To my surprise, however, it’s Cooper who breaks the silence.
“So…should I set another place at the table?”
“Huh?” Erica looks from him to me. “What am I missing?”
“We were about to have dinner,” I say. “Cooper wants to know if you’d like to stay and eat with us.”
“Oh.” She uncomfortably scratches at her cheek. “Well, I haven’t eaten yet, so why the hell not? What are we having?”
Cooper unties the apron and tugs it off. “Steak, potatoes, string beans, homemade biscuits, and baked cinnamon apples.”
I peer around Erica’s shoulder at Cooper. “Dude, how did you make all that in less than an hour?”
Cooper flashes me a knowing smile. “Maybe it was magic.”
Erica laughs. “Sounds great. And while we’re chowing down, how about I fill you in on my end of the Jameson case?”
Cooper sends me an inquisitive glance.
I reply to him, “Erica passes DSI intel about the ICM, via me. It’s a secret, though, so keep it hush-hush.”
Cooper digests that information. “So, is the relationship a cover, or…?”
Erica claps Cooper on the back as she passes into the kitchen. “Not quite, archivist.”
“Okay,” Cooper mutters. “And your team is all right with this, Cal? Seems a little dangerous, since the ICM can get so nasty.” He bites his lip and turns to Erica. “No offense.”
“Not offended.” She waves off his concern as she grabs a third plate from my open cabinet and then heads to the table. “If I thought the ICM was all rainbows and unicorns, I wouldn’t be playing the mole role in the first place.”
The mole.
There’s one in DSI, I suddenly remember, along with the fact I suspected it might be Liam.
And there’s a whole new bucket of shame for me to dunk my head in. Just what I needed.
I shake it off for now and say, “Cooper, actually, no one but Riker knows about Erica being a spy. He was her DSI contact before I came into the picture. He let me take over his role since Erica and I, well, you know, the whole…”
“Fuck buddy thing,” Erica says. She pulls out a chair and seats herself, grinning.
Cooper’s cheeks redden, and he retreats to the stove to grab another pot. “Well, that sounds interesting. But Cal, you do realize Ella is going to be pissed when—not if, when—she finds out about this, right? And you know she has no problem smacking down Riker when he does dangerous things, so with you…”
“Yes, I’m aware of the epic shit storm she will eventually bring down on my head. Punishment accepted in advance.” I pick the chair across from Erica and finally take a good, hard look at the food I honestly think Cooper may have pulled from a different dimension hiding in the back of my hallway closet. Because hot damn, I have eaten five-star restaurant meals that don’t look as good as the perfectly cooked steak dinner and delicious apple dessert sitting on the table in front of me. What kind of sorcery…?
Erica, eyes on the pots and pans, appears to be thinking the same thing.
Cooper places the last pot—the mashed potatoes—on an old potholder in the center of the dinner arrangement and then sits at the head of the table. “Well, Cal, as long as you know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“I think I do,” I reply, reaching for a hot, fresh biscuit, “but I’m sure we all know how accurate my intuition is.”
“Luckily, mine’s a lot better than yours,” says Erica the witch, as she pours herself a rather large glass of wine. “So butter your biscuits and slice your steaks, gentlemen, because I have got the most infuriating story to tell the two of you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Erica Milburn’s tale of two assholes can be summed up in five sentences.
One: Shortly after he was dismissed from the Jameson crime scene, Aurora ICM leader Allen Marcus convened a meeting of six wizards and four witches in the basement of his house, which is apparently where he usually holds semisecret meetings because he’s a paranoid fuck who thinks DSI will bug public meeting places if he books them on any regular basis.
Two: During this meeting, Marcus revealed he has a mole in DSI, feeding him important intel about our cases, and that this mole revealed the third victim at the bar and grill was a werewolf.
Three: Marcus refused to allow anyone near Wizard Halliburton’s home, until Wizard Ambrose arrived in Aurora, under the faulty reasoning that Halliburton’s house could be booby-trapped with dangerous wards—and it was during this unreasonable wait for Ambrose to show that I was kidnapped by McKinney’s crew.
