Date: 2018-06-11 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Romance; Fantasy
Description: Beware the Vulture Moon One body, two bodies, three bodies, four. Five bodies, six bodies, seven, and more. When a murder victim’s mother hires Danyon and Peet to prove her daughter’s coven is to blame for her death, psychic Oona Goodlight and wizard Diego Adair are plunged into magic that is deeper and darker than either imagined. Things get personal when Diego’s mentor mysteriously disappears and Diego vanishes soon after. With the night of the Vulture Moon approaching and rumors of black magic rituals under that moon growing ever more persistent, Oona has to work fast before those dearest t

Vulture Moon

Alexes Razevich

Razor Street Publishing

Copyright © 2018 Alexes Razevich

All rights reserved

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidently and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or by any information storage, retrieval, or transmission system without permission in writing from the author. Requests for permission should be sent to Lxsraz@yahoo.com.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter One

Nothing pisses off death more than a rousing round of great sex.

I thought about that bit of wisdom lying in Diego’s arms, both of us wrung out and basking in the transcendent glow of what our bodies can bring to the other.

I thought about it because there had been way too much death around us lately. It was to be expected, given the work we did. That didn’t mean I couldn’t hate it.

I supposed many private investigators found themselves in the vicinity of too much death, but as an empath and a psychic—even though I was only a consultant, not a PI—I found it overwhelming. You try being bombarded by the emotions the victim and the killer felt as if they were your own. You’d hate it too. The anger, madness, and, weirdly, glee that ran through killers in the act of murder was a whole lot more than I wanted to feel and know about.

Diego, who I called Dee, shifted a little, murmured something into my hair, and planted a small kiss on the top of my head.

I rolled free of his arms. Lovers all develop unspoken communications. That little murmur and kiss meant he wanted to get up.

“Pee for me too while you’re in there,” I said.

Dee waved one hand, dismissing my silliness.

I watched as he padded toward the bathroom and shut the door. I’d lost count of how many times I’d watched his lovely, naked self move across a room, but I hadn’t lost my appreciation for it. He had an athlete’s body and grace. His dark hair was getting longish and shaggy again. He said he hadn’t had time to get to the barber, but I knew he was letting it grow because I liked it a little wild. Dee came across as this very in control guy. When we’d first met I’d wished he had a feral side. Now that I knew him better, I knew that for all his self-control, he had an untamed soul.

What he said about me was I was remarkably competent and unpredictable for someone who came across as naive and slightly bewildered. Little did he know how often I actually was a bit dazed and confused by the magical world.

“You’re out of soap, Oona,” Dee called from behind the bathroom door.

“What’s the problem, Wizard?” I called back. “Conjure up whatever you need.”

He opened the door and stuck his head out the doorway. “Waste my magic on carnival tricks?”

“It’s hardly a carnival trick if you need something.”

He laughed, muttered under his breath, and then held out his palm to show me the bar of soap. It was a type we both liked.

“Good choice,” I said.

Okay, maybe I was more comfortable around magic than I’d thought.

Dee disappeared back into the bathroom. I heard the shower water turn on. The thing about conjuring up something was that it didn’t last long. Tomorrow, I’d still need to hit the store.

Since the conjured soap wouldn’t last, I figured I’d better jump in the shower with him before it disappeared. I was halfway there when it occurred to me that he’d said, “You’re out of soap,” not “We’re out.” Dee and I had been together almost a year, but it wasn’t we. Not for him.

That was probably my fault. I wouldn’t move in to his place and didn’t want him full-time here in mine. I knew he understood intellectually, but he couldn’t really grasp what it was like for me to be psychically and empathically assaulted almost constantly by people’s thoughts and emotions. Even when I wasn’t actively listening to someone’s mind, the undercurrent washed around me, a steady swirl of wants, needs, desires, angers, elations, jealousies, thrills. It was exhausting. My only salvation was to retreat into my house and hole up alone until I felt ready to face the world again.

“Not a problem,” he’d said more than once. “We’ll keep both houses. You can retreat whenever you want.”

Much as I adored him, I couldn’t say yes to our living together.

And he didn’t say we. He used to, but not anymore.

The shower was still running when his phone rang. I picked it up and read the caller ID: J P.

Juliana Peet was half owner of Danyon and Peet, the private investigation firm Dee worked for and to which I’d consulted so often they’d finally offered me a hefty salary to go full time. I’d declined, and then blithely informed them that my consulting fee was going up. Sometimes I surprised myself.

I pressed the on button, moved the phone to my ear, and said, “Hey, Juliana.”

“Oona,” she said coolly. Dee and I answered each other’s phones often enough these days that you’d think she wouldn’t have that disapproving note in her voice. “Is Diego available?”

“He’s in the shower,” I said just to niggle her. Juliana was at least twenty-five years older than Dee and felt motherly toward him. No girl was ever going to be good enough for her beautiful, shining Diego.

“Write this address down,” she said. “Twenty-five-oh-one Beachhead. It’s in Redondo. Meet us there.”

Her tone made my heartbeat quicken. “What’s happened?”

“Come sharp, Oona,” she said. “We need your psychic impressions on this one.”

“What happened?” I said again. Sometimes, Juliana could be crisp to the point of missing the point. Little things—like telling me why we’d been called onto a case.

She cleared her throat. “The client’s daughter, twenty-seven years old, in perfect health, dropped dead on the street. The client has a friend in the coroner’s office. The official COD is heart failure. The truth, evidently, is there was absolutely nothing medically wrong with her, and she should have lived another fifty years.”

Chapter Two

Dee and I took his navy-blue Audi S5 to the meeting. Here’s a thing about living in an old house—my garage barely fit one car. When you live at the beach like I do, parking is a premium. Dee had parked at a meter on Hermosa Avenue, so it was just as well we had somewhere to go since paying for the meter all day got expensive. I just wished we were on the road for a more cheerful reason than someone’s child dropping dead on the street for no apparent cause.

We made our way down Hermosa Avenue, past the clothing stores, restaurants, and shops that lined both sides of the street. The shops of Hermosa gave way to the big overhead sign for King Harbor Marina, where pleasure boats bobbed gently in their slips, to the condos lining the Redondo Beach Esplanade. We turned left and crossed Pacific Coast Highway, beach-front condos giving way to cottages from the last century, newer homes, and apartment buildings.

“That’s it there,” I said when I spotted the right address. “The blue two-story.”

Dee glided the car into an empty spot in front of the house and turned off the engine. Tyron’s maroon Ford Explorer sat in the driveway. Tyron Danyon was the other owner of Danyon and Peet. A big, hail-fellow-well-met sort of guy in his fifties who favored khaki shorts, dark T-shirts, and brightly colored running shoes, he was my favorite between the two agency owners.

Dee and I walked up a brick walkway, with patchy brown grass on either side, to the house’s front door and knocked.

A woman in her mid-fifties pulled open the door. Her eyes were red rimmed and her nose pink around the nostrils. Her sorrow blasted across me like a hard rain, and I took a step back. Dee put his left hand gently on my back for support while holding his right out to the woman.

“Diego Adair and Oona Goodlight,” he said, his voice low, soothing. “We work for Danyon and Peet.”

The woman sniffed, stared a moment at Dee’s hand, seemed to realize it was being held out for a reason and shook it.

“Matilda Keller,” she said. “Tilda. Thank you for coming. Please, come in.”

We followed Tilda down a cool, dark hallway to a large living room. Soft September sun beamed through big windows on two walls. She gestured toward a loveseat covered in a smooth, blue fabric. Dee and I sat. Tyron and Juliana were already seated on a long, red floral-pattern couch. The sorrow in the house was so overwhelming I felt tears gathering in my own eyes. I swiped at them as discreetly as I could and focused on Tyron’s deep, rolling voice.

“If you wouldn’t mind telling it again for Diego and Oona,” he said. “If it’s too much, we can fill them in later.”

“No,” Tilda said, sniffing again. “I can tell it.” She looked at us, drew in a breath and let the air out slowly. “There’s really not all that much to tell. My daughter, Brittany, had gone to a friend’s house. She was walking back to her car when, according to Cath, her friend, she clutched suddenly at her chest and fell over. Cath is a nurse. She rushed over and checked for a pulse. There wasn’t one. She called 911, then started CPR. An ambulance came, and the paramedics from the fire department. Cath knew Brittany was dead, but you have to wait for an official word.” Tears were leaking down Tilda’s face again. She choked back a sob. “My little girl.”

We sat in silence while she pulled herself together.

“Brit was as healthy as they come,” she said finally. “Even the coroner said there was no reason he could find for her to die suddenly like that.” She sniffed again and then glanced around the room. Her voice dropped low. “Brit was into some strange things.”

“Not drugs,” Tyron said softly to us.

Tilda shook her head. She rubbed the side of her mouth and said in a low, embarrassed voice, “Witchcraft.”

Dee threw a glance at me. I nodded to let him know I’d picked up faint traces of magic in the house.

“Where did your daughter live?” he asked. “Would it be possible for us to visit there?”

“Brit rents a small house on Avenue A,” Tilda said. “I have a key.”

She got up and disappeared for a few moments, returning with a key and a slip of paper she handed to Dee.

She cleared her throat. “I want you to know, I don’t believe in witchcraft or magic or any of that stuff. Brittany did though. Believed it heart and soul.”

I spoke up. “Do you think her interest had something to do with her death.”

The woman’s features grew hard. “I do. I think those people—those so-called witches she liked to be around—poisoned my daughter with something the coroner didn’t detect. I want you to prove it.”

“This is our mandate,” Tyron said, rephrasing things slightly. “Investigate Brittany’s companions and determine if they might have had anything to do with her death. If they did, try to find enough proof to turn over to the police.”

Dee and I both nodded and stood. Tyron and Juliana stood as well. Tilda walked the four of us to the door.

In the driveway, standing next to Tyron’s SUV, Juliana said, “What do you think?”

Neither Juliana nor Tyron let themselves consciously believe Dee was a wizard but both, for some reason, were willing to believe in my psychic abilities. It set up a rather weird dynamic, which Dee found endlessly amusing.

“The daughter certainly believed she was a witch,” I said. “Or at least her mother believes that Brittany believed it. We’ll know more once we’ve been in the daughter’s house.”

“Okay,” Tyron said. “Take this photo of Brittany, in case you need it later. Call in after you’re done at her place.”

It was a short drive to Avenue A. We found the daughter’s house and let ourselves in. My shoulders hunched up of their own accord the moment I stepped inside.

“Some weird shit here,” I said. “Dark energy.”

Dee was looking around, taking in the place, as was I. The house was small, with an open living room, small dining room, and narrow kitchen layout. Brittany’s furniture looked newish and serviceable. Her style seemed to run to the Bohemian—lots of ethnic-looking pillows on a patterned sofa, lamps with beaded lampshades on Moroccan-style end tables, a seated Buddha in one corner, and several good luck elephants, their trunks raised, on the fireplace mantel. Dee bent over and picked up a business card from the aged steamer trunk that served as her coffee table. His face darkened, and I felt his mind become troubled. He handed me the card.

‘Merlin Tattoo’ it read, with an address on Hermosa Avenue. The name was only partially a joke.

“The Gate?” I said, naming Diego’s old mentor. The Gate had mixed the ink that Gil, the tattoo artist, had used to place the sigils Dee and I wore—an eagle and sunrays for me; the numeral 1 embraced by a crescent moon for him. The inks had been imbued with magical properties, converting negative energy and emotions thrown our way into power and strength for us. Those sigils had saved our lives when we’d gone into the Brume—a parallel world to ours where demon-beasts ruled.

“It doesn’t mean he or Gil knew Brittany, or even that she’d ever been there,” he said. “A business card can be handed around easily enough.”

Dee was protective of his old mentor, one of the few people I’d ever seen him show true, deep respect for. Dee and Gil had apprenticed under The Gate at the same time, and he thought of Gil as a brother. It was understandable that he didn’t want either of them close to someone who’d dropped dead for no reason, especially if someone in the magic community had anything to do with it. I hiked a shoulder in a shrug and didn’t tell him I felt there was a connection, though I didn’t know what. Most likely Gil had inked her at some point.

“I’m going to check out the bedroom,” I said.

The force of Brittany’s emotions left behind in the room hit me the moment I opened the door. My chest tightened, and my throat closed up. Brittany had done a lot of crying there.

Traces of magic floated in the air like little wisps of fog. Not strong magic. She hadn’t been an adept. And that was as much a source of her sorrow as the—what? The man who hadn’t loved her.

Everything about this woman had hurt—her heart, her mind, her soul. There was no way I was going to step further into that room. I shut the door and turned away.

“Ugly in there?” Dee said, seeing my face as I came back into the living room.

“Sad.” I sighed. “I’ve seen enough. I’d really like to get out of here.”

“Sure,” he said. “We should drop by the shop and see if The Gate or Gil knew Brittany. Are you up for that or do you need some time to recuperate first?”

I thought about it. “Let’s go see them. Maybe The Gate will take pity on me this time.”

