“I would not risk it,” Galen said. “Once I wake the demons, they can endanger their human hosts. Ultari can shut down the functions of a host’s brain, lungs, and heart in a matter of seconds.”
I stood up and stepped back. The female officer lay closest to me, her broken wrist already beginning to swell. Aside from that, she looked as if she’d just chosen that moment to lie down for a nap.
“I agree, we can’t take that chance,” I said. “What about your spell combo to banish and destroy the Ultari? Will that harm the officers?”
“It should not,” the Wizard replied.
“Then will the officers know about us? I mean, about this encounter.”
Galen thought on that for a moment. “I think not. None of the hosted centaurs from the House of Zakaris could clearly remember what happened from the moment the Ultari took them over. They said it was as if they’d been woken from a ‘bad dream’.”
“I’m sure the pooka would approve,” I grumbled. “Especially Destry’s mom.”
“Come again?”
“Never mind,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
With a clatter of hooves, Galen and Liam positioned themselves on opposite sides of where the four officers lay still. The Wizard raised his hands, weaving an intricate pattern in the air, chanting under his breath. In contrast, Liam bent his head and closed his eyes as his antlers glowed with power.
Suddenly, the four humans convulsed as if someone had run live current through them. They shook for a few seconds, and then went still. Dark, shadowy shapes without form or face pulled reluctantly free from the officer’s bodies as if made of hot tar. The forms hovered in midair, beating themselves against the web of energy that Galen had woven like bats blinded by the sun.
The sight made my blood run cold.
Liam added his voice to Galen’s now. His antlers flashed red for one moment. A paff! and the black forms shriveled up with the reek of burning plastic. Powdery ash danced in the air for a moment before it vanished in the breeze.
Clarke let out a faint moan. The man didn’t open his eyes, but he moved sluggishly, as if trying to wake up.
“Time to go,” I said. “Gather round, I’ll take us back.”
Shaw, Galen, and Liam moved to position themselves around me. As they did so, I cast one more glance back towards the big white van. It occurred to me that while it was a police vehicle, the back had been outfitted a lot more like the one I drove, courtesy of the OME.
This was a clean-up crew, I realized. But why send it after I’d already done my crime scene sweep?
The answer was simple. Given their gear, they were trying to hide traces of magic, not physical evidence. I squeezed the medallion and concentrated on my destination. But one final thought crossed my mind as the whiteness engulfed me.
Who was Harrison trying to hide magical traces from?
Chapter Twenty-Two
The loamy smell of wet earth tickled my nose. I did my best not to sneeze as I jammed my trowel into the soil at the very end of Shelly’s hedgerow. The line of oleanders she’d planted by her back fence had fully embraced the onset of spring, and they steadily dripped white petals on my shoulders as I continued digging.
Once my friends and I had made it back to Andeluvia, Galen had insisted on immediately cataloging the artifacts we’d liberated from the police van. I agreed, with the added request that he lock away the four firearms we’d brought back as well. Aside from the mischief that could be wrought with these weapons, the King would’ve thrown me in the dungeon if he knew I’d brought them here.
As soon as everything had been secured, the Wizard had one more item to give to me. While I’d rather have stayed with my friends, I had to return to Los Angeles for one more day of work. Only then could I come back and deal with the final preparations before the Spring Tournament started in earnest.
“I would be remiss if you left without additional protection,” Galen noted, as he pulled a small leathery bag held closed with a drawstring out of a pocket. The Wizard held it in his palm as he closed his eyes and murmured an incantation I hadn’t heard before. “Holde denne kvinnen trygt!”
The bag glowed, and the contents rattled about like little piece of charcoal as Galen gave it to me. I received it on a shrinking palm, but the contents were no more than pleasantly warm. I gave him a questioning look.
“These are ward stones,” he explained. “Plant each of these two or three inches deep at the bounds of any demesnes you inhabit. It shall give you protection from most magic, or at least alert you to the presence of most magical beings.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Most?”
