“Uh, the principal has to do a day each month or so in a class, and today she’s teaching my class. She says it keeps her fresh, gives her a chance to see the syllabus in action. She’s done it for the past six years.” Jenny nodded. “It’s a good thing—she can foresee some of the issues when the curriculum changes. So I’m home preparing lessons for next semester.”
“Where were you preparing the lessons?” Dave asked.
Jenny blinked. “In—in my living room,” she murmured. He rose from his seat and indicated the doorway.
“Would you mind showing us?”
Jenny nodded, and rose, leaving her tea on the table. She led them to her small living room. The coffee table in the center of the room was strewn with papers, and her large diary was opened up to a couple of months away.
Dave nodded, then glanced around the room. “Okay. Can you remember what happened after that?”
Jenny touched her hand to her mouth, then turned to the hallway. “There was a knock at the door...” Her hands trembled, and she pressed her fingers to her temple. “It’s so murky. Why can’t I remember?”
Dave reached for her hand, and cupped it in both of his. “It’s okay, Jenny. We’ll figure this out,” he reassured her.
Sully watched as her friend seem to draw comfort from Dave’s words. He pulled her gently into the hallway. “So, there was a knock at the door...you went to answer it?”
Jenny nodded, and Dave guided her closer to the door. “Can you remember what happened? You would have reached for the doorknob...”
He raised her hand, and Jenny whipped it out of his reach. She stepped closer to Sully, her face pale. “No.”
Sully glanced at her. “No? Do you remember something, Jen?”
Jenny shook her head, folding her arms as she looked at her front door with trepidation. “No.”
“It’s okay, Jenny. He’s not here anymore. He can’t hurt you.”
“Can you remember anything about him, Jen? His hair, his eyes...?”
Jenny caught her lip between her teeth. Sully watched the movement, dismayed. Her friend was so...timid, so afraid. On one level, she could understand—the guy had tried to kill her. But—this was Jenny. Her friend was normally so feisty and vivacious, and here she was, too scared to open her own front door.
Memories surfaced, of a similar time when her own heart would stutter at the slightest sound inside her city apartment... She reached for her friend’s arm, trying to imbue support and comfort, and feeling nothing rise inside.
Jenny shook her head and took a step back, her gaze fixed on the door.
“Okay, Jenny,” Dave said, and Sully was momentarily distracted by the smooth, soothing tone he used. He stepped between Jenny and the door.
“You can remember the knock at the door, you can remember going to answer it. Once you opened the door, what—”
The pounding at the door made them all jump. “Jenny! Jenny, are you okay?”
Sully’s shoulders sagged when she recognized Jacob’s voice. The doorknob turned, and the door swung inward.
Jenny screamed, collapsing to the floor sobbing, holding her arms up in front of her. “No, please, no,” she cried.
Jacob stared down at his sister in stunned shock, and stepped toward her. Jenny screamed again, scrambling back on her hands and feet.
“No! Stop, get out!”
Jacob halted, his mouth agape. Sully glanced between Jenny and the brother her friend adored. Why was she reacting like this?
“Jenny—” Jacob breathed in dismay as flashing red-and-blue lights flickered into the hallway, and Tyler Clinton bounded up the stairs in his sheriff’s uniform.
“No!” Jenny screamed, almost hysterical as she backed away.
Dave held out his arms between the siblings, inserting himself between them. “Jenny, it’s okay,” he said, soothing.
“It was him,” she cried, stopping when she backed up against a wall. Her head tilted, and she drew her knees up as though trying to back her way through the wall.
Sully frowned, looking over at Jacob. He looked so shocked, so hurt, so worried. She looked back at Jenny. Her friend was trembling, pale and teary as she tried to curl up and disappear.
Tyler frowned as he stepped inside the house, and looked between Jenny and Jacob. Sully knelt next to her friend, holding her arms out, and Jenny collapsed against her, sobbing. She lifted her gaze to meet Dave’s. His expression was grim as he looked between the Forsyth siblings.