The Gate had an empathic niece who’d used magic to build a shell around herself to filter out the constant assault of other people’s emotions. I’d asked him more than once to teach me how to do it or at least let me talk to her, but he always refused.

Dee gave me an I-wouldn’t-get-my-hopes-up look.

I shrugged. It was kind of late for that.

Merlin Tattoo was a small, brightly lit shop in the middle of a block on Hermosa Avenue. Inside, it looked the same as it had the day I’d first come here—green faux-leather and chrome chairs pushed up against the street-side wall, a coffee table in front of them with binders filled with tattoo art. Sheets of paper with drawings of available tattoos were Scotch-taped on the walls.

Gil was frowning over something in a book on the counter he stood behind. A shock of his sand-colored hair fell over his forehead. He closed the book and looked up. His frown deepened for a moment and animosity floated in the air, but then his shockingly green eyes focused on us and he grinned.

“Hey, you two. What’s up?” His grin faded as he took in our expressions. “Something’s happened, hasn’t it?”

Dee held out the photo of Brittany that Tyron had given us. “Do you know her? Did you maybe lay some ink on her?”

Gil took the photo and examined it. “I don’t think so. I don’t remember everyone who comes through here. Why? What happened to her?”

Not did something happen, but what happened, because Dee wouldn’t be asking if something hadn’t happened, something bad.

“She’s dead,” he said. “It might have been natural but might have been something else. She was a member of a local coven.”

Gil looked at the photo again but shook his head. “Do you have a photo of her tats? I might remember those.”

“No,” Dee said, “but good point. I’ll see if I can get one.”

“You wanna ask him?” Gil said, casting his glance toward The Gate’s office.

Something niggled in the back of my mind, a sense of something being off, but I couldn’t get hold of it.

Maybe it was just nerves. The Gate sort of scared me. I’m psychic; I know things about people, but The Gate seemed to know my soul in a way that left me feeling way more exposed than I liked.

Dee nodded. “We’ll go on through.”

I followed him into the work area of the shop, past the chairs and massage-type tables where Gil inked or pierced customers, past the small tables with tattoo guns on them and drawers full of various colored inks, down a narrow hall to The Gate’s small office. The door was closed but opened on its own as we approached.

The last time I’d been in this room, the black-painted walls had writhed with runes and sigils that changed as I watched them. This time nothing showed on the walls and the windowless room was somehow brightly lit without any visible lights being on. The Gate was standing behind his scarred wooden desk, his right hand already outstretched toward Dee.

“The eagle and the fierce lamb,” The Gate boomed as we walked into the office. “Good to see you again.” His eyes glittered as he regarded me.

Dee strode over and shook The Gate’s hand, both men leaning slightly forward over the desk between them.

“Sit,” The Gate said, motioning to the two chairs in front of the desk.

The Gate, no one seemed to know his birth certificate name, was good-looking for a man in his late sixties, with silver and iron-gray hair and deep blue eyes. He wore a well-cut navy-blue suit and light gray shirt with a navy-and-dark-gray striped tie. He turned his gaze on me and smiled slowly. I gazed back, keeping my look as even and nonchalant as I could manage. I absolutely refused to let him make me sweat.

“Sir,” Dee said, handing him the photograph of Brittany, “do you know her?”

The Gate shifted his gaze from me to the photo. He gave it a long, careful look, then shook his head.

“She’s dead,” Dee said. “We found a business card for the shop in her house.”

The Gate’s eyebrows quirked up and he regarded the photo again.

“I don’t know her,” he said. “Was she in the community?”

The magical community, he meant.

“She’d recently joined a coven,” Dee said.

“Witch,” The Gate said.

“Not much of one,” Dee said, “from what Oona felt about her. Some light magic, but not an adept.”

The Gate sighed. “Any loss of life is cause for sorrow.”

Dee and I nodded, but I thought there were people and things in this world that needed to stop breathing if that was what it took to end the evil they did.

I wanted to ask The Gate again about how his empath niece built a protective shell for herself, but this clearly wasn’t the moment.

Dee stood, and I stood, too. The Gate came around from behind his desk and the two men embraced. Then The Gate turned and wrapped his arms around me, something he’d never done before.

It was only a quick hug, but in that brief touch I felt worry and resignation in the man. I stepped back and looked at him. He’d given me access to his emotions on purpose and had no intention of telling me what his purpose was.

Chapter Three

Back in the car and headed for my place I said, “The Gate is worried about something. Something he sees as inevitable and makes him sad.”

Dee’s gaze never left the road. “Why do you say that?”

“I felt it when he hugged me. He wanted me to know.” That wasn’t quite right. I corrected myself. “He wanted us to know. You more than me.”

His hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel. “But you didn’t see what’s worrying him?”

I shook my head. “I tried to slip into his mind, but he blocked me.”

A thin smile crossed Dee’s mouth. “I’ll have to ask him how he managed that. It’d be a useful trick.”

I shot him some side eye. “If it’s any comfort, it wasn’t easy for him. I felt the will and energy it took to keep me out.”

Dee didn’t say anything. I wanted to slip in and read his thoughts, but he always knew when I did, and didn’t like it. His need for privacy was almost as strong as mine. It was easier to deal with ordins—ordinary people. They never felt me rummaging around in their minds. If I couldn’t read Dee’s thoughts, I guessed I’d have to ask outright.

“Are you worried that The Gate is worried?”

He glanced at me. “I’m worried that he wants us to know he’s worried. When The Gate is obvious about something—and hugging you so you’d feel his emotions is pretty obvious—it usually means he’s cooking up some sort of life lesson.”

I didn’t know The Gate well, but I knew him well enough to know Dee could easily be right. The man had a penchant for setting things up to teach someone what he thought they should learn. The sigils we each wore were a good example. The Gate had set it up so that I designed both the one I wore and the one on Dee’s body. They not only helped save our lives in the Brume but, Dee had said, were a way of The Gate teaching Dee to trust and rely on someone besides himself.

“He’s never going to stop being your teacher, is he?” I said.

Dee chuffed a laugh. “Not if he can help it. It’s the way he is. I’m surprised Gil has stayed with him as long as he has. Gil’s a full wizard, not a student. If it was me, I’d go crazy.”

“So, we shouldn’t worry about the worry?” I said.

“Not yet.” He pulled the car up to a meter on Hermosa Avenue and parked. “But let’s not write it off either.”

∞∞∞

“You really should bespell that door,” Dee said as I fished in my purse for my house key. “Easier to open it with a few words than a key you have to hunt for every time.”

I nodded. He’d said the same thing more than once. He was probably right, but I liked the tradition of it. The same key had been unlocking that door for fifty years now, since the last time the lock had been changed. Traditions could be very comforting. Plus, I knew he was just trying to get my thoughts off Brittany and bring me back into the ordinary world.

I muttered the spell to take down the wards protecting the house and fitted the key in the lock at the same moment that Dee’s cell phone rang. I unlocked the door and went inside, hanging my purse on a peg in the foyer as I went. He stayed on the porch talking on the phone. It was either private or he felt there was nothing lurking around the house. Usually, we came in as quickly as possible and got the wards back up right away. There were a lot of evil things in the world, human and otherwise, and more than one of them had come after us.

Dee followed me in a few minutes later, putting his phone back in his pocket and muttering under his breath, putting the wards on.

“Who was on the phone?” I asked when he joined me in the parlor.

Most people would call this the living room, but I respected the old name, from when the house was built. It was parlor then and it was parlor now.

“Jack,” he said. “He’s invited us for coffee. I assume he wants to talk about something.”

Jack Schneider was an old friend of Dee’s who I’d met a couple of times and liked. He was also a senior member of the magic police. Both Dee and I had complicated relationships with the MPs—Dee because he sometimes wound up doing magic in, and for, the ordinary world which, while not strictly illegal, was definitely frowned on. Me because as a psychic I didn’t really fall under their jurisdiction—but Dee, who wasn’t accredited as a mentor, had taught me some magic, so maybe I did. It was all iffy stuff, nothing to get hauled in and sent to court over, but not quite Kosher, either.

I shook my head. “If it’s business, I don’t think I’m ready for that right now.”

“I’d guess it is,” he said. “Jack specifically said to bring you, that it would be good to see you again—his way of saying he needs your help. I can call back, arrange to meet tomorrow.”

I thought about starting a fresh day with whatever Jack wanted from me and sighed. “I’d rather get it over with.”

We met Jack at The Bean Pot, a semi-private coffee shop on Pacific Coast Highway. Semi-private in that anyone could come in and buy a very good cup of coffee to go, but only members could enter the back room where tables and comfortable, padded chairs awaited. Membership was only granted to members of the magic community. Of course, Jack had one. Dee didn’t, but then—except for hockey teams—he wasn’t much of a joiner. We had that in common.

We poked our heads in the back room. Dee nodded to Jack. I raised my hand in a slight but friendly wave.

Jack was an average man—average height, average build, brown hair—but I’d seen his brown eyes blaze with an intensity that should warn off anyone thinking of messing with him. Today, he wore street clothes—jeans, a dark blue polo shirt, running shoes—and not the all-white uniform of the magic police. He sat at a square wood table with two empty chairs drawn up to it. The steam from his coffee rose in a little swirl. I smelled the cinnamon he’d added to the cup. The only other people in the room were a couple of guys nuzzling at a table in the back corner.

Dee nodded to Jack with a ‘we’ll-be-right-back’ motion. We went to the counter, ordered coffee, and rejoined him at the table.

“Jesus,” Jack said when we sat down, coffees in hands. “You two look wrung out.” He fastened his gaze on me. “Especially you.”

“Oona had a hard day,” Dee said. “Work.”

A small crease formed between Jack’s eyes. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Occupational hazard,” I said, trying to make light of it all. Brittany and Mrs. Keller, and maybe a little concern for The Gate, were the last things I wanted to talk about.

Jack angled himself, so he looked at both of us. “Your day might not get any better.”

My shoulders tightened and the skin on the back of my neck prickled.

“You two get around,” he said. “Have you heard anything about unexplained deaths in the beach cities? People suddenly dropping dead for no apparent reason?”

I drew in a deep breath.

“Why?” Dee said.

Jack leaned forward the tiniest bit. “So, you have.”

Here’s the thing about knowing people well, knowing their habits—answers can be clear even when they are evaded. And, of course, Jack was a cop, trained to notice and analyze subtle clues. There was no point in holding back.

“Today, as a matter of fact,” Dee said. “A woman in Redondo Beach. Her mother is convinced the coven her daughter belonged to was responsible. She hired Danyon and Peet to prove or disprove her theory.”

Jack nodded. “Brittany Keller, I’d guess.”

“Are you investigating her death as suspicious?” Dee said.

Jack nodded again. “Along with five others in the last week.”

My stomach clenched. Dee gave a low whistle. I felt, rather than saw, the couple in the corner turn their attention to him. It didn’t last long though and they returned their thoughts solely to each other again.

Dee took out his phone. “Do you know which coven Brittany had joined?”

Jack nodded. “Frankie Ulmego’s”

Dee’s eye’s narrowed and he typed the name into his phone.

“Are all the dead in the community?” I asked, speaking for the first time.

“Not all,” Jack said. “Three of the five.”

“Coincidence?” I said. “Or subterfuge? A way to make the deaths look random, not targeted at the community?”

“Maybe coincidence.” Jack hiked his eyebrows. “Maybe not. Which is why I asked to see you both.” He focused on me. “I’d appreciate it if you’d come with me to the death sites and tell me what you pick up.”

I swallowed hard.

“Oona is pretty burned out at the moment,” Dee said. “How about she calls you in the morning.”

“Thank you,” I muttered low. Under the table, I gently squeezed his leg.

“I can do it tomorrow,” I said. “Why don’t you give me the first address and I’ll meet you there.”

Jack typed into his phone. A moment later my phone beeped with a new message. I looked at the address he’d sent.

“That’s only half a block from here.”

“One of the community,” Jack said. “Walking his dog. The dog was fine but wouldn’t leave his human’s side until the dead man’s brother came to get it.”

I pressed my palms together in front of my face, thinking, I knew Jack was trying to tug my heartstrings with the dog story. I didn’t have pets, but I grew up with dogs, cats, rabbits, mice, even squirrels as members of the family. I had a strong fondness for most animals and all the furry ones. Maybe it was how utterly transparent he was that made me relent. I was always a sucker for manipulation I could see straight through. That was contradictory, but even while knowing I was falling for it, I fell for it.

“Okay,” I said. “Since it’s close. But just the one. I need some time and some sleep before I check the others.”

Jack pushed his chair back and stood. We did the same.

There was no crime scene tape, no chalk outline like on TV on the sidewalk, but I felt the violence long before we reached the spot. When the sensation got too strong to bear, I stopped. Jack watched me thoughtfully. Dee had worry in his eyes.

“It’s like Brittany,” I whispered. “Just walking along and his heart stopped. No reason for it. No reason at all.”