Four: After Wizard Ambrose finally ambled into Aurora, he accompanied Erica, Marcus, and two other ICM members to Halliburton’s house, where they—surprise, surprise—broke down his wards with minimal effort and entered without incurring a single injury.
Five: Ambrose and Marcus quickly concluded that there was no evidence related to the Jameson case inside Halliburton’s house, which they reported to DSI and the mayor’s office, but, after thoroughly examining the house, Erica realized something quite obvious that Marcus and Ambrose pointedly ignored: Halliburton’s publicly listed address was a decoy house, and he clearly hadn’t lived there in some time, if ever.
Shoveling a wad of potatoes into my mouth, I say, “If Halliburton was truly hiding his underground activities in a second secret house, then maybe McKinney’s paranoia wasn’t quite as unfounded as I thought.” At Erica’s questioning glance, I fill her in on DSI’s side of the case so far, including everything that happened (sans a few explicit details) during my captivity in the torture shack. Inadvertently, I also fill Cooper in, but I know he’s got more than enough discretion to refrain from spilling the beans to anyone who shouldn’t know.
When I finish my second retelling—I don’t cry this time, thank god—I ask, “Do you think it’s possible there’s a coalition of ICM practitioners in Aurora who used Halliburton as their spokesperson, the same way Martinez was McKinney’s proxy?”
Erica sets her fork down and rests her chin on her hands. “Hm, it’s not impossible. But to think that any significant number of wizards and witches would risk expulsion from the ICM by engaging in banned summoning practices is a hard pill to swallow. Most practitioners I know are more into self-preservation than anything else. Although…” She takes a sip of her wine. “If this all-important summoning was part of a plot to ensure that much-touted self-preservation, then maybe a number of practitioners could be persuaded to contribute.”
I shove half a biscuit in my mouth. “Like, if this ‘enemy’ the emails kept referring to is a threat to the general practitioner population?”
“Exactly. If they weighed the costs of the ICM’s ire against the benefits of summoning a creature to destroy this unknown enemy, then—”
“You’re missing something,” murmurs a meek voice at the end of the table. Erica and I turn to Cooper, who’s staring intently at a piece of steak on his fork so he doesn’t have to look at us.
“What do you mean?” Erica asks. “A clue?”
Cooper slowly lowers the fork. “Cal, you said the final email sent to Slate by Halliburton mentioned that the werewolves were the ones who acquired the instructions for the summoning.”
“So?” I try to figure out where he’s going with this.
Erica beats me to it.
“Of course,” she groans. “If numerous high-level wizards and witches were working together to perform a powerful spell, why would they rely on Wolves to procure their materials? A large group of practitioners is far more formidable than a pack of werewolves, and definitely a fuck-ton sneakier. So even if the acquisition of the summoning instructions involved a heist, the practitioners would have been the better team to send. Thus, if the Wolves were the ones who did the heavy lifting, it means there weren’t many practitioners working on the scheme with Slate and McKinney’s crew.”
“Huh.” I smirk at Cooper. “Nice catch, buddy. You’d make a fine detective yourself.”
Erica snickers, then collects herself with another sip of wine. “All right. Maybe Halliburton wasn’t the only practitioner involved, but there couldn’t have been more than, say, three or four. So few that attempting to procure the summoning instructions would have been too dangerous for them. Makes sense.” She taps a nail against the crystal glass. “What I want to know, then, is what the hell were they trying to summon? If simply getting the instructions for dragging this creature out of the Eververse required a dangerous acquisition mission, then this summoning must be serious. Like, Charun serious.”
I grimace at the resurfacing memories of Charun beating me to a pulp. More than once. “Yeah, well, whatever it was, the ‘sinful souls’ they were going to use as fuel have all been Called beyond the veil. So I’m not sure the creature’s identity matters much at this point. What I’m more concerned about right now—beyond Donahue, still on the loose—is the original question at the center of this case.”
Erica responds, “Who killed the Jameson trio?”
