by Jayne Faith
I eyed the dark shape of the folded umbrella in the middle of my glass-topped patio table. Visualizing the whip spiraling around it, my pulse accelerated, and I gripped the handle tighter. Holding my focus, I raised my hand and tried to imitate Damien’s demonstration. Magic sparked down the whip and flew off the end, arcing to the umbrella. Instead of twining around it as I’d intended, the magic flew outward in one glob, missed the umbrella completely, and smacked into the wood fence with a bang, rattling the slats with the solid force of earth magic as if I’d walked up and kicked them. At the same time, the shadows in my periphery went wild, and my head thumped hard enough to make me wince. The other reacting to my magic? The strands of green spread out in a paint-splatter pattern before fading and leaving the faint scent of ozone hanging in the air.
I crowed a laugh in spite of the misfire and the smoky shapes swirling frantically in a frame around my vision. I’d never felt such an abundance of magic before, and certainly never wielded it that way. My ability was too meager to perform distal magic—magic at a distance of more than a couple of feet—and my heart galloped at the thrill of slinging magic for the first time in my life.
I grinned at Damien in the dark. “This thing kicks ass.” His face was shadowed, but I had the sense that he was grinning back.
I drew more earth magic and shook my hand back and forth, and the whip skipped across the patio leaving green in its wake. I did it again just for the fun of it.
He chuckled at my playing. “I’m glad you like it. I can teach you to do some specific maneuvers if you want.”
I released the earth magic and began coiling the whip, suddenly aware of the familiar drained sensation seeping into my body. There was always a price to wielding magic, and the lower the ability, the faster the crafter tired. A shiver passed through me as the faint chill left by the absence of magic set in. There was a little strap on the base of the handle, which was probably for keeping the coils in place. I wrapped the strap around the whip and snapped it.
The thumping in my head was still going strong, and something from my visit to the Gregori campus pinged in my memory. I shivered again as I remembered the look on Phillip Zarella’s face when he’d appeared in the doorway of the conference room. He’d looked at me like he wanted to devour me and muttered the word “reaper.”
I licked my dry lips. “Zarella said something to me. It was before Jacob showed up and shooed him away.” My words came haltingly as a vague tightness clutched at my insides.
“What was it?” Damien’s head tilted in curiosity.
“He said ‘reaper.’ And it wasn’t just what he said but the look on his face. Like he wanted to whisk me back to his lab and take a saw to my skull so he could poke around in my head.” I hunched forward and wrapped one arm around my waist.
Damien went still. “Are you sure that’s what he said?”
“Positive. You’re knowledgeable. Any idea what he meant by that?”
He let out a harsh scoffing breath, an expression of disgust. “No, and I have no desire to understand the inner workings of a psychopath’s mind. He’s a necromancer, so he has an affinity for anything related to death. But he’s also clinically insane. I wouldn’t put much stock in anything that comes out of his mouth.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right . . .” I trailed off.
But a chill passed through me. I’d forgotten that in addition to Zarella’s atrocities against humans, vampires, and any other species he could get his hands on, he was one of only a few necromancers in the world. He’d raised zombies and then controlled them using telepathy. It was rumored that he could see through the eyes of any zombie, demon, or vamp—anything or anyone that had been touched by death or the Rip—and steer them around like a kid with a radio control car.
Anything that had been touched by death.
My mind flashed to the moment I’d awakened on a gurney under a sheet, queued for the autopsy lab along the side of a dark hallway in the basement of St. Luke’s Hospital with two other stiffs. Talk about a real life nightmare that would haunt me for the rest of my days. The poor orderly would need therapy for the next decade after witnessing me bolt upright, screaming bloody murder as the sheet fell away.
I’d definitely been touched by death. More than touched. It had claimed me for eighteen minutes, and by some unknown miracle, I’d escaped. My forehead thumped its rhythm, that foreign beat that didn’t line up with my pulse, as if to remind me of the passenger I’d carried since returning to the living. Zarella had seen something when he looked at me, and I didn’t think it was just a hallucination of an insane man.
