My gaze flicked to him, then back to the laptop screen. He rattled off the details of another cultist, which I added to the spreadsheet.
“But I’m scared for you, too,” he added as I finished typing, so quietly I almost couldn’t hear him. “You’ve already had to kill to defend yourself. How long until someone kills you?”
“That won’t happen. I have the guys to protect me, and—”
“I heard what Aaron said before we left. He could kill you.” Justin shook his head. “I’ve patrolled the worst streets in the Eastside, full of raving addicts and gang members, and I’ve never felt fear like I did when that demon appeared last night.”
“Demons are really scary,” I agreed in a mumble.
“What makes all that worth it, Tori?” His gaze probed me, but I didn’t look up. “Why are you so determined to be part of such a dangerous world?”
“It’s not all danger and ugliness, Justin. There’s beauty and wonder too.” I nudged my combat belt, tucked under the dash near my feet, with a toe. “Hoshi?”
Silver scales burst from the back pouch. The sylph rose into the air, her undulating tail filling the front of the vehicle. Even though he’d briefly seen her at my apartment before our pre-Christmas argument, Justin recoiled, pressing against the driver’s door.
“You remember Hoshi, right?” I stroked her smooth neck. “She’s a fae—my familiar. We’re friends.”
“Friends?”
“She talks to me with color and images in my head. It’s pretty cool.” I rubbed under her chin. “Hoshi, this is my brother, Justin. He’s never met a fae before.”
She canted her head, studying him with fuchsia eyes. He forced his limbs to relax, his throat moving with a swallow.
“Hello, Hoshi.”
The jeweled tip of her tail flicked, then she stretched her neck out and sniffed at his shoulder.
“There’s so much that’s amazing about the mythic world,” I explained, struggling to find the right words. “Creatures like Hoshi and other fae, and magic like you can’t even imagine, and people too. The people are just …” A grin tugged at my lips. “At the Crow and Hammer, at least, they’re all misfits like me. I’ve never fit in anywhere before, but I fit in with them. It’s where I belong.”
Justin took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I know it feels like this guild is the only place where you can belong, but … but I bet everyone in that garage last night would say the exact same thing about their group.”
A tremor ran through me. My throat tightened, hurt and fury slashing through me.
“I’m just saying—” he began hastily.
“I think you’ve said enough,” I snapped. “Let’s focus on our job.”
He returned his attention to the video and searched for a good view of the third cultist.
I stared at the laptop screen without seeing it. Hoshi had drifted into the back of the vehicle to peer over the seats at our luggage. I wished I could get out of the SUV, but I couldn’t draw attention to us. I wanted to be alone so badly.
My gaze shifted to my phone, in Justin’s hand, and I realized that wasn’t quite true. I wanted to be with Ezra.
I wanted to hear his smooth, soothing tones that soaked into my very essence. His quiet smile, his mismatched eyes warm with understanding. He’d hold me in one of his amazing hugs, then he’d say the right thing to ease the storm in my heart—a straight-faced joke, a funny story, or a simple question about what I needed.
But I couldn’t talk to him because he didn’t want anything to do with me. I’d trampled all over everything that mattered to him in my attempt to save him.
That burning was back in my eyes, but I wouldn’t cry. Not again. I’d shed enough tears on this trip already, and no way was I going to—
The car door beside me opened.
My head jerked up, and expecting to find Aaron standing there, I twisted toward the door—just as a single stupid tear broke free and trickled down my cheek.
“What’s wrong, Tori?”
I blinked at the man beside my door. Blinked again. “Are you a mirage?”
“No.”
“Am I sleeping?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“Then … you’re actually real?”
A bemused smile. “Last I checked, yes.”
A shudder began somewhere in the vicinity of my diaphragm, then burst outward to fill my limbs with frenetic energy.
“Kai!” I gasped, leaping out of the car.
Somehow, he caught both me and the laptop that went flying off my thighs. Not caring one little bit about Aaron’s thin, expensive techno-toy, I clamped my arms around Kai’s neck and mashed my face into his leather-clad shoulder.
