by Deanna Chase
“Rolland,” she supplied.
“Ms. Rolland. Thank you. I’m here to find out if you found any files associated with Simone. I was the one here after hours who found her last night. She was supposed to be helping me with some research.”
Ms. Rolland frowned and shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.” She glanced at the stairs leading to the second floor. “Let’s go up and see if the cleaning crew missed something.”
I followed her up the wide, sweeping staircase, realizing I’d barely registered it the night before. The steps looked to be old cypress wood and had ornate railings usually only seen in the fanciest of New Orleans mansions.
“This way,” the librarian said. She led the way into the same room where I’d found Simone the night before.
Sheer curtains covered the window, letting light filter in but protecting the books from the damaging sun. The carpet had been cleaned; all traces of Simone’s blood was gone. The only remnant of the attack from the night before was the strong scent of industrial cleaning solvent.
“It doesn’t look like any files were left here. Did you check with the cleaning crew?”
I nodded. “Yes. They gave me a report early this morning. Simone didn’t have anything on her except a small handbag with her keys and her wallet.”
“I see.” Ms. Rolland glanced around one more time, then shook her head. “Nothing seems to be out of place, but you’re welcome to take a look. While you’re doing that, I’ll check her search history, see if that brings anything up.”
“You can do that?” I asked, surprised.
“Yep. No one gets into the database without identification.”
We could do that at the Void building, but that was because no employee could log into any of the computers without their special employee code. That also meant everything we did in on the computers while in that building was traceable. I hadn’t realized it was the same for the library. Good to know. I nodded an acknowledgment at her and said, “Then today might just be my lucky day.”
“Take your time. I’ll be downstairs at my computer, checking the database.”
“Thanks.” I was already turning to inspect the shelves lining the far wall.
Her heels clattered on the old wood floors as she retreated to her office, and I swept my gaze over the shelves, looking for any abnormalities. Most of the books were thick volumes, bound in leather and in pristine condition. There was nothing to indicate research that had been tucked away right before an attack. I moved methodically through the room, running my fingers lightly over the spines of the books. The Arcane was meticulous in their records, using the same smooth bindings for all of their reference books. Every single one was the same, except one. The old leather was scarred and rough under my fingertips. I paused and eyed the aged volume. The binding had no numbers, no title, and the leather had a reddish tint, lighter than the brown volumes.
Curious, I pulled the book out and quickly realized it wasn’t a book at all. It was a journal. The front had the words Secreta Secretorum engraved in the leather.
“The Secret of Secrets,” I whispered, translating the Latin phrase. I flipped it open and noted the initials on the inside of the cover: SB. There was no doubt in my mind this journal belonged to Simone Bernard. My pulse jumped as my heart quickened. Whatever information Simone had for me, likely I was holding it in my hand. I sucked in a deep breath and turned the pages.
“Son of a…” Page after page was filled with notes, all of them in Latin. I knew a few phrases, but not enough to have any idea of what the journal contained. I was going to have to translate it. After doing another sweep of the office, I tucked the journal into my messenger bag and went to find Ms. Rolland.
The librarian was sitting behind her desk, frowning as she banged away on the keys of her computer, muttering under her breath.
“Ms. Rolland?” I asked. “Is everything all right?”
She shook her head. “No. Not at all.” Turning the monitor in my direction, she said, “Look at this.”
The screen had a list of time-stamped log-ins, but the column where the access codes would normally go was completely blank. “Whoa. That’s not right.”
She gritted her teeth and punched another key. Her name and access number flashed up on the screen. “This is yesterday. Notice anything unusual?”
Her log-in history was missing. I met her eyes, registering the anger mixed with frustration staring back at me. “Looks like all your records have been wiped.”
“Completely. The entire month is gone, and it was there yesterday. I know. I checked when I was updating records. It looks like whoever attacked Simone is covering something up. Bastard. I can’t believe he breached our security, and from the looks of this, he’s going to get away with it.”
“Not so fast.” I pulled the journal out of my bag and slid it across her desk. “I found this upstairs.” After opening the front cover, I tapped on Simone’s initials. “I don’t read Latin, but I’m pretty sure that after I translate her notes, I’ll be able to connect some dots. If Allcot and his band of vampires are trying to keep whatever information Simone has secret, it will be fairly obvious once we uncover the material.”
The frustration drained from the librarian’s face and her body visibly relaxed as she sat back in her chair. “How did you manage to find this? I swear, I checked three times to make sure Simone didn’t leave anything behind.”
I gave her a cat-that-ate-the-canary grin. “Simone hid it on one of the bookshelves. I imagine she chose the library as a meeting place precisely because it would be easy to hide this should anything go wrong. And lucky for her, I’m very good at my job.”
“There’s no question there.” She scanned the pages again, this time concentrating on the text. After a minute of trying to read the scribble inside, she shook her head. “Nope. Can’t recall enough to make this out. But I can translate it for you. I’d just need a little time to get through it.”
“I’ve got it,” I said, unwilling to let the text out of my sight. The journal was the closest thing I had to possibly finding out what might have happened to my brother. There was no way I was giving it up. I nodded to her computer. “I’ll let IT know you need someone to analyze the data breach. It could just be a glitch.”
