by Robyn Bachar
“I have managed to locate a ritual that can undo your spirit bond with young Mr. Harrison. Unfortunately, the only copy is kept within the library of Kristoff Valkyrie.”
I glanced at Lex, and he didn’t appear to recognize the name either. “And he is a vampire of some sort?” I guessed.
“No. He is a demon in the shadow realm who barters information with demons, summoners and master necromancers. He specializes in acquiring rare spells and magical artifacts, and his collection is most impressive.”
Lex swore, and I winced. That didn’t sound good.
“Will he deal with us?” Lex asked.
“Possibly, but a demon is likely to ask a price you won’t want to pay. You would be better off stealing the ritual, and I cannot help you with this. Doing so would overstep my bounds as a member of the Order. You’ll need to find another guide.”
“Okay. What’s the shadow realm?” I asked.
“It’s one of the hells, similar to the Gray,” Mac explained.
“Really? We have to go to hell to fix this? Great.” Rubbing my eyes, I cursed Harrison for the millionth time for forcing this stupid spell on me. Big, stupid billionaire jerk.
“It’s a lesser hell. Brimstone-free,” Simon commented with a slight smirk. “The shadow realm is actually quite neutral, as far as the hell dimensions are concerned. Not all of its inhabitants are evil.”
“Who do you suggest for a guide?” Lex asked.
The chronicler leaned back in his chair and sighed. “I would prefer that you not ask Emily for her aid in this.”
“Emily’s been to hell?” I asked, surprised. She seemed so nice.
“To the shadow realm. Many of us use it as a means to travel from one place to another on earth. Rather like using Faerie to travel,” Simon explained. “It is dangerous, but effective in a pinch.”
“I thought vampires can’t travel to other worlds. Not that you’re a vampire,” I corrected quickly. I knew he found the term offensive.
“To the worlds worth going to. The hell dimensions are fair game. Most are too dangerous to attempt. As I was saying, Emily could help you, but Michael would insist on accompanying her, and that would put him in the same predicament I would be.”
“Good point,” I said. I liked Emily—you had to like a woman who hit Zachary Harrison in the head with the brick concealed in her purse. I didn’t want to get her or her husband in trouble. “So who do you suggest?”
“A summoner would be ideal in this situation. As such, I recommend Patience.”
Lex growled. “Patience and I don’t exactly get along.”
I blinked, realizing that Patience was not a virtue but a person. I knew next to nothing about the local summoner community, and I had no idea who they were talking about.
“Ah yes. Didn’t she stab you once?” Simon asked, tilting his head to the side.
“She stabbed you?” I repeated, my jaw dropping.
“Only once. She’d had a real bad day. I let her slide,” Lex drawled.
“Patience Roberts is the best in the area. In fact she’s one of the best in the country. Also, she will be obligated to help you, as she is faerie-blooded,” Simon said.
“Really. What clan?” Lex asked.
“Fiera.”
“Figures,” Mac snorted. I glanced up at him for further explanation. I was getting better at recognizing the different faerie clans, but there were a whole lot of them. “They’re fire faeries. She’s hot-tempered.”
“Obviously, if she stabs guardians. I haven’t heard of her. Should I?”
“Only if you need a demon summoned,” Mac replied.
“I have enough trouble as it is,” I pointed out. Besides, I probably couldn’t afford to hire a summoner. They were a mercenary lot, like alchemists, selling their magic to the highest bidder. “If she’s good, she’s got to be expensive.”
“She is,” Lex agreed.
“Great.” I sighed, not thrilled by that idea.
“Speaking of the matter of payment,” Simon began, and I braced myself for the worst, “consider this information a gift to you both.”
“Whoa, really?” I’d been expecting an epic blood donation in return for the work Simon had put in on this project. Possibly even multiple epic blood donations, and here he was giving us a free pass.
He chuckled, sounding genuinely amused at my reaction. “I think it only proper to offer a gift to the new Titania and Oberon.”