I got a centaur chuckle in response. “I left what you call a ‘looped hole’ in the spellcraft for one specific centaur, one griffin, and one fayleene.”
“Aye,” Shaw put in. “Thy welfare was worth donating a wing feather.”
“Or in my case, a plucked hair,” Liam put in, with a flick of his puffball tail. “What you found inside your house…that was terrible enough. None of us want you exposed to danger like that, especially when you must sleep.”
“Thanks, guys. This means a lot.” I embraced each of them in turn. I had to stand on tiptoe to do that with Galen. Liam raised his head to keep his sharp antlers safely out of the way. Shaw draped a leonine paw over my shoulder and let out a deep, rumbly purr.
As it happened, I returned to a spot in Southern California at least a dozen miles from where I made my home. Liam hadn’t been kidding about how badly shaken I’d been by what I’d found on my kitchen table. But Shelly had come by my office as soon as she’d been informed about Maxwell Cohen’s death and insisted that I stay with her.
She didn’t have to twist my arm to get me to accept.
It seemed both appropriate and prudent that I use Galen’s gift to secure her place from any sort of attacker that might follow me here. As soon as I returned from Andeluvia, I went into Shelly’s garage, found a rusty garden trowel, and went to work. Each of Galen’s stones looked and smelled like a gone-off charcoal briquette. Given how they were going to be buried outside under a couple inches of soil, I didn’t mind that at all.
Shelly’s peach-colored ranch house sprawled at the end of a broad cul-de-sac. Luckily, the lot her house sat on was a tidy trapezoid of land without underbrush, steep slopes, or poison oak. I plopped each of the first three stones into their freshly dug holes without incident.
As soon as I covered up the fourth and final stone, I felt more than saw a shimmying wash through the air. It reminded me of the rippling effect produced by Destry or his pooka kin when they arrived and phased into solidity. I tentatively stuck my hand out across the invisible barrier, and came away with no sensation at all.
I shook my head. Of course the barrier wasn’t set up to trigger by my touch, or the magic I carried in my medallion. So I got up, returned the trowel to the work basket I’d found it in, and headed towards the house.
Shortly past sunset, the sky had turned a pleasantly pink-and-violet shade. I carefully wiped my shoes on the doormat Shelly had placed under her trademark peppermint-striped cloth awnings before going inside. The mouthwatering aromas of beans, cilantro, and green chili greeted me as I did so.
My friend’s voice had the soft blush of a southern accent, but it carried all the way down the length of the house. “There you are, Dayna! I figured you’d be back by the time things started turnin’ purple outside. Come on, I’ve got things on the stove.”
“Be right there,” I called back. I quickly ducked into the bluebonnet-themed bedroom that was my makeshift fiefdom. I hung up my jacket and shoulder holster and then washed up a little in the attached bathroom. All the towels had the same red and white checkered pattern that I associated with pizza joints and picnic tablecloths. But they were softer and fluffier than I ever managed to get my own linens.
The beans-and-spices mélange of scents got even stronger as I headed for the kitchen. That was more than a just a pleasant diversion. It helped wipe
away bad associations. The last time I’d visited Shelly’s place, the house had been pitch black and filled with the smell of rotting pot roast.
I joined Shelly just as she closed the oven door with a sideways bump of her hip. She set aside a baking pan that held an eighteen-inch long cigar of meat wrapped in bacon strips. As good as that smelled, I couldn’t help but peek at the concoction I’d smelled all the way from the front door. Shelly pulled off her oven mitts, tilting the pot so I could see the multiple colors inside, and then handed me a wooden spoon.
“Give these fellas a pull-around,” she instructed me, as she stepped aside so I could work. I took over as she went on. “That there is Texas caviar. Black, white, and kidney beans in a nice slow-cook alongside a whole mess of spices.”
I took a long sniff and then moved the spoon as instructed. “I’m guessing…onion, garlic, cilantro, green chilies, and jalapeños.”
“You’ve got a good nose. However, you missed the bacon that’s in there as well.”
“I should’ve known.” In truth, I had already guessed that, but I’d thought it was coming from the bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin that sat sizzling in its own juices off to one side.
