Myths and Magic: An Epic Fantasy and Speculative Fiction Boxed Set

by K.N. Lee

“Someone signed for the body.” He pointed at a black scrawl across the bottom of the page. “Maybe they have more information upstairs.”

  She didn’t recognize the signature. It wasn’t Ben’s or anyone else from her family. It wasn’t even Sister Joe’s or Brown’s. Of course, it didn’t seem that Brown was in her life in this world. Maybe it was Jovkovic’s. But Jovkovic didn’t strike her as a scrawler. He seemed too meticulous. His suit was pressed, his hair was too short to be anything but neat, and he was clean-shaven.

  She had a stack of files crammed in her purse. Likely something in there had his signature, but she couldn’t check it with the M.E. and Jerry watching.

  “Is there some way you can find out where the body went or who picked it up?”

  Dr. Mercer nudged Jerry aside and scanned the document. “It looks like Patient Transport took the body. It shouldn’t be a problem.” He picked up the phone on the edge of the counter and punched in a four-digit extension. “Do you have the rest of the file on Rowan Hill?”

  She waited, an uneasiness settling in the pit of her stomach. Something wasn’t right. She couldn’t explain what, but she had a growing suspicion that her being in this world had something to do with it. Everyone thought she was this world’s Rowan Hill and she couldn’t prove otherwise.

  A new, horrible thought struck her. What if she was this world’s Rowan and not some pretender?

  Her pulse picked up, and a cold sweat burst across the back of her neck and her palms. What if Ben and Agent Brown and her Sister Joe and Shannon were the dream? What if this was reality?

  Except it couldn’t be real. Demons didn’t exist. Magic didn’t exist. It was a dream. It had to be a dream, even though it didn’t feel like a dream and she had no way home if it was a dream.

  God, she hated that truth. If this was a dream, there was no way back until it released her. At least with Seth, even though she wanted nothing to do with him, he at least could end this.

  “What do you mean, you can’t find the rest of Rowan Hill’s file?” Mercer asked into the phone.

  Rowan’s heart stuttered. Save for a handful of people, no one knew that this world’s Rowan Hill was dead. She was already continuing the activities of her other-self, and soon, with the missing body and file, the news of her death would become a clerical error.

  It had all happened so fast. She’d only been shot two days ago. She would have thought the morgue would have held on to her body a little bit longer. Heck, she’d only been dead for a day.

  The thought made her stomach clench, and more sweat chilled her skin. She’d come so close to death and hadn’t even known it. Even with that vest on, she still could have died in that alley when Manny had shot her. If he’d just aimed for her head — heck, if he’d hit the artery in one of her legs she could have bled out before help arrived.

  “I need a little—” She couldn’t catch her breath.

  Dr. Mercer and Jerry frowned at her. She shoved past them, pushed open the door, and rushed down the hall.

  This was her fault. She didn’t know how or why, but every instinct she had screamed at her that her other-self’s death was her fault. Maybe it had something to do with the world-crossing spell. Maybe that was why the spell was so difficult to cast.

  What happened when two people from different worlds met? Did everything explode or implode? Or what? Ben would know. He’d have read some sci-fi book that would have explained it all.

  She burst out the side door into a small, mostly-dead garden. A cold wind struck her face, and she gasped for breath, her heart fluttering. She had killed someone. She was sure of it. Even if it was Seth’s fault, she was the murder weapon that had killed herself. Freud would have had a field day with that thought. Please, let it be a dream, a hallucination. Maybe she was the one who was dead, and this was hell. She shivered and hugged herself.

  A pale band of sunlight struggled free from the clouds and struck her face.

  She had to convince herself that nothing she’d discovered mattered, not until she could determine another course of action.

  Her other-self was dead. That was disturbing, even scary, but it didn’t affect her ambition to return home. It just meant she couldn’t turn to herself for help.

  A snort escaped before she could stop it.

  She glanced around to ensure no one was watching. She was alone in the small area, sheltered by two sides of the hospital. A bench and a garbage can sat a few feet away. The garden part of the garden — a withered shrub, some scraggly things that had three wilted pink flowers — didn’t look as if it had received much attention.

  Surely she was losing her mind. There was just something so ridiculous about the thought that she couldn’t turn to herself for help.

  Her phone rang, and she rummaged through her purse to find it.

  “Hello?”

  “Where the hell are you?” It was Jovkovic, and save for the expletive he sounded calm. She wondered what that meant. If it had been Brown, she’d know that meant he was mildly pissed.

  “I’m—”

  “Don’t bother lying. I know where you’re not.”

  “And where’s that?” Damn, she hated being caught off guard, and the last two days had been one big serving of just that.

  “At our missing entity’s apartment.”

  “So now you’re keeping tabs on me?”

  “When I call the local P.D. wondering if you’re still at the scene… yeah. Tell me you’ve got something good and that’s why you’re not where you’re supposed to be.”

  Oh, she had something. But it wasn’t good and she couldn’t tell him.

  Well, she could, but she doubted he’d believe her. You see, sir, my other-self — the one who belongs in this world — is dead and the body is missing. Well, no, it had nothing to do with your missing demons per se.