“It is if you’re faerie-blooded,” Lex said.
Simon inclined his head slightly, and I wondered what clan he might be related to. Most magicians were faerie-blooded at some point or other in their family tree, thanks to a combination of frisky faeries and ambitious magicians. The dark red hair could hint at a fire faerie heritage, but not necessarily. He could even be a distant Silverleaf cousin, for all I knew.
“I am also grateful to you for introducing me to Maxwell. He is proving to be an excellent apprentice and will be a great asset to the Order.”
I glanced up at Mac, wondering what he thought of that, and he squeezed my shoulder with a reassuring smile. “Too bad I didn’t sign up sooner, when I had more hair,” he joked.
“You don’t have a hair replenishing spell somewhere around here?” I asked, glancing at the rows of bookshelves.
“No, though many have tried and failed,” Simon replied. “Now, unless you have any further questions, I believe Maxwell wishes to show you more of his improvements to the house upstairs.”
Chapter Four
Mac seemed happy, or at least happy enough, given his situation. I was still racked with guilt for putting him in said situation, and thus I was quiet on the drive back, until my cell phone started vibrating. It was Marie, so I answered it.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked.
“Where are you?”
“On 294, near O’Hare. Why? Please tell me this is about picking up dinner.”
“Nope, not this time. I need you to detour to Des Plaines. You’re practically here anyway.”
“Fine. Give me the address. I’ll put it into the GPS,” I replied. At least the million bells and whistles on Lex’s SUV came in handy. She gave me the address and I punched it in, and the calm, ladylike voice of the GPS directed us to get off at the next exit. After giving me a brief description of the house, Marie hung up.
“What’s wrong?” Lex asked.
“Marie wants us to meet her. She didn’t say why, but I’m assuming it’s bad.”
His jaw clenched as he nodded. Once we were off the expressway, we traveled down a series of busy commercial streets. Lots of strip malls, very little character. Finally we turned in to a neighborhood, and I found myself critiquing the area. Small, ranch-style houses lined curving streets with multiple expensive cars in their driveways. I wondered what the schools were like…but then again, if something awful had happened here, we probably didn’t want to add it to our list of possible places to move.
It was late afternoon, and what had started as a bright, cold day was turning into a stormy, cold day. We parked the car on the street because Marie’s motorcycle was in the driveway—she rode a Harley, and Lex hated it. I think she did it to annoy him, but she’d need to trade up for something a bit tougher very soon because it wouldn’t survive an Illinois winter. As we walked up to the house, I wondered what the neighbors would think, but at least Lex and I were dressed like normal people at the moment, thanks to our morning meeting with the real estate agent.
Marie met us at the door and ushered us inside. The smell of blood hit us the moment we entered. I didn’t see any in the empty kitchen, but there had to be a lot of it, and close.
“Who called you in?” Lex asked.
“Friends of the family. It’s the mom’s week to carpool, and she never showed this morning,” Marie explained.
“Is this the summoner family you were talking about?” I asked.
“No. New case. Librarians.”
I cursed, loud and long, and Marie quirked a
pink brow at me. The last thing we needed was for the hunters to snatch more librarians. And this was two families in two days. Talk about escalation.
“Are the neighbors likely to call the cops on us with your bike in the driveway?” I asked.
“It shouldn’t be a problem. I put an unnoticing ward around the place when I got here. It’ll keep the straights out of our hair for now. Walk with me,” Marie said to Lex.
“Sure. You wait here,” he said to me, and I nodded numbly.
The guardians—or ex-guardian in Lex’s case—went off to investigate the house, and I stood in the kitchen. I shoved my hands into my pockets and fought the urge to pick at things. Aside from the ominous smell of blood, everything looked normal. I inched forward and peeked around the corner into the living room. Still no blood, but the sliding-glass doors leading to the backyard were open. I spotted a massive wooden swing set, complete with a slide and a tower.