Sudden cardiac death was a thing. The body’s electrical system malfunctioned for whatever reason. Without immediate treatment the person died. But this didn’t feel natural like that.

I pulled my gaze up to meet Jack’s face. “Did he have ink?”

He blinked, surprised by the question. “No. Why do you ask?”

Because we found a business card for Merlin Tattoo at Brittany’s house and I’m worried that maybe somehow The Gate and/or Gil are involved.

I shook my head. “Just curious. It’s so common these days. You can tell a lot about a person by the ink they choose to wear.”

“He was older. Seventies.”

I thought about Dee’s well-inked arms, the runes around his left ankle, my sigil on his chest. “Magical and he wasn’t inked?”

Jack shrugged. “Old school guys usually use amulets, charms, and the like. Sometimes you’ll see a single sigil or rune, something of great personal importance to them on their body. For the most part it’s the younger wizards and witches who carry their charms in ink.”

I was new enough to the magic world that I was still learning the lay of things. This was one more fact to put in my bag of puzzle pieces.

“Who was it?” Dee’s voice carried a heavy note of worry.

“Dean Belin,” Jack said.

Dee closed his eyes and sighed. “Damn.”

The magic community in the South Bay was small enough that most everyone knew, or had at least heard of, nearly everyone else. It was clear in Dee’s voice and vibe that he’d not only known the man but liked him. Dee hadn’t known Brittany, but from what her mother had said she was new into the magic world, newer even than I was.

I shifted my gaze to Jack. “Can we go now?”

“You have what you need?” Jack said. “You know the answer?”

I nodded.

“And?”

“Not natural causes,” I said. “Someone, or something, did this to him.”

∞∞∞

The morning broke bright and beautiful—much too lovely a day for the tasks ahead of me. I made coffee while Dee cooked spinach and cheese omelets and toast. I wasn’t all that hungry but made myself eat. I had no way of knowing how long the day would be.

When we finished, I texted Jack to arrange the time and place of our next meeting. He texted back almost immediately.

“West Torrance,” I said.

“I’ll drive,” Dee said.

I tapped my fingers on the tabletop. “Would you be offended if I asked to go alone?”

His surprise was written on his face. “No. But why?”

I cleared my throat, “Because I feel a bit like your appendage these days.”

“Jack asked you for help, not me,” he said. “Maybe that makes me your appendage.”

I tsked. “You know what I mean.”

He nodded. “I do. Oona Goodlight: Independent Woman.”

I half shrugged. “It’s more that I feel I need to do this on my own. I don’t know—prove my worth to the community or something.”

“Prove your worth to yourself, you mean. Which is ridiculous.”

He regarded me a long moment. “Call me when you’re done.”

∞∞∞

I drove my yellow Subaru to the address Jack had sent—a large apartment complex fronted by palm trees on Palos Verdes Boulevard. He met me outside and led me to an apartment on the second floor.

We walked into a small, tidy space. Jack took me straight through to a kitchen with new stainless appliances, a tile floor, and granite counter tops. I ran my fingers through my hair. It didn’t take long to feel the same surprised, angry, sad vibe I’d felt at the other two sites.

My stomach cramped, and I felt a migraine coming on. Maybe because this was the first death that hadn’t occurred outdoors, but the feel of dark magic was all over the apartment in a way it hadn’t been at the other places. I also didn’t feel that the victim had been in the community.

“Ordin?” I said, and Jack nodded.

I wondered how Jack had heard about this death and how he’d gotten a key to this apartment. As far as I knew, the regular police and the magic police didn’t have any crossover. In theory, ordains were ordins, and magicals were magicals, and never the twain shall meet. There seemed to be some difference in the reality.

“Same thing though, right?” I said. “Sudden cardiac death? No history of health issues?”

Jack nodded again.

I felt around the apartment for its former occupant.

“Young,” I said. “Younger than Brittany.”

“Twenty-one, two months ago.”

I felt a sob catch in my throat. “I don’t think she had any idea what was coming. There’s a huge feeling of surprise here. And anger, because she was so young and had everything in front of her.” I looked at him. “That’s all I get.”

“So, another unnatural death?”

I nodded. “Let’s move on.”

I followed him to three more locations, one near Wilson Park in South Torrance, one at The Galleria, and another one on Pacific Coast Highway though in Manhattan Beach this time. They all felt the same. They all felt like murder.

Chapter Four

Dee had asked me to call him when I finished with Jack, but I couldn’t bear the idea of conversation. I texted instead and briefly laid out all that had happened. When he offered to come over, I said I’d rather be alone a while. I was lucky to have a boyfriend who understood my need for solitude and didn’t take it personally or feel threatened.

The morning had been devastating—feeling the last desperate moments of those poor people. I needed silence. To not have to talk to anyone, to not worry about anyone’s needs or state of being but my own. Not that Dee was high-maintenance, he wasn’t, but I couldn’t not be aware of him—or of anyone—in my home. Another downside of being psychic. I shut the front door behind me and leaned against it, closed my eyes, and sighed. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep doing this work before it broke me.

I went upstairs and curled on my bed. Sunlight poured through the ceiling window. I reached over and pressed the button to draw a curtain over it. I wanted dim. I needed to fold in on myself and tell myself that something would be done—those people would get justice.

That was why I did this job, wasn’t it? Why Dee did the work he’d chosen. I rolled over, closed my eyes, and let sleep soothe what it could of my aching soul.

When my cell phone rang, I bolted awake from a strange dream about a lion making a banquet of field mice. I thought about not answering the call but decided to at least see who was on the line. I picked up the phone from where I’d left it on the nightstand next to my bed and glanced at the screen: Chas G.

My forehead creased. My cousin, Charles Goodlight the second, or Chas as he liked to be called, rarely rang me. We’d known each other since we were kids, had gone to the same summer camp all through elementary and middle school, and had become friends there. My side of the family was small; I was the third generation of only-children. Chas’ side was larger, which gave me dozens of cousins all descended from James Goodlight, the only son of the original Charles Goodlight—the man who had built my house and started the family fortune.

It was possible Chas was calling to say hi, but it didn’t feel that way. I pushed the phone on and took the call.

“Hey, Chas,” I said. “How are you?”

His words tumbled furiously in my ear. “Shit, Oona, I’ve got a big, big problem.”

I rolled my eyes. Chas and problem were practically synonyms. “What’s happened?”

“Don’t laugh, but I’ve got a crazy ex-girlfriend hounding me.”

Somehow, I wasn’t surprised. I’d met a few of his girlfriends. Chas had a knack for getting entwined with people I would have run away from as fast and far as I could.

“Laureen?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “That was six months ago. Laureen is long gone.”

“Does the new crazy one have a name?” The migraine that had started in the apartment in West Torrance had faded to almost nothing. Now it came roaring back. The last thing I needed was more stress.

“Tawny Brown,” he said.

“You’re dating a stripper?”

“She’s not a stripper,” he said, and I waited for him to correct the designation to exotic dancer.

“She’s an administrative assistant at a large insurance company.”

I shrugged away my preconceptions.

“What’s the problem?” I said.

“Can I come over and talk to you?”

That got my attention. Chas had never been to my house. None of that side of the family had, though I’d gone to family holidays at some of theirs. Why would he ask to come here instead of me coming to him or us meeting somewhere in between for coffee or something?

“This really isn’t a good time.” I rubbed the bridge of my nose, trying to massage the migraine away. “Can’t you just tell me on the phone?”

“I really need to see you in person,” he said. “Can I come over? Please?”

I peeked into his thoughts.

Oh. He wanted to finally see great-great-grandfather’s house. There was something there besides idle curiosity. A niggling anger. I wasn’t in the mood for anger, but he was my cousin and it did sound like he was in trouble of some sort.

I gave in. “Okay. Give me an hour or so, okay?”

I rattled off my address, feeling the old, familiar dread of someone invading my space. But Chas was family. I couldn’t say no.

∞∞∞

My cousin stood in my parlor, mouth agape.

“So, this is the famous beach house,” he said, his eyes sweeping around the room. His gaze fastened on the original blueprints, which hung framed on the wall. He walked over and examined them. “Three bedrooms, parlor, formal dining room, kitchen, baths upstairs and down. Not bad for a holiday shack.”

“The dining room is gone,” I said, ignoring the dismissive way he said holiday shack, “incorporated into the parlor by my grandmother.”

Chas nodded. “But this is where it all happened, right?”

I didn’t care much for his tone. “It’s where Charles, Audrey, and Cassie were when Jimmy was kidnapped, yes.”

Chas’s eyes flashed. James Goodlight, Jimmy, was Chas’ direct ancestor, as Cassie was mine. We shared Charles and Audrey in common.

“Why don’t you have a seat and tell me about the crazy ex,” I said.

Chas seemed to shake himself out of some revelry he’d fallen into. He sat on the blue ultrasuede-covered sofa and crossed his legs.

“Okay,” he said. “So Tawny and I went out for three or four months. She was fun, but some of her friends were a little . . . unsavory.”

“In what way?”

“Dealers. Bikers. One guy who was always trying to get me to invest in one scheme or another of his.”

I laughed slightly at that.

Chas smiled apologetically. “We broke up two months back. At least I thought we broke up. She seems to think we’re still together. She calls at all hours, and I think she’s stalking me.”

“Can’t you just be straight with her? Tell her flat out it’s over.”

“I have been,” he said. “I’ve told her very clearly that we’re not together, that I don’t want her to call, that I’m not coming over for ‘a little sugar,’ or anything else.”

The frustration and desperation rolling off him made my stomach hurt.

“How do you think I can help you?” I said.

He leaned toward me. “I heard you work for a private investigation company. I want to hire you to find out if it’s Tawny stalking me or if it’s someone else—and make them go away.”

“That’s not really the kind of work we do,” I said, though it was exactly the kind of work we often did.

“Then you do it, privately. Maybe with that guy you’re dating. I heard he’s an investigator, too.”

“Where did you hear I was dating someone?” I felt slightly miffed. I liked my private life private. The only person I’d told I was dating Dee was my best friend. And my hockey team knew because Dee sometimes came to watch me play and once in a while subbed for us in net.

“Your mom told my mom,” he said blithely.

How did my mother know? I hadn’t dated anyone for almost two years before Dee. She’d long since stopped asking if I was going out with someone. I had no intention of telling her I was dating a wizard with a bit of a reputation as a player. But here it was again, the magic community as small town where everyone knew everyone else’s business.

“Keep it to yourself, okay?” I said.

“Sure. Sure,” he said. “Can you help me?”

His eyes were growing a little wild. The vibe rolling off him was desperate. It was hard to say no to someone when I could feel their fears and needs as intensely as if they were my own. I wanted to soothe him. Plus, I felt sorry for the guy. Chas was two years younger than me and seemed even younger.

“Here’s what I’ll do,” I said. “Right now, I’m tied up with some work, but I’ll check around, keep an eye out, see who, if anyone, might be stalking you. If I find out who it is, I’ll have a talk with her or him. Okay?”

I didn’t like lying about going to work, but I really needed time to myself.

His eyes lost the wild look and lit up. “Thanks, Oona. That would be great.” He stood and reached toward his back pocket. “I’ll pay you.”

“Don’t be silly,” I said. “We’re family.”

Chas nodded. “Family. Yeah.”

There was something in his tone that set my teeth on edge, but I didn’t want to explore that now. I stood.

“I’m sorry. I have to get into the office. I’ll call you in a day or two.”

“Great,” he said, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Great. I’ll wait for your call.”

∞∞∞

Chasing down the stalker was ridiculously easy. That evening I drove by Chas’s house near Rat Beach in south Torrance. She was sitting out front in her car, a pair of binoculars in hand. From the description Chas had given me, the woman had to be Tawny Brown. He’d also given me her address. All I had to do was catch her at home and talk to her. Maybe throw a scare into her if she didn’t want to listen to reason. I turned around and went home.

Dee called in the morning and I told him about Chas and the crazy girl.

“Call the regular cops,” he said. “They’re good at this sort of thing. They’ll stop by her house, have a little chat, that’ll be the end of it.”

“I can’t,” I said. “I promised him I’d take care of it personally. He’s family.”

“Family I never heard you mention before,” Dee said. “How close can you be?”

I held the phone away from my face and gave it an evil stare.

He should talk. We’d been together almost a year and all I knew about his family and childhood was that he’d grown up in a commune of magical folk near Palo Alto. I didn’t know if his parents were still alive or if he had siblings. I’d heard no stories of his school days, no tales of high jinks with kids in the commune. I knew his mother was Mexican and his father Irish-American, but not much beyond that.

I put the phone back to my head. “Chas and I aren’t all that close, but I gave him my word. I’m going to go talk to her.”

As different as Dee and I were, we both had strong feelings about keeping one’s word.

“I’ll go with you,” he said.

I started to protest, but realized that if Tawny Brown had dicey friends, I probably didn’t want to go alone.

“I was going to go now,” I said. “Chas called right before you did. The ex-girlfriend is sitting out in front of his house again, not even trying to hide now.”

