“Violet!” Chaz was waving at me from the door.
“Take care of yourself,” I said over my shoulder as I walked across the front yard.
The woman shuffled back toward her house and I wondered how many more eyes were on us at two in the morning and which pair had called it in. It made me tighten my sweater around me as I joined Chaz in the doorway.
“Can you take a sniff around?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
Chaz just glared. “Do you want me to say please?”
“Maybe later.” I winked at him before I entered the familiar scene.
The police officer was sitting in an armchair filling out paperwork. He rose. “Are you the fiancée?”
“I do have that honor.”
“Mr. Garrett looked around and said he didn’t see anything missing. Said you might be able to.”
“I’ll try.”
When I was sure the officer was nothing more than an average Joe, I took off my dampening charm and released my borders. Without the charm to dull my senses, the information jumped to me. There had been someone here, but I couldn’t smell them. The lack of scent scared me. It was something unnatural. Not a shifter or elemental; they left a trail, a smell in their wake, being the more natural of the Wanderers. This was something that left a trail of cold spots through the living room and into the guest bedroom.
I followed the cold spots, and they led straight to the trunk. Chaz’s father had locked away a book responsible for enslaving half the shifter population of Dallas in that trunk. Why were they looking for the book? How did they even know it was here?
I walked back into the hallway and picked up on the cold spots. Holding my hands out, I felt where it—he, it was definitely a he—had walked through the house to the back bathroom. It was then I noticed that it wasn’t cold; it was a lack of heat, like the life had been sucked out of that spot. Every space had an energy, and this one’s had been sucked out.
I ran my hand across the sink and felt another cold spot on my half-used bottle of shampoo.
That was just creepy.
I went back out into the well-lit living room as fast as I could and found Tucker talking to the police officer. His eyes flashed to me for a moment, and his energy was spiky. Something the police officer said had set him on edge.
Chaz, too. His arms crossed over his chest so tightly I was sure he would rip his jacket. I walked over to him and rubbed my hand across his shoulder, using some of the friction to warm up my hands from the creepy cold spots.
“Got anything?” he asked quietly.
I nodded. I kept my lips tightly clamped between my teeth to keep from telling him because I didn’t want to say anything in front of the officer. I was pretty sure that Officer Joe would not understand unnatural cold spots running around the house.
Tucker spoke police to the officer, and about fifteen minutes later, the officer gave Chaz a case report number and I asked that he stop next door to calm the neighbor’s nerves.
When the door was shut, I was finally able to speak. It felt like I’d been holding my breath for ten minutes. “It wasn’t a shifter or an elemental. But it was one of us. Something that leaves an ice-cold trail. And they went for the trunk in the closet.”
“The one with the wedding dress?” Chaz asked as he headed for the room.
We followed after him. It didn’t strike me as odd that Chaz would think of it as the trunk with his mother’s wedding dress and other family heirlooms. But for me, it was the trunk that I used my weird psychic powers to open and discovered the most evil book on the planet like it had been calling to me.
He went to the trunk and examined the still intact lock. He looked relieved, if a person whose house was just broken into can look relieved.
“He walked down the hallway and messed with my shampoo, too.”
“It could have been trying to catch your scent.” Tucker said.
“And now its officially creepy.”
Chaz looked to Tucker over my shoulder. “There haven’t been any other break-ins in this neighborhood, have there?”
“No.” Tucker was being suspiciously still. I think he was taking my cue. This was Chaz’s call, his scene. We were just there to help.
Chaz ran his fingers through his hair, then put his hands on his hips. “What were they after?”
“The grimoire?” I suggested. That book could destroy the planet, one destructive spell at a time. It was worth trying to burgle.
“The one that’s missing?” Tucker asked.
I nodded. “It’s a scary book to go missing, but it’s even more scary that they knew where to look for it.”
Chaz gestured that we go back out to the living room. “Too bad they didn’t steal the TV,” he joked.
In our relationship, jokes were good. If he was joking, everything was going to be fine. I looked over at the bulky twenty-year-old TV set. “That really is a shame.”
I was just about to offer that we could make it disappear when my phone rang. I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and frowned. It was my neighbor.
“Miss Finn? Is something wrong?”
“Your dog keeps barking.”
My dog? Shadow? Why was Shadow at the house?
“I’ll get home right away, Miss Finn.” I hung up. “Shadow’s barking at my house.”
“I thought you installed a . . .” Tucker was going to say doggie door. We’d actually cut a hole in the wall for a nice doggie door so Shadow and, ironically, Nash could get into my house any time they needed. “Shit. This is a false flag. The guy’s at your place.”
I’d never moved so fast in my entire life for Chaz’s car. I yelled an order to Tucker across the front yard. “Go watch Jessa.”
CHAZ’S CHALLENGER COULDN’T go fast enough for my taste.
“Are they back? Did they reorganize now that Carlisle is gone? Was this an isolated attack? What kind of Wanderer leaves a trail like that?”
“Is this how your mind works?” Chaz asked, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. “All loud and constant?”
“Yes.”
“How do you stay sane?”
“Who said I was sane?”