I jumped when my cell phone buzzed. Harrison again. This time I answered.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, voice laced with concern.
“Do you even fucking know what the hunters just did?” I snapped. “They grabbed two families! Two! I thought you said you were making progress with the hunter problem.”
“Catherine, please calm down. We are making progress—”
“There is an empty high chair in the other room. A high chair, Harrison. These people snatched a baby. That’s getting worse, not better.”
“I am sorry to hear that. Where are you?”
I knew the man was holding on to his patience with both hands, which only provoked me more. Having Harrison and his endless resources helping solve the hunter problem was the only good reason I could give for why he shouldn’t bite the dust, and he wasn’t frickin’ helping. Maybe I should just let Lex and Portia whack him.
“I have no idea where we are. Somewhere in Des Plaines, with Marie.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“Why? What the fuck are you going to do? Send in the crime-scene clean-up crew? Why are you even calling me?”
“Because I sensed that you were upset.”
“Yeah right, there was a great disturbance in the Force. Unless you can send your undead posse out to rescue these poor kids, you’re wasting my time.”
“Well I can’t help if I don’t—” he started, but then I hung up on him. The conversation was going nowhere, and besides, the only way I could tell him where we were was to go ask Marie for the address again, and then she and Lex would want to know why I needed it. Lex was twitchy enough about Zach as it was at the moment.
I turned my phone off, shoved it into my pocket, and went in search of Marie and Lex. I found them in the baby’s room, standing over the body of what I assumed was the mother of the family. The smell of blood was strongest here, and I inhaled a lungful of it when I gasped in horror.
“I told you to stay in the kitchen,” Lex said.
“What happened to her?” I asked.
The jacket of the woman’s cotton-candy-pink sweat suit was stained burgundy across her chest. Brown eyes stared sightlessly up at the ceiling, widened forever in an expression of terror. It reminded me a bit too much of my mother’s eyes when I’d found her body after her murder, though my mom had been drained of her blood. This scene was filled with the pools of blood that my mother’s death lacked.
“She was shot. Took four in the chest,” Marie explained.
“The baby?” I asked, afraid to look in the direction of the powder-blue crib.
“Not here. I think she was trying to protect him, so they took her out rather than subdue her,” she said.
“And there’s no way to track them?” I asked.
“Straights? No. If they were other magicians, maybe, but our tracking spells rely on having magic to track. It’s part of the reason why we’re having such a hard time locating these bastards.” Marie ran a hand through her short, pink hair. “I’ll have to notify the librarian council.”
“Too bad you can’t hire a bloodhound,” I said sourly. Then I paused. “Wait, your tracking spells are guardian magic, right?”
“Right,” she replied.
“What about a seer?” I asked.
“There aren’t any in the States that I know of,” Lex said.
“But Emily’s a seer,” I countered.
He shook his head. “She was a seer, now she’s…something else.”
“No, she’s still a seer because she still has visions. Has anyone asked her to take a look at one of these scenes?” I peered at the guardians, and from their sheepish expressions I assumed that they hadn’t. “This is a librarian family, right?”
“Yes…why, what are you—?” Lex began as I whipped out my cell phone and turned it back on. I had Emily in my Contacts list, and I called her home number first.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Emily, it’s Catherine Duquesne. Do you have a minute?” I asked.
“Of course I do. Is something wrong?”
I filled her in on the gruesome situation as quickly as I could, while Marie and Lex both frowned at me. I wondered if I was insulting their pride by calling in extra help. Or if I was confirming my journey to the dark side by calling in undead help, but Emily wasn’t a necromancer. And she wasn’t a chronicler. She didn’t answer to either of them, so it should be fine to call her in. I knew the Order of St. Jerome wouldn’t argue with investigating the murder/kidnapping of a librarian family, considering that the Order was made up of living and undead librarians. Plus I couldn’t feel guilty about asking for her help, because Emily was one of the nicest people I’d ever met. Calling in Zach would cause drama on several levels. Emily wouldn’t.
