The Unseen

by Thea Harrison

  Pia couldn’t sit still any longer. “Excuse me for a moment. I have to check on Niall.”

  “Of course.”

  She was too sensible to rush. But she did enter the house briskly and slip into the nursery as quietly as possible. Her heart pounded as she approached the crib.

  Sprawled on his back, Niall snored peacefully, one fat fist pressed against the side of his head. Suddenly she could breathe again.

  She rested a light finger on his fat, warm little belly. Precious hellspawn.

  Then she found she couldn’t walk away, not after listening to the stories Bel had told. Not after knowing that something, somehow, had slipped undetected past one of the most sensitive and magical Elves Pia had ever met, along with one of Dragos’s most Powerful sentinels, to steal something off Bel’s bedside table. No wonder Graydon had gone ballistic.

  Bel had said nobody had going missing, but still. Anything that had the strength to transport a mattress up into a tree could easily whisk away a baby.

  Gathering up her sleeping son, she held Niall close and buried her nose in her son’s soft, sweet neck. As she inhaled his scent, something delicate and almost indetectable brushed against her awareness.

  A quiet thump sounded somewhere in the empty house.

  Adrenaline surged like a mule’s kick. She shot out of the nursery, through the master bedroom and onto the deck. At the same time, she screamed telepathically, Dragos, I need you!

  Where are you? His reply was filled with a universe of calm.

  On the outside d-deck with Bel.

  On my way.

  Bel had leaped to her feet, Giselle tucked into the baby carrier at her chest. “What is it? What happened?”

  Pia couldn’t talk. She was shaking all over.

  Within moments, a gigantic bronze meteor plummeted from the sky. The dragon landed with a crash that took out several trees, his great eyes glowing volcanic gold. A somewhat smaller golden meteor landed beside him. It was a gryphon: Graydon. A third meteor arrived. It was some kind of winged creature. Pia didn’t recognize who it was and didn’t care. She kept her attention trained on Dragos.

  The dragon shapeshifted into the man, and Dragos raced toward her. He took hold of her upper arms even as he scanned the area with a sharp gaze. His Power was raised to such an extent she could hardly bear to stand near him; he radiated so much heat.

  “You’re shaking like a leaf.” His voice was hard. “What happened?”

  “There was something in the house.” Her lips had gone numb.

  He turned a killer’s face to the sliding glass doors. Graydon had shapeshifted into his human form as well, conferring softly with Bel. The third winged Wyr had shapeshifted into a male with a soldier’s tough demeanor, crow’s feet radiating from the corners of his eyes and streaks of gray in his sandy hair.

  “Wait here,” Dragos told her. He opened the sliding glass doors and slipped into the house.

  “Paul, stay and guard the women,” Graydon said. He didn’t wait for an acknowledgement and slipped after Dragos. The unfamiliar male stood alert, watching everything.

  Eva and Linwe erupted from the path to the beach and raced toward them. “We saw the dragon. What happened?” Eva asked sharply. Linwe had run to Bel and Giselle.

  Pia shook her head. At the moment she couldn’t speak. She was still shaking. Unbelievably, Niall still slept through all of it.

  A few moments later, Dragos and Graydon stepped out of the house. Dragos flattened a hand on Pia’s back. “We didn’t find anything,” he told her quietly. His gold gaze was sharp with concern.

  “There was something,” she whispered.

  “Do you know what it was?”

  She shook her head. “Something.”

  The stranger spoke up with an easygoing smile. “Could it have just perhaps been the wind? Maybe no reason to panic or call 911.”

  Dragos’s killer expression snapped back over his face, but Pia forestalled him by digging her nails into his forearm. She didn’t feel quite grounded in her body. She said through gritted teeth, “I don’t know who you are, but it’s none of your fucking business if I panic every day for the next fifteen years and scream for my husband. And he will come every time, because you know why? I have been kidnapped more than once. I have been shot at. More. Than. Once. I have been shot. So, if this is your condescending attempt to de-escalate a hysterical woman, you can get the fuck out of my life right now. Go away.”