Damien’s voice jolted me from my thoughts. “If you did some focused training, you could do a lot more with the whip.”
“I seriously doubt I could do all that much,” I said.
“I disagree. I think you have more capacity.”
“Why?” I asked.
He cocked his head. “It’s hard to explain, and I admit I have nothing particularly concrete to base it on, just a sort of sixth-sense pinging. It’s almost like you were supposed to have a higher level of aptitude and then . . . I don’t know, something interfered at a critical moment and left you with only a bit of ability. Did you have any sort of traumatic event around puberty? A bad accident or serious illness?”
“Huh uh. Actually that was one of the few periods of my life that was fairly normal.” I looked at him. “This is really cool and all, but we need to figure out this thing with Roxanne’s brother. I was hoping Johnny would be able to stick around.”
He gave a low laugh and moved to two of the chairs, pulling them closer together with a soft screech of the metal legs across concrete. He lowered himself into one of them, crossed one ankle over the other knee and rocked the chair back on two legs, clearly waiting for me to sit.
I remained where I was, folding my arms and keeping the coiled whip clutched in one hand. “Why are you so smug and chuckly all of a sudden?”
“Come on, Ella. If we talk about it, we’ll spoil the mystique.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You and Johnny. Duh,” he said it in such a perfect imitation of Roxanne’s tone of adolescent impatience I had to hold tight to my irritation to keep from cracking a smile. But Damien’s mention of me and Johnny caused my stomach to do an unwelcome somersault.
“Um, there is no me and Johnny.”
“Sure. Sure, there isn’t.” His annoyingly patronizing tone made me want to push his chair over backward.
I let out an exasperated breath, went to the vacant chair, and yanked it back a few inches out of spite before slouching onto it.
“We have more important things to discuss.” I straightened and tried to tamp down the little flip-flop that was still echoing around in my stomach. “Here’s what we should do. We’ll wait near the Gregori campus for one of those vans to leave. We’ll follow it ‘til it’s out of sight of the campus but not yet in the city. Then we’ll borrow it and drive it back in through the security gate, go get the statue, and take it in the van.”
A deep laugh floated toward us from over the fence, and I half-rose in alarm. The gate latch released with a plink, and the hinges squeaked as the gate swung open. A broad-shouldered form came through.
“Johnny?” I asked in surprise.
“You know you’re insane, right?” Johnny took off his leather jacket, laid it on the table, and lifted a chair and carried it over to me and Damien. “I admire your intent, but that’s an idiotic plan. And you might not want to be so loud about your criminal intentions. I could hear you from the sidewalk.”
“Oh come on, that’s a little harsh,” I said indignantly. “Maybe my idea isn’t very practical, but I haven’t come up with anything better.” I cleared my throat, trying to reclaim my composure. “I mean, how are we going to get in there? And what are you doing back here, anyway? I thought you had some emergency case.”
“There were no supernatural forces at work in the crime scene,” he sai
d, his voice irritatingly level and soothing. “Newb cop called me in prematurely. Your plan is too rash, and it’ll never work. But when I said you were insane, I meant it as a compliment.”
Damien snickered while I opened my mouth and then snapped it closed, unable to come up with a good retort.
I sighed and leaned back. Getting prickly wasn’t going to bring Nathan home any faster. “Okay, how do we do this?”
I knew Johnny was committed to the rescue mission because he’d promised Roxanne, and I realized I was genuinely curious about whether he had a plan of his own. He had a ton of connections I didn’t, and I couldn’t deny that he was probably better equipped to get us in and out of the Gregori campus.
“There’s another Gregori gargoyle loose,” Johnny said.
I perked up. “We have proof of what he’s doing to gargoyles.”
“Yup, that’s what I was thinking. A friend of mine has eyes on it right now. He agreed to look the other way and pretend it was never there while we come and get it.”