  “I’m working on a theory.”

  “Well, work on it at Malachi Abbaddon’s apartment.”

  The hospital door beside her swung open. Jerry poked his head out and waved her over.

  “Sure thing,” she said to Jovkovic and hung up before he could argue. “So where is Ms. Hill?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Wonderful!

  “The file isn’t where it’s supposed to be. We’re going to need more time to track it down.”

  Somehow that didn’t surprise her.

  She doubted they’d find the file or the body. Which, she supposed, could mean that her other-self was still alive, but that chance was slim.

  Then a horrifying thought occurred to her. What if her other-self was in her world. Her gentle, intellectual, sensitive Ben wouldn’t be able to handle a her who kept body armor and guns in her bedroom closet.

  All right, Seth, now the gloves are off.

  “When you find out what happened, call me.” But she had a feeling no one was going to find anything about her missing other-self’s body.

  26

  Rowan took a taxi to Malachi Abbaddon’s apartment, churning with fear that her other-self was in her world messing up her life and frustrated that Special Agent Jovkovic’s demand might get in the way of her figuring out how to get home.

  Malachi’s apartment was in a luxury high rise in the center of town, and if Jovkovic hadn’t pointed out — numerous times — that Malachi was financially privileged, she’d have figured it out from his building. It made Manny’s apartment seem even more of a dump than her first impression. It wouldn’t have surprised her if a butler or a maid had greeted her at Malachi’s door instead of the local P.D.

  She stood in the doorway after the officer left, just to take in the room. Like Manny’s, the front door opened into the living room, well, actually Malachi’s started with an open foyer, designated by an eight-foot square of green slate titles. A closet stood to the right and a staircase to the left, and before her was the living room proper. Along the far wall was a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows, revealing a breathtaking view of the city. From the height of the sixteenth floor, V
alleyfield appeared more greenbelt than city.

  On the far left of the view stood St. Anne’s on its hilltop position and, beside and a little behind, was her apartment building. She drew closer to the windows and counted up from the bottom floors of her building and two balconies across from the left, and zeroed in on her apartment.

  She wrenched her gaze from the window and searched the room for a telescope. It was ridiculous to think Seth’s brother would spy on her — or anyone else, for that matter — but she was still relieved when she didn’t see one. At least that could be ruled out.

  Of course, that didn’t mean anything. Maybe Malachi could see far away. Magic existed in this world, so anything was possible. Who knew what demons were capable of? Which was a thought verging on the hysterical. She was supposed to know what demons were capable of.

  She turned away from the bank of windows, letting her gaze slide over the rest of the room. Leather, glass, and stainless steel, all black and white and silver. Very modern, and very masculine. Had Malachi actually put the look together himself or hired someone to do it for him?

  Probably hired someone. There didn’t seem to be anything out of place. In fact, it looked as if it had come straight out of a magazine. No personal touches, no sense of who Malachi was, and as such, no definite place to start looking for clues for what had happened to him.

  She pulled the files she’d taken from her other-self’s office from her purse, found Malachi’s, and flipped it open. His black mass blotted the middle of the photo. Even with a white background, it was difficult to distinguish his features, wings, and tentacles. For all she knew she’d already met him when she’d thought she was meeting his father.

  There wasn’t going to be anything in it that would help her at the moment. She closed the file and chewed on her bottom lip. What she was looking for was something small, something that hadn’t been noticed.

  Which was what?

  Crime scene investigators had already gone over everything with a fine-tooth comb.

  Of course, collecting evidence didn’t give a sense of a person. Only examining that evidence did. And the sense she got from this room was nothing. It was a model living room made for some society magazine. She was in the wrong room.

  She headed into the kitchen, actually more of a kitchenette, with a breakfast bar overlooking a dining room. It, too, looked immaculate, perfectly designed, just like the living room. This wasn’t the place to go, either.

  Upstairs comprised a master bedroom, a guest room, a study, and a media room, all as designed and sterile as downstairs. She could only assume Malachi was more of a neat-freak than she was. She, at least, personalized her apartment.

  Maybe demon personalities were too different from humans, ‘ and she just wasn’t picking up on the differences. But she’d already met a handful of demons and they had recognizable traits — more or less.

  The apartment just didn’t feel right. It certainly didn’t feel like anyone lived in it.

  She returned to the study and went straight to the desk. The top was empty, not even a container for pens or a notepad. CSU must have had a short shift with this place. If he’d had a laptop, CSU would have taken it to look for clues. Three drawers ran down the right side, along with a narrow one over her lap. The first of the three drawers had a dictionary and nothing else, and the second one was empty. The third had a dozen hanging folders with newspaper clippings that followed the Abbaddon family. Most were about business transactions. A few were social gossip. For the ruling family being a dynasty, there wasn’t a lot of information.

  Of course, what she’d found only meant that Malachi had gathered forty or so newspaper articles. Nothing more.