  As she spoke, it wiped the patronizing expression off his face. He paled. Looking at Dragos, he said apologetically, “My Lord…”

  “Addressing me instead of responding directly to my mate is your second mistake,” Dragos growled. “Pia told you to leave.”

  The man’s face clenched. Bowing, he backed away and strode off.

  The tableau on the deck pulsed with tension: Graydon with Bel and their baby. Linwe had her bow drawn, an arrow fitted into place and pointed at the deck. Eva, on one side of Pia, and Dragos on the other, while her beautiful disaster baby slept through it all.

  Then, even though it was difficult, Pia turned to Eva. “Please take Niall.”

  “Of course,” Eva murmured. She gathered up the baby and held him protectively.

  Pia looked at Dragos. “Let’s walk through the house.”

  “I was going to suggest that.” He looked at Graydon. “Are you coming?”

  “Hell yeah.”

  Pia stepped inside, followed by the two men. Dragos kept a hand on her shoulder. It didn’t stop her from shaking, but she felt slightly better at the physical connection. “I felt something,” she said. “I don’t know what it was.”

  “I know you did,” Dragos said. “How does our bedroom look to you? Is it how you last left it? Study everything.”

  She took a long careful look. “It looks fine. I heard something from the other side of the house.”

  “We’ll still take it room by room.” His voice was calm and reassuring.

  It unlocked her panic enough so that she could turn toward him. “It was like…” She held a hand an inch or so over his forearm without touching him. “I’m not making contact, but do you feel that, whatever that is? The warmth from my hand, my energy, whatever you want to call it.”

  “Yes.” The killer in his gaze turned analytical.

  She passed her hand over his forearm. “It was like that. Like I felt something walking past me. It didn’t quite touch me, just like I’m not quite touching you. But I felt it.”

  “Okay, got it. Let’s check the next room.”

  Taking their time, they walked through the house. Neither male had weapons drawn, but their combined raised Power told her they were ready for anything.

  And they found nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Not in Niall’s nursery. Not in any of the bathrooms or the other bedroom. Not in the kitchen.

  At last they stood in the living room. Pia rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache coming on. “I don’t know what to say,” she said at last. “I know what I felt. And I know what I heard.”

  “We believe you, cupcake,” Graydon told her. “There’s been some weird shit going on here.”

  “I was going to tell you about it when I got back,” Dragos murmured.

  “Bel already did,” she told him. “And I got to thinking, if something could move all that stuff around, it could move a small baby pretty easily too.”

  Dragos looked grim. “Understood. Whatever it was, it appears to have gone for now. Unless you still feel something?”

  As she shook her head, her gaze fell on the paperback on the floor by the couch. A chill ran along the back of her neck again. “That’s what the thump was,” she said. “The book.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She walked over to the couch, picked up the paperback, and set it firmly in the middle of the seat cushion on the couch. “This is where I left it when I went to answer the door. I remember I set it down deliberately on the seat cushion, because sometimes things can slip off the arm and I wanted
to keep it quiet because Niall was napping. This paperback is far too heavy for the ceiling fan to have blown it onto the floor, and it didn’t leap off the couch on its own.” She lifted her gaze to meet Dragos’s. “Something was in this house. I felt it go past me. And it knocked the book onto the floor.”

  Chapter Six

  Carefully Dragos took the paperback from Pia. Grasping it by one corner, he held it up to his nose. Pia’s scent clung to the pages, and, more faintly, he caught Jocasta’s scent. Jocasta and Ramone were the ones who had unpacked and arranged everything in the house.

  He could sense no lingering magic, and no other information of any kind. It was simply a paperback book.

  He handed it to Graydon, who inspected it as carefully as he had. Then both males went over every inch of the room. They didn’t find anything, but by that point Dragos had expected nothing else. It was still important that they check. No information was still data to be used for analysis.

