by Krista Walsh
What could this man hope to achieve once he had his hands on it?
The more she pondered her quandary, the tighter the muscles in her neck became, until her head throbbed with the pressure.
She rubbed her temple as she flipped the sign in the window to ‘Closed’. When she turned around, she found Ara paused with her watering can, staring at her.
Vera stared back.
After a moment, Ara said, “I know you’re still thinking about it, but please do it seriously. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone by going after him alone, and you shouldn’t have to prove it to yourself, either. Just consider bringing someone else in.”
“I will consider it,” Vera said.
When she offered nothing else, Ara sighed and continued watering the dozen plants that decorated every flat surface of the shop, not wasting any more breath trying to convince her. Vera knew herself to be an immovable wall at times like these. And yet, Ara never stopped doing what she felt was in Vera’s best interests. Vera appreciated it, but she was grateful that her friend knew when to stop pushing.
Before Ara left for the day, she took Vera’s hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “One way or another, we’ll find out who’s doing this. It won’t be hanging over our heads for long.”
Vera offered her a reassuring smile, then watched Ara slip out the front door. Once she was gone, Vera made sure the doors were locked and the alarm was set, then she went upstairs to her apartment.
Her German shepherd, Vidar, and her golden retriever, Baxter, were waiting for her by the door when she stepped inside. Their tails were wagging, and their goofy grins lit up when she reached for their leashes. After her day, she looked forward to taking a longer-than-normal run. She hoped it would be enough to tire the boys out and relax the muscles in her back that hugged her spine and made it painful to sit down.
The wind was brisk when she set out, the smell in the air threatening snow. With the leashes clipped to her waist, she kept a steady pace as she navigated the quiet streets. There weren’t many other runners joining her this evening, but the traffic was steady. The odd burst of voices from crowds coming out of restaurants cut through the muffled buzz of people still inside.
Focusing on her breath, Vera sought to detach herself from the new stress bearing down on her so she could come at the situation from an objective perspective. She let go of her promise to Ara for a while and stepped back from the memory of the thief hunched over the safe in her back room. Her attention remained on the slap of her shoes against the cold asphalt and the slight burn of her lungs as she drew in the icy air.
By the time she got home, the dogs were panting, and sweat had pooled in the small of her back. She let them in by the back door and climbed the stairs to her apartment. The one-bedroom space was especially cozy tonight as the darkness closed in. Her open kitchen and living room, divided by the island counter that served as her dining table, was filled with a soft yellow glow from the table lamps beside her armchair and next to the couch. The whitewashed built-in bookshelves flanking the fireplace reflected the light, tempting her with hundreds of worlds she could vanish into to escape her current plight.
Vidar and Baxter ran to their water bowls, and she stripped down to jump in the shower. The hot water was bliss after the sting of the wind, and she remained under the spray until the crick in her neck finally let go.
Dressed in her flannel pajamas and thick cable-knit sweater, she ate a quick dinner and inhaled a cup of tea. Afterward, she made a low fire in the grate and settled on the couch to read.
The evening was perfect. Exactly what she’d needed to get her mind back on track. After a good night’s sleep, she would be able to sit down with her problems and come up with a strategy to whittle them down into manageable pieces. It was a system she’d used her entire life and it had never let her down.
But tonight she couldn’t get rid of the memory of the man trying to get into the safe. She felt violated that he’d been able to push so far into her secrets. Her emotions were clouding her judgment and making it impossible to relax. She huffed out a breath, turned on her stereo, and invited the sweet melody of Bach to break apart her concentration. All it did was add a soundtrack to the many ways she wished she had acted last night.
She shouldn’t have given him a chance to move against her. Asking him his reason for being there had been a waste of time — she should have knocked him out and chained him up until he was ready to tell her what he knew.
With a groan, she shut off the stereo, doused the fire, and headed to bed. She needed to sleep if she wanted to figure out how to prevent another attempt on The Fettered Wolf.
As she crawled beneath her mother’s blue-and-pink handmade quilt, she considered Ara’s advice about bringing someone in to help, but sleep was weighing down her eyelids. She’d think about it in the morning.
She closed her eyes and pictured her muscles relaxing into the foam mattress, pooling beneath her until they were sapped of strength. Her mind drifted away toward the embracing blackness, and she let herself be consumed by it.
***
Vera expected dreams, but what she found instead was a strange bathroom.
Candles sat on every available surface, and a familiar symbol was drawn over the tiled floor out of bath salts.
She swallowed a groan and looked around her at the rest of the room. If she were going to be summoned into a bathroom, at least it had turned out to be a nice one. The shower stall was spacious, with two shower heads on the ceiling, so the water would fall like rain when the taps were turned on. The dual-sink counter top was a farmhouse design with the sinks raised above the surface, and the red-and-white hand towels were a matching rustic style.
Then her gaze landed on the man who had summoned her, and she wished she could walk away and return to her dreams.
