They settled about two feet off the ground in a semicircle facing LeeAnne, feathers and decorations from their oversized hats bobbing and fluttering. One wore a pale pink ruffled tulle hat that had to have been five feet in diameter, with a dark pink scarf securing it under her chin and three pheasant feathers standing straight up above. Another wore what looked like a wheeled red propeller on her head. Another was crowned with a silver- and blue-feathered beehive that swept down to her shoulders, a cutaway revealing her face. The fashionable crones hadn’t overlooked their goats either. Their shaggy beasts collected around and between the faeries, their horns twisted with ribbons, flowers, bells, and feathers, their hooves painted in brilliant colors and patterns.
“Hell,” Law swore and made to intercept them.
I hesitated before following. If I’d known the incubus’s room number, I’d have headed up without Law. He glanced back at me as if reading my mind. I gave him an innocent look, and he made a growling sound. He reached out and folded my hand in a firm grip before turning back to the trouble at hand.
I didn’t fight as he laced his long fingers through mine, drawing me closer to him. I knew he was just making sure I didn’t go running off without him. Even so, a thrill of happiness ran through me. I felt . . . claimed. Special. Chosen. His grip on me made a public statement that I belonged to him.
The air leaked from my happiness. I didn’t belong to him. Or maybe I did since I couldn’t seem to get over him, but that didn’t mean I could stay with him.
Could I?
I bit my bottom lip, trying not to feel hopeful, even as my mind raced. Lots of couples had disagreements and still managed to have relationships: Republicans and Democrats, vegans and carnivores, Coke and Pepsi drinkers, cowboys and Indians, jocks and nerds. We were reasonable adults. Maybe we could find a way to work this out.
It seemed crazy. Too good to be true. But God, how I wanted it.
We joined LeeAnne and the group of Gwylls. The housekeeper darted a glance at us, her gaze sliding down to our linked hands. Her mouth tightened. Then she returned her attention to the collection of faeries.
I had to admit to feeling a little smug, though I did refrain from sticking my tongue out at her.
“How may I be of service?” she asked the Gwylls, adopting her cool and helpful housekeeper persona.
All of the faeries answered at once, speaking gibberish as far as I could tell.
LeeAnne held up her hands. “Please. I want to help you, but I can’t understand when everyone speaks at once.”
That she could understand them at all was a miracle. But maybe she had a translation spell working for her. That prompted me to invoke my own. It let me understand many languages—supernatural and human—though most of the ones spoken by demons, gods, and ancients were off the table.
I felt Law glance at me, but I ignored him. He couldn’t know that the spell was from cutting.
“Magyar, Lotus, and Kieren have been kidnapped,” one of the crones snapped, the one with the feathered beehive. “What are you going to do about it?” She pointed a gnarled finger at LeeAnne, her fingernail pointed and black.
“Three Gwylls have been kidnapped?” LeeAnne asked. Her voice remained quiet, though urgency sharpened her tone. “How long have they been missing? Do you know who took them?”
“Not Gwylls. Goats,” said a crone with a whirl of purple and white flowers circling what appeared to be a bird’s nest on her head. “They vanished no more than an hour ago.”
“We searched and summoned. They didn’t answer,” chimed in Propeller Hat. She sniffed and pressed a gray handkerchief to her eyes.
“They always answer,” declared the first one. Her voice dropped into a growl like thunder. A dark smoke rose up from her feet, curling around her body. “Someone here has taken them. We demand that you find them. We will have them back, or you will pay.”
I caught the hot smell of ozone and sulfur as the smoke swirled wider. Law muttered and gestured with his free hand. Glimmering walls closed the Gwylls in a sphere of gold energy, containing the widening cloud.
“What on earth do you think are you doing?” LeeAnne demanded.
Law frowned. “My job.”
“The Gwylls are Effrayant guests. Release them at once.”
“Don’t be stupid,” he said.