“I’ll be by in ten minutes to pick you up.”

∞∞∞

I directed Dee to Chas’s house and we pulled up directly behind Tawny Brown’s green Corolla. We got out at the same time and walked up to her car, Dee rapping on the driver’s side window, me rapping on the passenger side. Her eyes flicked back and forth between us, but she didn’t roll down either window. I tried the door handle, but it was locked. Dee tried the one on the driver’s side. Locked as well.

“Dee,” I said over the car roof. “Her cell phone.”

Tawny had pulled hers out and was dialing. Dee flicked his wrist while muttering a few words. The locks clicked open. He yanked the door wide and hauled her out with one hand, snatching her cell phone away with the other. He tossed the phone to me.

“Who the fuck are you?” Tawny said, twisting in his hold. “Let go of me.”

Not an unreasonable response to being jerked out of a car by strangers.

Dee held on to her arm. Tawny swung at him with her free arm, but he caught her hand before she hit him. She stomped down on his foot and Dee grunted.

Now That was unreasonable.

“Knock it off,” I yelled.

She turned her gaze to me and glared. “You knock it off, bitch. Tell this ape to unhand me.”

I lowered my voice. “Chill, Tawny. We just want to talk to you.”

She didn’t chill. She stomped on Dee’s foot again. At the same time, she turned her head and bit his hand where he held her on her upper arm.

You know that cartoon thing about being so mad that steam comes out of your ears? That’s exactly how I perceived Dee at that moment.

“Okay,” he said, “that’s it.”

I hurried around the back of the car as Dee muttered a few words and let go of Tawny’s left arm long enough to make a small hand gesture. She sank to the ground in a sit, her hands behind her back—positioned exactly as if she had handcuffs on.

If someone had done that to me, I would have been scared, cowed. Tawny was neither. She glared at Dee and spit in his direction. I really had to wonder about my cousin’s taste in women.

“We should get her out of the street,” I said. “Before a car comes along.”

“There’s a veil up,” he said. “No one can see us.” He paused, thinking a moment. “You’re right. Best to move her.”

“And maybe take the veil down so Chas can see that we’re talking to her.”

Dee’s lips drew together, and I knew he wanted to leave the veil up—no point in the neighbors also seeing what was going on.

“Put her somewhere the neighbors can’t see but Chas can,” I said.

He said a few words and flicked his hand toward my cousin’s front lawn. Tawny rose a few feet in the air, glided to the lawn and settled there. Dee glanced at the street, making sure Tawny was hidden by his car at the curb I thought, then took down the veil.

Her eyes widened. “That was freaky. It’s drugs, right? You slipped me some drugs and now I’m hallucinating.” She seemed to consider that possibility. “Nope. Not stoned. I’d know if I was high.”

“Tawny,” Dee said sharply. “You need to listen.”

He glanced at me to take it from there, I guessed because Chas was my cousin.

“Tawny,” I said softly. Her eyes flicked to my face. “You need to understand something. You and Chas aren’t a couple anymore.”

She sneered. “Yes, we are.”

“No,” I said firmly. “You’re not. You need to go away and leave him alone. No more phone calls. No more parking outside his house. Don’t even drive on his street. Move on, Tawny. Find a new guy. Someone who deserves you.”

I felt Dee snicker at that last sentence, but he was wise enough not to do it out loud.

“Do you understand?” I said.

She nodded. I sent my sense out and felt her mind. The crazy in her brain knocked me back a step, but she had latched on to the idea of finding “someone who deserved her” and had turned her back on the idea of Chas as her boyfriend.

“You can let her go,” I said softly to Dee.

He wriggled his fingers and said a few words. Tawny didn’t move. She didn’t even bring her arms around from behind her back. I leaned over, put my arms around her and half lifted her, just to get her moving.

“Go home now,” I said. “Make yourself a cup of tea or get a Coke, whatever you like. Turn on the television. Relax.”

Tawny locked her gaze on me and said, “Fuck you, bitch. I do what I want.”

Dee blew out a harsh breath. “You listen, bitch. See this?” He made a quick motion with both hands and said something low.

Three very large, very scary looking dogs with very big, wet teeth appeared beside him, growling in Tawny’s direction. Her eyes opened wide.

“You are going home now,” Dee said firmly. “You are never going to contact Chas again. If you do, my dogs will be paying you a visit. You won’t like it.”

Tawny’s shoulders shook with fear and rage. She ran to her car and jumped in, locking the doors—as if that would stop us. She turned on the engine and rolled her window down just enough for us to hear her.

“I don’t know who or what the fuck you are, but you tell Chas he can have his new skanky girlfriend—and the two of you. I don’t want anything more to do with him.”

She pulled away with tires squealing.

Dee chuckled softly, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Magic in front of an ordin,” I said, knowing it was one of the stricter rules of the magic community.

“Unless absolutely necessary,” he said. “I think I could defend my actions in this case.”

“You were pissed when she stomped your foot and bit you,” I said. “It’s not like you, Mr. Always-in-Control.”

Dee shrugged. “Yeah, some. She stomped down hard, and it hurt. Mostly, I didn’t like the way she talked to you. I get pretty annoyed when someone calls my girlfriend a bitch.” He half-smiled. “Now you know my deep dark secret—I’m as human as the next man.”

“I think I already knew that.”

His face grew thoughtful. “Jack phoned earlier. He wants to see us.”

“When?”

Dee glanced at his watch. “Now.”

My heart chilled. “I have to tell you something I didn’t tell Jack when we went to all those death sites yesterday.”

He watched me, waiting for me to say what I’d been holding back.

“The dead, Dee,” I said. “They aren’t moving on. Not a one of them. They’re trapped.”

Chapter Five

We weren’t half a block away when my phone rang.

“Whoa! Oona. What the fuck?” Chas said through the earpiece. I put the phone on speaker, so Dee could hear too.

“What was going on out there?” Chas said. “You made Tawny sit on the lawn like the cops had caught her. And then those dogs came out of nowhere.”

Dee closed his eyes a small moment then concentrated harder on the road than I knew he needed to. I switched the speaker off and held the phone to my ear.

“Tawny sat on the lawn I guess because she was tired or didn’t feel like standing,” I said. “I thought those dogs belonged to one of your neighbors. We shooed them away.”

“Oh no, no, no,” Chas said. “I know what I saw, and what I saw was magic.”

I let a brief silence go by. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Come on, Cous,” he said. “It’s common family lore that Audrey and Cassie were magical. Family lore also says your grandmother was a psychic who could turn into a freaking animal when she wanted. Your mom tries to act all normal, but everyone in the family knows she’s magical too. Looks like the apple didn’t fall far from the tree with you.”

I forced a laugh. “If I were magical, don’t you think I would have gotten that pony I desperately wanted when I was a kid? Family stories are just that—stories.”

“Then it must be your boyfriend. Those dogs came out of nowhere and disappeared in a blink. None of my neighbors have animals like that.”

My heart was thumping but I kept my voice calm. “Stop being a goon, Chas. Tawny won’t bother you anymore. I’m going to hang up now.”

I did before he could say anything more.

“He’s going to be trouble,” Dee said.

I shook my head. “He’s young and kind of stupid, but he won’t cause any grief. I probably won’t hear from him again until the new year, and that’s almost four months away.

Dee didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t know my cousin like I did. Chas had the attention span of a gnat. A week from now, he’d probably have forgotten today even happened.

When we arrived at The Bean Pot, a sign on the door said Closed for private event. A nervous frisson shot through me. The whole building fairly shimmered with the magic contained inside it. I knew Dee felt it too.

“What do you think?” I said.

Dee tsked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “I’d say we’re in for a grilling.”

“About?”

“The deaths,” he said. “Jack must have turned in his report to the council and they have questions.” He laid a hand on my shoulder a moment. “You’re going to be on the hot seat. You need to tell the council about the dead being stuck in this world. You need to tell them everything you learned.”

“If that’s all,” I said, worried that somehow the council had already heard about the snarling dog illusion Dee had conjured, “then no problem.”

We couldn’t see any people inside, but they must have heard us arrive. Jack, wearing the all-white uniform of the magic police, came to the door, unlocked it, and let us in. He nodded a greeting but didn’t say anything as he led us to the back room.

The small, cozy square tables that had filled the room before were gone, replaced by one long table draped in a white cloth. Behind the table a dozen men and women, their faces masks of impartiality, watched us walk in. Each wore a long purple cloak that hid whatever they wore underneath. Dee stopped just inside the door and made a small bow to them that seemed more obligatory than respectful, then continued on. Several chairs lined the walls, most of them occupied. Jack took one, sitting with a man and two women who also wore all-white uniforms. My mouth went dry at the fierce formality of the scene. I half-expected nerve-jangling music to play. It would have felt appropriate.

Dee stopped a few feet in front of the table. I stopped beside him.

A tall woman with beautiful burnt umber skin sat at the center of the table. Her voice carried command in every syllable, “Wizard Adair, thank you for joining us today.”

Dee replied with a small nod of his head.

“And this,” the woman said, focusing on me, “must be the psychic, Goodlight.”

Her gaze seemed to pierce my skin and head straight for my heart. I had no idea what, if anything, I was supposed to say, so I followed Dee’s lead and inclined my head in a quiet nod.

The woman gave a small flick of her wrist and two chairs slid away from the wall, across the floor, and stopped behind us.

“Please,” the woman said. “Be seated.”

A wiggle of nerves flowed through my body. This felt a lot like being called to the principal’s office. Dee shot me a quick glance and raked his fingers through his hair at his temples, inviting me into his mind. I slipped in, and saw him shift slightly, making himself comfortable with the itch inside his skull that told him I was there. We sat.

Dee focused on the woman and I heard his voice in my mind. The council changes head every year at the summer equinox. Justine Benoit is this year’s head. Raging intelligence. One of the smartest women I know.

I glanced at the woman. She had her eyes on me. Her gaze was steady but there was curiosity there, too—and the tiniest suggestion of humor and compassion.

“Psychic Goodlight,” she said, “we thank you for coming today. Normally, you would not fall under this council’s jurisdiction, though I understand you are now also a wizard-in-training—” She shot a frown at Dee, then shifted her gaze back to me. “—so perhaps you do. That is a matter to be sorted out another day.” She sent another quick glare at Dee, then looked back at me. “Today, we would be grateful to hear what you know about these odd deaths occurring around us.”

I seem to be in a bit of trouble, Dee thought for my benefit. Don’t worry about it. Focus on telling your story.

I considered poking around in Justine Benoit’s mind, but she’d probably be aware of me in there the same way Dee always is. She didn’t strike me as someone who wouldn’t care.

I cleared my throat. “I can only tell you what I’ve felt around the scenes.”

I started with Brittany Keller and worked my way person by person, women and men, old and young, magical and ordin, to the end. When I finished, sadness had settled on me like a heavy coat. So much death—and for what? Was there some mad purpose behind it or was it just senseless killing? Neither option was good.

The council head turned to her companions at the table and asked, “Any questions?”

A tall, stoop-shoulder man in his forties with brown hair running to grey at the temples raised one finger in the air. Justine nodded at him.

I heard Dee in my head saying, Byron Walters. A reasonable enough wizard.

“I would like to know,” Byron said, “why Officer Schneider brought this psychic into the investigation in the first place.”

All eyes shifted to the wall where Jack sat with his three magic police companions. He stood and bowed to Byron Walters.

“Thank you for the opportunity to explain my decision,” Jack said. “I became acquainted with Psychic Goodlight while on the Sudie Wakanabe murder case. I found her insightful and her talents accurate and useful. These deaths are unusual. I felt her ability might help us find the truth about what’s happening.”

Another wizard, a man maybe in his late sixties, medium height, a shock of wheat-blonde hair cut military short, raised a finger. Justine recognized him.

Dee’s voice in my head said, Hugo Bernard. Total tight ass. Fancies himself the keeper of the pure flame of true magic.

I stopped myself from snickering at the description.

Hugo didn’t look at Jack or at me. He focused on Justine and said, “I take it from your earlier remarks that this psychic is getting magical training from Wizard Adair—who is neither accredited nor mature enough to teach magic to anyone.”

I had a feeling this would be coming, Dee said in my head.

Justine nodded.

“That cannot stand,” Hugo said firmly. “If the girl wishes to join us, I suggest she be offered the opportunity to train with an accredited teacher.”

Justine considered that, then turned to me. “Do you wish to learn magic and truly join our community?”

My tongue seemed to have thickened in my mouth. I’d taken learning a few spells as no big deal. This council seemed to think it was a big deal indeed.

If I said yes, Hugo would likely argue that my mentor be someone other than Diego, which frankly didn’t interest me. If I said no but continued learning from Dee, he’d be in trouble. How much and what kind of trouble? I had no way of knowing.

Likely Dee knew, and Justine, and Hugo, and the rest of the council. I had to guess since Dee had decided not to think the answer at the moment. My guess, given the harsh gleam in Hugo’s eyes, was a pretty fair amount of grief.