“I’ll have to show you how to make that some other evening,” she said, noting my gaze. “It’s a real rib-tickler.”
I nodded. Back when Shelly and Thea had ended up at my place, recovering from the twin beatings that life had handed to them, my friend had decided to teach me how to cook.
I thought that was a luxury I didn’t really need. The city of Los Angeles had more and better takeout than anyplace I’d lived to date. But Shelly insisted, and there wasn’t much I could do to say ‘no’ when I was staying at her place.
I’d learned two things from her style of cooking so far. First, she embraced multiple types of meat fat in ways that would horrify most diet-conscious Angelenos. In fact, she liked using fats so much that anything of hers set out to cool to room temperature would congeal into a solid mass. Second, Shelly viewed bacon as the ‘duct tape’ of food. If a flavor needed binding, filling, or joining, bacon was there to do the work.
Unlike the greasy mutton fat that marred most centaur cuisine, Shelly’s dishes tasted what she called ‘more-ish’. That is, one taste made you want to eat more. In short, she made some of the most artery-clogging, soul-enriching food I’d ever eaten.
“That’s good,” she pronounced, as I set the spoon aside. “You just need to stir it every ten minutes or so, or it’ll blacken up something fierce. We’re doing things Texan-style today, not Cajun.”
She next walked me through the process of making her version of a Cobb salad. I put a second pot of water on the stove to hard boil some eggs and tossed in a drizzle of salt as per her instructions. I crumbled up a bunch of Roquefort cheese while I waited for the water to slowly come to temperature. Shelly watched me work without comment as she roughly chopped up a solid head of iceberg lettuce along with a bushel of watercress and endive.
To my eyes, there was going to be enough food to feed a regiment of Air Cavalry, but I wasn’t in charge of the kitchen tonight.
Steam rose from the heating water as I went to the fridge to hunt up some eggs. Shelly began cutting a beefsteak tomato the size of a small child’s head into wedges, humming a country tune as she did so. Without looking up, she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.
“Myun-Hee and I did the work on Maxwell Cohen’s remains today,” she ventured. “It didn’t take long.”
A tremor ran through my fingers as I scanned the racks in the refrigerator door for the egg container. I clenched my hand into a fist for a moment, steadying myself before I reached out to pick up the carton. Shelly was as much of a signaler as a talker. She was inquiring as gently as possible if I wanted to know what she’d found.
“I don’t think there was all that much to work with,” I replied, as I used a hip motion like Shelly’s to close the fridge door. “Any breakthroughs I should know about?”
“There wasn’t anything labeled ‘clue!’ in big letters, if that’s what you mean. Toxicity scan came up negative, so no drugs or poisons were involved. We did a complete photo run on the remains, took the usual tissue samples. Finished up by bathing both of ‘em in a chemical wash to bring out any marks or prints.”
‘Both of ‘em’ meant Cohen’s eyeballs, which were the only parts we’d found so far. I reflected on that fact as I used a slotted spoon to carefully set each egg into the boiling water. The white ovals spun slowly around in the swirling water like whitish orbs torn free of their sockets.
“The photo scans didn’t show anything, but the chemical washes did,” Shelly continued, as she flicked away a stray bit of tomato-red gore from her finger. “The surfaces had weird markings. Could be from a very sharp knife, maybe a scalpel. Whatever instrument was used carried a sharply curved blade. It almost looked as if…well, I suppose that it looked a mite like a big claw mark.”
I didn’t turn away from the eggs. “You really think that could be it?”
“I don’t know of anything in this world that has claws that sharp,” she admitted. “But that’s only in ‘this world’, of course. You might figure something different.”
“Maybe.”
Shelly waited a moment, expecting, or maybe hoping that I’d say more. When I didn’t, she added, “The other thing we found that might interest you were traces of pollen from a flower called ‘rock butterweed’. It only grows at the higher elevations of the L.A. basin. San Fernando foothills, San Gabriel range, that sort of thing.”