Not the answer LeeAnne was looking for. She fixed an icy blue stare on him, her pupils contracting. A heaviness moved within her, ponderous, like a dragon rolling over. All my hairs stood on end. If Law hadn’t had a hold of me, I’d have backed away. She wasn’t a sorcerer, but she certainly wasn’t a human either.
“I will remind you that I am Effrayant’s housekeeper. You answer to me.” Her eyes flashed uncannily, and caustic energy flickered hot in the air before vanishing. My mouth went dry. I’d totally underestimated LeeAnne. Whatever she was, she wasn’t to be taken lightly.
Law didn’t back down. “Not when there’s trouble. Then I take over.”
“The Gwylls are merely upset and with good reason. They are not a threat.”
“They used magic outside the confines of their own rooms and uncontained by wards. That compromises the safety of the entire auberge and its clientele, not to mention you.” He faced the Gwylls and dipped in a slight bow. His voice softened. “I apologize for the necessity of the shielding. I understand your anger and concern for your missing friends. I, too, have had someone I care deeply about go missing.” His hand tightened on mine. “I will look into it immediately.”
Just then a goat poked its head through Law’s shield followed by the rest of her body. She trotted across the air, coming over to sniff our linked hands. My eyes widened and I reached out my other hand to scratch the little beast’s ears. She leaned her bony head into my hand and wuffled happily.
“That accounts for how the three escaped,” Law said so only I could hear.
Another goat followed the first and butted in between us. I let go of Law to pet him. Several more followed, and I found myself surrounded. The ghosts fluttered and reached out invisible hands to pet the greedy animals.
“We’d better go,” Law said.
His voice made me stiffen. He sounded too casual. He gave another little bow to the faeries. “Please excuse us. LeeAnne will make you comfortable.” He shot the housekeeper a warning look and took my hand again. We set off across the lobby.
“What’s wrong?” I asked as we passed a coffee kiosk.
“The Gwyll apartments are one floor below your incubus’s rooms,” he said.
I made the connection as fast as he had. Shields didn’t keep the goats from wandering. They could easily have wandered into the incubus’s rooms. “But how would they get in? It’s not like they can go through walls.”
Law grunted annoyance. “Yes, they can. Damned things are curious as hell too. They’re always getting into places where they don’t belong.”
The dominos started to fall in my head. The timeline looked ominous. The goats had been missing for over an hour. The incubus had been dead that long. If the beasts had wandered into the incubus’s apartment while his killer was searching for the box—
“Shit.”
“Exactly,” Law said, guiding me around the central column of elevators and down a broad corridor into one of the four wings. It was less a corridor than a massive lobby area, complete with a terrarium, dozens of cozy seating areas, a juice bar, a regular bar, and several little bistro-style cafés and restaurants. The ceiling was open all the way up. The rooms ran around the outer wall, and chrome railings kept people from falling down into the middle. On the opposite side, a bank of glass elevators ran up and down like bubbles.
I shivered. The air-conditioned air raised goose pimples all over me, and my nipples turned into rocks. I was all too aware that my feet were bare and I was wearing only a thong beneath my barely there dress. Law loosened his fingers from mine and put his arm around me, pulling me against him. His warmth enveloped me, and I sucked in the scent of him. I so did
n’t want to leave him.
We rode up the elevator with a pair of whispering couples. The elevator filled with cloying perfume and cologne. They ignored me and Law completely. I leaned against the brass rail and watched them. I was no longer touching Law, who stood a few inches away. I could feel him watching me. One of the girls looked familiar. She was the same height as me, with bobbed hair and a heart-shaped face. She flicked a glance at me. Blue eyes gleamed. She glanced from me to Law and back, and her coral lips pursed in appreciation as she winked.
We got out on the sixth floor. Law went midway down on the left side, stopping at an ornate door made of wood and brass with a brass number plate that read 6119 in flowing script letters.
“Wait outside,” he said as he reached for the keypad.
“I don’t think so.”