I glanced at Dee, hoping to read something on his face, but his expression was bland, disinterested. His voice in my head stayed silent, which meant he’d purposely made his mind blank.

Hell of a time to leave me on my own, I thought, and regretted yet again that he couldn’t read my thoughts the way I could read his.

Jack saved me.

He rose and bowed to the council members. “Please excuse my interruption, but that question seems one for another day. The issues before us are these deaths, what might be causing them, and what they might mean—especially given that Psychic Goodlight reports that the dead aren’t moving on. Why are they stuck here as ghosts? It’s not unusual for someone who died violently to refuse to move on, but all five? That seems unlikely. Are they under the control of the same force that killed them, or another?” His eyes flickered to Hugo Bernard and then back to Justine. “Worry over who might teach this psychic a spell or two seems a distraction and a waste of time that we may not have to wile away.”

“Quite right,” Justine said, glancing up and down the table, making sure each council member had gotten the point.

She turned her gaze to me. “I’m interested in this coven Brittany Keller was supposed to have recently joined. Witches also fall under the purview of this council. I want to be sure I have the coven leader correct. Frankie Ulmego, you said.”

I nodded.

Justine looked pointedly at Hugo Bernard. “Would you please follow up with Witch Ulmego?”

Hugo didn’t look pleased with the task but nodded. I hoped that meant the coven was one less thing Dee and I had to look into. I hoped, too, that Jack would tell us what Hugo learned, if anything.

Justine shifted her attentions back to me. “Do you have anything more to add about the deaths?”

I pressed my lips together, unsure if I should say what I thought.

Dee nudged me gently with his elbow. Whatever it is, tell them.

Oh, now he’s thinking to me again.

I cleared my throat. “I don’t feel the coven has anything to do with Brittany’s death.”

Several of the council members raised their eyebrows. Hugo Bernard scowled.

“Why is that?” Justine said.

I shrugged. “It’s just what I feel. Sometimes my psychic knowledge is concrete. Sometimes it’s—I don’t know how to explain it. More loosey-goosey.”

A couple of the council members laughed lightly. Hugo Bernard’s scowl deepened.

I felt my cheeks flush. “I’m sorry, I can’t be more definitive. Certainly look into the coven, but I don’t think there’s anything there to do with the five sudden deaths.”

“Then the council thanks you for your help,” Justine said, dismissing us.

Dee bowed slightly again and turned to go.

I followed his lead, resisting the urge to turn back for a final look at Hugo—imprinting his face in my mind so I’d know him should I ever see him again. Resisting, too, the urge to pop into his mind and hear what he was thinking. Tight ass indeed. Who I learned magic from was none of his damn business. Stupid rules.

“One other point,” Justine said, forcing Dee and me to turn and listen to her again. She’d let us start to walk away and then called us back on purpose—all the better to add emphasis to whatever she’d say next. My liking for the woman dropped down a few points.

“The magic police have this investigation well in hand now. Civilians, of course, must stay out of their way and let them do their jobs.”

I felt the energy in the room subtly change. A warning to us. A rebuke to Jack. Some people didn’t like one or the other, or both. Hugo, on the other hand, fairly beamed his pleasure.

Dee acknowledged the council head’s words with a slight tilt of his head. We turned toward the door again and made it out of the room without further callbacks.

“Where to?” I asked when we were back on the street heading toward Dee’s car.

“Home,” he said. “Yours or mine; it doesn’t matter. I could use a walk by the water to get the stink of Hugo Bernard out of my nose.” He paused. “If you don’t mind company, that is.”

“I don’t mind your company,” I said. “The rest of the world can stay away for a while, thank you.”

His shoulders relaxed, and he took my hand. “You did great, by the way. Spoke clearly, point by point. You’ve helped the council and the MPs a lot.”

“Except now we’ve been warned off,” I said.

“Brittany’s mother is Danyon & Peet’s client. We’ll continue working on that case. If it touches on other, related things . . .” Dee shrugged.

I squeezed his hand slightly. “You’re sort of a rebel, aren’t you?”

“Not at all. I take my work for our clients seriously. Tilda Keller is in pain over her daughter’s death. We have a moral obligation to ease that pain with facts, if we can. If we can discover who did it, why, and maybe help put a stop to more deaths, we have an obligation to do that as well.”

“So, we’ll turn any information we gather over to the magic police?”

Dee smiled thinly. “Possibly.”

That was Dee all over. Always a perfectly good reason to do exactly what he wanted.

I’d felt all the dead that the MPs knew about. I had compassion for the families of each of them. And a bit of desire for revenge, if I were honest. I was glad we’d keep hunting for the facts—and the killer.

“So, Hugo Bernard,” I said as I slipped into the passenger seat of Dee’s car. “What’s the story with him. He has a thing for you, no doubt about that.”

“It’s not me he dislikes so much as The Gate.” He paused. “Dislike isn’t the right word. Hate is more like it. Hugo hates The Gate.”

Chapter Six

We carried our shoes in our hands as we strolled the wet sand at the shoreline. Dee drew his power from the earth and I drew mine from the sea. Both of us were feeling better and stronger for walking where land and water met.

“So, what happened between The Gate and Hugo?” I said as we turned to head back to my house. “Why do they hate each other?” I reached up and played with a tendril of his dark hair at the back of his head. “Unless it’s private.”

“Not private,” he said. “It’s pretty well known in the community. Practically infamous. The hate only goes one way—from Hugo toward The Gate.”

I slipped my arm around his waist, so our sides touched as we walked. It was amazing, really, how the feel of his skin could banish all the horrid reality of the last few days for me—even if only temporarily. Murder, ghosts stuck on this plane, the worry that somehow Dee and I would be punished for him teaching me a bit of magic—it all fell away. Here, now, the whole world was the two of us and nothing more, and it was perfect.

“It was over a woman, of course,” he said. “Jenna Dunne. I’ve seen photos of her. She was stunning. Tall, fire-red hair. A body to die for. Every man’s wet dream.

I frowned at him. He shrugged.

“On top of that,” Dee said, “she was a first-class wizard. She developed spells that are amazing in their elegance.”

I knew where this story was going. The same place these kinds of stories always went. “They both loved her. She loved The Gate.”

“She loved Hugo, who it seems wasn’t such a tight ass in those days. They married and had two children—a daughter and a son.”

I blinked in surprise. I couldn’t imagine Hugo ever not being the way I saw him today or imagine a woman like Dee described falling in love with that pinched-soul man.

“If Hugo won the prize, why does he despise The Gate? And why is he so sour toward you?” I stopped. “Sorry. Tell the story your way.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Over time, Hugo began to believe Jenna was involved with someone else. Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn’t. In any event, Hugo believed it and started to get very controlling. He didn’t want her or the kids out of his sight. If he had business to do, he’d lock them in the house with wards. Finally, she couldn’t stand it anymore. Right under Hugo’s nose, she packed up the kids and ran to The Gate for protection.

“But they weren’t involved?”

“He says no, not after Jenna married Hugo, and I’ve no reason not to believe him. Jenna and The Gate had gone out together and were friends. As The Gate’s power grew, Hugo decided his wife preferred her old boyfriend, who was now the more powerful wizard.” Dee paused. “Hugo challenged Gate to a magical duel. The winner got Jenna and the kids.”

I glared at him, making my feelings plain about a man’s wife and children being little more than prizes in an ego battle.

He held one hand up. “Don’t blame me. Back in the early 1900s, women and children as a man’s property was a pretty common attitude.”

I blinked at the date. I knew wizards could have long lives, but not that long. I wondered suddenly how old Diego really was.

“I’d guess The Gate won,” I said.

Dee grinned, proud of his mentor’s victory. “Resoundingly. And in public. The magical public at least. Hugo turned as bitter as rat poison. He tends his bitterness the way a gardener tends his favorite hothouse flower.”

I thought about that as I fished out my house key, took down the wards, and let us inside.

“What happened with Jenna and the kids?”

“No one knows for sure. Gate put a glamour on them, so they were unrecognizable to anyone who knew them before. They went off somewhere and lived their lives, I guess.”

“That doesn’t explain why he dislikes you,” I said.

Dee hiked a shoulder in a small shrug. “I guess Hugo’s hatred for the man he considered a rival, the man who engineered the disappearance of his wife and children spills over onto those close to The Gate.”

“Does he hate Gil the same way?”

He shrugged again. “Less so. Something about me rubs him the wrong way.”

“You remind him of The Gate,” I said, sure I was right. “Gil doesn’t so much.”

Dee’s phone rang. He reached into his pocket and pulled it free. He glanced at the screen and pursed his lips. “Speaking of Gil, it’s his girlfriend, Allison.”

He thumbed the call on and listened a moment, his face growing dark, and his muscles tensing. He got up and walked out of the parlor still listening to what Allison was saying. I watched him go, an unfocused worry knotting my stomach.

“The Gate and Gil are missing,” he said, coming back into the parlor. “Allison has no idea where they might be. She hasn’t been able to reach Gil since yesterday morning.”

He ran his hand through his hair, then tried someone on his cell. His brows pulled together as whomever he was calling didn’t answer. He pushed the call off and tried another. Then a third. I remembered the bad vibes I’d felt in the shop when we’d gone there to ask Gil and The Gate if they knew Brittany. I should have paid more attention to the sense of animosity—thought more about what it might mean. At least said something to Gil and The Gate to put them on guard.

Dee sat down hard on the sofa and tied his shoes in quick, jerky motions, then stood and strode to the doorway. He turned almost as an afterthought and said, “I’m going to the shop.”

“Let’s take my car.” Mine was in the attached garage. His was parked a block and a half away.

He nodded. I followed him down the hall and out the back door to the garage. I stopped the car at the back of the short drive way and threw the protective wards for my house back up, then drove as fast as was safe.

“Is the shop warded?” I asked as we pulled into a parking spot near the front door. The shop was on the same street where Dee had parked, and we probably could have run there almost as quickly as drove.

He nodded. “The Gate changes them pretty often, but always puts in an ability for the right spell to override his own.”

“Who, besides you, knows the override?”

“Gil, of course,” he said. “We’re it, as far as I know.”

But there could be others, I thought. Dee wouldn’t know everyone in The Gate’s life now—not like when he was an apprentice. Past students, from before Dee and Gil, could know the override. Close magical friends might know it. And maybe someone with bad intent.

Dee’s hands flicked, and he muttered under his breath. I felt the magic shell surrounding the building shift and loosen. He pulled open the front door and we stepped inside.

If The Gate and Gil were taken from the shop, they either went willingly or were beamed away. Not so much as the chairs against the front wall or the waivers on the desk were disturbed or out of place. Dee tore through the front business area, pushed through the curtain at the back and disappeared in the direction of The Gate’s office.

I stood in the public area, looking past the black countertop to the chairs and tables behind where the tattoos were applied, and the piercings done. I cast my senses out, feeling for whatever had happened here.

My ears rang and a feeling like a punch to the chest hit me. I exhaled a fast breath. No, not a strike to my chest—to my heart.

A blow to the heart.

What did that mean?

Nausea twisted my stomach. Anger, jealousy, dark energy, and sorrow swirled in the room. I wanted to run out the front door and all the way to the ocean. I wanted to jump in the water and wash away the black intent flowing through this place.

I didn’t though. I followed where Dee had gone—down the hall to The Gate’s office.

He sat in The Gate’s big leather chair behind the scarred wooden desk. In the windowless room, the only source of light was a small, glowing orb, I presumed Dee had conjured it, floating above the otherwise empty desktop.

He looked up at me. “Feel anything?”

I nodded and sank into one of the three chairs in front of the desk.

“Someone took them,” I said, keeping my voice as even and calm as I could. “Several someones, from the feel of things. The focus seems to be on The Gate. Gil might have been wrong place, wrong time.”

I saw and felt the anger building in Dee.

“Who?” he said, the word said quickly and clipped. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know.”

Dee raked his fingers through his hair. I felt him will his anger and worry into a tiny ball and stuff it down inside him.

“Tell me about them,” I said, needing something to distract me from the nausea building in my stomach, the headache pounding behind my eyes. “If I know more about who they are as people, it might help me feel them better.”

Dee let out a shaky breath. “You already know The Gate was my mentor. My father sent me to him when I was sixteen. Gil had come six months earlier. We were his only two apprentices until I left when I turned twenty-one. Gil and me—you know how you feel about teammates you’ve played with for a long time? Teammates you love even though they aren’t—” He stopped as if not wanting to say the next words. “Who aren’t at your skill level.”

I nodded. There was always a spectrum—people you were better than. People who were better than you. It was as true in life as on the rink.

“Gil’s slightly older than I am,” Dee said. “I think it rankled him that I seemed to have more talent. As if age should have given him the edge.”

“Where do they live?” I asked, thinking we might learn more at their homes.

He glanced toward the ceiling. “Upstairs. Gate owns the building, along with most of the block. There are four apartments on the second floor. The Gate has one, Gil has one, and the other two are rented to ordins. He likes having non-magical folks living in the building, to help balance the energy.”

