Reece tried to get up, but Stella pushed him down with a single finger.
“I can help Aisling if she helps Reece. I got the feel for what her out of control magic was trying to do last time.” Stella grinned and cracked her knuckles. “I’m ready for it this time.”
Aisling looked to Bart and he nodded “Okay, Stella, you keep an eye on me. Caradoc and Jones, hang onto Reece if you need to. This is probably going to hurt.” Not all healings hurt, but ribs were tricky.
“What is up with your pendant?” Reece said as she sat down next to him. The damn thing was twitching again.
“No idea. It started trying to get to you right after I’d chased off whatever was taking you over.”
“Right after you cracked my ribs you mean?” He gave a half-smile. Still too sexy, even with his bruised torso.
Aisling focused on the spot between his eyebrows. No eye contact and it kept her from looking at anything else. “When I managed to fight you off without having to shoot you. You’re welcome. Now hold still and stay quiet.” There was a tingle of fear that what happened with Caradoc would happen again. But she did cause the injury, and taking him back to London wasn’t a great option. They needed to get to Noth, sooner rather than later.
She took a deep breath and focused on healing magic, letting it flow into Reece and repairing what she’d just done. He was healing, the ribs knitted together as she worked. She was just pulling free when a void opened in front of her and pulled her through.
Her magic acted as a conduit to drag her across a threshold. She couldn’t tell what it was, just that she didn’t want to cross it. The pendant started to move but she couldn’t tell what it was doing. Cold hands pulled on her, trying to bring her across the doorway, and terror filled her soul at what was on the other side. The pendant was trying to pull her away. Or was now trying to choke her to death as the pendant was pulling from behind which meant the chain was digging into her windpipe. Wherever she was, it was horrifying, even though she couldn’t see anything beyond the threshold. She pulled away as cold hands grabbed her arms, but as they got warmer she realized it was Stella.
“Let go of her!” Stella’s voice came in Aisling’s head and in her ears and there was powerful magic behind it.
Chapter Thirty-One
A popping sound filled Aisling’s mind and she was flung backwards. The room spun a bit and she had pulled Reece partially on top of her as she went back, but she was free.
“I appreciate that you didn’t shoot me and did just heal me, but maybe this isn’t the best position.” Reece carefully removed himself from covering her body. The pendant tugged toward him briefly, then dropped back.
“That necklace of yours likes Reece. It kept trying to get to him while you were healing him.” Caradoc helped Reece to his feet.
“Or something. If felt like it was choking me when I was...wherever I went.” Aisling rubbed her neck. “Thank you, Stella. I couldn’t get back out.”
Stella nodded and got to her feet. Then looked at Reece and Aisling. “We might want to continue this over breakfast—clothed.” The others weren’t dressed for going out, but they were better clothed than Aisling and Reece. Not that he was hard on the eyes right now, but he was seriously distracting.
“Agreed.” Aisling walked to the door to see everyone out. Reece was the last.
“Sorry I tried to attack you.”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s what all possessed men say. Go get some clothes on.”
He flashed her a wicked smile. “You too.” He left.
Aisling rolled her shoulders to break up the tension of the past ten minutes and quickly showered and changed. Her reaction to Reece was still normal, no idea what that meant. They needed to figure out if he was unintentionally sending siren powers. Soon.
The others were clustered around the table, talking and eating. Reece stayed silent as Aisling filled them in. She didn’t bring up mommy dearest’s call as she wanted to deal with one crisis at a time.
Reece nodded. “And I recall nothing of what happened. I was asleep, dreaming about trees for some reason, then woke up bruised and beaten on the floor with Aisling looking to put a bullet in me.”
“You weren’t yourself at all. In fact, at one point your grin looked like Nix.” Aisling kept her voice neutral but everyone exploded in questions and comments.
“Hold up!” Bart raised his hands as he yelled to be heard over everyone. “There’s currently no proof of what or who got into Larkin. But we can assume this trick might be something new for Nix. We need to capture one of him alive.”