“It’s only been a few days,” he muttered—but despite his words, his arm was tight around my middle.
“Feels way longer.” I pushed back, holding his shoulders as I scanned him. “Look at your sexy ass. Nice getup.”
Leather covered him, padded motorcycle pants clinging to his legs and a badass jacket enhancing the breadth of his shoulders. Add his dark hair, tousled from wearing a helmet, and a faint flush from the cold brightening his cheeks, and he was oozing hunkitude all over the place.
Damn, I had hot friends.
Grinning broadly, I glanced around for his motorcycle—and did a double take when I saw two sleek red bikes parked behind the SUV. And I did a quadruple take at the leather-clad woman leaning against the second one, her helmet visor pushed up to reveal her cold stare fixed on me.
“You brought her?” I hissed disbelievingly. The urge to storm over there and kick her good and hard in the shin was strong. Very strong. I hadn’t forgotten that it was her signature on Kai’s guild transfer paperwork. She’d stolen him from us, and I didn’t care what bullshit she spouted about her reasons. What she really wanted was a fresh chance to make him fall in love with her.
Fat. Freaking. Chance.
Kai tugged me into another embrace, and hiding his face beside mine, he whispered, “I may have led her to believe that a trip together was a good opportunity to rekindle a closer relationship.”
I grunted angrily.
“Why is your brother here?” he asked.
“Long story.” In my peripheral vision, I could see Justin lurking on the SUV’s far side, eyeing the newcomers. Probably wondering if they were scary magic criminals.
In this case, he’d be right.
As Kai set the rescued laptop on the SUV’s roof, Makiko sauntered toward us, her sleek black hair flowing neatly down her back, somehow untangled by the wind of their highway ride. Maybe it was an advanced aeromage trick.
“Tori,” she said coolly.
“Makiko,” I replied with just as much ice. “So kind of you to loosen Kai’s chains for a few days.”
Kai sighed. “Can we focus? Tori, where are we at?”
“Well, so far—”
My earpiece crackled. “Tori, you there?”
I fumbled for the controls and unmuted my mic. “Yes, Aaron, I’m here. What is it?”
“We just searched the Praetor’s bedroom.” The tinny speaker couldn’t hide the bleakness in his voice. “And I think we have a problem.”
A few minutes later, we’d convened at the SUV for a quick meeting to discuss said problem.
The issue? Mr. Praetor had flown the coop.
Aaron and Blake had found clear signs that the man had packed a bag and skipped town. Toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, and shaving tools were gone from his bathroom, and large gaps in the contents of his dresser drawers revealed missing socks and underwear. And most damning of all, the tapestry with the crown-in-a-circle emblem was missing from the detached garage.
In other words, we’d screwed up—and screwed our chances of finding a grimoire.
We should’ve captured the Praetor right after the cult meeting. Though we’d had no reason to assume he would realize a guild was on to him, we shouldn’t have taken the risk. Now, we had an assassin on our tails and our only le
ad had disappeared.
A new plan was formed, and we all got back to work. Kai joined Aaron and Blake to search the rest of the house for any cult clues that the Praetor might’ve left behind. Justin and I resumed profiling the cultists, and Makiko joined us with her own laptop to perform the actual database search; as a guild’s acting GM, she had all the clearance we could need.
Our shared task didn’t require a whole lot of talking, but I found plenty of opportunities to shoot ice-cold glares her way. I had no idea why she was here, what she knew about our mission, or whether I could get away with throwing her ass-first onto the curb. So I settled for glaring.
Noon came and went as we picked our way through the cult video, my spreadsheet, and Makiko’s search results. A headache built behind my eyes, and I rubbed my temples.
At a glimpse of movement outside the window, I looked up. Blake stalked down the road toward the grassy alley where he’d parked his jeep. I blinked after him—then the SUV’s driver door opened.
Aaron leaned down, peering at Justin and me. “Any luck?”
“Some,” I admitted. “You?”