She pursed her lips into a thin line, and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was: the wipe had been deliberate. But until we had cold hard facts, there wasn’t anything we could do about it. Hopefully IT would be able to trace when and where the wipe had occurred. It would help us track down the hacker.
“Don’t worry. The Void guys will get to the bottom of this.” I tried to reassure her.
“They’d better,” Ms. Rolland said, her expression grave. “Otherwise, the information in this library is about to become a huge liability.”
I glanced around, wondering just how hard it would be to hack into sensitive Void records. Then I shook my head. There was no point worrying about what could happen until we knew what we were working with. I pulled my phone out, ready to call the office when the device started ringing and the director’s number flashed on the screen.
“Halston?” I asked when I answered.
“It’s Maria,” Halston’s assistant said. “There’s been an emergency. You need to get back to the Void right away.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, then whispered to Ms. Rolland, “I have to go. It’s urgent.”
She gestured for me to take my leave, and I was already striding out of the building when Maria said, “It’s your partner, Marrok. He’s been attacked and is suffering an overdose of Scarlet.”
“What?” I cried into the phone even as I took off at a dead run. “Scarlet? That’s impossible. Dax hates drugs.”
“He didn’t take it voluntarily. At least not according to Leo, the shifter who brought him in. It happened during a fight with a vampire.”
Pure rage surged through my veins, heating me from the inside out. I sped up, lengthening my strides, and said, “I�
��ll be there in five minutes.”
6
I ran through the Void building, my boots echoing on the tile floors. It was hard to breathe, not because I was out of shape or pushing too hard. No. My heart was lodged in my throat as I pictured Dax lying unconscious in the medical unit. A Scarlet overdose? How the fuck had that happened?
As I rounded the corner, Leo’s distressed howl reverberated from Dax’s room, and I prayed to the goddess that Dax was still alive. As long as he was alive, there was hope. My stomach roiled, and bile rose in the back of my throat. I never had been very good at hope.
“Dax?” I cried as I burst through the door and rushed to his side. An IV had been administered, and machines were monitoring his heart rate and blood pressure. The steady beep, beep, beep went a long way in calming my fears. He was alive. Thank the gods.
But he was so pale, his skin ashen, and his eyes sunken as if he was on the verge of death. “Jesus, Dax. What happened to you?” I asked, taking his cold hand in mine.
Leo let out a low growl and fisted his hands in his hair as he prowled around the room. “It’s my fault. It’s always my fault.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him, keeping my eye trained on Dax. “What happened, Leo?”
“You’re going to hate me.”
“Only if you don’t tell me exactly what happened,” I snapped, turning to glare at him. Now was not the time for self-pity. “I can’t help him if I don’t know the details.”
Leo paused on the other side of Dax’s hospital bed and dropped his hands from his head. He stood perfectly still, staring at me as he said, “I tracked down the vamp who sold Rhea the drugs. I wanted answers—”
“You wanted revenge.” I corrected him, my tone void of judgment.
His tortured eyes met mine and he nodded. “Yeah. Revenge. I wanted him to suffer.”
“Did he?” I asked, wishing with all my heart that he had.
Leo shook his head. “No. Not really. He was old and fast, and soon after I attacked him, I knew I was in over my head.”
I swept my gaze over the younger shifter, relieved to see he was mostly intact. The only evidence of the vamp attack were the bites and bruises on his neck. “But then Dax showed up, and the vamp went after him instead,” I guessed.
“Not exactly. But you’re close. I tried to stab the vampire with his own needle, but he got the better of me and was moments from beating the shit out of me when Dax stepped in. I must’ve dropped the needle because the next thing I knew, Strix had it in his hand and attacked Dax with it.”
“Strix?” I asked, the name sounding familiar. “Is he one of Allcot’s?”
“That’s the word on the street, but he’s always either on Basin Street pushing that shit of his or in the strip clubs on Bourbon all day. Though he claims he isn’t dealing. Fucking liar. I’d bet my last dollar he sells to anyone who comes knocking.”
“Dark hair, looks like he belongs in an eighties hair band?” I asked.
Leo shrugged. “More like a street punk who hasn’t showered in days.”
I nodded. That sounded about right. Though if he was that visible, it was hard to believe he was still one of Allcot’s. The powerful vampire wasn’t above employing dealers, he just usually demanded they were discreet. I filed that information away for later and turned my attention back to Dax.
“What did the healer say? Is he going to wake up?” Just asking the question made me feel hollow. Dax was my partner and on again, off again lover. We’d just recently turned the switch to on again. And, I guess, technically we were dating. But it was so much more than that. Dax was my partner. The person I relied on day in and day out to have my back. There was a level of trust there I’d never had with anyone else of the opposite sex. Was it love? I didn’t know. Maybe. But losing him wasn’t an option.
Leo stared down at Dax, clutching the metal railing at the foot of the bed. “They don’t— Argh!” Leo’s eyes turned yellow as he prowled around the room, a sure sign he was losing control to his inner wolf.
