“Oh, come now, darling,” she said in her hurt voice, curling onto the bed, ice crunching as she shifted her weight around. “I know I don’t always show it, but it just kills me when something’s bothering you.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious. Besides, who else do you have to talk to?”
She had a point. With no one to confide in, my encounter with Caroline was only going to play a numb loop in my mind. A part of me felt a cold satisfaction at having shown Caroline the door, but the heart-piercing truth was that she had walked out of it a long time ago. The four months since our night together would have been roughly two years in the faerie realm. Enough time for Caroline to settle into her marriage, her new life.
“Fine,” I said, aiming a finger at Tabitha. “But the second you say something catty, this conversation’s over.”
She widened her ochre-green eyes as though to say moi?
I sighed and lowered myself to the couch. “Caroline stopped by my classroom today.”
Tabitha grinned at the delicious tidbit, but to her credit, she kept her mouth shut.
“She claimed she came to apologize,” I continued, “and to explain what happened, you know, that night.”
“Oh, I know all about that night,” Tabitha purred, damned feline hearing.
“I mean, I see where she’s coming from.” I stood and began pacing. “She agreed to marry Angelus to save her father, which is admirable. It is. And her new role carries all kinds of responsibilities, not just to her—” I had to swallow hard before I could form the word. “—husband, but to that realm. Responsibilities that, believe me, I understand. But I felt something that night in the way we moved, in the way our magic melded. Something that…”
“Doesn’t happen with just any old gal?” Tabitha asked.
She had one eyebrow arched, but not in sarcasm. It was an honest question. I considered it before collapsing back onto the couch and digging my hands into my sweat-dampened hair.
“Yes,” I said.
Tabitha nodded in what appeared honest understanding. That had to be a first.
“And when we were talking today,” I went on, “I kept getting this feeling that she was holding back. That there was something she wasn’t telling me.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know.”
Tabitha appeared to be thinking as she licked a paw and combed it over an ear. “Well, if you sensed as much, I’m sure the reason will emerge eventually. Will you have occasion to see each other again?”
I stared at Tabitha a moment to make sure she wasn’t mocking me before shaking my head. “Our meeting didn’t end well. Though I do have a standing invitation to the faerie realm. Woop-de-doo.”
“And what’s the occasion?”
“Oh, earlier today the mayor announced a plan to eradicate supernaturals. We’re all right as long as his wife remains comatose, but if she wakes up, Caroline thinks all bets could be off.”
Tabitha scowled. “By wife do you mean that werewolf? I do wish you would have killed her. I never have gotten on with their kind, and living inside a cat’s body doesn’t exactly improve things.”
“Half werewolf,” I corrected her. “And yeah, I’m starting to wish I would’ve finished her off, too. Which reminds me, any sightings today?”
Since my encounter with Penny and her pack, I’d asked Tabitha to be extra vigilant for werewolves. Budge may not have issued a sic-’em order, but the pack was no doubt burning to avenge the attack on their leader and fellow pack members. After four months, nothing, but I wasn’t about to let my guard down. Especially after the day’s developments.
“No, darling, but let’s not get off topic,” she replied, no doubt to steer the conversation from the tours she hadn’t carried out. “How did you reply to Caroline’s invitation?”
“I told her no, of course.”
Tabitha’s lower lip pouted out. “But their realm is rumored to have the most divine delectables. Markets of plump, fresh-caught fish—not the farm-raised trash you buy. Succulent lamb. Goat’s milk so rich it separates into a layer of cream thick enough to eat off the top.” Tabitha’s eyelids fluttered at the imagined foods. “It would be so wonderful, darling.”
“Well, too bad,” I said, “because I’m not going to hang around eating … goat yogurt while Caroline plays princess with Angelus.”
Tabitha tsked as she shook her head.
“What?” I said.
“You clearly don’t understand women. Don’t you see? Caroline is using the excuse of some ill-defined danger to bring you into her world, to be closer to you. It’s an age-old trick.”