“We need to do it now,” Damien said. “Tonight, before Gregori has a chance to track it down and claim it. Then we can go to the press in the morning.”
“Yeah, I agree.” I glanced through the kitchen’s screen door. The dull flickers of light indicated Roxanne still had the TV on.
“You think that’ll be enough to get Nathan released?” Damien asked.
“We won’t know until we try. But Jacob seems to want to redeem Gregori Industries in the eyes of the public, if only to help his own reputation,” I said, already standing and moving toward the door. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want more bad press.”
Johnny stood too and looked into the house. “What do we do about the kid?”
I bit the inside of my cheek for a moment and then shrugged. “Let’s take her with us. Hey, Roxanne,” I called into the living room. “How’d you like to go on a gargoyle mission with us?”
Her blond head popped up over the back of the sofa. “Can I pick a secret code name?”
I laughed. “Absolutely!”
Chapter 15
WITHOUT A GREGORI van to transport the wayward gargoyle, we needed something that could handle the weight of the stone creature. Fortunately, Johnny’s father had a trailer we could hook up to my truck. The gargoyle would be exposed but shouldn’t attract much notice in the middle of the night—or so we hoped.
Johnny and I got in my pickup to go get the trailer while Damien and Roxanne went to the apartment complex near the Boise River where Johnny’s buddy had spotted the gargoyle. They were going to stand watch and make sure it didn’t go anywhere. We figured if the gargoyle tried to take flight, or anything else of a supernatural nature occurred, Damien’s magic was our best shot at keeping it contained.
So that left me alone with Johnny. I tried to keep my focus on the task at hand but caught myself becoming annoyingly aware of the aroma of his cologne, which was a distracting scent reminiscent of both sea and mountain forest. Between that, the swirling shadows around the edges of my vision, and the faint thump behind my forehead, I had my work cut out for me just keeping the truck on the right side of the yellow line.
“You see your dad much?” I asked. I didn’t know anything about his family, though the way he’d mentioned his dad made it clear he lived alone. Johnny and I had crossed paths several times through work, and occasionally our social circles overlapped. Actually, it was probably more accurate to say his social circle pretty much engulfed mine. He was one of those people who seemed to know just about everyone, either directly or through one or two degrees of separation, especially when it came to people around our age in town. But I didn’t know much of anything about his background.
“He spends a lot of time at his cabin in eastern Idaho in the summer. In the winter he goes south to Arizona.” His tone was curiously flat.
My eyes ticked over to his face, trying to read his expression. Maybe he wasn’t on the best of terms with his pops.
“Wow, three homes,” I said. I wouldn’t have guessed Johnny came from money. He worked hard and his services were in demand, and I knew he did quite well on his own. He was no trust fund silver-spoon kid. “Why does he hang onto the place here in Boise? Sounds like he doesn’t use it much.”
I looked over to see Johnny’s non-committal shrug. “I don’t know for sure. I think he does it out of loyalty to Mom’s memory.” His eyebrows were drawn low, as if trying to hide his eyes.
“I didn’t know you lost mother. I’m sorry to hear that. That’s sweet that he keeps the place in her honor.”
“She’s been gone a long time.”
I wanted to say something comforting, but I got the sense the topic of his mother’s death was one he tried to avoid.
“Who’s the mysterious exorcist lady you know?” I asked, hoping a topic change would lighten his mood.
He shifted in his seat, straightening and unfolding his arms. “Her name’s Lynnette LeBlanc. She’s a witch who specializes in dark-edge magic.”
The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t manage to pull any references from my memory. The unfamiliar term he used piqued my curiosity and sent off a little ping of warning at the back of my mind. “That’s not the same as black crafting, is it?”
