by SM Reine
In Sophie’s educated opinion, these angels were abominations.
She was still awestruck to see one in the flesh. To know how much power this one entity must have controlled…
“Are you a Librarian?” Nash asked abruptly. His hand continued to write even though he was no longer looking at the page.
“I’ve no affiliation with the Librarians,” Sophie said.
“You know a lot,” Nash said. “Too much.”
No wonder her brain was tingling. He must have been digging around in her mind. He was unlikely to read details; the protections cloaking a Historian were strong enough to stand against every angel at once, if necessary. But he must have been able to tell the volume of content within her skull.
“I’m passionate about my studies,” she said honestly. “I’ve dedicated my entire life to ancient history, and I’ve no other hobbies to speak of. Unless you count gardening, I suppose, but that was more about survival. I do enjoy a good salad. Would you regard salad as a hobby?”
“Where did you get this ritual?” he asked, tapping the notebook with the pen. “It’s older than the Treaty of Dis.”
Sophie laughed nervously. “Is it? I confess I know very little about the Treaty.”
“You’re scaring her. Stop that.” Summer pushed Nash playfully. The tingling in Sophie’s skull vanished.
“I’ve finished translating the last few lines of cuneiform. I’ll return to work,” Nash said to his wife. He bent to kiss her—the kind of full-bodied effort that decent people tended to keep in the bedroom. Summer was an enthusiastic participant. She pressed herself to him, her knee sliding up his thigh, and his hands relearned the curve of her lower back as if it were a new frontier.
Sophie’s cheeks flamed with heat. She kept her eyes locked to her feet until she felt the rush of breeze that heralded Nash’s ascent to the roof.
The angel settled into a ray of sunlight as he picked up the hammer again.
“Come on, Soph,” Summer said, flushed and smiling. “Let’s finish working on your ritual.”
Chapter 25
Lincoln returned to the motel, exhausted but alert. He needed a shower, a change of clothes, one more smoke. And then he needed to get to the hospice again.
But when he parked in front of room six, he stopped.
The door was ajar.
Calm settled over Lincoln. He vacillated briefly between weapons and ended up drawing the unicorn dagger. It was overkill for most anything he was likely to run into. But overkill was sometimes just right. If a Remnant was in that room, he wasn’t going to risk dying and leaving Sophie to the shifters’ mercy.
He pressed back to the wall beside the door and nudged it open another half-inch. The room was too dark to visually penetrate. He held his breath and heard nothing moving inside. He slipped in, knuckles white on the horn and heart hammering in his throat.
Lincoln didn’t need much light to tell that the room had been tossed. Their clothes were everywhere. The mattress had been flipped. It looked like someone had slammed a baseball bat into the vanity mirror.
But the most prominent change to the room were the words painted on the wall: “Go home pret scum.”
Lincoln could only imagine “pret” was intended to mean “preternatural.”
He chipped at the paint to make sure that it was, in fact, paint rather than blood. It was a highly saturated barn door red. Blood didn’t dry that color. If it wasn’t blood, then it also probably wasn’t a witch trying to cast a spell over them.
He sheathed his knife, heart slowing. If the assassin had found Sophie, they wouldn’t graffiti the wall like that.
This was good old-fashioned hate.
He could easily imagine the waitress, Robin, having done this to their room. She hated Marshalls enough, and she’d surely hate them more now that Poppy had admonished her.
But this felt a lot more personal than that.
Ashley was the one who hated Sophie for her relationship with witch hunters, after all.
He flicked on the room’s lights.
It looked like something with knives on its shoes had walked past the foot of the bed. Intermittent gashes marked the old water stained carpet.
Now that things were brighter, the smashed mirror didn’t make Lincoln think of a baseball bat, but an oversized fist.
Movement flashed at the corner of his eye. Lincoln spun in time to see the door slam shut.
He leaped toward the door a heartbeat later.
Lincoln flung it open to see the shape vanishing around the edge of the motel. It might or might not have been a human shape. Only one way to find out.
“Stop right there!” Lincoln shouted.
He got to the edge of the wall moments after a human vanished into the forest behind it, so much faster than any human should have. There was no way Lincoln could catch up.
“Dammit!”
Another voice spoke from behind him. “What the hell is this?” The owner of the motel stood, gaping, on the sidewalk that connected the doors to the motel rooms.
“I’ve been vandalized,” Lincoln said. It took a couple of tries to get the words out; he was still breathing too hard. “We need the police.”
“You need to get out of my hotel,” the owner said. He’d stepped through the door and lifted a pair of women’s underwear. Sophie’s underwear. “You checked in alone. I’m thinking these don’t belong to you.”
Lincoln wouldn’t lower himself to pretending they did. Saying he wore panties would have gotten him tossed on his ass anyway. “I’ve been vandalized by a criminal and you’re kicking me out?”
“Contract violation,” he said. “You need to take your brand of trouble somewhere else.”
“There’s nowhere else open in the county!”
“Out!” boomed the owner.
He grabbed one of Sophie’s suitcases like he was going to throw it out of the room. The suitcase’s flap was open; several pairs of shoes and velvet bags tumbled out as it swung.