Hope flickered inside me. “Really?”
Tabitha darted out her tongue, too late to catch the trickle of saliva dribbling off her chin. I sighed. Her counsel no longer had anything to do with Caroline. She was thinking about the faerie food.
“All right,” I said, slapping my thighs, “we’re done here.”
Tabitha returned from the fantasy, eyes sharpening. “Won’t you even consider the offer?”
“No.” I stood and retrieved my cane from the coat rack.
“Wait. Where are you going?”
“To learn about my mother.”
6
Though the sun had just set, the dimming West Village streets continued to radiate late July heat. I hurried down the steps to Lady Bastet’s basement-level business—minutes from learning the fate of my mother—only to find the door locked.
I knocked, waited, and then knocked again, harder.
Still no answer. Must have stepped out.
I was debating whether to wait for her, assuming she would even be back tonight, when something scratched the other side of the door. A cat’s cry followed, the tenor low and strained. An alarm bell went off in my head. Without forethought, I drew my sword and aimed it at the lock.
“Vigore!” Energy coursed down the blade. The lock trembled and burst. When I pushed the door open, something lithe and black and wearing an odd collar darted past me and up the steps. Crap. I was preparing to retrieve Lady Bastet’s escaped cat, when I picked up a familiar scent.
Blood.
I threw myself against the brick wall beside the door. Using my sword blade, I tested the threshold. The protective glyphs were down. Either Lady Bastet had inactivated them, or a powerful presence had broken through. In readiness for the latter, I summoned a shield of light.
I peeked around the corner—no one inside—and eased into the main room. The lights had been left on. Ahead, one of Lady Bastet’s cats lay on its side, partly hidden behind a colorful hanging rug. In two more steps, I saw that the body was headless, blood pooling near the neck.
“Oh, Jesus,” I whispered, bringing the back of a hand to my mouth.
More cats littered the floor, all decapitated by a ripping force, hair everywhere. One severed head seemed to be watching me, the mouth opened in a frozen cry. I cut my gaze to the back room. From my angle, I could see a slice of the stone table and the shadow of someone sitting at it.
Heart slamming, I eased toward the room at an oblique angle, sword and staff at the ready. I peeked around the doorway and froze.
No.
Lady Bastet was slouched back in her chair, eyes wide but not from entrancement. I entered the room. Spilled blood wrapped her neck like a wine-red cravat. I stepped closer, my breath stuck in my chest. Someone or something had slit the mystic’s throat.
“Lady Bastet?” I whispered.
No answer.
My eyes fell from her bloodstained peasant’s blouse to her wrists and ankles. No bindings. No signs of struggle. The gold band in her hair hadn’t even shifted—which didn’t make any goddamned sense, not for someone so powerful. Had she been caught deep in spell work?
Beyond my crackling shield, I took in the overturned shelves, shattered spell items, and scattered cat parts. The scene had the markings of a werewolf attack. Penny had been planning to order wolves here to find her daughter, but
that had been before I’d put Penny in a coma. Had the mayor ordered the attack? Or was I looking at some kind of rogue event?
I circled the room, opening my wizard’s senses. Lingering energy showed in fading, multicolored hues. The energy appeared to have originated from Lady Bastet in the course of her divination work. Magic-wise, I wasn’t picking up anything foreign, or even violent.
I dispersed my shield with a sigh and drew a dog-eared business card from my wallet. I flicked it with my thumb a few times before nodding.
“Did you touch anything?” Detective Vega demanded.
Beneath midnight hair that had been stretched back into a ponytail, her professional eyes assessed the scene. She hadn’t been happy to hear my voice when I rang her from a payphone. To Vega’s credit, though, she hadn’t hung up. Now, she acted cold and clinical, as if we’d never worked together, never helped one another out. That stung in ways I hadn’t expected.
“Touch anything?” I echoed. “No.”
She stooped toward Lady Bastet and examined the neck wound. “You said the door was locked when you got here?”