My door opened, and Kai leaned against the frame. “Absolutely nothing. This guy ran a clean operation.”
“But,” Aaron added, nodding toward Blake as he disappeared behind some trees, “we’re rid of one problem. Blake decided there are no leads to follow, so we should all let the Keys teams take over from here.”
“A plan we reluctantly agreed with,” Kai said in a tone of mourning. “What choice do we have but to head home now?”
I opened my mouth, ready to furiously explain how we weren’t giving up yet, then caught Aaron’s smirk. “Oooh. I see.”
We weren’t leaving. We were just letting Blake believe we were. No more terramage dogging our every move.
“Let’s get out of here,” Aaron said. “We’ll head back into the city and finish identifying the cultists. Blake doesn’t know about our video recording, so we don’t have to worry about the Keys teams getting to them first.”
We rearranged for travel—Justin moving into the backseat, Aaron taking the driver’s seat, and Makiko returning to her motorcycle—then set out. The SUV zoomed down the rural road toward the highway, Kai and Makiko following on their bikes.
“So where are we going?” I queried. “We need a new place to stay.”
Aaron shrugged. “I’ll have to rent a place again, I guess.”
“Is that smart?” Justin asked cautiously.
I glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “What, you want to sleep in the SUV tonight?”
“Obviously not, but it’s safer to assume Aaron’s accounts are compromised, isn’t it?”
I blinked, and Aaron looked equally confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t that how the assassin found our rental?” Justin frowned. “If the Praetor got your license plate, the assassin could hack into your credit card records. It’s implausible for a civilian, but I don’t see any other explanations—unless there are magical ways to track people I don’t know about?”
Aaron’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “There are, and I should’ve thought about them myself. I was more worried about the assassin than how they found us.”
He flipped on his turn signal and pulled onto the highway shoulder. Kai drew his bike up beside Aaron’s door and flipped his tinted visor up. Makiko stopped behind him to listen in.
Aaron rolled down his window. “We may have a telethesian problem on top of the assassin problem.”
“Oh?”
I scrunched my nose, trying to remember what a telethesian was. Some sort of psychic?
“The assassin found us too easily,” Aaron explained. “They must have a telethesian tracking us.”
Kai nodded. “Then we’ll have to be fast. As long as we keep moving, we should be able to stay ahead of them.”
“Got it.” Aaron grinned. “But don’t leave me in the dust.”
Kai’s answering grin disappeared as he pulled his visor down. The motorcycle’s engine revved, then he pulled out with a squeal of burning rubber. Makiko’s bike flashed past as she took off in pursuit, and Aaron shoulder-checked before pulling out after them.
We sped down the pavement, leaving the Praetor’s house—and hopefully the assassin—far behind.
Chapter Sixteen
Cultist Number One: Brenda Holloway.
She was a properly registered, non-practicing witch who was thirty-three years old, single, and living in an apartment complex that bordered the Concordia University in Portland. And lucky for us, she was home—Kai had just called her and impersonated a delivery man to find out.
Our small group now sat at a picnic table on the grassy quad between university buildings, stuffing our faces with fast-food burgers. Or rather, most of us were. Makiko was picking unenthusiastically at her fries, no doubt missing her personal chef’s home-cooked cuisine. Justin sat on the bench beside her, eyeing the Miura aeromage as he ate.
I’d squashed myself between Aaron and Kai, and they were talking over my head between mouthfuls—the aftermath of the Varvara battle last weekend, more details about Enright, their suspicions about the cult. Neither mentioned Ezra, but I could read their concern between the lines.
Grinning stupidly, I devoured my food and enjoyed the sound of their voices, doing my best to ignore Makiko. As Kai laughed at Aaron’s rant over how Blake had sunk his SUV into a hole, her dark eyes flickered over her fiancé. She nibbled a fry, her long hair hanging around her face.
I tried to focus on my reunited friends, but as Makiko stared at Kai with that assessing look on her prim features, my temper began to boil. Ramming my last handful of salty fries into my mouth, I chewed and swallowed aggressively. I’d been focused on other things for the afternoon—namely, positively identifying a cultist—but there were some issues that needed addressing before we proceeded with our plan.