He sat on the toilet lid, a sheet of paper with her summoning spell in his hands. His thick brown hair was nicely styled with lighter highlights, and his impressive muscles stretched against the seams of his red button-down shirt. But his right cheek was twitching and his eyes burned with impatience.
“About time,” he said. “I’ve been chanting this stupid incantation for over an hour.”
Vera blinked at him and said nothing. She was used to people who summoned her being alarmed by the sudden appearance of her psychic projection. Instead, she’d come across a man who believed he was entitled to order her around now that his spell had succeeded. He had much to learn.
“I need you to kill my wife,” he said. “The bitch is sleeping with my business partner, can you believe that? Who does she think she is?”
He rose off the toilet seat and paced the length of the room. “He doesn’t bring in nearly as much money as I do, and God knows his travel account is only half the size, and yet she’s picking him over me? And the junior partners know about it, that’s the worst thing. She couldn’t even be bothered to keep the affair private. I’ve had enough of my own, but at least I had the decency to be discreet.”
Vera allowed him to prattle on, having already decided not to accept his contract. Her decision had nothing to do with his reasons for wanting his wife dead — it was never her place to judge — she just felt he needed a lesson on respecting authority. He might not have any clue about why his wife was leaving him, but in the thirty seconds she’d known him, Vera had developed an appreciation for the woman’s good sense.
When he finally stopped to draw breath, she raised a hand to silence him. “You meddle with powers you clearly do not understand.”
“Hey, you listen here, lady. I got your name from a friend of mine, and you did the work for him without any kind of fuss.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “What are you willing to offer me in return? If your bid is acceptable, I might consider it.”
He scoffed. “Offer you? No way. I’m the one who summoned you. You work for me until this contract is done. If you do it neat and quick, we’ll talk about compensation.”
Irrit
ation flowed through Vera’s veins, and she straightened her shoulders. “I am no demon that you can enslave and order about. You are speaking to a goddess of great power. I deserve your adoration and deference.”
She usually didn’t pull the goddess card, not believing it to be helpful or necessary, but this man deserved to be put in his place.
His expression changed as she spoke, growing more incredulous. “I called, you came. Strikes me that I’m the one in power here.”
Since he clearly wasn’t prepared to listen, she offered her message in another form.
Slipping her mental fingers into his brain, she nudged his mind so that in his eyes she rose to a towering eight feet tall, her hair brushing against the ceiling. In his vision, her eyes gleamed silver, and red wings stretched out on either side of her back. It was an image she found most effective in inspiring the right kind of fear in her clients.
As usual, the image succeeded. The man dropped to his knees, his eyes wide, and he held his hands in front of him to fend her off.
“Your summons is nothing to me,” she said, and through their connection, she heard the layers of her voice, her own softness against the rough growl of a goddess enraged. “You cower before me now because you begin to understand how small you are in the face of my power. Now be gone and never think to summon me or my kind again.”
In a rush, he blew out the candles on the counter, ending the ritual and cutting off the summons.
Vera’s mind tumbled into darkness, free from the man’s demands on her time. Satisfaction flowed through her that she’d managed to terrify him in the end. Perhaps now he would appreciate that he wasn’t as high on the evolutionary chain as he believed himself to be.
She floated through the ether, the place between dreaming and wakefulness, and drifted again toward her dreams.
Just a few minutes of sleep. That’s all I want.
It came closer, but before she reached it, her blood tingled. She stopped floating and remained still. She wasn’t alone in the darkness.
She stretched out her mind to find whatever lurked nearby and discovered nothing. Yet her certainty grew that some other presence was keeping her company. Watching her. It came closer, closing in on all sides until she couldn’t move. She pushed her hands out and struck an invisible wall that squeezed in tighter, trapping her in a narrow box.
Although she couldn’t see her present danger, her thoughts jumped to the thief in her shop. He had thrown her aside as though she were no stronger than a human. Did this presence, this magic, belong to him? Had he decided to come for her another way, since he couldn’t reach the book through physical means alone?
Her breath caught, but she couldn’t cry out. The power pressed on her chest now, suffocating her. If she didn’t get free soon, she was sure she would never wake up.
With a shout, she threw herself at the side of the box —
— and found herself sitting up in bed, her pajamas soaked with sweat and her breath ragged.
She pressed a hand to her chest until her heartbeat slowed and buried her other hand in Baxter’s soft golden fur where he slept next to her. Vidar lay across her feet. Neither of them appeared disturbed by what had happened.
She drew in a slow breath and let it out, then repeated the action. By the time she released her fifth breath, she came to a decision: she would take Ara up on her suggestion. She would find someone who could help her rid her mind of this thief.
Although Vera believed she could handle him on her own eventually, she wouldn’t be able to do it as quickly as someone who was trained to hunt. And she needed to find him soon. She doubted she would have a full night’s sleep until she did.
3
Vera slept through her alarm the next morning, and it took Vidar barking in her ear to drag her out of her dreams.