“Bolted. But her defenses were down.”
Detective Vega seemed to ignore my last remark as she moved around the room, careful not to step on anything. “What were you doing here?” The question bordered on accusing.
“I asked Lady Bastet to perform a reading on something I dropped off earlier today.” As I spoke, Vega continued to survey the scene. “I was returning to see if she’d finished with it.”
“What was the item?”
“A strand of my mother’s hair.”
Vega mumbled something about crime scene contamination, but she shifted her line of questioning. “And she was sitting here like this when you arrived?” she asked, standing to one side of Lady Bastet. “You didn’t pick her up off the floor or straighten her or anything?”
“No.”
“When you dropped off the hair earlier, did you come into this room?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell if anything’s missing?”
I looked around the trashed room. Was she serious? “Listen,” I said, stepping toward her and lowering my voice, even though we were alone. “Those werewolves we fought at the mayor’s mansion? I think they’re the ones who did this. Penny and her husband knew Lady Bastet put Penny’s daughter in someone’s care, but they don’t know whose. This could’ve been—”
Vega shook her head irritably. “Just answer the question.”
I gathered my nerve. If there was a time to have it out, it was now.
“For what it’s worth, there’s not a day that passes that I don’t regret what I did,” I said, “that I don’t think about the danger I put your son in. So here it is again: I’m sorry. I really am. But can we set that aside for right now?” I cut my eyes toward Lady Bastet. “There’s a good chance we’re looking at the work of wolves. Which puts us in danger too.”
Vega faced me, hands bracing her hips. “This is an official investigation, under the jurisdiction of the NYPD.” Her eyes bored into mine. “Other than the fact you were the first witness to the scene, there’s no we. Got it? Now, can you tell if anything’s missing or not?”
There was no compromise on her face. I blew out an exasperated breath as I turned from Vega to the table. The scrying globe was in front of Lady Bastet, the covering cloth folded neatly to one side. I scanned the table’s stone surface for my mother’s hair. Not there or on the floor around the table. My eyes ranged across the room’s wreckage once more.
“Nothing obvious,” I said.
“Holy shit,” someone exclaimed from the main room, no doubt finding the dead cats.
I turned as the person scuffed toward us, his body soon filling the doorway—its width, anyway. When he saw me, he scrunched up his face like someone had punched him in the nose. I squinted back in disbelief.
“Hoffman?” I said. “What in the hell are you doing here?”
“It’s Detective Hoffman,” he answered. “And I could ask you the same. Thought we eighty-sixed your contract.”
I turned to Vega. “But he was selling info to Moretti!”
“Yeah, or maybe I was setting him up,” Hoffman shot back. “Ever think of that, smartass?”
By Vega’s narrowing eyes, I guessed that she had reported her partner only to see him slapped on the wrist and sent back to work. It was tough times for the department—personnel cuts, waning public trust. The last thing they could afford was another investigation into police corruption.
“Is the door secured?” Vega asked him.
Hoffman gave me a final scowl. “Yeah, got a couple of uniforms out front. What’s going on?” He looked down at Lady Bastet and grinned around the gum he was smacking. “Someone get upset over his fortune?”
Vega observed my balling fists and stepped between us. “We’ll call if we have any more questions.”
I continued to glare at Hoffman, who ambled around the scene, still wearing that stupid smacking smile. Vega’s words only sank in when I’d forced a calming breath. “Wait, that’s it?” I asked her.
“You’re dismissed,” she affirmed.
I made sure Hoffman was out of earshot before lowering my voice. “Look, I think we need to collaborate on this one. Find out if it really is the work of wolves and, if so, what they’re up to.”
“I said you’re dismissed.”
“Allow me to translate.” Hoffman sauntered up behind her and jerked his thumb toward the door. “Take a hike, jackass.”
I searched Vega’s face for any sign that she might want to tell me something away from her partner. But her visage remained hard, hostile. Could she still be that angry with me?