“You want to take a look at them?” I said, needing to get out of the shop before the pounding in my head grew too hard to bear. I liked the idea of going up where regular people also lived, where the energy might feel a whole lot better than the dark, ugly vibe in here.

Dee looked distracted, as if his thoughts were far away, but he nodded and led the way.

The Gate’s apartment was a spacious two-bedroom with a large living/dining room and good-sized kitchen. The appliances were old, though—1950s era. There was no TV, stereo, or computer. The 1950s era furniture would be trendy now but looked like they’d been bought at the original time and sat here ever since.

Books were everywhere—crammed into bookshelves, stacked on end tables and on the floor. I picked up a few. The Gate’s reading taste seemed to run to mysteries, thrillers, and Space Marine science fiction.

There were more books in the master bedroom along with a bed, a dresser, a side table, and nothing else. The smaller, second bedroom was The Gate’s wizard’s lair. Dee walked around the room slowly, his hands trailing across books, bottles, and boxes.

My headache and sense of nausea were slowly fading. Dee’s tension was building. It was as obvious in his body language as it was from his vibe.

“He’s like a second father to you,” I said, feeling Diego’s emotions as strongly as if they were my own. “Better than your first father.”

Dee swung his head and looked at me.

“Never date a psychic,” he mumbled, and looked away. He pocketed something small lying on the table he stood next to.

“There’s nothing helpful here,” he said. “Let’s check Gil’s place.”

I followed him past two doors to the apartments where I assumed the regular people lived, down to the opposite end of the hallway. He made a small motion with his hands and muttered under his breath. The door of the apartment swung open. I looked in and then stared.

The apartment was completely empty.

Chapter Seven

Dee had his cell phone out and was scrolling through numbers.

“Who are you calling?” I asked.

He found the number he wanted and selected it, placing the call.

“Allison,” he said. “Gil’s girlfriend.”

I was surprised he had the girlfriend’s phone number. He and Gil were friends, but I hadn’t thought they were that close. Maybe the girlfriend was in the community. Dee had the phone numbers of a lot of magicals. Or maybe he’d gone to recent calls, not his personal phone book. Allison had called him, so her number would be there.

When they connected, Dee told her we hadn’t found the two missing men yet but were at Gil’s apartment. There was a long silence on our end, but Dee was listening to Allison, who I guessed was beside herself with worry and rambling on.

“Ally,” he said sharply. “Take a breath. I’m sure Gil is fine. I don’t know what happened or where he is, but either we’ll find him, or Gil will show up on his own. You’re working yourself up and it won’t help.”

There was another stretch of quiet while he listened. Then he said, “We’re at Gil’s place above the shop. Did he move to a new apartment?”

Another short silence. Dee nodded his head, listening. I watched some of the tension leave his shoulders.

They spoke a bit more and Dee rung off.

“He’s living at her place,” he said, confirming what I’d already gathered. “Just moved in two weeks ago. Not all that committed though, I guess. His furniture is in storage.”

“What next?” I said.

“I need to go home,” he said. “I can drop you at your house if you want.”

Here’s the thing about being psychic and close to someone. Even without reading his mind, I was almost always aware of what was going on with him. I knew what he wanted for breakfast, what shirt he’d like if we’re shopping, what he wanted in bed from moment to moment. It went way beyond simply knowing his tastes. Mostly, I tried to ignore the things I psychically or empathically knew, to act like we were normal people, but not now.

“I’ll come with you,” I said.

He nodded, and I felt his mix of gratitude—because he wanted my company and my help. And his annoyance—because he wanted to focus on finding the missing men and didn’t want to have to worry about me as well.

No one ever said being human was clear-cut.

∞∞∞

Dee raked a hand through his hair, pushing it back from where it had fallen over his forehead as he bent over his gazing bowl.

“Can’t see a damn thing,” he said, not turning to look at me where I sat against a wall behind him in the same chair he’d brought for me the first time I’d been in his wizard’s lair. Not really talking to me at all. Talking to himself.

He stared out the window that overlooked his backyard a moment, the vibe of his thoughts filling the room like smoke. I couldn’t help myself. I slipped into his mind to discover exactly what he was thinking.

He swiveled his head and shot me a hard glare.

I glared back. “If you’d tell me what you’re thinking, I wouldn’t have to go poking around to find out.”

“If I wanted you to know, I’d have told you,” he said.

“Too late,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “I heard what’s roiling around in your brain and you’re wrong.”

“Am I?”

I nodded. “You’re thinking two things, neither of them good. You’re thinking you can’t find The Gate and Gil with the gazing bowl because your magic is slipping. You’re wondering if somehow The Gate has been propping up your magic all these years, giving you power that you thought was your own.”

He stared at me, not speaking.

“But that pales to your other thought,” I said. “You’re afraid you can’t find them because they’re dead.”

He gulped in a quick shot of air, but still didn’t speak.

“I feel them alive, Dee. In danger, but alive. I trust my psychic sense over your bowl on this one. Besides, didn’t you tell me that if people were on the move you couldn’t find them with the bowl? Maybe they’re going from one place to another right now.”

He looked at me a long moment then blew out a breath. “You could be right about them being on the move.”

I felt the tension start to ease from his body as he decided to agree with me.

“There are plenty of forms of divination,” I said, getting up and walking over to stand next to him. “Why not try another, see if that works better? Try a map and pendulum.”

When I was growing up, my parents didn’t encourage magic in the house, except for Mom using her healer’s touch and, for some reason, pendulum divination to find lost things. Making an exception for healing was logical and sensible; she wasn’t going to leave her child or husband to suffer from illness or injury, but I never had understood why pendulum divination was okay when other forms of magic weren’t.

Dee didn’t say anything as he pulled a paper map of Los Angeles County from one of the drawers in his farmhouse table and spread it on top. He drew a wide-band silver ring from his pocket and set it on the map. I’d watched him pick up the ring while we were in The Gate’s apartment. Now that he laid it down, I saw that runes were carved over the ring’s entire surface.

“Is that something The Gate would be likely to leave at home?” I said, glancing down at the ring.

“It’s protective and a power source.” Dee’s voice held a slight tone of distraction because his mind was focused on the task at hand, not in talking to me. “He’d only take it if he felt threatened.”

That was good information. The Gate had gotten up that morning and left his apartment feeling safe. He probably went down to the shop, since Gil was missing, too. So, whoever took them probably found them there and forced the two men out. Both The Gate and Gil were strong wizards, so it was unlikely that a garden-variety robber or kidnapper could overpower and snatch them.

Dee took a small, crystal pendulum on a thick silver thread from the same drawer and laid it on the map. A tremble flew across my shoulders.

“Dee,” I said, a sudden piece of knowledge in my mind. “What do you call a group of wizards? Is it like witches, a coven?”

He glanced sideways at me. “You said the coven had nothing to do with her death. Are you saying now they have something to do with The Gate and Gil?”

I stammered, taken aback. “No. Brittany’s coven has nothing to do with them or anything else. But I feel it was a group of people in the shop today—magical people. I don’t know how many. Half a dozen?”

“An argument,” he said, his hands fiddling with the pendulum. “People usually say an argument of wizards—because you can hardly ever get two to agree on anything.” His hands stopped fiddling. “You think a group of wizards took The Gate and Gil? The council?”

“No,” I said. “I don’t think it was the council. But I do feel there was a group that ambushed them somehow. One person in charge and the rest helpers.”

He stood very still a long moment, taking that in, thinking through the ramifications.

“Should we call Jack?” I said. “Turn it over to the magic police?”

Another long, quiet moment passed. He shook his head. “The MPs are good for enforcing the rules and dogged legwork, but they’re slow. The Gate was my mentor. Gil’s my brother in magic. I’ll find them.”

Okay, I thought. We’ll locate them—and then call the police. Because this was getting very personal for Dee and it didn’t feel healthy for him.

He turned back to the map and slipped The Gate’s ring down the thread, so it rested about halfway down the pendulum. I wanted to ask why a group of wizards might kidnap the two men, but I could see as clearly as I could feel that Dee didn’t want more questions. He wanted to get on with whatever plan he had in his head.

He braced his elbow against his side and held the pendulum over the map. It hung there a moment, as still as a photograph, and then slowly began to swing back and forth. The pendulum swung further one direction than the other. Dee took a small step that direction and watched the pendulum. It swung again more one way than the other. He moved slightly. The pendulum swung. He moved a fraction of an inch the way the pendulum seemed to want to go. Finally, it stopped moving and hung straight down again.

“They’re somewhere in Torrance,” he said.

I shivered. All three South Bay beach cities had been murder sites. Why did mention of this one shake me?

For the beach cities, Torrance was a large, meandering place, touching the ocean at one stretch and reaching as far as five or six miles inland at others. Saying someone was in Torrance was like saying the needle was in one of twelve giant haystacks. Dee folded the map, put it away, and took out another. He unfolded the new map and started the process with the pendulum again.

It didn’t move.

It hung straight down for thirty seconds, then a minute, then longer.

I felt tension run through him, Tension and fear. Not fear for the missing men; fear that something was truly wrong with his magic. If he couldn’t pull off a simple location spell—

“Can I help?” I said quietly.

“No,” he snapped.

I stepped back a pace. He’d never snapped at me before. But I’d never felt this kind of worry in him before either, or this lack of control.

I knew how it felt to be afraid your powers were slipping. After Sudie Wakanabe’s murder, when I found my psychic abilities weakening and every spell I cast failed, I’d come close to panic. Thank goodness Dee had figured out it was the dark wizard, Petra Folger, with help from the marid blocking my magic from working.

If it took two magicals to block my abilities, how large an argument of wizards would it take to stop Dee’s? Or The Gate’s? Pretty big would be my guess.

Dee cupped the pendulum in his hands a few moments, blew on it, and tried again. Slowly the pendulum began to swing unevenly, stretching out one direction more than the other. He followed the swing, moving his hand fractions of an inch until the crystal fob once again pointed straight down.

He bent over to read the tiny print on the map. “Alaska Avenue.” He glanced at me. “Do you know it?”

“I do.” I’d had my car fixed at a garage there after some idiot had hit me. Alaska Avenue was a short stretch of road in an industrial area. “Do you want to go now?”

Dee rolled his shoulders and let out a breath. He reached out and touched my arm.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to bark at you before. And yeah, I want to go now. You coming?”

Alaska Avenue was only a few blocks long, but Gil and The Gate could have been in any of the many buildings on the street. Dee parked his car and we got out.

“Can you feel where they are?” he asked.

I’d met The Gate and Gil a few times, but I didn’t know either of their signatures, the unique frequency every living thing had. If I’d known their signatures, I could have homed in on them specifically. As it was, I was going to have to feel around for disturbed energy, presuming that the men had been taken against their will and were angry or upset over it. And feel for magic. If magicals had the two men, they’d surely ward the building.

We were lucky it was night and most of the businesses were closed. Otherwise I could pick up a pissed off clerk just as easily as an upset wizard. I centered myself, closed my eyes, and sent my senses out looking.

The sigil on my arm tingled. I opened my eyes and looked at Dee. I tapped the spot on my chest that corresponded to where he wore the sigil that represented my power. He knew what I was getting at—was his sigil waking up?—and shook his head.

It was just me, then. The sigil only woke up when I needed to convert negative energy into positive power for myself. I couldn’t imagine who would be thinking evil thoughts about me on this street.

Almost a year after meeting Dee there were boatloads of things I didn’t yet understand about magic or know how to control. Maybe the sigil’s magic turned on when I needed a little burst of energy and power—like now, to help me find the missing men.

The sigil grew warm and power rushed through me. My inner eyes, already open and searching, seemed like search beams illuminating the street and buildings around us. I felt late night workers in offices, a mechanic working on his own car afterhours, and the nervousness of a thief reconsidering the break-in he’d come to do—but not magic practitioners, and not The Gate or Gil.

My ears popped, and I heard Diego’s name on many lips—some angry, some desperate, some hate-filled. The sounds were faint, echo-like, and seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. A ribbon of nerves wound through me. Why couldn’t I locate where the sounds were coming from?

“Something’s going on here,” I said. “Something weird.”

Dee turned his palms up in clear question.

There was no point telling him I heard his name being called if I couldn’t find the sources and had no idea of the reason. Without specifics, it was useless information. The anger and hate flowing over me made my head pound until it felt ready to burst.

“Do you remember how to follow a person’s signature?” I said.

I’d taught Dee this trick—half surprised, honestly, that a non-psychic could do it. He wasn’t great at it, but he knew The Gate and Gil far better than I did. If anyone could follow the men’s frequencies, it would be him.

His eyes lit at the suggestion and he nodded. He centered himself and muttered, giving himself a little burst of magic to help along what native psychic ability he had, and slowly turned in a full circle, looking for the signatures.

I experienced a person’s signature like a scent that grew stronger as I came closer to whoever I was seeking. Dee had said he sensed it like a thin beam of light. He seemed to have spotted that beam. His back straightened, and he strode off with purpose.

