,” Asa broke the ice, “isn’t far behind.”
A bomb, even a magic one, was a rather stationary threat. A knife happy stalker was the bigger problem.
“The stalker is probably a black witch, probably part of Luca’s circle, and probably on their way here.”
Everyone looked to me, waiting for their marching orders, which never ceased to amaze me.
The trust.
It was terrifying.
“Tomorrow, we go to Beverly and see what we can learn about the Lyonne coven.” I glanced around the house. “We’ll spend another night in Salem, in a different rental, and we’ll stake out Essex Street.”
That put us on the strip where the black witches had been the most active, and it kept us from being responsible for a historical home getting blown to smithereens if the stalker was also the bomber.
“We’ll take the first watch.” Derry shrugged on his sheet. “Mind if Colby stays up with us?”
“Take Blay too.” I shoved Asa toward them. “He deserves to have some fun.”
“Are you sure?” Asa cradled my cheek in his palm. “He’ll understand if you want me tonight.”
“I always want you.” I nipped his palm. “But come on.” I laughed. “Blay will love this.”
Flames licked over his body, leaving a hulking red-skinned daemon behind with eyes as bright as stars.
“Blay scare people?” He all but bounced on the balls of his feet. “Rue let Blay scare people?”
“Knock yourself out.” I patted his shoulder. “Just don’t get the cops called on us, okay?”
While they pranked tourists, I had a contract to reread, and the spirit of a lawyer to consult.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Aedan
Calixta dozed on a chaise lounge carved from bone-white coral. Her hair drifted around her face, tugged by the gentle current, and colorful fish peeked out of the homes they had made in the furniture.
I sat on the floor, in the farthest corner of the room, and stared at my hands.
Front to back, I studied them, but I couldn’t find a hint of the crimes I had committed for my queen.
Blood didn’t grow sticky or dry under your nails in the ocean. It didn’t itch or flake. It didn’t stain.
“Pouting in the corner won’t bring them back.”
The whipcrack of her voice warned she was unhappy with my fit of conscience.
“I’m not pouting.” I placed my palms on my thighs. “I am, however, wondering why we’re here.”
Arctor Breva was the familial seat for the Damaris family, and it had sat empty for decades.
Delma had killed our relatives until none remained between her and the title of heir.
Only I remained, and the siblings, barely more than toddlers, I had hidden in blind fosterage.
“You’re upset with me.” She stroked the fin of a bright blue tang. “You’re beginning to hate me.”
For taking me from my family?
For ordering me to kill innocents?
For ensuring I never saw her again?
“No, Majesty.” I swallowed past the tight band circling my throat. “I’m yours to command.”
“Hate is a powerful weapon.” She stabbed the beautiful fish with her nail and popped it in her mouth whole. “More powerful than love or shame or pride.”
“Yes, Majesty.”
The blistering hatred that kindled in me the night she had me kill my way across Ilianorata threatened to boil over, but instead of stuffing it down, choking on it, I let it shine through my eyes. Let her see how the twisted game she played was hollowing me out.
“Ah.” Her eyes shone like pearls. “There he is.” She curled her finger. “Come.” She parted her lips. “Let me taste your bitterness and take its measure.”
For Rue.
For my family.
For her.
I did as my queen commanded, and when her mouth brushed mine, I felt the lock turn in my head, bolting the cold creek, the little white house, and the soft hitch of her breath the one and only time I tasted her lips behind an impenetrable door where even I could no longer reach them.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dawn spread golden fingers across the floor as I wrapped up my all-nighter with Meg.
“You have the power to enforce the terms,” she assured me for maybe the twenty-fifth time.
“I expected her to go off the rails.” I rubbed my gritty eyes. “I just didn’t think it would happen so fast.”
“She’s had a lot of years to nurse her rage.” She inhaled a long drag on her cigarette. “Let’s hope the attack on Ilianorata was catharsis and that one bloodbath got it out of her system.” She flicked ash. “For now.”