Not many were stupid enough to get mixed up in black magic. It was forbidden in the magic community, and it was dangerous—black magic was always accompanied by unpredictable and unintended results. A black love spell, for example, might achieve the goal of getting someone to fall in love with you, but then the love interest might get run over by a truck a month later. Or something equally terrible and random could happen to someone in proximity to the black magic practitioner—like a neighbor or family member.
“She doesn’t practice any dark arts. She says her specialty is ‘around’ the black.” Johnny lifted his hands to make air quotes with his fingers. “But I believe her. She’s smart and really talented, but I don’t think she’s reckless.”
I snorted as I swung the wheel around to take a left off Park Center Boulevard into an upscale subdivision. “I’m not sure how you can practice around the black without dipping into it.”
“Yeah, I know it sounds weird. Her talent has to do with grave magic and things of that nature.” His voice changed as his attention swung over to me. “She reminds me of you, actually.”
My heart and my forehead thumped at the same time, as if the other and I both took notice of his comment in the same way. I blinked a few times, and for a moment I had the wild urge to tell Johnny that I wasn’t alone inside my own head, that something had come with me back from death and I needed to figure out how to communicate with it because it somehow knew where my brother was.
Instead, I sucked in a breath and then gave him a sly glance. “Well, she sounds like a badass, so I can see why you’d say that.”
With a flip of his index finger, he indicated I should take the next right. “It’s the third one on the left.”
I pulled over to the curb and cut the engine.
He’d twisted to face me, and in doing so closed some of the space between us. “Ella, I’m glad I’m getting the chance to know you a little better. I have to admit you’re part of the reason I’m getting swept up in this little rescue mission.”
My pulse sped as my eyes stayed locked on his. They wanted to flick down to his lips, but I resisted. If I let my focus wander to his mouth, I’d probably kiss him and that would be stupid, just me giving into those silly flutters in my stomach and getting swept up in his gallant desire to help Roxanne. Despite his apparent sincerity and his admittedly charming declaration, I knew it was just a moment. I was well aware of his reputation. Tomorrow night or the next night he’d be saying something like that to another woman. That’s how Johnny was—charm and yes, there was genuine sincerity there, but he had no interest in anything more than the passion of the moment.
So what did that say about me? That I actually wanted something that lasted more than just a moment? I scoffed
at myself and my entire irrelevant train of thought. We were there to save Roxanne’s brother. Once that was done, I’d go back to trying to figure out how to get the thing in my head to show me where I could find Evan, and then I was going to bring my brother home.
I forced a grin. “Well, then let’s get on with the mission,” I said, trying to sound jaunty.
Hopping out of the truck and pulling in a deep breath of night air, I felt a little more like myself. I was used to moving and doing, not chit-chatting and exchanging silent glances. My fingers brushed the loops of the whip, attached to a clip on my Patrol belt that was positioned at the front of my left hip, and a tingle of residual magic raised the tiny hairs on my forearm. That was me—coiled and ready for action.
Johnny went to punch a code into the keypad mounted in the garage door frame, opening one side of the four-car garage. The noise of the door raising seemed to blast into the silence of the quiet residential street, but I was actually grateful for the racket because it filled the void left by the absence of conversation between us. We found the trailer inside and pulled away the bricks that were wedged in front of the tires, and then I jumped into my truck and backed it into the driveway so we could hitch up the trailer. Johnny also grabbed a rolling dolly and a mess of rope and bungee cords.
We pulled away with the trailer bumping along behind the truck and the dolly in the bed. It was just a five-minute drive to where Damien and Roxanne stood watch over the gargoyle, which we passed in silence that I tried to convince myself wasn’t awkward at all. Due to the extra length of the trailer, I had to park on the street edging the apartment complex, rather than the nearly-full lot. I left the truck idling. Damien was supposed to give us the exact location of the gargoyle.
Johnny was fiddling with his phone. “They’re at the northwest corner by the river. No parking nearby.”
“Damn.” I killed the engine and pulled out the key. “We’ll have to take the dolly and hope no one looks out a window and thinks we’re stealing something.”