  While they inspected the area, Pia sat in one of the chairs, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees and burying her face in her hands. Graydon gave Dragos a troubled look, then he signaled his intention to step out by tilting his head in the direction toward the deck and left.

  Dragos squatted in front of Pia and contemplated the dejected slump of her shoulders.

  She peered over her fingers at him. “I have PTSD.”

  Cupping one of her elbows, he nodded. “At this point, I would expect nothing else.”

  “Did I overreact? Of all the things we’ve faced since we’ve gotten together, we’ve never had something invade our living space. It completely freaked me out.”

  She was entitled to feel everything she felt and behave in any way she wanted. He didn’t care if she had overreacted, but he knew she did. She liked to behave in a fair and balanced manner. After giving it some thought, he replied, “I don’t think so. Something unknown and not understood came into our home uninvited. And Paul was out of line.”

  “Who is he, anyway?”

  He shrugged that off. “The city police captain.” Or at least he had been. Some of the older predator Wyr held chauvinistic attitudes toward herbivores, and Dragos had every intention of firing him when he got the chance. “I want you to consider taking Niall back to New York for now.”

  At that, she lifted her head to give him a long, level look. She asked evenly, “Are you quite certain that’s what you really want?”

  The way she asked made him reconsider his own words. Scowling, he clenched his hands into fists. If she returned to New York, it would mean a bigger separation than they had ever faced before.

  And staying in New York would be no guarantee that she and the baby would be safe. He would not be able to see personally to their protection. If something happened to them, he wouldn’t find out about it for days, and from the look in her eyes, she had already realized that. She was just waiting for him to come to the same conclusion.

  “No,” he growled. “What if you and Niall went to stay at the guard station with Malan?”

  She raised one eyebrow and waited patiently.

  He thought through that one too. Again, if something happened to them, he would not find out about it for hours. He hissed, “Damn it.”

  Gently, she said, “What you really want is for us to remain close by and safe. Now that I’ve had a chance to calm down, I’m not sure we were in any danger.” At that, he started to speak, but she rested fingers against his lips. “I’m not sure we weren’t either. My bottom line is, we absolutely need to do everything possible to protect the baby. I propose we stay as long as we keep alert eyes on him at all times. If whatever that power is could slip past Bel and Gray, it might be able to slip past even you. And we don’t know if it would hurt a child, but we don’t know that it wouldn’t. Until we find out more, we don’t take any chances.”

  As she spoke Graydon and Bel, carrying Giselle and Niall, walked into the living room. Bel said, “I agree one hundred percent. No baby should be unattended until we find out for sure that the unseen won’t hurt them.”

  Graydon handed Niall over to Dragos as he added, “And, believe it or not, we’ve just had something of a breakthrough. Pia is the first person we’ve found who has sensed anything. We should see what else she might be able to discover.”

  Dragos’s eyes narrowed. Like Pia, he had been in reaction mode and hadn’t yet come to that realization. “Good point.” He looked at his mate. “Are you willing to play detective?”

  “Absolutely,” she said at once. “As long as we go overboard about protection for Niall. I want full-on neurotic, Dragos. I’m ready to face any and all adventures and problems we may encounter, but I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to the baby.”

  They’d had many discussions about security since they’d mated, and, if anything, Pia had been the voice for sanity. Otherwise Dragos would have her constantly surrounded with half a dozen guards at any given time. The fact that she gave him permission to go overboard filled him with immense satisfaction.

  “Full-on neurotic it is,” he said with a fierce smile.

  The four settled in the living room to discuss options. In the end, they decided that whenever Pia and Dragos chose to investigate, Bel and Graydon could keep the babies with them. Bel’s Elven attendants provided a constant guard presence at the perimeter of their property, for whatever good that would do. Eva and Linwe could also take shifts to maintain eyes on both babies at all times.

