Veiled Menace

by Deborah Blake

  Peter and Donata were finally alone, and she felt lost and a little off balance in the big fancy house. The overall color scheme was black and white, with the occasional startling splash of color, usually provided by some no doubt expensive work of art. Luxury was everywhere, but there was no sense of warmth or emotion. The whole place shrieked of professional decorator. White carpets underfoot made her feel like she should have taken her boots off at the door.

  Once the repair folks left, Peter had walked with her through the house—less to show her the place than to double check that nothing was missing or damaged. It appeared that Dugan had been correct; there was no sign that anyone (or anything) had made it inside.

  “Well, that’s good news, at least,” she said once they’d finished traversing the house. They’d started at the top floor, all of which was one huge studio space filled with light and air. A few covered easels stood in one corner, but Peter hadn’t allowed her to look at what lay underneath.

  The high point of the tour, as far as Donata was concerned, had been the discovery in Peter’s bedroom of an old friend—his French bulldog, Elmyr de Hoys. Named after a famous forger, in homage to Peter’s less lawful activities, the little black and white dog had practically shaken himself apart in his joy at seeing Donata. Even though she considered herself to be a cat person, she had to admit she’d grown quite fond of the little bat-eared beast. Now he tagged along at their heels as they came to a halt on the lowest level.

  “It doesn’t look like anything was touched. I guess all the damage was limited to the outside,” she said with relief.

  Peter’s cheekbones seemed sharper than usual and his eyes darker. “I suppose I was due for some good news, all things considered.” His voice was bleak in the empty basement hallway where they’d ended up.

  Donata sighed, at a loss for any way to make him feel better. “Since we’re done checking the house, why don’t you let me fix you something to eat? You need to keep your strength up, even if you’re not hungry.”

  Dragon metabolism burned fast, and they tended to need to refuel often. This was the longest she’d ever seen Peter go without eating. Of course, he’d been a little busy. Still, the well-appointed stainless steel and granite kitchen they’d passed through a few minutes ago looked as though it would be well stocked. If she couldn’t hug him, at least she could feed him.

  He shook his head. “We’re not done, actually. There’s one more space to check, although I’m pretty sure there would have been signs of entry if anyone had gotten this far.”

  Donata scratched her head, confused. They’d been through all three main stories of the house, and had just completed a walk-though of the basement (mostly furnace room, storage, and a state-of-the-art wine cellar). What was left?

  Her baffled look drew a small smile from Peter, slightly smug at having stumped her. He walked toward the blank wall at the end of the hallway and beckoned her to follow.

  “There’s nothing here, Peter,” she said. “What are you up to?”

  His smile broadened and he lifted one dark eyebrow. “Showing you the Dragon’s hoard, of course.”

  Was this some kind of joke? Not that she was against anything that perked him up at this point, but seriously. “I thought the Dragon’s hoard was all that artwork upstairs. I’m pretty sure I saw an original Picasso up there.” She thought about her cop’s salary and her nearly bare replacement apartment and grimaced. “Are you saying Raphael had things that were better than the stuff he’s got on display?”

  Peter tilted his head back and roared with laughter, causing Elmyr to dance at his feet, barking his fool head off. “Oh, please,” the half-Dragon said. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  He reached out one slim hand and traced the outline of a ceiling tile overhead. Nothing happened, except that his smirk was replaced by a scowl.

  “Damn,” he muttered, “I can never remember which one it is.” He moved his hand along the tiles above his head—not having to reach very far above his six foot height to do so—until he found the one he was looking for. There was a sharp click and the entire wall in front of them slid to the side, vanishing into a hidden pocket. Clean dry air gusted out at them, slightly colder than the temperature in the hallway.

  “Holy crap!” Donata said, taking one step backward in surprise, and then moving forward to peer into the secret room. When she saw what lay within, she drew in a deep breath, exhaling it with a sharp, “Holy crap on toast with a side of fries.” She could feel her eyes widen, trying to take in the remarkable sight.

  Peter gave another short laugh and followed her inside. Behind them, the door slid shut with a whooshing noise and the lights that had come on automatically when it opened ramped up a notch in brightness. The room itself was nothing special; a long rectangle with white walls and no windows.

  But the spotlights set into the ceiling reflected off shelves filled with gold statues, ancient scrolls set within Plexiglas cases, brightly colored ceramic vases poised on plinths, and painting after painting by what even Donata recognized as famous artists.

  “Are these all real?” she asked in a hushed voice. She walked over to stand in front of a black and white sketch. “Is that a Da Vinci?” Her hand trembled as she reached out, not quite touching it.

  Peter chuckled. “Well, I didn’t paint them, if that’s what you mean.” The corners of his mouth turned up at her blush. “Yes, they’re all the genuine article. One of the benefits of an extremely long life. Many of these he bought off the original artists, usually for very little money.”

  Donata abandoned the picture to wander to a shelf that held what looked like Egyptian statuary. “Please tell me he didn’t get these from the original artists.” Her gaze was caught by one particularly lovely figure of Isis, decorated by what looked like lapis, gold, and a green stone that might have been malachite.