“Right.” I stir my potatoes with my fork. “Out of all the shit I’ve waded through on this case, that is the one and only aspect of the investigation for which we have no leads. I mean, clearly, it was an agent of the great ‘enemy.’ But the emails were so vague about the enemy’s identity that we don’t even know if they’re an individual, an organization, or a whole species.”
Erica tilts her head to the side. “Well, I mean, if we’re talking humans and werewolves—”
“Sinful souls?” Cooper suddenly says. “That was the exact phrasing?” His eyes are cast down at the tabletop, but this time, he’s not avoiding eye contact in embarrassment. He’s thinking. Lids low. Lips drawn into a thin line. Fingers stroking his smooth chin. Something in the vast array of Archive knowledge in his brain has pinged his attention.
“Yeah, Coop.” I set my utensils on my plate. “They used the same term many times throughout the emails. Why? Sound familiar?”
Cooper scoots his chair back and rises without answering me. He marches over to his backpack, which rests against the wall next to the fridge. After unzipping the main pouch, he retrieves a tablet. He crouches on the floor, balances the tablet on his knee, and unlocks the screen. Without looking over his shoulder, he says, “Give me some time. I think I might have something in a set of old research notes I made for a missing persons case a few years ago.”
Erica mouths to me, Years?
I shrug and reply, He’s smart.
She looks impressed.
“Hey, Cooper,” I say. “You don’t have to sit on the floor. If you need some quiet time, you can take a chair in the living room, or—”
Cooper stands mechanically, the tablet held close to his face. He then shuffles through the kitchen doorway, takes a sharp left, and disappears down the hall toward my bedroom. The door slams shut a second later. He must have kicked it.
“Wow.” Erica whistles. “Someone’s into their job.”
“He can get pretty intense about this research stuff.” I snatch the last biscuit from the basket and smother it in butter. “While we’re waiting, anything else you want to discuss relevant to the Jameson case, or should I go put on a Jeopardy rerun?”
Lightning fast, she rips the buttery biscuit from my hand and wolfs it down. “Well, if you must know,” she replies, ignoring my betrayed expression, “the only thing I’ve been working on, besides placating Marcus and Ambrose every time they start ranting about DSI’s insolent behavior”—there’s that nasally Ambrose impression again—“is tracking down the location of Halliburton’s safe house.”
“Using magic?”
“What else?” She shrugs. “I’m no detective.”
“Any luck?”
“If I’d had any, I would have said so by now.” She downs the rest of her wine in one gulp. It’s not a small amount. “Halliburton may have been some kind of criminal, but he wasn’t a dumb criminal. Either he’s got his second house warded to the teeth, to the point where it can throw off tracking spells within a several-mile radius of the property. Or, he was paranoid enough to carry charms that masked his whereabouts at all times.”
Pushing my plate away, finally sated for the first time in the better part of a week, I throw my head back and release a sigh so deep it rattles my cracked ribs. I ignore the pain and say, “Hey, you didn’t happen to try tracking me down after I got kidnapped, did you?”
The remaining flicker of Erica’s mirth is snuffed out in an instant. “I did, actually. For twelve hours straight. Halliburton must have set McKinney and his crew up with similar protections. The best I could get from my standard grab-bag of tracking spells was that you were somewhere outside the city limits. Helpful, I know.”
“Twelve hours?” My tone softens despite my best efforts. “Didn’t know you cared that much, witch.”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Crow.” She hides a faint smile behind the back of her hand. “I have a reputation as a strong witch to uphold, you know? Can’t be slacking off when my city’s in trouble.”
“Right.” I crack a grin of my own. “I totally understand. You—”
The door to my bedroom swings open with a mighty whoosh and slams against the wall so hard I’ll probably have a hole to match the one next to my front door. Cooper pads down the hall, turns the corner into the kitchen, flips the tablet around to show us a drawing on the screen, and shouts triumphantly, “Ammit! Guardian of Duat, the Egyptian Underworld. Known as the Devourer of Souls!”
As the words fade in the still air, a grim and lonely silence envelops my home.
Cooper lets the tablet fall to his side.