“What happened” Tyler asked curtly, surveying those gathered in the hallway.
Dave shifted his gaze from Sully to Jenny. “Good question.”
Chapter 13
Dave followed Sully into her home and watched as she rubbed her neck. He closed the door behind them, locked it, then put a magical ward over it, just for the sake of it. Relief swelled through him as he saw the brief bloom of color, the intricate markings of his spell take hold of the door and its frame before disappearing from view. It had felt damn weird not being able to call on his powers when he was chasing the witch.
She turned to look at him. “Nightcap?”
“Hell, yeah.”
She turned on the light to the living room, and he narrowed his eyes. She must have seen his reaction, because she turned off the lights, then waved her hand casually. The candles that were placed around the room sputtered to life, and he smiled his appreciation. She crossed to the white timber cabinet, and his eyebrows rose when she pulled out a bottle of Irish whiskey and two glasses. She poured a measure of the amber liquid into each and handed him a glass. She took a seat in the armchair, and he subsided on the folded out sofa.
“What an awful day,” Sully muttered as she took a sip of her drink.
Dave nodded. It had been interesting, explaining to Sheriff Clinton about an intruder the victim believed had been her brother. But he’d chased that bastard, and it wasn’t Jacob. Wrong height, wrong weight, wrong hair color—just wrong, wrong and wrong. Jacob had been removed from his sister’s home to give her a chance to calm down, but with Jenny being a null, Dave had been unable to do any body or brain scans to figure out what the hell had happened.
“He blurred her memory,” Sully murmured, incredulous. “She’s a null, and he tricked her.” Her lips tightened. “And to make her think it was Jacob—that’s just plain low.”
“While I think Jacob Forsyth is more than capable of being a dick, you’re right, he wasn’t the man I chased out of Jenny’s kitchen.”
He took a sip of his whiskey, enjoying the mild burn as it slid down his throat. “I just wish I’d gotten the bastard.”
Sully tilted her head. “So, he just...disappeared?”
Dave nodded, and finished his drink. He didn’t like failing—hated it, but he just couldn’t figure out how the witch had done his vanishing act.
In null territory.
When he couldn’t so much as muster a powerpuff punch.
Sully rose and crossed to her library, waving a hand across the front of the bookcase. Dave watched as the camouflage spell glimmered at the movement to reveal the tomes of magical spells and history.
Sully dragged her finger gently across the spines, and for a moment he was distracted by the graceful movement.
“What are you looking for?” he asked, and rose from the sofa. He placed his empty glass on the end table and crossed to her. She pulled out a book and passed to him, then scanned again, pulling two more volumes from the shelf.
“Something isn’t adding up here,” she said, as she crossed to the liquor cabinet and snagged up the whiskey bottle. “This guy has used my name—I don’t understand that part, or why the Ancestors sent you after me. That’s number one,” she said, holding up the bottle. She poured another measure in his glass, and one in her own, then placed the bottle on the table.
“Number two, he’s able to
use magic. Around nulls. That doesn’t compute. Nulls void any natural magic. Wolves can’t shift, vampires can’t fang out, witches can’t cast spells.”
Dave nodded as he sat down on the sofa again. “I know, that’s something that’s confusing the crap out of me, too,” he admitted.
She nodded, then started to flick through one of the books she held as she sank into her armchair. “So, how is he doing it? There has to be something in these books that can help us figure this out.”
He eyed her for a moment. He didn’t need to ask her why she was doing this. He’d seen her with her friend. She’d been worried. Jenny had been distraught, clutching on to Sully as she’d given her statement to the sheriff. He and Sully had spent hours with the nulls, and he had even walked the neighborhood again, with some of the deputies, in case they could find some trace of the man who’d managed to enter Jenny’s home through her front door, mess with her memory and almost kill her.
When Sully had been sitting with Jenny, he’d been trying to soothe Jacob. The one thing he and Sully had agreed on was not to mention the witch aspect. It didn’t make sense—yet. They couldn’t explain it, and Dave didn’t want the sheriff looking at them as potential suspects and distract the man from pursuing the relevant clues—or interfere with his own objective of finding the witch and sending the bastard to the Other Realm.