“Leo—” I started, alarmed that he was able to shift at all. Hadn’t security forced him to go through the magical neutralizer when he’d entered the building? His ability to shift should’ve been out of commission for at least a couple of hours.
He crashed into the wall and let out a roar as his body contorted and his bones cracked and reformed into his shifter shape. His wolf had taken over, and it was clear from how he was twisting and fighting the transformation that he wasn’t in control of the shift.
That wasn’t good. Too much had happened over the past couple of days. His girl had died and now the person who’d taken on the role as a pseudo father was in a drug-induced coma. Leo had no one save Dax and by extension me. The stress of losing those close to him had gotten the better of him.
I darted out of the room and ran smack into Talisen, a fae and healer who also happened to be my best friend’s husband. He’d recently started working for the Void again as a researcher in their medical labs. He was particularly gifted with stone and crystal magic and had proven to be a valuable asset because of his ability to discern new healing techniques.
“Phoebe, are you all right?” he asked, gripping both my arms as he scanned his gaze down my body.
“I’m fine,” I said, shaking him off. “It’s Leo. He got so agitated he spontaneously shifted and now he’s completely out of control. Didn’t they make him go through security?”
A loud crash came from Dax’s room, followed by another howl.
“Damn. I was afraid of that. His wolf must’ve already been highly agitated when he went through the machine. And since wolves are the most resistant to the neutralizer of us paranormals, his wolf likely fought off the magic and he wasn’t affected at all.” Talisen grabbed a light-rose-colored stone from a pocket of his lab coat and strode into the room.
I followed and stood in the doorway, magic pulsing at my fingertips, ready to help should Talisen need backup. The room was in shambles. The heart monitor had been knocked over, the IV line had been ripped out of Dax’s arm, and all the supplies that had been neatly stacked on the counter had been overturned and were now strewn across the floor. Dax and his bed appeared to be the only two things that had survived Leo’s wrath.
Talisen calmly moved toward Leo, forcing the wolf back into a corner. Leo’s hackles rose and he bared his teeth at Talisen, but the fae was unfazed. He just pointed his rose stone at the wolf and said, “Somnum.”
The wolf blinked, then suddenly he slid to the floor, his paws stretched out in front of him and his head resting on the tile with his eyes closed.
“Sleeping spell?” I asked.
“Yes.” He walked over and crouched down next to the wolf. After searching for a pulse, he nodded and said, “He’s going to need to sleep this one off.”
“I’m on it.” I called security. When they answered, I said, “We have a wolf that needs to spend some time in a containment cell.”
A moment later, I ended the call and looked up into Tal’s concerned expression.
“Do you think that’s necessary?” he asked.
“Absolutely. Have you ever seen a wolf come out of a spell-induced sleep? Not just heard about it, but seen it with your own two eyes?”
“No, I guess I haven’t,” he admitted. “Though I’ve certainly been around ones who’ve passed out from too many drugs, too many drinks, too much everything. It’s been fine.”
“They sometimes wake up in a disoriented rage too. He needs a room where he can be monitored and administered sedatives if the break persists.”
Talisen frowned, clearly unhappy with my explanation, but he nodded and waited with me until two guards arrived and hauled the limp shifter away. “How much do you trust them?” he asked me as we watched the two guards disappear around the corner.
I chewed on my lower lip. “It’s not the guards we need to be wary of. It’s the system itself. If they think he’s a danger to anyone, they’ll pump him full of drugs and keep
him that way until someone intervenes.”
“Damn,” he said, running a hand through his short blond hair.
“We’ll keep an eye on him. For now, tell me about Dax. How is he?”
Talisen tugged me back into Dax’s room and immediately righted the equipment and got my partner hooked back up to the IV and heart monitor. That reassuring beep, beep, beep filled the room again, and it was as if I could feel my blood pressure returning to normal.
“I have good news and bad news,” Talisen said, taking a seat on one of the rolling stools as he manually checked Dax’s vitals.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay, lay it on me.”
“The good news is that Dax has mostly already metabolized the drug out of his system, and he appears to be stable.”
My partner didn’t look any better than he had when I’d walked into the room twenty minutes ago. “Okay. So it’s obviously had an effect on him. How long until he recovers?”
A muscle in Talisen’s jaw pulsed. Definitely not a good sign. It was one of his tells when something was bothering him.
“Tal? I need to know.”
He ground his teeth and forced out, “That’s the problem. I don’t have an answer. I did a tox screen, and while there are traces of the drug still in his bloodstream, it isn’t enough to warrant this.” He waved a hand at Dax. “So I had the techs run a few more tests, and they found something that presents as a poison.”
“Poison?” I gasped out. “You think the drug was laced with something toxic?”
He nodded. “It’s the only explanation for his reaction to it. We have to run some more tests to see if we can pinpoint it. But Phoebe, I have to warn you that the symptoms he’s exhibiting right now indicate that if this doesn’t clear within the next twenty-four hours, whatever is causing this could be fatal.”
“Twenty-four hours?” I choked out. My mouth had gone dry while a chill ran down my spine. I stared at Dax and felt the foreboding kick in again.