His head whipped around. “I can handle whatever this asshole has to throw at us.”
“Two’s better than one.”
“I don’t want to have to worry about you getting hurt,” he gritted out when I didn’t back down.
I folded my arms across my chest. “Funny, you didn’t used to worry about that.” So here it was. My greatest fear come to life.
“You know damned well what’s changed.”
“Yeah. You think I can’t handle myself anymore.”
His scowl cut deep lines around his mouth. “What I think is that I’m not going to risk losing you again.”
“I’m not going to sit safe on my ass when I’ve got a job to do.”
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Fine.”
He put his forefinger on the keypad. Power engulfed his digit, and the door popped open. I wondered if the incubus had set any personal wards, but Law stepped inside without any trouble. I followed.
The air smelled faintly of nutmeg and the musky odor I’d come to associate with the incubus. It was masculine and tantalizing. I touched the emerald pendant around my neck, and the lingering effects of the sex demon’s presence slid away from me.
The suite was much smaller than mine, with a bedroom, a bathroom, a sitting area, and a balcony looking west. It was plush with plenty of space and French furniture upholstered in sea blues and vanilla cream. In the bedroom, clothes had been flung haphazardly over the dresser and bed and onto the floor. Damp towels on the carpet indicated the incubus had showered. A suitcase on the end of the bed was empty. Another on the floor was full.
I prowled around, keeping my distance from Law. I didn’t see any sign of the goats or the box in the bedroom or bathroom and returned to the sitting room.
“Anything?” Law asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing. Maybe the goats went somewhere else.”
“Maybe.” He scanned the room. “Do you get the feeling something’s off here?” he asked.
It was true. Something had been gnawing at me since we came in, but I’d been too focused on my feelings for Law to pay attention. I mentally kicked myself. At the rate I was going, I was going to prove to Law that I was as incompetent as he thought I was. Stung by the thought, I forced myself to concentrate, stuffing my emotions deep down where they couldn’t interfere. I took a breath and let it out slowly, letting my senses spread from me.
Something was off. But what? I frowned.
I centered myself. A thought invoked a revelation spell. It unrooted from my flesh and floated out above my head. The edges unfolded like the petals of a rose then whirled softly. Magic unfurled in hundreds of violet streamers. They filled the air then puffed into particles as fine as sugar. Washed on an invisible tide, they rose on a wave and swept into the corners of the room and up to the ceiling. After a moment, they sifted down.
I waited. As the flecks of magic descended, they began to catch on invisible symmetrical cones ranging from inches to several feet in height. They thrust up from the floor and down from the ceiling like teeth.
“Impressive,” Law said when the spell had run to completion.
I couldn’t tell if he really meant it or not. I decided to take it at face value. “Thanks. What are they?”
We both walked around them. There didn’t seem to be a pattern to the design, and they had not reacted to my magic. I couldn’t feel any energy in them. They seemed more like playground toys than anything else. Except there was a menacing quality to them—like the white curve of fangs or the reflection of eyes in the black of night.
“I have no idea,” Law said.
That was saying something. He was a walking magical encyclopedia. As I examined them, I felt like I should know what they were. They struck a chord in me. I resisted the urge to touch them. In the course of our search, Law and I had certainly walked through more than one and suffered no harm, but I didn’t want to risk it again.
“Maybe these were supposed to signal the incubus if anyone trespassed into his suite,” I suggested.
“Could be.” Law sounded doubtful.
He was right. If they were trip alarms, they’d have been on thresholds and in walkways, not clinging to the ceilings and hiding in corners.
“There are getting to be entirely too many unknowns in this situation for my comfort,” I complained.
“Preaching to the choir,” Law said, a phrase so familiar from the years of our partnership that it made my chest ache.
I shook away the memories before they could cloud my reason. Instead I reviewed what we knew.