Jacob, though, had had a difficult time accepting that his sister believed he’d tried to kill her, and was looking for answers—and Sully had wanted to give them to him, and Dave knew how hard it was for her to bite her tongue.
“They’re PBs, obviously,” Sully muttered absently as she scanned the pages in front of her.
Dave’s eyebrows rose. “Really?”
She nodded, her honey-blond braid sliding across her shoulder. “Yeah. Jacob confirmed it. He told me the Adlers, Forsyths, Sinclairs, Drummonds, Maxwells and Tarringtons are the PB families in their community. A member from each family sits on the council.”
Dave blinked. “When did he tell you that?”
“When you helped Jenny up, and I had to tell her brother she wasn’t really losing her marbles,” Sully said calmly. She winced. “Those were Jacob’s words, not mine.”
Dave’s lips tightened. “So when Jacob told us about the PBs, he just happened to forget to mention he was one of them?” That was damn annoying.
Sully shrugged. “They’ll tell us stuff when they trust us. We just need to work harder to earn their trust.”
Dave frowned as he glanced down at the old and weathered book he held. “And in the meantime, more of them are in danger.” It didn’t escape his notice that Jacob Forsyth trusted Sully enough to divulge this information, after pretty much telling him to get lost the night before.
Sully played with her braid, and Dave found himself watching her more than reading from the book in his lap. She turned a page, and he forced himself to look down at the book he held. Yet in a moment, he found his gaze lifting to surreptitiously peek at her again. Her slightly crooked mouth was quirked, and a faint line had appeared between her eyebrows as she read through the spells and histories. For some, it took only a momentary scan. For others, she seemed to catch her lip, as though hopeful she’d found the answer, and then she’d press those sexy lips into a disappointed pout and turn the page.
She glanced up at him, distracted, and he glanced back down at his book.
“What about the Ancestors?”
He blinked at the question that seemed to come out of left field. “What?”
“The Ancestors,” she repeated, then rose from her seat. She disappeared into her kitchen, and he heard the tap run in the sink, and then she came back into the living room carrying a bowl of water.
“Can you ask them?”
He put the book off to the side, frowning as she set the bowl down on the floor between them. She slipped her flip-flops off to the side, then sat cross-legged on the floor.
“Ask them what?” He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees as he tried to figure out where she was going with this.
She met his gaze. “The Ancestors directed you to me. They were wrong. Can you ask them for help?”
Dave shook his head briefly, confused as he tried to work through her suggestion until it made sense. He eyed the bowl.
“It’s the Ancestors, Sully. They’ve only ever given me the name, and I take it from there. There’s no conversation. It’s not like a phone call, where I can chat with them over it.”
“Have you ever tried?”
He frowned as he lowered himself to the floor, eyeing the bowl. “You want to scry the Ancestors?” He crossed his legs. He’d never heard of that being done, so he had no idea whether it would work or not—or whether it would just piss off the Ancestors.
Sully shrugged. “It can’t hurt to ask, right? This guy is doing stuff that we’ve never seen before. Surely they can give us a clue.”
He gave her a doubtful look, and she responded with an expression full of exasperation. “This guy managed to give you the slip—and I’ve seen you in action. I even went invisible, and you still caught me. Aren’t you interested to see how he managed to evade you?”
He shifted uncomfortably. Admitting to failure yet again was like running a cheese grater over his skin. Damn it, she had a point. He nodded, then settled himself comfortably. Sully did the same, and he closed his eyes, centering his awareness. Once he felt the peace, the warmth of relaxation, he slid his eyes open. He tried to extend his awareness, his senses, to encompass the witch in front of him, but her shields were in place yet again, blocking him off. His brow dipped briefly. It wasn’t unusual for witches to combine powers in something like this, but Sully was completely closed off to him. He’d have to do this on his own.