“The blood she was meant to spill was Stavros’s,” I growled, probably for the fiftieth time. “That was the target. She was supposed to kill him, take his throne, and be one less headache for me. Now it’s a safe bet she’s slaughtering her way across her former court, and she’s dragging Aedan along for the ride.”
“He’s her heir.” Meg blew out a long curl of smoke. “She collared him.”
Between the lines, a truth I didn’t want to acknowledge churned in my gut like I’d swallowed a hurricane.
“You think he did it.” I had trouble forming the words. “Aedan wouldn’t…”
“No, darling, he wouldn’t.” Her creased lips thinned. “Not if he had a choice.”
“How do I fix this?” I hated how lost I sounded in my own ears. “How do I save him?”
“You save yourself.” Her expression hardened. “He gave his life for yours, and Asa’s.”
Had she put out the red tip of her cigarette in my eye, it would have hurt less than her reminder.
Nails digging into my palms, I gritted out, “I’m aware.”
A knock on the door drew my attention as Asa eased into the room with a nod for Meg.
“Just the man I wanted to see,” she greeted him. “Rue needs an intervention.”
The urge to splash my fingers in her reflection was strong, but I curbed it before I lashed out.
“She wants to go after Calixta,” he guessed, sitting next to me on the rug. “To get Aedan back.”
“She can’t remove Aedan from the equation.” Meg looked ready to stuff the whole pack of smokes in her mouth. “Calixta requires an heir to move against Stavros. Aedan has to stay put until she holds the throne.” She sat back in her chair. “That’s the only scenario that ends with you and Rue both alive and with some semblance of a normal life. The boy volunteered for this. He knew what was coming. He thought it was worth it to protect you, his family. Don’t throw that away.”
“If we’re right and she’s using him to pave the way to the wrong fucking throne, we don’t know how much of him will be left to save if we wait.”
“Rue.” Asa slid his arm around my shoulders and pulled me against him. “Breathe.”
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
“It’s not helping.” I blinked stubborn tears from my eyes. “There’s this weight on my chest…”
“I know.” He pressed his warm lips to my temple. “But Meg is right.”
A fresh surge of adrenaline helped me shove off him. “What?”
“You have two choices.” He gave me my space. “We put Father down ourselves, extract Aedan from Calixta, which might require her death, then allow Hael to choose its own ruler via civil war. Or we let Calixta challenge Father, ascend the throne, and then we extract Aedan once she names a new heir from her court as a good faith gesture that she is dedicated to ruling Hael and not reclaiming her kingdom.”
As my boost of indignation ebbed away, I caved in on myself. “Civil war is unacceptable.”
As long as Stavros held the throne, there would be a line a mile long of daemons who had told themselves they could do better if only they had the chance. If we removed Stavros from power, we created a vacuum, and chaos would breed in it.
Innocents would die. By the hundreds if not thousands if full-on war erupted. All to save Aedan.
I wasn’t proud to admit, to myself, I was fine with that. I just wanted my cousin back. I wanted him home safe. He deserved peace after fighting so hard for so long just to live.
I should have been the assassin acting on Calixta’s orders. I should have been the knife she held at every throat. Me. Not him.
“You have so much of your mother in you,” Meg said softly. “Her goodness and her big heart.”
I sensed the but coming and knew what she said next would sting.
“But you have a lot of your father in you too.” She toyed with her lighter. “I haven’t seen it until now. Not really. Not even during your early years with the Bureau.” She spun it idly on the table where she sat. “I see it now. That darkness. That pain. That promise to burn down the world to save those you love.”
Had she hit me with that reality check prior to the challenge, prior to me almost losing Asa, I would have flung the bowl against the wall to rebel against the comparison. But that experience gave me a deep and terrible understanding of my father. I grasped his pain now, and I understood the power grief and rage held over us in those moments that made bad decisions seem like the only way out.
“You can’t set fire to the ocean,” I said bitterly. “As long as she’s under the sea, she’s untouchable.”
“Not if you yank on her leash.” Meg pounded her fist on the table. “Listen to me or I swear to God I will call your mother and tell her what you’re up to, and then you’ll have to answer to Howl and Saint.”