  “No, but he was on the dig where they were found, back in the 1800s,” Peter said. He came to look over her shoulder at the piece. “He told me a few wild stories . . .” His voice tapered off as he was hit by the realization that he’d heard all the tales he would ever hear from his newly discovered father.

  Donata felt as much as heard the ragged drawn-in breath he took. When she turned around, his face was a stoic mask, one that failed to hide the pain in his eyes. But when she made a move toward him, he stepped away.

  “The real treasure is over on the far side of the room,” he said, sliding in the direction he indicated. “As you can see, we’ve been busy.”

  In one corner, the Pentacle Pentimento sat on an easel under an unlit task lamp. A large corkboard on the wall behind it was covered with sketches of symbols, notes about everything from international weather reports to references taken from classic religious texts, and one large sheet of paper that simply said in bold black letters: MINOR ANEMOI???

  Donata tried not to growl at the sight of it all. “I wouldn’t call that thing a treasure, Peter. More like a cursed booby trap of an enigma.” Nothing had been the same since that damned painting had come into her life. If it was up to her, she would happily burn it. No, wait—they’d tried that. And here it was. Dammit.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Peter gave an unhappy bark of laughter. “I’m starting to agree with you.” He gave her an ironic look. “I can’t believe how excited I was when you first told me you’d come across a genuine Pentacle Pentimento. Now I wish I’d never heard of the thing.”

  “You get no argument from me there, babe,” Donata said ruefully, thinking about her firebombed apartment, an irate Alliance Council, and finding out that the fabled evil Cabal was alive and well and currently pissed off at her.

  Of course, if she hadn’t come across the Pentimento, she never would have met Peter, or gotten a live-in Kobold, or been given the chance at a new, more rewarding career. Maybe she’d call it even. Once they found out who killed Peter’s father, that is.
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  She peered at the information spread out on the board. “What is all this?”

  Peter shrugged. “Raphael was charting weather trends for the last two hundred years; he’d gotten it into his head that some of the symbols on the painting pointed to elemental magic somehow. I’m not sure why he thought that changing weather patterns would tell us anything.” His mouth tightened. “Not very good at sharing his thoughts, my father.”

  There was a series of graphs pinned to the board that showed statistics for various natural disasters, like earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and droughts. Donata’s eyes widened as she took in the sharp upward spikes at the end of each graph.

  “These make it look like all sorts of weather-related problems have increased dramatically in the last twenty years. Can that be right?” She tried to remember if she’d been hearing more about such things on the news—but the truth was, she hardly ever watched the news. She hadn’t even gotten around to replacing her television once she moved into the new apartment.

  Peter shrugged. “Well, that’s what it looks like, but I think it is more likely that as the world has become more interconnected, we just know more about what happens in other countries than we used to. Or maybe we are just going through an unusual climactic cycle; they do happen.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Why, what does it look like to you?”

  Donata echoed his shrug. “Hmph. I’d say it looks like Mother Nature is pissed, but that’s just the Witch in me speaking. You’re probably right.” She moved her attention to a piece of paper with a number of small drawings and pictograms. “Some of these look like the tiny bit we uncovered when you removed some of that weird black blotch. Did you finally get it to come off?”

  “See for yourself.” Peter waved a hand at the painting.

  She walked over and stood in front of it. “Huh,” she said, disappointed. “The black spot is still there. Crap. I would have expected you to have figured out a way to remove it by now.”

  Peter held up his hands. “Hey, I was asleep for part of the time. Besides, I tried everything I knew.” He pointed back at the paper with the drawings on it. “But I did manage to take off a little bit at a time, and make copies of what was underneath before the stuff came creeping back again.”

  He sounded defensive, and Donata had a sudden image of him trying hard to please his newly acquired father and failing.

  “Hey, I think that’s pretty impressive,” she said, as she turned back to the board. “So I recognize these pictures that we thought probably stood for earth, air, fire, and water. But what are these other ones?” She bent her head closer to try to make sense of them. “Is that some kind of Cyrillic writing or something?”

  “We think it’s Hebrew, actually,” Peter said dismissively. “But it is hard to be sure. Raphael thought it was probably a code for something, but we couldn’t figure out what.” He gnawed on a fingernail. “I still think the answer lies somewhere in those signs for the elements.”

  Donata got the feeling there was something he wasn’t saying. The way his eyes slid away from hers just reinforced her suspicions.

  “What?” she asked. “Is there some kind of problem I don’t know about?”

  “Let’s go back upstairs,” he responded, avoiding her question. “You’re right about me needing to eat.” At his feet, Elmyr whined in agreement.

  They left the hidden room behind them, although Donata couldn’t help but give one more wistful glance over her shoulder at all the treasures it concealed. She trailed Peter back up to the huge, cold kitchen and watched him put together a sandwich that would have choked an elephant. He gulped it down in about two minutes flat. The dog ate his food about as fast and wandered off to sleep on a cushion in the corner.

  She sat on a stool next to Peter at the counter and nibbled on some chips to keep him company, but couldn’t muster much of an appetite with her stomach tied into knots.

