Oriel smiled at me. “Sebastian has used three of the four elements in his escapes—water, wind, fire.” She waved to someone I couldn’t see. “The only element left for him to use is earth.”
The next I knew, Tattoo Boy stepped up, what looked like a large board in his hands.
As he set the board in place over the box, I heard Oriel say, “That’s why I’m going to bury you alive.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Jake drained his glass of wine. Obviously Shelley wasn’t coming back tonight.
He was already mourning her loss.
As was the cat whirling around his ankles.
He stared down at the little beast Shelley called Cadet. She stared up at him sad-eyed. Her pink mouth opened and she yowled. Did she really want his attention?
Expecting her to fight him, Jake scooped her up and set her in his lap. Rather than jumping off, she settled down, and when he scratched her ears, she purred softly. A movement across the room caught his attention. Sarge squatted under a low table and peered out at him, as if he too were considering his chances with Jake.
How ironic that Shelley’s cats were willing to give him a chance now…
Enhanced hearing alerted Jake that someone was coming up the steps even before the doorbell freaked out the cats. Cadet jumped off his lap and scurried down the hall with Sarge right behind her. Jake got the buzzer then opened the door to see Shelley climbing the stairs with a man in a tweed suit and cap.
“Did you forget your keys?” he asked, then sensed something was very wrong. He took a closer look at her distressed expression. “Silke. What are you doing here? And what are you dressed up for?”
“Shelley made me trade clothes with her to protect me.”
“From what?”
“From being the next murder victim. And then she and Brogan here went to Illusions to see what she could dig up. She’s gone, Jake. They’ve got her.”
Glancing at the man who apparently really was a banshee, he asked, “Who has her?”
“The murderer!”
Jake’s blood stilled. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t lose Shelley. Not this way. Sebastian had said he meant to take away the one person he loved…he hadn’t said anything about killing her.
“Sebastian!”
“It’s not Sebastian,” Silke protested.
“He made his intentions clear. He was after Shelley to get at me.” Jake quickly explained his relationship to the mage.
“And you believe your own brother killed three innocent people first? Why?”
“Because he’s evil.”
“He’s not evil!”
A wail from the banshee set the flesh on Jake’s neck to pebbling. He whirled to see the man’s eyes roll back in his head.
“Can’t breathe…so close…no light…”
Brogan moaned again.
“What’s going on?” Jake asked.
“He’s experiencing Shelley’s death,” Silke said before bursting into tears.
“Now?” Jake’s mouth went sour. “You’re telling me she’s dying now?”
Brogan’s eyes lost their glassy look. “Soon,” he said, his voice spooky enough to chill Jake.
Jake grabbed his car keys. “I’m going after Sebastian.”
“How are you going to find him?” Silke asked. “He was arrested after the fire, but he vanished.”
“Then we have to make him reappear.”
“How? In a city this size, how do you expect we’re going to find him?”
Jake looked at Shelley’s double and prayed that she had what it took to get the job done. “You’re going to do it. Magic. A finding spell.”
“I might be able to do it if I had an object that belonged to Sebastian, but I don’t.”
“I do.”
Reaching into his pocket, Jake produced the photo he’d stolen from Sebastian.
Chapter Fifty
Sebastian arrived at the construction site at dawn. He had to execute the final escape, to conquer the earth and close the magic loop he’d begun using the four elements. Only then would he have enough power to do what was now necessary.
He walked to the loader, one of the pieces of equipment at the State Street construction site. In mere months, a new department store would take shape here. The two construction workers had arrived before him. They’d been led to think this was a rehearsal. They had no clue it would be the real deal.
“You understand what we’re going to do, right?” he asked the equipment operator.
“Yes, sir, I’ve been briefed.”
But this time, Sebastian would perform the escape without his usual audience. Without his team. He couldn’t put anyone else at risk.
The hole had already been dug. Beginning the ritual, Sebastian silently recited the first part of the spell. Oh, Earth, womb of the Goddess, I enter you to learn from you. He placed burning pots of copal around the hole. Let me taste your power. Soon blue smoke hazed over the opening.
As he prepared the shackles, the roar of a speeding car and brakes tearing up the pavement cut through the early morning quiet. He turned to see three people spill from a low-slung car—Jake, Shelley and a little man in a tweed suit. How the hell had they found him?
“Where is she?” Jake demanded. “What did you do with Shelley?”
“Are you unhinged?” Sebastian asked before taking a better look at the woman. Not Shelley after all. He frowned. “Silke?”
“Where is my sister?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Has something happened to her?”
“She was taken, that she was,” the stranger said, his accent faintly Irish. “By magic.”
“Not mine.”
“Liar!”
Jake lunged for him. Shaken by the news, Sebastian was unprepared. He found himself on the ground near the opening under his half-brother who was angry enough to show his elongated incisors.
“If you kill me, Shelley will die.”
“You do have her.”
“No, I don’t! I’m trying to stop any more deaths. Get off of me, you idiot!”
Jake glared at him for a moment as if trying to read him, then reluctantly rose. Crossing his arms over his chest, he said, “Why should I trust you’ll help her?”