“So,” I said, accidentally speaking right over Aaron, my glower on Makiko.
Her attention shifted from Kai to me.
“You’re going to wait right here while we deal with the cultist, correct?”
She pushed her hair off her shoulders. “Of course not.”
“Tori—” Kai began placatingly.
“Kai doesn’t need your supervision,” I snapped at her. “And you have no reason to be here. We don’t need your ulterior motives getting in the way right now.”
“Then I’ll be clear about my motives.” She drew herself up. “If the truth about Ezra Rowe comes to light, Kai will be implicated in capital crimes. And not only do capital crimes come with steep penalties for the accused’s guild—which is now my guild—but it would be an unacceptable smear on my family’s reputation.”
I stared at her, then turned to Kai and whispered in hoarse disbelief, “You told her?”
“Makiko will protect Ezra’s secret.”
Aaron gave his best friend a considering look before pushing to his feet. “All right, time to get to work.”
I crumpled my burger wrapper and tossed it into the paper bag, my displeasure over Makiko’s presence wilting under a tide of nervousness.
Twenty minutes later, I stood in the entryway of Brenda Holloway’s apartment building, adjusting my hair. The tangled curls fell past my shoulders, acting as a curtain to hide the small Bluetooth phone in my ear. Our usual earpieces had cords that were way too obvious, so I was borrowing Makiko’s sleek little earbud phone instead.
Beside me, with his hands in his pockets, Justin surveyed the dingy foyer with a clinical eye. Neither of us looked directly at the security camera in the corner.
Step one: Get Brenda’s attention.
I approached the panel on the wall and dialed the number for B. Holloway. The panel emitted a ringing sound, then a terse female voice answered.
“Who is it?”
“Is this Brenda?” I asked brusquely.
“Yes. Who—”
“I was sent,” I interrupted. “You sho
uld know by whom.”
A confused pause. “I’m sorry, but—”
“I have a delivery for the Praetor.”
“Th-the Praetor?” she whispered. “You can’t talk about that—”
“Then let me up and I’ll explain.”
Suspicion stiffened her voice. “I don’t recognize you.”
I looked up into the camera. My hand dipped into my purse, and I lifted out a small bundle wrapped in a black shroud—my scarf—and tugged the fabric open. The small silver scepter we’d taken from the underground room in Enright glinted.
“Do you recognize this?” I asked, exuding a cultishly dreamy air. “We are both blessed by the Goddess’s light, fellow Auditrix.”
A fluttery breath came through the speaker. “Oh. Please come up, then. Unit 506.”
The security door buzzed, and Justin pulled it open. We crossed to the elevator and I pressed the button.
As the doors opened with a quiet chime, I murmured. “We’re heading up. Fifth floor.”
“Copy that,” Kai murmured through the Bluetooth phone in my ear.
We rode the elevator up and disembarked. The gray-carpeted hallway was as drab and unwelcoming as the lobby downstairs. I glanced at the nearest unit numbers, then headed right. Justin followed.
At the far end of the hall, Aaron flashed me a grin before stepping out of sight. He and Kai had broken in through the rear exit and were stationed nearby, ready to act. Makiko was patrolling at ground level in case Brenda somehow made it past them.
I knocked on the door to unit 506. The bolt clacked and a sliver of a long, plain face appeared.
“You have a delivery for the Praetor?” she whispered.
Stepping closer, I flashed the top of the scepter, where it was tucked in my purse again. “Yes, but he’s not home. We were supposed to meet.”
“I see. The Praetor is—”
With a rustle of movement, another face appeared above Brenda’s—a male face. Neatly combed hair, a smooth jaw, and a cleft in his chin. He peered at me.
“I can handle this, Daniel,” she muttered out of the corner of her mouth, trying to elbow him away. “She’s looking for the Praetor and—”
Lost Talismans and a Tequila (The Guild Codex: Spellbound Book 7) Page 14