  Tiago and Niniane arrived while they were in mid-discussion. After greeting everyone and getting undated on current events, they offered to help guard the babies. In the end, even Pia had to agree they couldn’t have found a more Powerful or capable babysitting team if they’d tried.

  While they strategized, Eva and Linwe left to retrieve the dog that Dragos had left with others when Pia had called for help. When the women returned, Skeeter bolted to Dragos and leaned against his leg.

  “I can’t believe you got a dog,” Linwe said, smiling. “It doesn’t seem like you.”

  “I know, right?” Niniane exclaimed. “I couldn’t believe it either.”

  As Dragos opened his mouth to strenuously deny it yet again, he caught a glimpse of the hilarity dancing in Pia’s expression. Her return to laughter was so welcome he rolled his eyes but decided not to respond.

  Instead, he said telepathically to Graydon, Pia won’t let me hire someone full-time to look after it.

  The Gryphon’s expression was suffused with repressed amusement. She won’t?

  He glowered. I do not live the kind of lifestyle that allows for looking after live snacks.

  That is actually an excellent point, Graydon conceded. You already had to leave him behind once. Maybe he just needs to stay home based.

  Please hire a dog walker for him. Someone who is willing to be available 24/7. He paused. They must love dogs. I think they should be open to adopting him.

  Graydon covered his face with one large hand. Help me out here, Dragos. How is that different from hiring someone to look after Skeeter full time?

  His eyes narrowed. He didn’t appreciate being laughed at. Clearly I need to plan a guerilla campaign over this issue. It’s all about a difference in terminology. Professionals hire dog walkers all the time. Surely not even Pia can object to that. Gradually, maybe it can sleep over at the dog walker’s house now and then. He rolled one wide shoulder restlessly. Then we’ll have it sleep over more often.

  I hate to tell you this, but I don’t think that’ll be guerilla enough. She’s going to see you coming a mile away. The other male shook his head. It would be a lot simpler if you just ask Jocasta and Ramone to watch him when you’re not at home.

  Dragos growled under his breath. The dog had smelled of anxiety and stress ever since he’d entered the house. Putting a hand on Skeeter’s head, Dragos said quietly, “Calm.”

  As the command took effect, Skeeter looked at him adoringly and rested his head on his knee.

  The interaction d
id not go unnoted. “Look at that,” Niniane exclaimed. “Aryal was right—you really are good with him.”

  “Right now, I am his Xanax,” Dragos replied in a dry voice. “That is not a viable long-term situation for anybody.”

  “It’s working for now,” Pia said. “And we’ve got more urgent things to think about.”

  She had a point, and the conversation moved on. The others lingered and, since it had been such a long time since they’d all been together, Pia and Dragos invited them to stay for supper. It was good to relax with friends and old companions.

  To Dragos’s eye, even though Niniane threw herself into every subject and laughed often, she carried a kind of fragility, as if she were as breakable as glass, and Tiago watched her almost unceasingly. They had difficult decisions ahead of them.

  If they chose to settle in Rhyacia, he wondered if Tiago might be interested in replacing Paul to head the police force in the city. He liked that idea. He liked it very much, but as Pia had pointed out before, people did not have to arrange their lives to suit him. Still, he would be ready to mention it should the situation arise where it might fall on welcome ears.

  Over dinner, the group decided on a schedule for the next few days. Unless something unexpected happened, Pia and Dragos would take Niall over to Graydon and Bel’s in the mornings to investigate the unseen.

  Since they didn’t know what they might uncover, it was impossible to plan too far in advance. To start with, they would retrace the scenes where items had been moved. Dragos also wanted to check out the construction site of the concert hall, although nobody knew if the two sets of phenomena were connected.

  After everyone had said goodnight and left, and Jocasta and Ramone came to clean up for the evening, Dragos settled Niall on his shoulder again, took Pia’s hand and led her down to the beach.