Lincoln seized the other end to stop him. “Please. We can pay you.”
“I don’t want nothing to do with your money,” the owner said. “Your type isn’t welcome here!”
Lincoln ripped the underwear out of the other man’s hand. He thought about force-feeding it to him. Instead, he put it in one of Sophie’s nearby bags, and said, “I’ll be gone in an hour.”
He repacked his bag first. He only had one; it was easy. He was still trying to figure out how to approach the mess of Sophie’s luggage when he called the Grove County Sheriff’s Department, using the extension that used to lead directly to Sheriff Dickerson.
“Adair here,” said Noah when he answered.
“Someone broke into my motel room and vandalized it,” Lincoln said. “I don’t know if anything got stolen. My bag looks fine, but I’ve got no idea what Sophie might be missing.”
“So what?” Noah asked.
“So send someone this way to collect evidence and take a statement. You’re gonna have to move fast—the owner’s kicking me out, and the cleaner’s bound to destroy the evidence.”
“Resources are short, Linc. I’m the sheriff and I’m the only guy working a serial murder full-time. Right now, I’m going back to the hospice to look for new leads. Vandalism’s not a priority, no matter how much it hurts your feelings.”
“Don’t you think it was probably the same person as the serial murderer? Someone trying to scare me off for getting too close?” Lincoln seriously doubted it because they weren’t close, but he’d have said anything to get his room treated like a crime scene.
“It’s probably a prank,” Noah said.
“A prank? A prank? They wrecked half of Sophie’s stuff!”
“Did you think you weren’t gonna tick people off by coming home and digging for skeletons?” Noah asked.
Lincoln hurled a shirt into Sophie’s suitcase. “You just don’t care about who’s out to get us because my friend’s black.”
“I didn’t say an
ything about that. Not one damn thing.”
“You’re playing a fool if you think that’s got nothing to do with the way Aunt Bee and Skylar have treated us.”
“They’re right to be scared of a witch hunter,” Noah said.
“Sophie’s not dangerous!”
“Look, whatever bias you think’s happening with the family, I’m not twisted up in it. I’m a lawman.”
Lincoln zipped one suitcase shut, then started shoveling Sophie’s clothes into another. She hadn’t brought many outfits. She’d used a lot of the space for notebooks and survival supplies, like flasks, rope, and even roadside flares. “You know sometimes lawmen can be biased too. And not without reason. There’s two black families in Grove County and we used to get called to their fights more than anything else, right?”
“Right,” Noah said.
“But we did respond every time, and we treated them fair, because that’s how justice goes,” Lincoln said.
“You’re diverting. This wasn’t about race at all until you started talking about it. It’s about resources, Marshall, and that’s that. I’m gonna hang up now. I have to get on the road to the hospice if I wanna catch Nurse Teague before the end of her shift.”
Lincoln’s urge to be petty battled with his urge to get access. He was pulling together the scraps of Sophie’s nomadic life under the furious red eye of graffiti, kicked out for being too close to preternaturals, and Lincoln was aching to burn the whole damn county down for it.
Bending repeatedly had made the old photograph fall from Lincoln’s pocket. He picked it up again and caught himself staring at the younger face of John Marshall, giving a mustached scowl at the camera as he held an illegitimate baby.
“I was just heading that way to see Dad,” Lincoln said. “I’ll meet you at the hospice.”
The words “serial killer” were exciting enough to attract journalists to Mortise, and the big city vans parked on the street outside couldn’t have been more conspicuous if they’d shot off fireworks. Functioning cars were still uncommon in the first place. Throw huge satellite dishes on top and duct-tape cabling to the sides, and the news vans demanded attention.
Two news crews had set up outside. Lincoln pulled his hat low over his eyes until he got inside, where he found Noah being interviewed by a third crew in the lobby.
This crew only contained two people: a snow-blond young woman and her cameraman. Lincoln didn’t recognize the logo on the back of their camera. He reckoned they must have been a regional thing. Noah looked as serious as though he were interviewing for a big network, though.
“That was great,” the journalist said enthusiastically. She reached up to turn off the lights, then removed a microphone from Noah’s lapel. “You gave me some really good bits in there.”
Noah smoothed a hand over his hair. “Did I do good?”
“So good,” she said.
They shook hands, and Lincoln waited until Noah walked away from her equipment to speak. “You’re doing interviews?” Lincoln asked. He caught a rare puff of air conditioning, chilling the sweat on the back of his neck.
“It’s one of the easier ways to inform the public,” Noah said.
“The public’s not on the internet or watching TV right now. I just read in the newspaper—less than fifteen percent of the nation’s got access.”
“But this stuff will get saved,” the sheriff said. “It’ll be historic.”
Lincoln snorted. “Some history. ‘First post-Genesis serial killer.’”
“And they’ll see my interview every time we learn about it,” he said. People would forever associate Noah with this case. He must have been real confident that it was gonna turn out well.
“Is that why you don’t got time to figure out who vandalized the motel room? Because you’re too busy giving historic interviews?”
“I’m saving lives, Marshall,” Noah said. “Look, I just talked with one of the nurses. She said your dad’s been stirring. Seems likely he’s awake by now. Are you gonna check in on Uncle John, or are you gonna delay the case by whining at me like a baby girl?”