“So the incubus steals the box, then travels across country like he has time to waste, even after killing the woman in Vegas. Something spooks him in Chicago, and he rushes to Effrayant. He checks in and within a few hours, he gets himself murdered and in a most violent way. The box I was supposed to recover is missing, probably taken by the killer, which could be someone or something called So’la, according to Tabitha, who is also terrified of the creature. Now we have these weird shapes.”
“Don’t forget the shutdown shields triggered,” Law added. “I’d like to know why. And the goats. Where are they?”
I nodded and pinched my lower lip. “Here’s the big question: Did the incubus know this So’la? Or was it a coincidental murder?”
“I find the last hard to believe,” Law said.
“Me too. This all has to fit together somehow. We just don’t have enough clues to put it together.”
That left me with only one thing to do. The root of this mess was the stolen box. I needed to call Ivan. Unfortunately my cell was in my suite.
“Let me borrow your phone.” I held out my hand.
Law’s brows rose, but he said nothing as he pulled his cell from his pocket and handed it over. I did my best not to notice the jolt of heat that ran through me as his fingers brushed mine.
“Maybe we’d better step out of here while I reach Ivan,” I said, eyeing the cone shapes.
“You read my mind,” Law said and pushed me ahead of him to the door.
It didn’t open.
I frowned, depressing the thumb lever and yanking. Nothing happened. Law elbowed me aside and did the same, rattling it back and forth. It might as well have been a solid wall. He swore and slapped his hands flat against it, releasing a blast of silvery magic that should have charred the wood to cinders. Instead it bounced away and sucked down into the nearest cones, disappearing like water into dry sand.
“They absorb magic,” I said. “But I did the revelation spell and they didn’t interfere. Why not?”
Law turned, his eyes flinty and faintly worried. He glanced at me then scanned the collection of cones. “Could be your spell armed them. It was predictable that one of us would cast a revelation spell, so once we did, the door sealed and the cones activated. I don’t like this.”
Preaching to the choir. I didn’t say it. A shiver rippled across my skin. I should have known or at least expected the trap. It seemed obvious now, though it wasn’t an easy sort of magic and nothing that an incubus should have been capable of. It was a complex working and required a deep ability. I didn’t know how he would have come by such a spell or why h
e’d have set it. He’d clearly made a beeline to Effrayant because he thought it was a haven. All the same, I could have kicked myself. It pays to be paranoid in my line of work. Either I was more tired than I thought or Law had me that distracted. Or both.
“We were meant to be here,” I said slowly as my brain started to work. “This is a witch trap.” I quickly leaped to the obvious conclusion. “This isn’t the incubus’s work at all. This is So’la’s.”
“I agree. The question is, what exactly does he or it want with us?”
I didn’t have an answer, but I did still have Law’s phone. I tapped Ivan’s number into it and waited. Nothing happened. I hung up and tried again, but even though the phone had full bars and a healthy battery charge, it refused to connect.
I resisted the urge to throw it at the wall and instead handed it back to Law.
“No signal,” I said.
He scowled and hit a speed-dial number. He tried three different times before he gave up. I wanted to tell him I told you so, but I refrained—barely. Did he think I’d forgotten how to use a stupid phone?
I crossed my arms, and the beading of my dress rustled, the silk cool against my skin. I would have given a lot to be wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“Got any good ideas for escape?” I asked, mentally ticking through my own arsenal.
The only way to really take out magic suckers was to overload them. That could easily exhaust us both before we succeeded. As it was, I could feel them sucking on my shields. I was replenishing them with a trickle of magic, but a constant drain would take its toll. Once my shields went, the suckers would drain the spell carvings and eventually kill me.
Even though it wouldn’t help, I backed away from the cones as far as I could get. At some point the doors to the other bedroom and the bathroom had swung closed.
“The ghosts might overload the cones,” Law said.
I knew he’d get around to suggesting it sooner or later, and I couldn’t resent him for it. After all, as far as he cared, they were already dead and unnatural. Their potent energy could be used to save our lives.
The Incubus Job Page 8