  As soon as the last bite had vanished, she stared into his eyes and said, “Okay, now spit it out.”

  Peter choked on the soda he was drinking. “What, the sandwich?”

  Donata rolled her eyes. “No, dumb ass, whatever it is you’ve been so energetically not asking me since we were downstairs. Go on; just come out with it, whatever it is.” She braced herself against the counter.

  Peter glanced down at the tile floor, and then back up at her, and sighed. “Fine. Here it is. Do you think Witches could have killed my father?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was Donata’s turn to choke on her drink.

  “What?” she sputtered, water splashing onto her shirt. “Why would you think Witches had anything to do with Raphael’s death?” She wiped her face with her sleeve, glaring at him.

  Peter held up both hands in a “don’t hit me” gesture.

  “Look, I’m not saying they did—I’m just asking if they could have,” he said defensively. “We kept coming across information that indicated a connection between the Minor Anemoi and Witches. And you said yourself that Witches are the race that is the most connected to nature.”

  “Odin’s buttocks,” Donata muttered, rolling her eyes. “I said connected to nature. Not ‘can throw lightning bolts at will.’ We’re not Thor, for goddess’s sake.” She stood up and reached across him for a kitchen towel, then used it to blot at her chest. She stopped when she noticed him staring.

  “Look,” she said with a sigh, “Witches work with the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. There are a few Witches whose talents are particularly associated with the weather, and some of them can call on the Minor Anemoi for help with magical tasks. But you have to understand, this is all fairly small stuff we’re talking about: creating a wind while out sailing, helping to reclaim the soil in a place decimated by pollution or overuse, things like that. Anything major would take a number of Witches working together, and we rarely mess with the weather at all if we can avoid it.”

  “Why?” Peter asked, taking the towel back from her and hanging it on the rack at the end of the granite counter. “I would think it would be pretty handy to be able to influence the elements. You’d never have another rained out picnic, for one thing.”

  “Sure, that would be great,” Donata said. “Except that there’s always a price. If you push the rain away from here so you can have a picnic, that rain will go somewhere else and end up ruining someone’s barbecue.” She shook her head ruefully. “And think about what a mess it would be if one Witch did a spell for a dry, sunny day for her picnic, and another Witch down the road did a spell for rain because his garden needed to be watered. And then multiply that by thousands of Witches.”

  Peter blanched. “Oh. I see your point.” His shoulders slumped. “So I guess we can rule out Witches, then.”

  Donata scrunched up her face in thought. “Well, not necessarily. I mean, I still don’t think it is a likely scenario, but on the other hand, it is possible that a group of weather Witches got together and did something somehow.”

  He looked confused. “I thought you just said they couldn’t do that.”

  She shook her head, making her braid bounce against her back. “No, I said it would be difficult. And that most Witches don’t like to mess with the weather. That doesn’t mean there aren’t always a few folks who ignore the rules.” She pondered it for a minute. “I suppose if you had a group of strong elemental Witches, and they could somehow persuade some Minor Anemoi to help boost their power, they might just be able to make a lightning bolt on command. But to be honest, I think they’d need to have an already existing storm to piggyback off of, and you said there wasn’t one.”

  Peter’s face fell. “No. The sky was perfectly clear and the lightning just came out of nowhere.” He ran his fingers through his dark hair in frustration, making it stand up in endearing little spikes.

  “I’m sorry I’m not more help,” Donata said. �
��But at least that means you can take me off the suspect list.” She gave him an ironic smile he didn’t return. She supposed it was a little much to expect him to have a sense of humor under the circumstances.

  “Oh,” she said with a snap of her fingers, remembering something she’d forgotten to ask when they were downstairs. “Did Raphael ever get any answers from the Alliance Council about why the Minor Anemoi are called ‘Minor’ or why all the Dragons are missing their memories about the lost sixth race?”

  Peter growled and his eyes darkened. “No. He called the Dragon race representative himself, and must have talked to every flunky in the organization besides. Nobody would admit to having the answer to either question. All he got was the runaround and a lot more questions.”

  He gave a deep sigh and rested his chin on one palm, elbow propped on the counter to keep him upright. Donata thought she’d never seen him look so tired or so defeated.

  “That must have been frustrating,” she said, thinking that Dragons in general didn’t deal well with frustration—and Raphael hadn’t seemed like he would be an exception to that rule. “For both of you.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Peter admitted. “He was trying to teach me all about my Dragon heritage and how to tap into my natural abilities. But he kept getting sidetracked by all those unanswered questions. They gnawed at him. Kept him up at night. Sometimes I’d come downstairs and find him staring out the window with smoke coming out of his nostrils, he was so angry.”

  Donata rested one hand on his shoulder gingerly. He didn’t shake it off, so she left it there.

  “Dragons enjoy puzzles; they just don’t enjoy not being able to solve them,” she said in a gentler than usual voice. “I’m sure Raphael didn’t mean to shut you out. As a species, Dragons tend to be territorial and solitary. He would have adjusted in time, Peter. I know he was glad to have found you.”

  He lifted his head and gazed at her, face stricken and eyes filled with sorrow.