Erica plants her face in her hands and whispers under her breath.
And me? I have to resist the urge to stab myself in the eye with my bent old fork, as I say, “There’s an underworld involved? Just like in the Etruscan case?”
Cooper, now a bit pale, licks his lips. “Could the two cases be related to the same...scheme?”
“Erica.” I rise from the table, palms flat on the surface, back bent painfully. “You told me a powerful sorcerer tricked those kids into stealing Vanth’s key, tricked them into signing their own death warrants, tricked them into getting butchered. Could Halliburton have fit that bill? Was he strong enough for that role? Smart enough for that role? Did he know the Eververse well enough to play the mastermind?”
Erica drops her hands to her lap and stares off into nowhere, considering the possibility. “I admit I didn’t know Halliburton that well, but I do remember he had a keen interest in the Eververse. He had frequent conversations with other witches and wizards about Eververse creatures, but they were always in theory, always hypothetical…” She quietly calls herself a fucking moron. “Always phrased in ways that would suggest he’d never actually been there. When of course he’d been there. Goddammit! It was him. He was the bastard who sold those poor kids out to Charun and Tuchulcha.”
I slam my hands on the table. Erica’s wine glass tumbles off and shatters on the floor.
“Yes. It was him.” I stare into Erica’s eyes, my teeth clenched so hard they ache. And then I say in a bleak and furious tone, a dangerous tone, “But was it only him?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
There’s always something spine-tingling about waking up in the dead of night.
I jolt straight up in my bed the instant the clock strikes 2:00 AM, a film of sweat gluing the sheets to my skin. My hair is damp, my bandages limp and wrinkled from tossing and turning, and there’s a cooling, sticky sensation somewhere near my hip bone where I tore a stitch and started bleeding in my restlessness. The tail end of a nightmare slinks off toward the shadows of my mind; I can’t recall the subject beyond vague impressions of sharp teeth and echoing howls. But even if I was reliving my time with McKinney and friends in a twisted dream world, that doesn’t explain why I woke up.
Nightmares don�
�t wake me up. I suffer through the night.
Trying to calm my rapid breathing, I peel the sheets off my bare chest, careful to avoid snagging any of the bandages. My body is stiff and aching, but I popped some meds before I dozed off, so the pain isn’t bad enough to keep me pinned to the mattress. I slip my trembling legs off the bed and rise, using the nightstand to support myself. As I do, I survey my bedroom. Search for signs of a disturbance. Something out of place. An object that fell off a shelf when a big truck blew by on the street below. Or something that loudly shifted under the pressing force of gravity.
Everything looks the same as it did before I went to sleep.
So what woke me?
I grab a pair of jeans sticking halfway out of my dresser drawer, pull them on without buttoning them, and then reach behind my mattress, under the headboard, and tug out the personal handgun I hid there for easy access. I double-check that the little .22 is loaded and flip the safety off, but don’t slip my finger onto the trigger quite yet. I’m too shaky. Heart palpitating. Shivers creeping up my spine. Breaths short and ragged. Still sweating.
Don’t want to blast a(nother) hole through the wall if I jump at the sound of a creaking floorboard.
Quietly, I open my bedroom door and hobble into the hall, checking my bathroom and kitchen for any disturbances as I go. Nothing. Slipping into the living room, I peer over the back of the sofa, where Cooper is curled up under the same quilt I napped with earlier. His blond hair pokes out from the top of the quilt, and a soft, almost imperceptible snore resonates from under the fabric. Whatever disturbed me did not disturb him.
It could have been my imagination, I admit. Maybe nothing’s wrong.
But after my experience with Donahue outside Stein’s, I’m too paranoid to let it go without a thorough investigation. I carefully back away from the couch to avoid waking my designated babysitter and head for the front door. Ears focused on the hall beyond, I hear nothing. Eyes peeled on the door, I see nothing. There’s no strange taste or smell lingering in the air either, or anything else to indicate an intruder. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone or something waiting outside my apartment.
Shade Chaser (City of Crows 2) Page 20