  She closed the bottom drawer, opened the center drawer. Basic office supplies, pens, pencils, clips, a box of staples — but no stapler — were scattered inside, half covering a small date book. She flipped it open but the pages were blank. At the back was a small section for names and phone numbers with only four entries. Seth’s name was at the bottom. She looked at the number. She couldn’t help herself. But the phone number couldn’t have been Seth’s since it was the same one that had been scrawled on the back of the Devils Do business card she’d found in Manny’s apartment. The one for Faust, the high-stakes bookie.

  27

  Back at the Federal Building at her other-self’s desk in her other-self’s office, Rowan flipped through the first missing demon’s file. It was only a few pages long, consisting of the initial missing person report and a background check with a parking ticket on it. There were some photos of his apartment, but since there wasn’t really a crime scene — if there was even a crime — the local police didn’t have much to go on.

  The contact number for Faust had been discovered scrawled on the inside cover of a phone book. It was the best lead to anything she was going to get and she’d already called it in to Jovkovic.

  She picked up her paper coffee cup beside the file, drained the last of the cold, bitter contents, and looked at the financial reports, bank statements, and eight credit cards.

  It had been updated when the FBI had linked this case to Malachi’s. There’d been one withdrawal of five hundred thousand dollars the day before the first demon had been reported missing, but no activity since. Nothing on any of his credit cards, either.

  Not the behavior of a person on vacation — especially since he’d gone on vacation six months before and used his cards then. And while five hundred grand would be a wild vacation for her, it was a drop in the bucket for Malachi, and probably for the first demon, who was sixth in line to the throne of another dynasty.

  She couldn’t even say they’d been abducted by a competing family or dynasty, since she had no proof, and there were no ransom notes. But that seemed more likely than a vacation — if these dynasties worked like drug cartels or gangs.

  Shannon sauntered from the kitchenette to her desk and sat on the edge. It groaned with his weight but didn’t break. “So, Jovkovic thinks it’s time to ask Faust a few questions.”

  “We can link him to both missing demons and Manny.”

  Shannon shrugged. “Could be a coincidence.”

  He was being awfully aloof. Probably still mad at her for breaking into the club. Except jealousy was a stronger emotion, so it was more likely he was trying to make her pay for the affair she hadn’t had.

  “I don’t think Jovkovic believes in coincidences.” She hoped Shannon would get to his point and leave.

  “More like it’s a good excuse to rattle Faust’s cage.”

  “Hunh.” She couldn’t think of anything better to say. She really just wanted the background check on Seth to arrive so she could go home and study it. It was her only lead — at least until she could figure out how this world worked and she came up with a better idea.

  “So?” he asked.

  “So,” she said, not understanding his question.

  “Jeez, you’ve never waited for an invitation before.” He pushed away from the desk. It screeched against the floor, moving an inch. “Jovkovic says if you’re well enough to break into the entities’ club, you’re well enough to question Faust.”

  “He does, does he?”

  Shannon took two steps to the elevator then turned back to her. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go suit up.”

  They took the elevator two floors down to the locker room, which was a part of the city’s actual FBI branch. She had a locker in her world but she never kept anything in it. She felt like she didn’t belong, and really, there was no reason for her to keep anything at the office. Brown rarely took her out in the field, so she never got dirty, and more often than not she worked from home where she had access to her library of occult texts.

  She opened her other-self’s locker, not surprised that the combination for the lock was the same, and stared at the small arsenal inside.

  If she’d thought the stash in her closet at home was impressive, this was downright terrifying. She was getting the distinct impression
that the rules for federal enforcement in this world were a little different than her own. Her other-self owned more guns than she thought were legal. She couldn’t imagine why she’d need a shotgun, let alone three.

  And then she thought of Akiva Abbaddon or the gargoyle creature that had landed on his balcony. A handgun would certainly stop a human, but would it stop a demon?

  Shannon leaned against the locker beside hers, buttoning his navy dress shirt around a Kevlar vest. She’d been so distracted by the locker she hadn’t noticed him change. He finished with the buttons, shrugged into a double shoulder holster with a gun on either side and grabbed a suit jacket from the bench in front of him. Rowan didn’t think she’d ever seen him, certainly not her world’s him, so dressed up.

  Obviously, they weren’t going to storm Faust’s place in tactical gear with guns blazing — and she was sure this Shannon would be all for blazing guns.

  “You should hurry up. Jovkovic won’t wait, even for you.” He grabbed a fitted vest from her locker and pushed it against her chest. She took it, but his hand lingered as if he could feel her through the layers of Kevlar.

  “I should get changed,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Jovkovic won’t wait.” She didn’t know if that was true, but it was all she could think of.

  He snorted and jerked his hand back. “What are you waiting for, then?”

  Apparently, he remembered he was mad at her. He turned and left.

  She shrugged out of her suit jacket and put on the vest. It fit like it was made for her slim figure, not like the bulky, unfitted one Brown had given her. She put her jacket back on and contemplated taking a handgun, but since she’d only fired one a few times at the range back home, she decided against it. She might know how to handle herself in a fistfight, but with a gun she was just as likely to shoot someone on her side as the other.

  She settled on a long knife, found a wrist sheath for it, and strapped it to her left forearm, over her blouse but under her suit jacket.