Sully met his gaze, then dipped her finger in the bowl and swirled her finger to create a gentle whirlpool. She murmured a chant in the Old Language, and he shoved aside his surprise at her knowledge and skill, focusing on the water in the bowl that was beginning to cloud over as steam rose from the surface.
Sully kept chanting, and once he could decipher the words, he joined her. The water thickened, and Sully nodded at him. Dave closed his eyes, and using the Old Language, summoned the Ancestors, and asked his question—who was this witch, and where could they find him?
He removed his sunglasses, then opened his eyes. He could feel a coolness sweep over him, the gentle but dizzying sensation as his perception of Sully’s living room, of Sully herself, slipped from view, and instead the steam enveloped him. At first it was gentle, its touch against his face whisper-soft, but the pressure increased, and the color faded from white to red. Murky shadows, dark and indistinct, danced around him, weaving and ducking, fading and reappearing. Flashes of light snapped and crackled around him, so bright it hurt his eyes, but he remained steadfast, eyes open, until the light dimmed into that X symbol he’d seen carved into flesh. Over and over, the symbol flashed around him, and then he saw a face emerge from the red mist. The features were fuzzy, and he squinted, but no matter how much he tried to focus, the features wouldn’t sharpen, but would twist and morph as it got closer, bigger, growing larger the nearer it drew.
“Dave,” Sully gasped, and Dave blinked.
The red mist dispersed with a soft hiss, and he had to blink again to snap Sully into focus. She was staring down at the bowl, her expression perturbed.
He glanced down. The clear water they’d started with was now thick and red, and the metallic scent was nearly overpowering.
Blood.
It was expanding in the bowl, creeping up to the lip. “There’s so much of it,” Sully whispered.
He reached for the bowl, sweeping it up as he rose to his feet and strode into the kitchen. He tipped the blood down the sink and ran the tap to get rid of the liquid that had splattered the sides of the basin.
Sully followed him, and he turne
d to face her. “Well?” she asked him, curious. “Did it work? What did you see?”
He frowned. “I’m not sure. Red cloud. That symbol, flashing over and over,” he told her, his fingers spreading out like mini fireworks. “Then there was this face, but I couldn’t see it, the features kept twisting and moving.” He gestured to the now clean bowl sitting in the sink. “Then the blood.”
She shuddered, and rubbed her hands over her arms. “There was so much of it,” she whispered. “What do you think they meant?”
He shrugged. “No idea. I’ve never tried to contact them before, so...” He winced. “I don’t understand their code.”
Sully gestured to his chest. “So the Ancestors can freakin’ spell stuff out, but use cryptic picture codes for the important stuff. Nice going,” she muttered, glaring up at the ceiling, as though talking with them directly.
“That symbol is obviously important,” he murmured, and headed back to the books in the living room, then halted. He turned to her.
“You use your safeguards, even when you’re at home?” Why was she so guarded? She certainly had the right—every witch could decline a sharing of powers, it was their prerogative, but it had still been a surprise. He’d felt a companionship with her, a camaraderie, a shared intimacy as they worked together to figure out what the hell was going on. Admittedly, the magical block had made him realize he’d taken that for granted, and now was uncertain just how much they could or would share.
Her expression was surprised for a moment, then understanding crossed her features. “Yes. I guess it’s just reflex.” She scratched her head. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even think to try to link for the scry.” She indicated the bowl. “It’s been so long, I just instinctively do it by myself.”
He turned to face her fully. “How long has it been, Sully?” Witches were funny creatures. Mostly, they gathered in covens, but there were plenty of outliers, and one could certainly reserve their right not to link. Sully, though, seemed too sociable, too connected with the well-being of others to be so isolated. He’d seen her with Jenny, the amount of times she’d reached out to touch her friend, and the frustration on her face when whatever she’d wanted to do to help her was blocked. He’d seen her comfort her friend, hold her, reassure her... She genuinely cared for others, and that kind of witch seemed conducive to sharing, to linking and bonding. It was almost as though she was fighting her own instinctive nature.
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