by Meg Anne
Chapter 26
Lucas
Just fucking wonderful, Lucas thought bitterly as he and Skye made the drive to the university. Seeing her pass out had been hard enough, but seeing her get hurt because he hadn’t been fast enough was what really pissed him off.
From now on he was just going to have to stick close to her. A thorn in her side. He smiled to himself. She was just going to love that.
“What are you grinning about?” Skye asked, her eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.”
“Maybe.” He smiled, hoping their banter would put some of the life back in her eyes. It didn’t. He’d witnessed three of her visions now, and he’d never seen her have this kind of reaction. It made him wonder; what all had she Seen? “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked, fully expecting her to shut him down.
To his surprise, she let out a sigh. “It was different this time, Lucas.”
“What do you mean?”
“In every vision I’ve had since I met you, the Druid has always been able to see me. This time, he couldn’t…” Her voice trailed off, but then she looked over at him, her brows furrowed. “But Ben did.”
“Professor Zane saw you? While you were having the vision?”
“Yes, but I don’t know if he was really seeing me or just hoping I would See him.” She covered her face with her hands, groaning. “Which makes absolutely no sense.”
“What did you See in the vision?”
Skye lowered her hands, looking out the window. “I was standing in his office and he said my name.”
“He spoke to you?”
“Not directly, no. It almost felt like a recording? I think that’s the right word.”
“That’s fucking weird.”
She snorted, but it was completely without amusement. “Isn’t that an understatement?”
They drove the rest of the way in silence, Skye staring out of the window until they pulled into the parking lot of the university. It was well into the morning now, and students had already begun to make their way toward the classes on their schedules. Lucas sent up a silent prayer they weren’t too late.
Skye’s normally olive-toned skin was still pale as they got out of the car, so he linked his fingers with hers and was grateful she didn’t pull away. If she passed out, he wanted to make sure he was able to catch her this time. She’d pulled the hair up out of her face in another of her sloppy buns, and her jaw was set, making him wish he’d pushed her to stay behind.
Witnessing the horrible murder once was more than enough for her. Stubborn as she was though, she would have just followed anyways.
After knocking on the professor’s door twice with no answer, Lucas pulled a lock pick set from his pocket and unlocked the door. He didn’t make a habit of breaking and entering, but it was still a good skill to have in times like these.
“Don’t you need a warrant for that?” Skye asked with a surprised lift of her brow.
Lucas shrugged. “Probable cause.”
“I’m pretty sure it doesn’t work that way.”
Lucas straightened and stared at her. “You really want me to give you a lesson on the Constitution right now, Giovanni? Fine. A: it’s not his home; it’s a public university. B: he’s not a suspect, and I’m not looking for evidence to use in court. C—”
“Alright, alright.” She held up her hands with a small laugh. “I’m sorry I said anything. You just always hear about warrants in those cop shows.”
He shook his head with exasperation. “They get more wrong than they get right.”
“Says the guy who won’t stop using the words Druid and wizard interchangeably.”
“Touché. Can we go in now?”
Skye waved her hand for him to proceed, all vestiges of humor slowly fading from her face. Despite her insistence that they hurry, it was clear she was not looking forward to going back inside.
“Hello?” Lucas called as they stepped inside, switching the light on.
The room was still, nothing out of place or overtly different since their visit yesterday. He locked the door behind them and followed Skye as she inched closer to the desk.
“Oh no!” she cried out, covering her mouth with her hands.
He looked behind the desk. “Fuck.” The professor still wore the same sweater he’d been wearing yesterday when they’d spoken to him, with the jarring addition of dark red blood that now stained the thick wool fabric. “I’m so sorry, Skye.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled out his phone to call the body in.
“Wait.” She placed a hand on his and shook her head. “I need to check something first.” She knelt beside the body.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “You can’t touch anything; you’ll taint the crime scene.”
“Can I see your phone?”
“Why?”
“Because I forgot mine, and I need the camera. I don’t want to risk getting too close,” she explained, holding her hand out.
Lucas handed it over to her, feeling more and more confused. Just what did she expect to find down there?
Skye snapped a photograph of something beneath the desk, then stood. She kept her eyes averted, doing everything she could to not look at Ben’s body.
“I knew it,” she muttered, studying the image on his phone screen closely. “He left us a message.”
Lucas looked over her shoulder to study the image. “What is that squiggly thing?” he asked, squinting. The professor must’ve been barely hanging on when he’d drawn it, because the swirl had random thumbprints scattered along the lines.
Skye didn’t answer, so he asked another. “What’s ‘ley’?”
“I’m not sure,” Skye admitted. “I don’t know what any of this means, but it must be important. Why else would he risk so much to get the message to us?”
It was a valid point. “Why put it down there, though? We could have easily missed it. How did you even know it was there?” he asked, mostly thinking out loud.
“I told you, this was different than the other visions. Typically, after the death event, I’m pulled out. But this time, I was here, watching him write that message with his blood. He wanted me to find it.”