“Fine,” I said, “but if you have any questions—”
“I already said we’d call you.” Vega turned away.
When Hoffman did the same, I unsheathed my sword and flicked my wrist. The path of the blade cut just behind Hoffman’s left ear. I caught the tuft of hair that fell from his curly brown wreath.
Might come in handy.
7
It was full dusk when I reached the sidewalk. Headlights swam up and down the street as my cane tapped a hollow rhythm beside me. I needed to be back there, helping with the investigation. I needed to be doing something, dammit.
But Vega wouldn’t allow it.
I racked my brain for a spell I could cast, one that would point to the killer. But lacking a target item, I came up blank. Did I even need a spell? I wondered. The crime scene had Penny’s wolves written all over it. That filled in the who. But ignoring the why for a moment, how would they have breached Lady Bastet’s defenses? How would they have overpowered her?
“Mr. Croft,” a deep voice called.
I peeked back. The broad-shouldered man was mostly in silhouette, but I could make out the dull glint of a badge, and it wasn’t NYPD. Shit. Penny’s pack worked in government security, and there wasn’t a chance in hell this man appearing on the heels of Lady Bastet’s murder was a coincidence. I lifted my shirt away from the revolver holstered above my hip. For the last four months, I hadn’t left home without it, a silver bullet in each cylinder.
“Mr. Croft,” he called again, walking faster. “Need to have a word with you.”
“I don’t know any Mr. Croft,” I called back. “You’ve got the wrong person.”
My heart thumped as I moved my cane to my front and readied a shield invocation. I could probably take him, but I wanted to reach the next intersection, where traffic flashed past. The wolf would be less likely to shift in the open, giving me an advantage.
He wasn’t going to let me get there, though. The man bounded past and wheeled, a feral light burning in his eyes.
“Protezione!” I called, throwing a shield of light between us and drawing the revolver.
He tilted his nose up and sniffed the air. “Yeah, it’s him,” he called past me.
Huh?
I was halfway into my turn when a blow from a second wolf
crushed the side of my head. My legs jiggled for a moment, and I fell to the street, revolver tumbling from my grip as the light shield rained over me.
Voices, low and murky, seeped into my hearing. I squinted my eyes open. I was sitting in a padded chair in a small room. A warehouse office, judging by the corrugated metal and piles of old file boxes. Moths batted around a dangling bulb, some as large as sparrows. When one fluttered too close to my face, I tried to swat it away, but my arm wouldn’t budge.
Head throbbing, I looked down at my wrists. Plastic zip ties secured them to the armrests. A second pair bound my ankles to the chair’s legs.
Well, shit, I thought groggily.
I listened to the voices. I couldn’t make out words, but they were coming from beyond the office door. Men’s voices. Two sets. Probably the werewolves who had ambushed me. Meaning if I didn’t want to end up like Lady Bastet, I needed to get the hell out of here.
And without making a lot of noise.
My cane was nowhere in sight, my coin pendant absent from my neck. I trained my attention inward, to my casting prism, and found it fractured and wrapped in fog. When I tried a centering mantra to restore it, my lips wouldn’t separate. A strip of tape held them closed.
Great, someone knows who they’re dealing with.
After attempting to create a pocket inside the tape using my tongue, I gave up and studied the chair’s armrests. The foam padding around the right one had disintegrated down to a hard edge of metal. Sharp enough to cut through the plastic restraint? I moved my right arm back and forth in a minute sawing motion, a few millimeters each way, all the restraint would allow.
The voices drew nearer, their owners now casting shadows against the doorframe.
Crap crap crap crap.
I relaxed my arm as the werewolf I’d met in the alleyway entered, still in human form. He had dark red hair and arms the size of my thighs, though better sculpted. He was followed by a second hulking werewolf, no doubt the one who had smashed me in the head. They looked like brothers, especially in their matching security guard uniforms. I took an immediate dislike to both of them.
Purge City (Prof Croft Book 3) Page 4