Chaz cracked a smile, which again was my goal.
“I’m sorry it broke into your house.”
“It’s not an it, Violet. It’s a being. And I’m sure he has a name and when I figure out what it is, I will not stop until I find him.”
“Is that how your mind works? All loud and vendetta-y?”
Chaz snorted as we pulled up to my house. I stepped out of the car and Shadow came running up to me. His energy was manic as he jumped and pointed with his cute black nose and ran around me.
“I know. There was someone in the house.”
I started walking toward the door and Shadow blocked my path. “Shadow, if he’s still in there, I promise to leave a little for you to stomp on too.”
I stepped over him and tried for the door one more time.
Shadow growled and bared his teeth. In the waxing moonlight, I saw something dangling from his white teeth.
I knelt down and reached out for the strip of cloth hanging out of his mouth.
“What is it?” Chaz walked up behind me.
I stood up and faced Chaz. “Apparently, Shadow got a piece of our intruder.”
His eyes flashed golden in the streetlights. He was just itching to use his power to go off and find the guy.
“Now, now, Action Boy,” I took the cloth from Shadow and held it behind my back. “Let’s check our house before you go gallivanting off.”
“But the fresher the cloth the easier it is for me to track them.”
I walked toward the door. “And when you haven’t slept in three days when you finally catch him, and he . . .”
There were scratch marks on my front door. Long, deep grooves into the red paint. I traced the imprint of a boot into the wood. He was strong, but not strong enough to break through the wards that kept out evil intention
s.
“Is that a . . .” Chaz ran his fingers across the impression.
“Going to rethink chasing after it?”
Chaz nodded. “Let’s just get inside.”
I knew we weren’t done with the conversation. I knew I was going to have to burn this piece of cloth to keep Chaz from hunting down the thing that broke into his house, but as he gently ushered me through my front door, I knew that I had until sunrise to convince him to not go alone.
Chapter Five
FIRE ROSE AND licked the ceiling of the warehouse. The tall aisles of product only created more defined pathways for the fire to follow. The girl ran, and ran hard. Every turn she took only landed her face to face with the fire.
She took a left and then another left and was met with the wall of flames that seemed to be toying with her.
“What do you want?” She screamed out as she pressed against the wooden pallets.
A face appeared in the fire, a beautiful face with dark wide eyes. The curl of the flames formed into lips that seemed to smile as they spoke, the voice pressing down on her like the flames that surrounded her.
“I want you to pay for what your kind did.”
“We did nothing,” the girl screamed back.
“She’s dead because of you.”
“We didn’t kill her.”
The flames rose higher and burned hotter. Her sharp canines pressed down against her dried lips as she tried to find another way out.
A figure walked out of the flames. A woman with dark hair and dark skin, who carried the flames with her in her eyes. “The Prima is dead. Someone will pay.”
The flames encircled both of them and as the vampire girl screamed, the woman with the dark skin simply held her there until the girl was nothing but a handful of ash.
I WOKE UP with sweat across my brow. I’d gotten close to no sleep but this dream was dark and real and my fingers itched to write it down. Chaz’s head weighed seventeen more pounds as I pulled out from under it. It would just have to be another “coffee with a side of coffee” kind of day.
I grabbed my dream journal from the dresser and slid into my slippers. I’d slept in my clothes just in case our little visitor decided to try again. I grabbed my robe off my door and went downstairs. There was something brewing in the air. Something more than coffee.
I looked out the glass window to the purple morning sky and wished I could read the clouds like I read all those novels. This was the beginning of something. Something big. Something planned.
Crap.
I heard keys in the front door and Tucker ducked in. It made me look at the clock. Six a.m.
“Wanted to make sure you were okay?” he said softly, walking quickly past Shadow sleeping on the couch.
“We’re fine. Anything at Jessa’s?”
Tucker shook his head. “Talked with the doorman, nothing strange. They were just targeting you and Chaz.”
I sighed as I hit the “on” button on the coffeemaker. I didn’t have the energy to make a latté. “You should probably go home, get some sleep.”
“I’ll sleep when you sleep, Prima.”
I could have fought him, impose my will, but that would just take too much energy. So instead I made him coffee. Tucker took off his utility belt so that he could sit at the dining-room table.
I put his coffee before him, some of the liquid sloshing out with my rough delivery and sat next to him. “You look awesome, by the way. All geared up and policey again. How does it feel after almost six months off?”
Despite what was going on around us, Tucker smiled and his brown eyes twinkled. But what I saw wasn’t anything compared to what I felt. His joy reverberated through the ties that bound us together, like someone doing double-dutch in my chest. “Really good.”
“I know I should have asked sooner, but what did happen with the IA investigation?”
Tucker shrugged. “They couldn’t find any real evidence against me. Just hearsay. I’m completely bottom rung again but I’m working.”
“Good.”
“And I’ll keep an ear out for any of our kind of trouble.”
I frowned. “I want to take the high ground here and tell you that’s how you got in trouble before, but after last night, I think I’m going to need that contact.”
“I’m not letting any of us get hurt anymore, Violet.” There was a particular growl in his words.