“How, though? He wasn’t a Druid, too, was he?”
She shook her head slowly, meeting his gaze. “I don’t think so. The Druid spoke to him, said he taught Ben all his ways and Ben had used it against him. He was angry.”
“So our guy knew Ben beforehand.”
It wasn’t a question, but Skye nodded anyway.
“Lovely,” Lucas said dryly. Why the hell hadn’t the professor told them that before? Why keep it a secret? Not that they had a photograph to show him, but you think he could’ve mentioned having met a psychopathic Druid at one point in his life. “I need to call this in, you good?” She nodded, and he dialed the precinct. “Hey, it’s MacConnell, I’ve got another body.”
Chapter 27
Skye
Skye felt numb as she stood in the corner and watched Ben’s body being placed into a black bag. Seeing them zipper his once kind face away beneath the material brought tears to her eyes. The coroner wheeled him out on a stretcher, and Skye closed her eyes so she didn’t look down at the blood-stained floor. They’d been in his office for three hours as investigators came and went.
‘Skye, I hope you can see this.’ She closed her eyes as Ben’s words floated back into her mind. Obviously, he meant that he wanted her to see the message, but how in the hell had he sent it to her in the first place?
“You ready?” Lucas asked, jarring her from her thoughts.
“Yeah, sorry.”
“No need to be sorry. The coroner says she’s estimating time of death at about seven this morning.”
Skye looked at him and widened her eyes. “That must have been right when I had the vision. We left just after seven to come here.”
“I know.”
“So that means that I watched it as it happened
?” Bile started rising in her throat, and she fought it back at the realization that she’d witnessed a murder as it was happening.
His jaw was tight, and she didn’t miss the worry in his eyes. If she was no longer getting a warning before something happened, that was even worse than the way her vision had changed for Lizzie’s death. It meant that they may have just majorly lost their edge.
“Lucas, we have to get my Gran’s journals.”
“I agree.” He ushered her out of the building, her thoughts a jumbled mess as they moved. So, not only did they still have no idea how to stop the Druid, now they wouldn’t even see him coming until it was too late.
“I’m sorry, Lucas,” she muttered once he climbed into the car.
“For what?”
“What good am I? I can’t even give you a heads-up now.” Tears brimmed her eyes, and she wiped them away with frustration. Usually, Skye never cried. She hated anything that made her feel vulnerable, but with everything that had happened in the last few days, her emotions were all over the place, and she was beyond terrified.
“Skye.” The gentleness of his voice surprised her, and she looked at him. “You didn’t touch anyone before that vision.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“And that’s something that has always precluded one of your visions?”
“Right.”
“So that must mean this was not a typical run of the mill Gypsy Seer death prediction, right?”
“Right,” she repeated, wondering where he was going with his line of questioning.
“It may have been a message of some kind, sent specifically to you.”
“A message? But how?”
Lucas shrugged. “I can’t pretend to know that part, but you did say that Ben kept telling you that he wanted you to See it right? Whatever he wrote on the bottom of that desk was important, you said so yourself. So important that he didn’t even try to call for help. That doesn’t mean that your visions are off, it just means this was something else. Something that could prove majorly beneficial for us.” He squeezed her shoulder lightly. “Don’t throw in the towel just yet, Giovanni. We’re still in this thing.”
Skye let out a shaky breath. “Okay.”
“Now”—he turned on the engine and the car roared to life—“how about we find out what the hell that swirly doohickey means?”
“You sure have a way with words, Detective.”
He winked. “That’s not all I have a way with.”
Skye shook her head with a laugh, then closed her eyes and pushed everything from her mind except for one thought that she forced herself to repeat over and over. It isn’t over.
It isn’t over.
It.
Isn’t.
Over.
Chapter 28
Lucas
Lucas thought this might be his favorite version of Skye yet. Once they got back to his place, she’d set up at his table with her laptop and started scouring the internet to see what she could find out about the message Professor Zane had left for them. She’d used one of his pencils to keep her hair knotted on top of her head, which brought all sorts of inappropriate sexy librarian thoughts. Currently, her face was scrunched up in an adorable frown as she stared at the computer screen, and the entire picture was nearly too much to look away from.
“What’s up, Giovanni?”
She glanced up at him over the top of her laptop. “Well, according to this, ley lines are essentially like a grid of power that runs underneath the physical world.”
“Like latitude and longitude?”
“Sort of, but with more magical purpose.”
Lucas set down his plate, the leftover pizza forgotten. “But the professor didn’t leave us a grid, he left us a swirl.”
“Right, but he made a point to write those three letters as a clue. This had to be what he was talking about.”
“So what’s so special about these lines?”
Skye sat back in her chair, crossing her arms beneath her chest. “Well, in a nutshell, every place that these lines intersect, there’s something of sacred or spiritual significance. Or at least, that’s the belief. A lot of spiritual sites are built on top of what people believe to be one such intersection.”