“That might explain the last call I got from Max. The wind was blowing hard where he was. But I checked the weather report for that day, and it was calm down here in the city. He may have been up in the mountains.”
My friend watched me as I looked forlornly at the stove. I didn’t acknowledge her glance. Inside, my gut had given me a new twinge over the news about the ‘claw-like mark’.
Could there be yet another otherworldly person – or creature – lurking about? The boundaries between Los Angeles and Andeluvia had never seemed so fragile to me. Not until this very moment.
“Dayna, you look awful sad.” Shelly put away the vegetables and wiped her hands clean on a nearby towel. “In fact, you look sad enough to bring a tear to a glass eye. Come on. Tell me what’s wrong.”
I thought about it, hard. Keeping what happened today at the crime scene a secret wasn’t going to help my beauty sleep, that was for sure.
“Have you seen any of the paperwork on the Wainwright case?” I asked.
She pursed her lips for moment before nodding. “It came across my desk for a moment. I had to pass it on to Myun-Hee. But I know the specifics.”
“There’s more than just a bizarre mystery weapon involved,” I said, as I turned the burners down a hair. “I came across traces of a strange kind of magic. And Alanzo found out an interesting common thread in this case.”
“Go on,” Shelly urged me. “I want to hear this.”
“Grayson Archer’s involved somehow. He owned the house for almost a decade before selling it to Wainwright in the past year. He’d done multiple deals with the man. And he’s the employer for the last person to visit Wainwright – a man who probably developed and dropped off the missing mystery weapon.”
Shelly’s expression darkened as she listened to me. “I know that Archer was workin’ with McClatchy to bury me in that looney bin. And let me out, once you sweet-talked him with a deal he couldn’t refuse.”
“Archer being involved worries me too. He shows up a little too often in these things. I know that he’s likely an Andeluvian, likely a magic-user of some sort. And that he’s got a very weak leash on his underling, Damon Harrison.”
“The fellow you think carved up Cohen. Maybe he’s got claws stashed away inside his suit?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure he’s even human.”
Shelly stopped what she was doing. She set aside the dirty kitchen towel for later washing before fixing me
with a hard stare.
One that I knew I would have to answer to.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“What in God’s name do you mean by that?” Shelly breathed.
I took a breath. “Just what I said. I don’t know if Harrison is human. Something that happened today has me questioning that very thing.”
“Then I think you had better fill me in.” When I gave her a questioning look, she added, “I mean more about what you’ve been doing in Andeluvia. I know the little bit that you and that hunky centaur have told me. Heard more from Miss Thea, when she was here.”
“I don’t know, Shelly,” I said, wavering. “You and Esteban…I don’t want either of you put at risk. You don’t want to get involved.”
She snorted.
“Not get involved? You’re the one who brought that pooka to work. That ghost horse made scrambled eggs on toast out of my brains. And I’m the one who smoothed out the aches of your Albess. I’m already ‘involved’.”
A sigh escaped my lips. I knew better than to argue with Shelly.
I moved to give the beans a stir as I told her about the murder of Good King Benedict. That case had brought me to Andeluvia, Galen to the OME offices, and a griffin to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I told her about the arrival of Sirrahon, the discovery of the Old War, the demons, and the Codex that listed the Creatures of Light and Dark.
Shelly remained where she stood, as patient as a stone as I told her everything. I set aside the spoon and leaned against the counter as she asked questions about the other world, how my friends visited, and what my recent promotion meant. I answered as much as I could before gathering up the emotional fortitude to tell her about the theft at the Natural History Museum, Hollyhock’s treachery, and Perrin’s murder.
Then I spoke of the arrival of the phoenix, the discovery of Keshali, and the recent fight at the Oxine that destroyed Bonecarver and restored Magnus’s kingship over the centaurs. Finally, I brought her up to speed by telling her how I brought my friends to the Wainwright house. About the four police officers that had shown up, hosting the Ultari. Of Harrison’s voice coming in loud and clear over the radio, speaking a demonic tongue. And of how helpless I felt to stop whatever was to come next.
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