“And figure out a dozen other mysteries and issues.” Caradoc ran his hand through his hair. “Or that’s what it feels like. They keep adding and we’ve no idea if they are connected or not.”
“I have two more.” Aisling didn’t want to add to the pile but it wasn’t like she could ignore things. She quickly told them about the tree dream she’d had—from the frowning nods from Reece, she’d described his dream too well. Then she brought out her phone. “I also got this message, sometime around 4 a.m. Came through as a blocked number. Better to just let you hear it.” She played it back. Her mother sounded less like herself on this listen through. Of course Aisling wasn’t completely awake when she heard it the first time.
“Can you play it again? There is something off about the call,” Bart said.
“The odd part is that she’s trying to sound like she cares. Our mother cares about power and money—nothing else.” She played it again. Then once more when Jones pulled out a smaller phone to record it, placed it next to hers and nodded.
“Can I see your phone?” Caradoc held out his hand. He also pulled out a small tool kit. “That woman shouldn’t be able to get through, regardless of the number. I have our phones set to block her voice. And no one should be able to get a blocked call through. I’ll see what’s going on.” He almost dropped her phone when it rang before he could start ripping it apart. “Damn it!” He tossed the phone back to Aisling. “It’s Maeve. Make it quick.”
“Hey, interesting timing. You just almost shocked Caradoc.”
Maeve laughed. “I’ll try harder next time. Are you still in London? Something weird is going on with Area 42.”
“No, we’re not. Mind if I put you on speaker?”
“Sure. Hi all. Your Area 42 folks are having a shit storm. London, L.A., and New York but mostly London. My people are getting concerned and I was asked to touch base with you.”
“Damn it, what’s happened?” Bart moved closer to the phone. He refrained from grabbing it, but he looked ready to.
“I’m assuming you know about your plane, the safe house, and some weird underground invasion?”
“Yes.”
“There’s more. Ten Area 42 high level agents were found in a mass grave. They’d been there for at least a week.”
“What? Where? Who?” Bart paled a few shades.
“I can text you the list. They were found in Hyde Park, buried in a distant corner of the tennis center. The royal family is not pleased.”
“Was one of them named Greely?” Aisling asked. Something had been off about that man, and then for him to vanish? She ignored the look Bart gave her.
“Let me check...nope. Why, did he give you people trouble?”
“Not that much, but he’s gone missing. If you could ask your people to keep an eye out for him, I can send you his public file.” Bart didn’t look relieved or upset at the news. Just extremely neutral.
“Any more news?”
“Just that I get to come work with you. Don’t worry, if you tell me not to tell them anything, I won’t tell them, and they know it.”
“Any more Nix sightings?” Aisling would fill Maeve in on their own encounter when they got together. Maeve wasn’t going to take it well.
“Not a one. I’m personally hoping he wants payback for what we did to him in California and will find us. Where are you?”
Aisling looked to Bart. They needed to investiga
te Noth, but London was having serious issues.
Bart sighed. “We’ll be back in London by tomorrow. We’re going to swing up to Noth, see if there’s anything new. Then at least some of us will be coming back to London—it seems to be where the trouble is.”
“Ya hear that? Stay put, we’ll come to you.”
“Will eagerly await your call. I’d forgotten how jovial and full of life most MI-6 agents are. See you soon.” Maeve hung up and Aisling gave her phone back to her brother.
Bart started swearing a few moments later as his phone buzzed with an incoming text. “Damn it. Greely might not have been replaced; I say might because he’s not acting like himself so he’s still a suspect at this point. But his two partners at the house had been. The real Locke and Wastegirdle are listed as being identified in the mass grave.” He rubbed his forehead. “And two more above Greely. Excuse me, I need to make a call.” He left for his bedroom.
“This keeps piling up. We can’t take care of anything.” Caradoc had a huge pile of food in front of him but hadn’t eaten it. Never a good sign. He started tearing apart Aisling’s phone as if it having allowed their mother to call was a personal affront to him. Caradoc was usually able to keep a light heart about things, including the possible end of the world. That wasn’t the case now.