“I have nothing against Shelley.”
Sebastian picked himself up off the ground and signaled to the workers that everything was okay. He didn’t need them calling 911 on his behalf.
“Not even that she’s my woman?”
“She’s also Silke’s sister.”
“Letting her die would be some way to get even with me, wouldn’t it?”
“I’ll concoct a very special hell for you…later. Shelley needs help now. She has done nothing to deserve what’s happening to her.” Sebastian looked to Silke. “Three people died because of me. I know that now. I didn’t believe the first death had anything to do with me, but the second made me wonder. That’s why I sped up my schedule, so the murderer wouldn’t have the time to target a third victim. I was a fool. The man whose life ended in that explosion last night was right below me.”
“And you didn’t know?” Silke asked.
Sebastian shook his head. “Afterward, I knew magic was involved. Maybe a cloaking spell so that I couldn’t sense another human presence. Only then did the pieces start coming together. The victims were mere pawns. All along, I was the real target.”
Whoever did this to him was clever beyond words.
And powerful.
He needed to be more so.
For longer than he could define, he’d wanted to best his brother and so had sought an increase in his powers. With three people dead and somehow related to him, his priorities had changed. Jake could wait. Taking the murderer down couldn’t. Which meant he needed to be as powerful as the other sorcerer involved.
“I’ve tried using everything I could think of to get to my sister,” Silke said. “Cell…mental connection…finding spell. Nothing worked. It’s like Shelley
’s been placed in a no-contact zone. At least to me. But you were born a mage.”
“And I’ll do anything I can to help her. I got through to her earlier for a moment. She didn’t know where she was.”
“You invaded her dreams again?”
Jake looked like he wanted to hit something, Sebastian thought, preferably him, no doubt.
“This time she pulled me in. Undoubtedly a subconscious cry for help. But she awoke too soon.”
“Try again,” Jake demanded. “Put some effort into it.”
“I might be able to get through to her even awake…assuming she’ll let me in…but that doesn’t mean I can find her if she doesn’t know where she is.”
“Then what are we supposed to do?” Silke asked, her voice trembling as if she were on the verge of tears.
“Let me finish what I started.” He indicated the heavy machinery. “The fourth escape. I need to seal the link between the four elements. And then I’ll try.”
He couldn’t let another person die because of him, not even if it hurt the man he’d hated most in his life. He’d been willing to use Shelley to break Jake’s heart, but not to see her die. Not to mention she was the sister of a woman he was starting to care for. Despite all the planning he’d done, he hadn’t been prepared for Silke and her soft-hearted influence.
When no one objected, Sebastian waved to the workers who awaited his signal. The crane and wheel loader both inched forward. He picked up the shackles and held them out to the Shelley look-alike before him, thinking he preferred Silke as herself.
“Will you do the honors?”
While Silke attached the shackles to his wrists and ankles and hooked him to the crane, Sebastian concentrated on the purpose of this escape. He gathered the power of the elements already within him as the crane dropped him down into the six-foot-deep hole. A hole that, if his escape didn’t succeed, would be his grave. He began silently reciting the second part of the spell.
I summon thee, Mother Earth, to imbue me with your power, to join with your sister Water and brothers Air and Fire so that I can stop the evil taking lives in your names.
Before the wheel loader dropped the first bucket of sand on him, Sebastian had freed the shackles. He concentrated on drawing energy from the earth. The sand around him heated and threatened to suffocate him. He drew on the power of air to cool him and lift the sand a millimeter off his body. The power of water slaked his dry throat so he could complete the third part of the spell aloud. Fire allowed him enough energy to link earth to the other elements.
By the time the second load of sand dumped over him, the loop was complete. Concentrating on Jake’s car, he shimmered and shifted until he found himself outside at the curb in the cool morning air.
“You think he’ll be surviving this?” the banshee Brogan asked Silke as Sebastian came up behind them.
“He survived.”
All three turned to face him.
“What about Shelley?” Silke asked. “Where the hell is my sister?”
Chapter Fifty-One
I tried to shut out the sound of sand slithering through the cracks of my crude coffin, tried to ignore the panic that made blood rush through my veins. Tried not to accept the fact that I was going to die.
My life was just about to take a new and scary turn with Jake, and I wanted to be there for every moment of it. I wanted to be there for the man I loved. I closed my eyes and touched his face with my mind. I imagined his arms around me, holding me close. I imagined proving how deeply I cared for him. I wasn’t embarrassed and I didn’t want to hide him. I wanted to be with Jake, wanted to find a way to celebrate our differences.
Somehow we could work things out.
But not if I was dead.
And I would be dead if someone didn’t find me and soon.
Beating on the coffin would only bring a quicker death if I created an opening. Sand was unforgiving, would fill every crevice it could reach—ears, nose, mouth. It would steal away my very breath and suffocate me in minutes.
So I lay still and focused on my remaining weapon. I was more than I’d ever known—at least that’s what Mom had told me. I had more psychic energy than I’d ever guessed. What else could I do? What could I see if only I opened my eyes and my mind? I had to come close to death to realize I wanted to know. I wanted to find out who I really was at last.