We crossed the street and headed around to the back of what looked like a warehouse of some sort with an office facing the street. There was a sign on the front door—likely the name of the business—but Dee had bee-lined around the side to the back and I followed.

The voices calling Dee’s name grew louder as we headed toward the back of the building. My head felt ready to split apart. My stomach knotted.

A large metal roll-up door and a small, metal regular door with a small window graced the back of the building. Next to the small door stood two of those large, industrial trash containers, both with their lids down. Bits of paper trash and empty bottles lay near the trash containers as if spilled at the last pickup. My heart did a quick double thump as Dee quietly and cautiously lifted the container lids and looked inside. I’d seen too many TV cop shows with bodies stashed inside trash containers.

He set the lid down easily, so it wouldn’t clang then moved over to try the small door. So, no bodies in the trash bins. That was a relief. And the building didn’t feel warded—a surprise but also a relief.

The door was locked. Not that locks meant much to Dee. He muttered a few words and flicked his wrist. The click of the lock opening was loud enough to easily hear.

We stood quietly outside, listening for approaching feet or voices. I sent my senses into the building.

“There’s no one here,” I said, keeping my voice low anyway.

Dee glanced at me. “But there’s left-behind magic.”

“Left behind?”

“A spell meant to linger long after the wizard is gone but hide what was done at a place.” He drew in a breath, thinking. “Any wizard, or psychic, would know magic had been practiced here but the left-behind spell obscures what kind of magic it was. Could have been someone conjuring up a glass of water, or this place could be a portal to other lands. Could be an apprentice’s first spell or a wizard’s one millionth. Could be someone who doesn’t realize he or she’s truly magical at all, reciting a spell they got off the internet. The left-behind makes it all feel the same.”

I shook my head. I hadn’t been able to trace the two men’s signatures, but I felt their echoes now. And left-behind spell meant to obscure things or not, I had a pretty good, if confusing, sense of what had gone on emotionally in this building. “Adepts were here, one of them stronger than the others, but all of them good at what they do. I feel anger and jealousies. I feel anticipation and glee.” I ran my hands through my hair. “Gil and The Gate were here, but they’ve moved.”

Dee crossed his arms over his chest. “Where to?”

I didn’t have an answer for that.

His frustration hung in the air like a heat mirage—frustration and irritation. Dee was a goaltender on the ice and by nature. Not being able to make the save was screwing with his focus.

Something caught his eye. He walked over near the large, metal roll-up door, picked up something from the ground and held it tightly in his closed hand. I couldn’t see what it was but knew from his body language and his vibe it was something important. Something he hadn’t wanted to find.

I walked over and stood quietly beside him. “What is it?”

Dee opened his hand and showed me a silver dollar-sized star on a silver chain.

“It’s The Gate’s,” he said. “A power object like the ring I took from his apartment, except he never takes this off. Without it—it’s like he’s naked in the snow.”

Chapter Eight

The implications of that were obvious. There had to be a reason for it to have been removed. To rob him of his personal protection and power seemed obvious. But what if the obvious wasn’t the reason at all?

“He might have taken it off himself and left it for you,” I said. “He’d know you’d come looking for him. Maybe this is his way of showing you you’re on the right track.”

Dee closed his hand around the necklace again. “Maybe.”

“Or maybe,” I said, “He left it to share his power with you.”

Dee opened his hand and looked down at the silver star. I felt him thinking over what I’d suggested, running it against the man he knew and what The Gate was likely to do. He shook his head.

“The Gate would never take this off,” he said. “He’d never voluntarily leave it in the vague hope I’d find it. He certainly wouldn’t hand over this much power to anyone.” His voice dropped low. “Not even to me.”

He clenched his fist around the necklace again and stowed it in his pocket.

If Dee was right and The Gate had been forced to take it off, we were dealing with someone with more power than The Gate himself had. That was a scary idea. But why leave it on the ground? To show The Gate how very little his abductor thought of him?

My throat felt dry and my head was still pounding. I fished in my purse and made sure the prescription Norco I always carried was there. I didn’t think particularly well when my head hurt this much. I needed to find some water, get the pill down and calm this migraine if I was going to be any help in finding the missing men.

“You were right about something,” Dee said. “We need to get Jack in on this. We need his help.”

Diego Adair admitting he needed help wasn’t something you heard every day. He was good, though, at admitting when I’d been right.

He cast a glance at the small metal door again. I knew what he was thinking and agreed with him: we had to go in and check out the building or spend time later wondering if there had been a veil after all and the men were there all along. I didn’t feel any current magic beyond the left-behind spell and I didn’t think Dee did either, but there was only one way to know for sure.

I swung the door open and stepped inside a small kitchenette. Lights flicked on, blazing bright in my eyes after the darkness outside. I froze where I stood and cast my senses out, feeling for living beings.

Nothing. No one was here to have turned on the lights.

Motion sensors, I realized.

I looked around the room as Dee came in behind me. Dirty dishes and coffee cups littered a large, stainless steel sink. Empty take-out boxes cluttered the table and garbage can. No ants or flies feasting on the rubbish, though. Whoever had left this mess had done so recently.

Another door stood open on the opposite wall. Through it I could see a large warehouse area empty of anything but a few high stacks of wooden pallets. Lights had come on there as well. Probably the motion sensors that had brought lights on in the kitchen turned on lights throughout the building, a good deterrent to burglars. The concrete floor was clean-ish—no oil stains, no marks where heavy machinery had been. The pallets seemed to indicate the space had been used for product storage.

A second door in the kitchen led to the office we’d seen at the front of the building. I had a good sense of the place’s layout now. Maybe a fifth of the total space was the front office with the kitchen straight behind it. The rest was open warehouse.

Dee strode across the kitchen and stood in the open doorway to the warehouse. He pulled The Gate’s necklace from his pocket, held it to his mouth and whispered to it. He straightened the arm that held the necklace, so the star dangled at the chain’s end, arm’s length from his body. I stood slightly behind and to the side of him. We stood still long enough that the motion sensors decided no one was in the room. The lights went out, leaving us in nearly total darkness. In that dark I saw that the star glowed with a very faint orange light.

Dee pivoted and stepped toward the door that led back to the alley. The lights switched on again. “If The Gate was here, the star would have reacted. He’s not. They’re not. Let’s go.”

“Shouldn’t we call Jack?” I said.

“Outside.”

Dee had once told me that using magic to open a locked door counted as breaking and entering. We’d meet Jack by the front door and claim we hadn’t taken a look around inside. I should have thought of that. Dee and Jack were friends, but I thought Jack was magic police first and foremost.

We shut the door behind us. Dee muttered a few words and flicked his wrist. No telltale click of the lock engaging broke the night’s silence. I felt worry slide through him. He bit his lip, sucked in a breath and tried again. No click. He reached out and tried the doorknob. The door opened.

He slammed the door shut in frustration just as his phone started ringing.

This wasn’t good. His magic failing him again, right now. . .it was only going to make him second-guess every spell before he cast it. I had no idea how to counter the failure of confidence he felt deep inside himself.

Dee cursed under his breath and shut his eyes a moment, composing himself, before he answered the call with a calm, “Hello.”

His brow furrowed, and he put the phone on speaker. A woman’s nearly hysterical voice came through.

“. . . how he got away. He barely had time to say he was in the parking lot at Alpine Village. I heard angry voices and, and, and I think someone hit Gil, and then the phone went dead. I don’t know what to do. Oh, God, Diego. You have to find him.”

He pressed the speaker off and soothed the caller as best he could.

My mind spun. Alpine Village was a faux Bavarian village with shops and restaurants on an outer edge of Torrance. The place was known mostly for its raucous Oktoberfest celebrations each year and boasted it had LA’s finest sausage kitchen. It also had a giant parking lot.

“We’ll find him,” Dee said into the phone. “I promise.”

He thumbed the phone off and took a deep breath. He tried the locking spell again. Again, it failed. His jaw clenched. Frustration rolled off him like lava, hot and bubbling, threatening to destroy everything in its path.

“Can I help?” I said softly.

Dee raked his hand hard through his hair. I felt him control his feelings and stuff down his worry. His clenched jaw relaxed—some.

“Sure,” he said. “See if you can push some of your magic my way.”

I didn’t think it was more magic he needed. What he needed was focus. I felt how scattered his mind was. How could he focus his magic and his will with his thoughts skittering hither and yon? But if he couldn’t get that under control, I’d be glad to give him some of my magic if he thought it would help. I’d never tried to share it, but Dee had done it to me several times. I put my arms around him, breathed into his face, and willed my magic into him.

He smiled gamely and tried to lock the door again.

As soon as the lock clicked, he turned and headed toward his car. I was pretty proud of myself for having pulled off the power transfer. Dee had walked off without a word of thanks or congratulations. It wasn’t like him. He had to be pretty worried to drop his manners like that. Yeah. Scattered.

“What about calling Jack?” I said as we reached the car.

He shot me an impatient glance. “Later. Right now, we’re going to try to find Gil.”

“He won’t be there,” I said, knowing it as a fact. “If someone caught up with him, unless it was some random mugger, it was the people who’d taken him and The Gate in the first place. They’re not likely to let him stay wandering around loose.”

Dee had pulled his keys from his pocket and pointed the lock fob toward the car. The light beep-beep of the fob sounded loud in the night air.

“Probably not,” he said. “But maybe you’ll pick up his trail. Or maybe I will. Or we’ll find something that will tell us where The Gate is.”

Or maybe we’re off chasing will-o’-the-wisps and false hopes, I thought but didn’t say.

∞∞∞

This late at night, or more accurately early in the morning, Alpine Village’s huge parking lot was completely empty of cars. Dee drove slowly up and down each lane, the white lines of the marked parking spots glowing faintly under the radiance cast by his car’s headlamps. It took a while to cover the entire stretch of asphalt, the expression on Dee’s face growing grimmer as the minutes passed with no sign of Gil. A heavy lump of worry settled in my chest near my heart. Worry for the missing men but more for him.

I cast my senses out, feeling for Gil. I felt he’d been here but was gone now. I felt him but couldn’t catch Gil’s signature enough to follow his trail.

No, that wasn’t quite it. The last glimmers of magic still hung around the parking lot. Another left-behind spell meant to hide who had been here and what they’d done—and was doing a good job of it.

Dee stopped the car, opened his door and stepped out. I threw my door open and hurried over beside him.

“What are you thinking?” I said.

“I want to check around behind the fence and over there.” He cast his glance toward a trio of large, blue, metal industrial trash containers.

“Okay,” I said, walking beside him as he strode toward the bins, “but if you want to go mucking around inside them, you’re on your own.”

I’d hoped for a smile, but he might as well not have heard me.

“There’s something there,” he said, quickening his steps. “Behind the last container.”

A few more steps and I saw it, too—a pair of man’s legs in jeans and running shoes, visible from the knees down, the rest of the body hidden behind the can.

“Shit,” Dee said, breaking into a run. “No, no, no.”

Please. Not The Gate or Gil, I prayed to whatever powers may be.

Dee reached the trash container and threw his weight against it, pushing it away from the body. I came up behind him a moment later and looked down.

Not The Gate. Not Gil. Relief poured through me.

Dee stared down at the man’s body. I felt the anger vibrating through him.

“Do you know him?” I said.

He shook his head. “But I know who did this.”

The sound of a car’s engine cut the silence. I spun around. A large, black sedan was coming fast straight toward us. I tugged at Dee’s arm. He turned and swung his hand up, already chanting the words of a spell.

The car kept coming. My heart beat so hard it seemed it might fly out through my skin. We couldn’t get behind the big metal containers and push them toward the car. All that would do was make us wind up smashed between the containers and the wall behind them when the car hit. We could run in separate directions, making the driver choose one of us over the other, so maybe one could escape.

Except I could see into the car now—it was that close—and there was no driver. Someone was operating the vehicle by magic.

There hadn’t been any vehicles other than Dee’s in the whole parking lot when we pulled in. Which meant this car likely was conjured on the spot. Conjured and real for a limited time—or only an illusion, meant to scare but not hurt us? Conjured by whom?

Dee had repeated his spell twice already. Even with the extra magic I’d given him, the car kept racing toward us. We had seconds left, I estimated, before we’d be hit. I knew a spell for dissipating illusions. It wouldn’t work if the car was conjured and solid, but—

I made the hand motions and shouted out the spell.

The car broke into an uncountable number of tiny blackbirds which flew up toward the night sky. The birds exploded into hundreds of tiny stars and were carried off on a sudden wind.

Dee stared at me, his breath coming fast and hard. I was breathing pretty hard myself. I reached over and took his hand. We stood there a long moment, our hands holding tight and hard to the other.

“So, what now?” I said quietly.

Chapter Nine

Dee pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Jack’s number. I’d once been magically whisked off the beach and into a police station by the magic police, so wasn’t all that surprised when Jack and another man simply materialized near us. I recognized the other man as the one who’d sat against the wall with Jack when Dee and I had spoken in front of the council. I didn’t know his name and I didn’t like the scowl on his face.