“I think we need to split up,” Aisling held up her hand before the protests could come in. “Trust me, I don’t like it either. But with everything that’s going on, sticking together isn’t helping. And now our mother and her cronies, and I do mean the High Council, are possibly involved? We have too much to cover.”
“I agree.” Jones had been quiet, but he was clearly upset. “We can’t trust Area 42 right now. What we need is someone with Harlie’s abilities.”
“Which is most likely why someone took him out.” Reece started pacing. “We need one of Aisling’s murder boards to see the connections. We’re missing something.”
“I’m surprised a super spook like you would be suggest something so old school, but I agree. If we could stay in one place long enough to set one up anyway. Not to mention finding one.” Aisling did miss her boards. Her original one had been blown up when someone decided to destroy her home. The second one was at Caradoc’s place. Both were too big to travel.
Caradoc was scowling at her phone, the guts of which were spread out in a pile in front of him. He looked up at her words. “I forgot about that!” He ran to a bedroom, and came back with a small laptop. “I’ve been lugging this all over, but didn’t get a chance to give it to you.” He put the laptop down in front of her like a proud daddy with his newborn.
“Thanks, but I have a laptop. A few in fact.”
“No, no, no. Just open it.” He stepped back. “Maybe put it on the floor first, open it, and step back a bit.”
Aisling gave him a questioning look, but moved away. At first the laptop just sat there not doing anything. It looked like a laptop. “Okay, now wha—”
The laptop whirled at her touch and began unfolding. In less than thirty seconds, a mini murder board appeared in front of her. It even extended legs to stand on the floor. Although it was smaller than her previous two, it was still about four by five feet in size.
“Now that is impressive.” Jones said as he and Reece came around to Aisling’s side to look.
“But how do I draw on it?” Aisling was impressed at the ingenuity, the new screen in front of her was a single piece—no idea how Caradoc did that—and asking would probably just hurt her head.
“Touch the on button at the top. Then use the stylus. Or your finger, either work.” Caradoc looked far happier than he’d been in a week.
She did so and grinned as a screen appeared. One that was clearly electronic but looked like an old-fashioned dry erase board. She took the stylus and wrote out, “What the hell is going on?” at the top, then turned back to him.
“This is amazing, Caradoc. Thank you.” Aisling liked being able to see the issues in a large, cohesive format, it helped her find connections.
Stella came up to investigate. “This is wonderful.” She turned to Caradoc. “I assume the details stay once it is collapsed back down?”
He tried to look affronted at her question but was still too proud of his invention to let it get to him. “Of course. It can even save multiple screens in their full state. And it has a locking mechanism so that if someone opens the laptop to search it, or by accident, it won’t unfold, and will just look like a simple laptop. Am I good, or am I good?”
Aisling laughed and started writing down what they had so far—it was a mess. But now it was a mess on a board.
“I hate to break up whatever you have going on.” Bart came out from his room and walked around to the front of the board. “Fascinating board, total crap intel on it. We need to split up.” He waited for their response.
“Aisling already pointed that out. I assume the information you just got is making things worse?” Reece had started adding things to the board with his finger. Nothing major, but there were a lot of little events along with the large—there was no way to be certain which would impact major events.
“Yes. New York seems to have had a mole. It was Toril Kjai. He was killed in a gun fight once they caught him, and they’re going through his computer looking for his connections. I knew that guy was an asshole, but he apparently was a larger one than we expected.”
“Mole, or duplicate?” Aisling kept adding things to the board as well. Soon she and Reece would have it full and still no solutions in sight.
“Mole. They did blood work after he was killed. It was him. And yes, I asked about searching for possession. The seers found no signs of it. They hadn’t been looking for possession prior, but I told them about Reece going after Aisling.”
“It wasn’t me,” Reece said.
“I know. However, they got to you needs to be resolved. They got inside your head in a secure building. There are blocks against telepathic invasion here.”