The bedroom was still dark, but she rolled out of bed and pulled on her exercise gear without complaint. Still half-asleep, she leashed the dogs and took them for a short walk, too fatigued to indulge in a longer route.
While she walked, her dreams came back to her, and her blood turned to sludge as she remembered that crushing weight on her chest. Had that been real or just a side effect of the summons? She played it out in her mind, taking the time to consider all the angles as she moved through the neighborhood. In the light of day, she could almost discount her experience, but she couldn’t forget her fear when that presence had closed in on her. Maybe it really was necessary to ask someone for help.
She returned home, took a quick shower, then dressed for the day in a simple white top and black slacks with a dove gray jacket over top. Professional, but still in keeping with the cozy atmosphere of the shop.
As she got dressed, her thoughts turned toward who she was going to call, and her stomach fluttered as one name in particular rose to mind. Gabriel Mulligan had opened a private detective agency eight months ago, and so far she’d only heard good things about his services.
She told herself the only reason he was top of her list was because her previous experience with him assured her he would be up for the task, but that didn’t stop her from spending a bit of extra time pinning back her hair.
When she went downstairs, Ara was already at work. She looked up from her papers as Vera reached the main floor. “You’re late.”
Her tone suggested disbelief more than accusation, and Vera understood her surprise. The last time she’d been late for work had been the day Jermaine had transported her to the locked room. Before that had been three years ago when she’d learned her father had passed away.
“Strange dreams,” she said, then grimaced. “And a summons I had to refuse.”
Ara’s jaw dropped, and she set down her cup of tea. “First you’re late, and now you’re telling me you actually turned someone down?”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but yes,” she said. It was an unusual thing to admit. Her reputation for being reliable and responsible was something she guarded carefully, and rarely did she do anything that would make people believe they couldn’t count on her.
But there were always exceptions. “Some people have no respect.”
“You don’t need to tell me,” Ara said, returning her attention to her papers. “There are days I wonder why I ever came out of my tree.”
Vera patted her friend’s shoulder in commiseration, then went about her morning routine of tidying the books on the coffee table and straightening up the display in the window. Ara had already done so, but it was Vera’s compulsion to tweak.
She arranged Mr. McGuinty’s history books beside his usual chair and made sure the latest edition of Fancy Homes magazine was on top of the stack for Ms. Gunther. Both of them had weekly doctors’ visits on Thursdays and came by the shop afterward to relax. Mrs. Dell would be coming later in the afternoon, so there was no rush to get her romances set up.
While she nitpicked, Vera tried to keep her thoughts away from Gabe and consider other options, wanting to make sure that she came at her decision with a sound and objective mind. After half an hour of waffling, she finally accepted that she wasn’t going to look anywhere else.
“I’ve decided to take you up on your advice from yesterday,” she said, directing the words to the stack of books on the window sill and speaking quickly to avoid changing her mind midsentence.
A book slammed behind her, and Vera turned to find Ara sitting up straight. “This is just a morning of surprises. You’re going to speak with someone?”
“I will. I make no promises of how much help I’ll ask for, but I’ll at least get an opinion on how I might proceed.”
Vera hated to admit it, but even if she were strong enough to fight the thief, how many times could she successfully chase him away before he outsmarted her and sneaked in without her being aware of it? The only sure way to stop him was to track him down and prevent him from trying again.
And she wouldn’t be able to do that on her own. She couldn’t take time away from work for a wild goose chase. Even if she di
d take a few vacation days — something she had never done before in her life — she wouldn’t know where to begin to look for him. The man had worn a black coat buttoned up to his collar, cloaking most of his figure and the lower half of his face. She could see his green eyes clearly in her mind, but she didn’t recognize him from any of her circles. He could be anyone. Be anywhere.
“Where will you go?” Ara asked. “Ezel said she might have a few ideas on how to keep out any magic users. She’s going to stop by sometime today to give our system a thorough overhaul.”
“That should help,” Vera said. “Will you be all right to watch the shop while she’s here?”
“Of course. But where will you be?”
“I know someone with a different specialty,” she said, nerves making her tongue unwieldy. “He’s supposed to be good at finding the unfindable. I’ll go see him this afternoon. I have it marked down for three-thirty if you don’t mind staying a little later.”
The crease on Ara’s brow smoothed as she smiled, the warmth and affection in her eyes removing most of the sting of yesterday’s disagreement. “I know you’re not happy to be doing this, but I do think it’s the right decision. It will be worth it to protect the book. You know I’m right.”
“Of course you are,” Vera said, not wanting to admit that the excuse to go and speak with Gabe was helping drive her agreement. “You’re usually right.”
***
A few hours later, Vera climbed the stairs of the creaky old office building toward the third floor. Voices drifted toward her from other offices, but she did her best to tune them out. This area of town, so close to the harbor, lured all sorts of gray-moralled entrepreneurs, and she was afraid of being caught up in a crime just by overhearing an inopportune telephone conversation.