Time to ramp it up, to believe in myself like I never had before, to send a beacon out to Silke or anyone else who could hear me.
But the moment I tried, an invisible block stopped me cold. Oriel’s magic.
I wouldn’t accept that, so I mentally pushed at the force holding my mind prisoner, thrust at it over and over, each time fueling my anger and resolve. If I couldn’t go through it, maybe I could go around it.
I truly didn’t know of what I was capable—I’d never wanted to know—but if I wanted to live, now was the time to find out.
Putting everything I had into freeing my mind of the web that held it fast, I narrowed my focus, fused Oriel’s image into my thoughts and then eradicated it.
I must have taken her by surprise because suddenly my mind was set free.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Jake froze, his mind filled with images from somewhere in psychic space. Images from Shelley. What he saw made his blood run cold.
Shovels digging a grave in the sand.
He could feel Shelley’s panic. The lack of air…and the dark, closed space holding her.
Suddenly he saw Oriel, the lake and beach house behind her.
“North Avenue Beach. They’ve buried Shelley in the sand. She’s running out of air. We need to get to her now.” Why he, rather than Silke, had connected with Shelley, Jake didn’t know. He was only glad he had. “I’ll drive,” he said, heading for his vehicle.
“I have a faster way.” Sebastian indicated Jake and Silke. “I can only take the two of you, though,” he said, looking at the banshee.
“You’re going to teleport again?” Silke asked. “And take us with you? Won’t that drain your powers?”
“It’s the only way to make sure we get to her before she suffocates.”
“Brogan, I want you to find my mother, District Commander Caldwell.” Silke scribbled on a piece of paper and gave it to him. “You have to see her in person, tell her what’s happening. Alone. She’ll understand and get us the backup we need.”
“It’ll be a pleasure to see Rena again.”
“Take my car.” Jake threw him the keys. “You do know how to drive, right?”
Already on his way, Brogan muttered, “Why does everyone assume banshees are somehow inferior?”
“Did you see the murderer?” Sebastian asked Jake.
“Looks like it’s that blond assistant of yours.”
“Oriel,” Silke gasped. “No wonder she wanted to be such good friends with me.”
Sebastian did something Jake never thought the mage would do. After linking himself to Silke, Sebastian held out his other hand to him.
And Jake did something he never thought he would do. He took the hand of the brother who’d been trying to destroy his life.
“The two of you hold hands and make a circle,” Sebastian said. “Whatever you do, don’t let go.” He lowered his head and mumbled a chant.
The atmosphere changed and an electrical charge shot through Jake. Hoping that Sebastian was playing it straight, Jake clenched his jaw and hung on. The construction site began to fade before his eyes, then striated into waves of shimmering color. Trapped in the unnatural space-time-continuum, Jake told himself not to panic. Hard to do when his limbs felt thick and heavy and then light as air as if simply disappearing. The shimmering steadied and the lake and beach came into focus. His limbs came to life as his feet touched the sand.
“You’re too late, Sebastian,” Oriel said the moment they materialized. Wearing a gauzy flowing garment that gleamed a silvery blue in the moonlight, she stood barefoot in the sand. “You should have come alone. Now you’re po
werless.”
Jake realized Oriel was right. The connection between him and Sebastian had flattened, and the mage appeared physically exhausted. Not to mention vulnerable. Jake stepped between the two sorcerers.
Before he could threaten Oriel, a soft-spoken Silke said, “But I’m not powerless.”
“Detective.” Oriel smirked at her. “Your kind of power means nothing to me.”
Silke stepped between Oriel and the men. “I’m not Shelley. You buried the wrong sister.”
Oriel laughed. “Well, the joke’s on her then. Oh, Silke, you are so naive. And what about you?” she asked Jake. “Are you going to fight for the brother who hates you?”
“What I do is none of your business. You have no power over me.”
As if to prove it, Jake pushed Oriel out of the way, grabbed a shovel from the ground and with vampire speed, started removing the sand from the newly dug grave. Even so, he remained aware of the sorceress in case he had to deal with her before he got to Shelley. He didn’t know if Oriel feared him or simply dismissed him.
Whichever, she ignored him.
His shovel struck wood and he heard a muffled voice on the other side. Reaching down, he took hold of one corner of the coffin cover and ripped the whole lid free in a single sweeping motion.
Chapter Fifty-Three
I gasped in the cool night air, appreciating its sweetness like never before. Above me was the one face in the world I’d longed to see above all others. No matter the problems between us, Jake had come for me. When he reached in an arm, I gladly took it and let him pull me out to crush me against his chest.
I pressed myself against him, taking comfort in his arms and the sound of his familiar heartbeat. I felt shaky but whole. I simply needed a moment to regain my equilibrium.
Then I focused on Oriel. Either the murderous bitch didn’t find me a threat or she didn’t realize Jake had freed me.
“Since setting you up didn’t work,” the sorceress was saying to Sebastian, “I’ll use my powers to destroy you. A fitting end considering how you destroyed Delano.”
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