“Maybe they got him before he rejoined us.” Aisling watched Jones as well as Reece. “They were left behind working with at least two duplicates.”
Reece shook his head. “We don’t know if there is a connection between the duplicates and someone pulling possession. Very different skill sets. Besides, you said I reminded you of Nix, and we didn’t run into any of his clones.” His look of concern was aimed at Aisling and Caradoc.
Stella watched everyone and a frown appeared. “Look at you all, glaring at each other. We are not the enemy, but if they, whoever they are, manage to push us against each other, they win.”
“We need a way to make sure everyone is who they say they are and that no one has been possessed. Anyone got that handy?” Aisling agreed with Stella. Bart, Jones, and Reece all seemed to be slowly moving to the walls.
Caradoc hadn’t moved from the table. “And again, who do we need? Harlie. Whoever we are up against knows our strengths and weaknesses. Stella, can you check Jones for possession?”
“What? I’m fine. I have no idea how someone got in Larkin’s head. But they didn’t get in mine.” Jones didn’t pull out a weapon, but his body language said he was ready to.
Aisling held up her hands. “Easy there. Stella can check all of us, but then how do we check Stella?” She trusted her friend, but this was getting into some weirdness. She’d just finished speaking when a wall of darkness slammed her.
“Search. Here.” Again it was Harlie’s voice in her head but this time an image appeared. It was Mott and a small round box.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Aisling tried calling Harlie back to her, they needed him and if he could reach out to her like this maybe they could strengthen the tie between them and get some answers. But he vanished and she felt someone holding her up and talking to her.
“I’m fine. Harlie popped in again.” She opened her eyes to find that Reece was the one holding her. He helped to her feet. “I’m fine.”
“You look awful. Seriously, sit down and
have some tea.” Stella pulled out the nearest chair. “Has he popped into your head before? I mean before this morning?”
“No. But he’s also never been unconscious like this. This time he showed me an image of Mott with a little round box, does that ring any bells?” It didn’t look familiar to her but hopefully, if it was something they could use, someone would know what it was. Not being able to clear everyone as not being possessed was going to make resolving things even harder. When everyone continued to look at her blankly, she sketched the box on the board.
“Did it have a small jewel, right here?” Caradoc pointed to the top. “Did you notice the color?”
Aisling was about to respond that it had happened in a split second, but then she nodded. The image still lingered with her. “It had a silver jewel there and the box was dark blue.”
“Ha! I know that one; a pet project of Mott’s, one he’d been working with Harlie on from time to time. Let me contact him.” He dialed Mott before anyone could question him.
Aisling leaned over to Stella. “There’s a gadget that can tell if someone has been possessed or not?”
“Not that I know of. But that Mott is a scarily smart individual. And if Harlie had been working with him...who knows? You are right, I can search everyone, but who would check me? If whoever is behind this knew about Harlie, they know my abilities as well. Not to mention we need something that can tell if someone’s status has changed after the initial search. Unless we were planning on hiding out here until this blows over. Or blows up.” She jumped to her feet as an idea hit her and ran to Caradoc. “Did you reach him? Can I speak to him?” She looked ready to rip the phone out of Caradoc’s hand so he handed it to her.
“Mott? How are you doing? Very good. Now what did Caradoc tell you?” She paused then continued. “Excellent. Can it be made to adjust into subdural chips that can monitor possession or duplication? Ahh, it just picks up non-normal behavior—that will work if we can get the chips.” A longer pause this time, and Caradoc was fully frowning at Stella. She finally nodded and smiled. “You are going to get so many cookies when I come back! Yes, let me have Bart give you the address. Thank you!” She bypassed Caradoc’s extended hand and gave the phone to Bart. “He has something that will work and that he can modify into single chips that will let us know if someone has gone bad after our initial check. Or at least been changed, the bad part is an assumption. He’ll have it sent mage-express, so we do need to stay here a few hours. Please do give him the address?”
An Uncommon Truth of Dying (Broken Veil Book 2) Page 24