Lincoln’s heart flip-flopped. “We’re gonna talk after I’m done with my dad.”
“We’ll see about that,” Noah said.
The door to a shared office had opened. It was currently occupied by a woman in scrubs whose name tag said Kelly Teague, RN.
She shook hands with Noah. They stepped inside and shut the door most of the way. The latch didn’t click, leaving a sliver of air between door and frame. Lincoln lingered by the wall next to it. He listened.
“Thanks for seeing me,” Noah said. “Do you have what I asked for?”
Papers shuffled inside the room.
“Is this it?” he asked.
“Yes, those are the complete records.” Nurse Teague had a foreign brogue, thicker than sap on bark.
“Then the patients don’t seem to be getting all that many visitors,” Noah said.
“Honestly, no,” said Nurse Teague. “Aside from Susannah, nobody really visits any of the patients. Some of these folks aren’t even local. We found them in the area after Genesis.”
“You mean the patients who’ve died naturally in the last month—they’re mostly local?”
“All of them are local,” she said. “We’re running out of locals in this hospital.”
“Peter Hanks is from around here,” the sheriff said. Lincoln recognized the name. Pete Hanks wasn’t much older than his dad. He’d lived in Woodbridge and gone to Northgate’s cathedral for church. Lincoln used to play with his girls at Sunday school. “Don’t his girls visit him?”
“They moved away years ago,” Nurse Teague said.
“Why’s that?” Noah pitched the question casually, but Lincoln heard the edge in his voice.
“Lots of the younger girls left right after school. Always figured it was because there’s not much here for the youth, especially once the church in Northgate lost most of its parishioners.”
After Robin’s behavior at Poppy’s, this information itched at Lincoln, like he was missing a piece of the picture.
Noah was moving on the other side of the doorway, about to emerge from the room.
Lincoln booked it before he could be seen listening in. He’d heard enough anyway. The younger girls had mostly left the community—the girls from Lincoln’s generation, who were only young when viewed through the eyes of older ladies like Sissy Cassidy. The patients dying prematurely were all locals, though.
Noah would hear that information and think that this was personal. Something community-driven. He’d be visiting Cassidy Farms soon if he hadn’t already—researching all the same leads. The risk of collision between Noah and the pack was only getting higher.
Time was short.
But time wasn’t only short in regard to the case.
The hushed hallways were empty, and Lincoln reached his father’s room without running into anyone else.
He stood in his dad’s doorway to watch him, diminished within the tangle of blankets. He thought, at first, that John Marshall was still sleeping because he was so quiet. But then his head turned.
Dad was awake.
“Is that you, Lincoln?” John asked. The voice croaking out of the bed was as foreign as Nurse Teague’s, tinted with the accent that came with death. Labored syllables. A burr in the throat. Wheezing exhalations.
“Yes, sir. It’s me.” He stepped into the room. And there he was. He was standing in the room where his father was waiting to die.
“Sit down so I can see you better.”
Lincoln took the chair by John’s bed. All the rest John had been getting lately had done nothing to improve his health; he was paler than even the day before. But that was the expected progression. The doctors had given up trying to figure out how to put life back into a lifeless body.
“I knew you’d come here to see me off,” John said. “Your mama said no, no, Lincoln will never come back. But you proved her wrong. You showed her there’s no
thing closer than a dad and his boy.” His hand, rough from years of hard work, clutched Lincoln’s arm.
“Most of the time,” Lincoln said. “When all’s right.”
“Nothing’s right anymore. World’s gone to hell in a hand basket.”
“You can say that again.” And again, and again. The world had been diced into several baskets so that each could be gifted to a different hell, and all of them burned miserably dark.
This version of hell was darkest of all. Bright Marshall eyes gleamed within John’s frowning face. But he was puffy from intravenous fluids and medication, and it stretched out his wrinkles, making him look like a lumpy stranger. His tumescent jowls were grizzled with white stubble. When he breathed out, it smelled like rot, and Lincoln wondered the last time he’d eaten orally. It might have been a while. A feeding tube jutted from within the ridges of his oversized hospital gown.
“Jesus,” Lincoln said quietly.
“I’m gonna die soon,” John said. “I don’t say it like that to your mom. I wouldn’t say it to your sisters either. But you’re the man of the family now, and you need the truth.”
“That’s how men deal with each other, huh? Truth for truth.” He swallowed hard. “Can you think of a reason someone might want to kill you?”
“I’m not being poisoned, son,” John said.
“Noah thinks someone’s targeting people at the hospice. Other patients local to the area have been killed, and you’re one of the only ones left,” Lincoln said. The blunt truth was scary, but that was what John wanted. Truth for truth.
John seemed to struggle to focus on Lincoln’s face. His free hand was rubbing circles on his belly, to the left of the feeding tube’s entry point. Like he was hurting. “There aren’t no murderers in Grove County.”
“There’s one now,” he said.
“It’s Genesis,” John said. “It’s those damn preternaturals.”
“Evidence points that way. Not sure how you might have fallen into the victim pool of a preternatural monster, though.”