“I know, Tucker.” I looked down at the coffee. Something was missing. “We’ve got an appointment with Delmont this morning if you want to come.”
“We?”
“Chaz and I? But since it’s pack business, you should come too.”
Tucker nodded. “I’m going to sniff around Chaz’s place a little more and see if anyone else got a visit last night.”
“Who? The entire pack?”
“If I need to.”
I looked down at the black coffee. I was so tired that I’d forgotten milk. Screw it, I needed the caffeine. “Take Nash. He wants more training time.”
“He upstairs?”
“No, actually. No one was here last night.” I sat up. Where were they? Kandice had taken over the guest bedroom and Nash was usually on my couch. If it wasn’t for Tucker’s snicker, I would have called them that instant.
“What’s that for?”
Tucker was smiling into his coffee. “Come on, Violet. He just rescued Kandice and she’s probably really, really grateful. You’re the storyteller, you write it.”
When his meaning sunk it, I grimaced. “No. Not Nash.”
Tucker laughed and he took a long swig of the hot coffee.
Now the images of Nash and Kandice were firmly planted into my brain, I desperately needed to change the subject. “What’s this?” I pointed to something on his belt.
“Taser.”
I pulled the bright yellow plastic gun from the holster on the opposite side of his gun and turned it over in my hands. It looked like it should have NERF written across its plastic handle. “So the needle thingies shoot out and send the electricity through wires?”
Tucker took the Taser from my inexperienced hand. “Yes, when you pull the trigger, the prongs shoot out at one hundred thirty-five feet per second and conduct a five-thousand-volt shock.” Then, he smiled. “What they don’t tell you is that you can just use it as a stun gun when you take off the cartridge.”
“Really?”
Tucker pulled off the plastic cartridge at the end of the barrel and flipped a button on the side. He pointed it up to the ceiling and pulled the trigger.
A white-hot stream of electricity crackled between two silver prongs at the end of the open barrel. It was pretty and the snap of the pulse make my hairs stand on end.
I was mesmerized by the violet sizzle.
“It’s enough voltage to take down a grown man. And can be used several times.”
“What about a grown animal?”
Tucker frowned. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“No, never. Just . . .” I looked down at the table as he set down the Taser. “I know I’m not the biggest fish in the fish bowl and I want to make sure that if I have to get into it again, I . . .”
“A Taser will reduce the use of deadly force.”
“Exactly.”
Tucker took in a deep breath as he holstered his weapon. “You can’t blame yourself for her death, Violet. Of any of us, Cristina knew what she was doing.”
“But I didn’t. That’s what got her killed. How can you put so much faith in someone who—”
Tucker grabbed my hand and slammed it down on the table, squeezing it so hard my knuckles cracked. My eyes locked with his as my Legacy burned around us at the sudden pain. “Yes. She died. But she died free. She didn’t choose you because you were the most powerful or the best at strategy. She chose you, we chose you because you gave us the freedom to. People die and it hurts like hell and it reminds us how much we’ve got worth living for.”
Tears of exhaustion and pain st
reaked down my cheeks. Tucker was slowly but surely absorbing my way with words, possibly through magical osmosis.
“Now, as your Riko, I should be giving you the ‘buck up and deal with it’ speech because you’ve got others who need your help. Others who might need a firmer hand to make sure they make better choices than they did before. But as your friend, I know you can’t even think about risking another person’s life. That you doubt yourself, which I’m again going to remind you is one of the reasons I trust you. You will never let the Legacy go to your head. You will put others first even if that means not sleeping and not eating.”
I sniffed and wiped my tears on the sleeve of my robe. “You really are good at those pep talks.”
“Here’s another. You need some sleep and you need to eat.”
“Can’t. Have to go become a millionaire today.”
He released my hand and leaned back in the chair. “Fine, I’ll sleep when you sleep,” he repeated, like it was some sort of gauntlet tossed out on the table.
“You have no idea the number of all-nighters I pulled in LA.”
“And you have no idea how many nights I was out partying and then had to be on duty the next day.”
“Touché, Mr. Briggs.”
As I sniffed again, I took in a whiff of Tucker’s scent, a steady, dark chocolatey espresso blend. The first time I’d really sensed his good guy potential, he’d smelled like coffee, the one staple in all the incarnations of my life. It wasn’t until now that I realized what that meant: he was the rock. He was the constant and the North Star. Where Chaz was my heart and would catch me when I fell, Tucker would stand beside me loyally because I had set him free and he chose to be by my side.
Tucker tapped his knuckles on the table. “Violet, you okay? Your eyes went a little glassy there for a second.”
I chuckled, pushing the under-caffeinated and overly philosophical thoughts aside. “Peachy. Just need a little more coffee.”
DELMONT WAS NOT happy to be there on a Saturday. He had to come down to the front of the building to let us in and the silence in the elevator was only made worse by a horrible rendition of In Your Eyes.
But I didn’t care. Fresh coffee in hand, I was ready to become a millionaire. Maybe I could get some sleep then.
Nine Lives of an Urban Panther Page 5