“Do you think you’d be able to read anything if you came here? I’m sorry for asking this, because it’s…pretty bad, but if we can learn anything about who took the family, we have a better shot at finding them. I mean, the clock’s ticking, right? Most murders are solved in the first forty-eight hours or some-such?” I asked, looking to Marie for confirmation, and she nodded.
“I am willing to try. Can you give me directions?” Emily asked.
“I can’t. Marie can…one second.” I held the phone out to my sister-in-law, and she took it. She dutifully recited streets and roads and landmarks, and I had no idea how she managed it. Marie was new to the area, and she knew it better than I did. Then again, I don’t come out this way very often—more now that I had access to a car again, but not enough to know what streets go where in which suburb. Maybe guardians have a natural sense for directions. Or maybe the poor girl stayed up late studying maps of the Chicagoland area.
“They’ll be here in about forty-five minutes,” Marie said after she ended the call and handed me the phone. “We’ll keep looking around in the meantime.”
“Do you think the hunters might come back?” I asked.
“Probably not. They’ve been hitting each place only once,” Lex said.
“But how long will they keep that up? Sooner or later they’ll figure out to stay and catch the investigators too. Or plant bugs. You don’t think there are tiny hunter microphones around here, do you?” I glanced around the room, looking for pinhole cameras or suspicious places to hide a microphone.
“Well, if you two will get out of my hair, I’ll check,” Marie said.
She shooed us out of the room, and I took one last glance at the body of the poor librarian mother. She’d died defending her child, to no avail. As Lex and I walked down the hallway to return to the kitchen, I paused and looked at the family photos mounted on the wall. It was all disturbingly normal—a boy, a girl, the parents, grandparents, and now pictures of the new baby. Birthday parties, weddings, even a first communion. Christian magicians were rare, but not unheard of. Magicians were almost all some flavor of pagan, worshipping some aspect of the Lord and Lady.
“Are you okay?” Lex asked, his voice low.
“No. Not at all,” I said. “Look at this. Even if they live, they’ll never be the same. Yo
u don’t get over something like this.” He didn’t reply, and instead he drew me close to him and hugged me. Closing my eyes, I leaned into his comfort. “How are we supposed to fight them? They’re picking us off left and right.”
“We’ll figure something out. These aren’t the first hunters we’ve faced.”
“They’ve got the best guns though.”
The last time I knew of where we were being hunted on such a large scale was during the Burning Times, when witch hunting was popular for a few centuries. The straights killed anyone who looked at them funny—including a boatload of innocent people who had no magic whatsoever. They even printed wacky guides to finding and identifying witches, like the Malleus Maleficarum. I’d like to think that humanity had come a long way since then.
Guess I was wrong.
Emily arrived with her husband Michael in tow. As I understood it, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Black had been married for over a century. (If fifty was the golden anniversary, I wondered what one hundred was? Mithril?) They were both dressed impeccably in what I’d consider formal attire—though I’m the sort who wears “good” jeans to holiday events—and I wondered if they were perfect all the time. An eternity of being neatly pressed and freshly washed.
“I feel I must warn you that I’m not certain how much I will be able to find. My abilities can be very fickle,” Emily apologized.
“That’s fine. We’re grateful for your help,” I assured her. Well, I was grateful. I assumed Lex and Marie were as well. Marie seemed to play well with others, so I was fairly certain she wouldn’t go all territorial on us and start spouting things about “chain of command” or “jurisdiction”.
“I don’t believe we have met this family. Have we, darling?” Emily asked Michael.
“No, we haven’t,” he confirmed.
She nodded, her carefully styled bun bobbing up and down. Emily handed her handbag to her husband, and then she slowly walked into the living room. She held her hands out to her sides as though wading through the air itself. Shaking her head, she returned to the kitchen and ran the tips of her fingers over the island in the center of the room.