“So, like Stonehenge?”
“Look at you, knowing a thing,” Skye teased. “But, yes. Essentially. There’s a lot of people that believe Stonehenge was used by the Druids as a ritual site, although modern day researchers have ruled out the possibility.”
“Alright, I can get behind that. People have been fighting over land they believe to be sacred for centuries, there’s nothing otherworldly about that.”
“You hold on to that disbelief any more tightly, we might have to revoke your Druid card.”
“Can you do that?” Lucas asked sharply, hope that maybe he could avoid all this crazy shit blooming in his chest.
Skye laughed heartily. “Geeze, look at your face. I hate to break it to you, kid, but no, it doesn’t work like that. Your power is in your blood, Lucas. Quite literally. Each microscopic strand of your DNA has power infused into it. I can’t just undo that because you like to pretend it’s not there.”
Lucas sighed. For a second there, the hope he’d felt eclipsed everything else, but of course, nothing was ever that easy. There’s no going back to regular guy, Lucas MacConnell.
“Right. Sorry, continue.”
Skye shook her head, a small smile still playing on her lips. “The basic belief is that anything that occurs on top of a ley line is amplified by the power there. So they are sought out for that power.”
“How does one know where to find a ley line?”
She shrugged. “A map, I guess.”
“Did you check?” He gestured toward the laptop.
“You mean, did I put ‘map of ley lines’ into the little white bar on Google? Why yes, Detective, I did, because I’m a Millennial and know how to use the damn internet. But as it turns out, Google Maps didn’t have a search result.”
“Want to dial the sarcasm down a notch or seven, Giovanni?”
“Nope, sure don’t.”
Lucas was sorely tempted to stick his tongue out at her, but he resisted. There were some things that were safe to do with your sister that you couldn’t risk in front of a future lover. She’d never let him live it down.
Skye stood up and stretched, the sweater she changed into when they got back from the crime scene lifting up and showing him a brief glimpse of skin. Lucas forced his eyes up. There was definitely not any time to let his mind start wandering down that road. She walked around the table and picked up the printout of Ben’s swirl.
“These dots have to be intentional,” she murmured, talking more to herself than to him.
“Skye, the man was half out of his mind from blood loss; they are probably just the places his hand brushed against as he passed out.”
She shook her head. “No, that doesn’t fit. Look.” She sat the photo down on the flat surface and held her hand just above the dots, trying to position her fingers over them. “There’s no way your hand leaves those marks by accident.”
Lucas was forced to agree. “Alright, so not an accident.”
He reached for the photograph, but his fingers brushed against the map he’d brought home. It was a map of Chicago, with neat black Xs placed on the three crime scenes. He started to look away when something had his eyes moving back to the map. It was an awareness he often felt when working a case. A sense of knowing there was something important ahead, without any reason to believe it.
Trusting that sense, Lucas looked at the map more intently. There was something about the three Xs that was familiar. Skye remained quiet at his side. The minutes passed, and Lucas growled with frustration. It was there, just on the fringe of his awareness. Something obvious that he was missing.
“Fuck!” he said, after five more minutes passed without any massive revelation. Lucas tossed the picture onto the table. It fluttered down, landing just to t
he left of the first X.
Skye sucked in a breath. “Lucas!”
But he saw it too. Those three Xs were in the exact same placement as the three fingerprints in Ben’s picture.
“The fingerprints are crime scenes.”
“Holy shit. Lucas, there’s so many of them.”
Lucas did a quick count. Seven. There were seven prints, which meant seven scenes. They’d already found three. That meant there were four more out there, or there would be by the time their bloodthirsty Druid was done.
Skye’s eyes were glowing with amber fire when he looked at her, making him wonder if her mind wasn’t reaching the same conclusion. She reached past him, her fingers tracing the spiral from its outermost line and in to the center. “Do you see what I see?”
Lucas nodded. “I think you just found the location of that missing crime scene.”
Skye’s fingers trembled slightly as she lifted them back up.
“That means the other three will happen soon. One scene, then two at once, and then three…”
“But why seven total?” Lucas asked, looking at her. “What’s special about that number?”
Skye’s eyes went hazy, as she searched her memory for the answer. “It’s the number of completion. Seven and three both are, actually.”
“How can two different numbers mean the same thing?”
Her lips quirked up. “Well, it’s simple really.”
“Oh, well then, enlighten me, please.”
“God made the world in seven days, it’s often tied to the idea of creation or birth for that reason. I think I read somewhere that it can also signify being between two worlds, although I’d have to dig some more to see if I can recall which worlds exactly. And as for the number three, well we’ve already talked about the big ones. But, even if we’re not looking at the Holy Trinity, or something notably tied to religion, think of popular movie franchises. Almost everything is a trilogy these days. There’s a sense of perfection in things that happen in threes. A beginning, middle, and an end.”