“Thanks for coming,” Dee said to Jack. He turned his gaze to the second man. “You, too, Matthew.”

Matthew was shorter than Dee or Jack, maybe five foot nine, with dark, military-short hair. I guessed him to be in his late thirties, maybe early forties. Both men wore the all-white uniforms of the magic police, so I assumed they’d been on duty when Dee had called.

Dee turned and looked at the body, or what could be seen of the body behind the trashcan from where we stood. He’d told Jack on the phone how we’d come to find the dead man, but either Jack hadn’t passed the information on or Matthew simply wanted to hear it for himself.

“What were the two of you doing here this late at night?” Matthew asked as he and Jack moved toward the container.

Diego walked with them. “The Gate and Gil Adair are both missing. Gil’s girlfriend called me, saying he’d called her and he was here. We came to get him.”

Gil Adair. The last name wasn’t that uncommon, but it wasn’t all that common either. The two men looked nothing alike—but still. I tucked my questions away for later.

“Was he here?” Matthew said.

The three men positioned themselves and began pushing the industrial trash container away from the body. The big metal container creaked as they pushed at it. I turned my head away.

Curiosity got the better of me and I turned to look. The man was young, early thirties, I’d guess. His blond hair was matted with dried blood. The faint scent of charred meat floated around him.

“Any of you know him?” Jack said.

Dee, Matthew, and I shook our heads.

“Not in the community, then,” Jack said. “Something for the ordins to handle.”

He stepped away and made a call—to the normal police, I assumed.

“You didn’t answer before,” Matthew said. “Was Gil here when you pulled in, or any time after, up until the time you called in the body?”

“No,” Dee said. “If he had been here, he was gone by the time we arrived. We were checking the place out when we found—” He glanced toward the blond man.

“You’re sure you don’t know him?” Matthew said.

Dee shook his head. “But I’m pretty sure I know who killed him. I recognize the style.”

“Thomas Halvorsen,” Matthew said, as if the two men shared a secret knowledge—which I supposed they did. “He favors fire as his weapon of choice.”

Dee nodded. “Under the dead man’s shirt, you’ll probably find that his skin is charred.”

“No doubt,” Matthew said, and then rattled off a string of Spanish that had only two words I recognized: pinche pendejo. Fucking asshole. You couldn’t live in Southern California and not know that expression.

Dee shrugged. He answered with a shorter burst of Spanish, a language I hadn’t known he spoke. Another question for later.

Jack returned to where we were standing and said, “The ordin police are on their way. You two can go home.” He gave Dee a studied stare. “You should have called me when you first knew the men were missing. I had to hear about it through the rumor mill.”

“Yeah, well,” Dee said, and shrugged.

“Go home,” Jack said again. “And stay out of this.”

The air shimmered a moment and the two policemen were gone.

∞∞∞

I waited until we were almost back to Dee’s house before saying, “Can I ask you something?”

He gave me some side eye. “Could I stop you?”

“Gil Adair?” I emphasized the last name.

Dee blew out a breath. “Same father. Different mothers.”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was your brother?” I said.

“Half-brother.”

“But you grew up together.”

Dee waved a hand helplessly. “I don’t know why I didn’t tell you. It didn’t seem worth mentioning, I guess. Gil and I aren’t that close.”

Evidently Dee and I weren’t either. He’d let me into his life only so far. I guessed we were pretty even on that score.

“I grew up in a commune,” he reminded me. “Five families who had lots of half-siblings between them.”

No wonder he was so upset by The Gate and Gil vanishing—his mentor, like a second father to him, and his half-brother had been abducted. This Thomas Halvorsen, the dark sorcerer who’d evidently killed the blond man, likely had something to do with the abductions. A man who liked to kill with fire. In the same situation, I didn’t know if I could hold it together as well as Dee was.

Despite my family history and my mother having shifters and the occasional wizard or witch as patients, my parents had worked hard to make my childhood as much as possible like that of the regular kids I went to school with. Dee’s childhood must have been very different from mine.

“I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” I said.

He shrugged. “My mother’s from Veracruz. My two full-sisters and I speak Spanish fluently. Gil doesn’t speak a word.”

I considered what he’d said. “Your upbringing was complicated, wasn’t it?”

He smiled grimly. “You could say that.”

“Are you close to your other siblings?”

“My sisters and I were always close. Gil and I had our, um, differences growing up, but we’ve made peace as adults. We’re friendly now, I’d say, but we don’t hang out a lot together or anything.”

But he knew Gil’s girlfriend. Close enough for that but not close enough to know Gil had moved in with her. Complicated.

He leaned over and turned on the radio. Death metal blasted from the speakers. It seemed appropriate.

∞∞∞

The early morning light was thin and watery when the insistent ring of my phone woke me.

Dee was awake too, I saw, and giving me that ‘who’s calling at this hour?’ look.

I glanced at the screen. “Chas.”

He looked heavenward, sighed, and rolled over.

I thumbed the phone on and said hello.

“Thank God, you answered,” Chas said. “It’s that damn crazy Tawny. She’s been telling lies about me all over town. And now her fucking biker brother is in front of my house with half a dozen of his friends. You have to help me.”

A vague pain emerged behind my eyes. Too little sleep and Chas freaking out would probably give anyone a headache.

“I can call the police for you,” I said, “but you could have done that yourself. What is it you want me to do?”

Chas drew in a breath so noisy it was audible through the phone. “Sorry to ask, but could Diego come do more of that magic. Scare these bastards off.” His voice went up half an octave. “Shit. They’ve got baseball bats.”

I put the phone face down on the sheet and quickly sketched the situation to Dee, keeping my voice as calm as I could.

His face clouded but he nodded.

I picked the phone up again and spoke into it. “We’re on our way.”

My thoughts rocketed back and forth on the drive over. My cousin was about to get the shit beat out of him or worse by a bunch of bikers. If Diego did what Chas asked and used magic to scare the bikers away, he could be in trouble with the council who’d already warned him about using magic outside of the community.

Maybe I should do it. I had some spells that could make the bikers see things that weren’t there. As a mere ‘wizard-in-training’ I was more likely to get away with claiming ignorance and concern for my cousin. I said as much to Dee.

He shook his head firmly. “Not a good idea. You might be able to claim ignorance, but I’m with you and what’s my excuse? Not to mention that the council isn’t happy I’ve taught you any magic. No need to go showing it off to a bunch of ordins.”

I thought for a moment. “How about this? You cast an illusion of people the bikers wouldn’t want to be seen by. Real Estate agents or a FedEx driver, dog walkers maybe—someone non-confrontational but who might call the cops. That should scare off the bikers without making the magic obvious.”

He raised an eyebrow, considering. “Maybe.”

He thought a moment more, then flicked his fingers in a particular way and muttered a few words. My jeans and T-shirt metamorphosed into a forest green woman’s suit. My red high-tops became black, low-heeled dress shoes. Dee’s jeans and T-shirt were suddenly a dark gray wool suit I’d seen on him before. He’d put on a glamour, so he looked much older. I assumed he’d done the same to me.

I released the small breath I’d been holding, afraid his magic wouldn’t work again. At least that worry seemed behind us. Now, if we could get Chas behind us, too, we could get back to what was important—finding The Gate and Gil and discovering who was behind the murders and the stuck ghosts.

“I think we have a house to sell,” Dee said as we came near to Chas’s house. “You’ll be on your cell already when we step out of the car. I’ll give the bikers a shout, in case they don’t notice our arrival.”

When we pulled up in front of Chas’s house, my heart sank.

The front door gaped wide open.

Chapter Ten

I’d pulled the car door open and jumped out before Dee turned off the engine. I heard him curse behind me and the car door slam on his side. The slap of his running feet followed behind me as I burst through the open doorway and into Chas’s living room.

My cousin sat on the floor, his arms wrapped around his shins, head on his knees, rocking back and forth and moaning. His knuckles were raw and bleeding. I squatted down next to him.

“Are you okay?”

Stupid question, but what else was there to say in a situation like this?

“Motherfucker bikers.” Chas raised his head and looked at me. Dee must have undone the glamour because Chas recognized both of us immediately. His bottom lip was split. Blood trickled down his chin. His face was already beginning to bruise at his left cheek.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Dee standing next to us. Yep. No glamour.

“I’ll call an ambulance,” he said.

I looked up “Not yet. Give me a moment.”

I gently moved Chas’s arms away from his shins, got him to sit up straight and felt his ribs. Nothing seemed broken. There could be fractures and he’d need X-rays, but there wasn’t a need I could see to go to a hospital yet.

“We’re going to take you to my mother,” I told Chas. “Can you walk?”

He nodded and struggled to get up. I pulled to my feet and got behind him to lift him. He was nearly deadweight, but I got him standing. Dee stepped over for Chas to lean on while I pulled out my phone and called my mother.

“Hey, Mom. Are you home?”

I could practically see her blink twice in that way that she had, her mind running through a list of possibilities—none of them good—about why my voice was a mix of worry and no-nonsense.

“Yes,” she said, concern clear in her voice.

I should have made my voice a little lighter, for her sake. I supposed Moms couldn’t help going to the worst possible scenario when their kid’s voice sounded like mine had. At least my mother couldn’t help it. Which was odd, because I was pretty trouble-free as a child. Even boring, you might say. My dangerous adventures didn’t start until I met Dee, and I certainly didn’t tell my mother about them.

“We’re coming over,” I said. “Cousin Chas is a little banged up.”

Her sigh of relief that it wasn’t me in trouble was audible. Lucky for her, she had no idea of the sorts of things I’d been up to lately.

“I’ll be here.”

Her voice had gone from worry to professional in a heartbeat. I loved that about my mom. Nothing threw her off her game.

Dee’s phone rang just as I was closing my call. He listened and nodded.

“It’s Jack,” he said. “I need to meet him.”

“Okay,” I said. “Chas probably shouldn’t be driving. We’ll Lyft over to my mom’s from here. I’ll call you later. Or you call me.”

I watched the door close behind him then asked Chas, “What happened? Honestly, I expected to find you beat to an absolute pulp by the bikers. I’m glad to be wrong.”

Chas touched his tender lip and grimaced. I gave him a sympathetic smile. Everyone needed a little sympathy when they were hurting—even if I did think Chas had mostly brought his grief on himself.

“What happened,” he said, “was that crazy bitch Tawny showing up minutes after the bikers did, yelling her head off for her brother not to hurt me.” He touched his bruised cheek. “A little late for that. But she did get them to stop using me as a soccer ball.” He shook his head. “I’ll never understand that woman.”

I nodded my agreement and more sympathy, pulled out my phone and scheduled a Lyft.

The driver must have been close because he pulled up out front in under five minutes. I helped Chas into the back seat of the white Honda Civic and slid in next to my cousin. The driver verified the address we were going to and pulled away from the curb. He seemed not surprised at Chas’s state. I supposed that rideshare and taxi drivers likely saw it all and nothing could surprise them.

∞∞∞

Like my house at the beach, Charles Goodlight had designed the house where my parents lived. He’d fashioned it after a mansion he’d seen in Spain while on R&R during World War One. The two-story house had white stucco walls, red roof tiles, and lots of arches in the Spanish style and was set back from the street on a large lot. Tall, thin cypress trees lined a red brick walkway to the front door.

Unlike my three-bedroom cottage, The Big House, as it was always called in the family, had six large bedrooms upstairs and two smaller downstairs, presumably for live-in help. It always struck me as sad that Charles and Audrey had planned on a big family but only had the two children: Cassie and James. In the generations since, there’d never been a family living here large enough to make use of all the space.

Dad had turned one of the unused upstairs bedrooms into a home office for his construction business. Mom had torn down the wall between the two small downstairs bedrooms and used it as a clinic for occasional members of the magical community who didn’t feel comfortable walking into a hospital for repairs.

Mom met us at the front door. I bent over to give her a hug. I was tallish, but Mom was seriously short, five foot one—maybe after a visit to the chiropractor. She had nearly black hair she wore short and favored slacks and button up shirts as daywear.

She clucked her tongue at Chas while she and I helped him limp into the clinic area. We got him seated and she immediately set to work cleaning his wounds and checking for damage. I took a chair in a corner.

In the same way that I liked watching Dee mix a potion, I liked watching my mother at work, the deft way her hands moved with no hesitations, knowing everything that needed to be done. I liked the way the room filled up with what I called her “good vibrations” when she turned on her healer skills. I always thought I could smell, as well as feel, those healer vibes. They smelled like lemongrass.

Chas had been tense when he walked into the room, but he’d relaxed some now. My guess was he’d expected Mom’s ministrations to hurt a lot more than they did. I knew personally, from everything from scraped knees to sprained arms from falling out of the big peach tree out back, that when Mom treated you, it almost never hurt.

Mom bandaged a laceration on Chas’ right arm and said, “Now, tell me how this happened.”

Chas blanched and looked at me for help. I shrugged. It was his story and he’d have to tell it, even if having a crazy ex with a biker brother was probably more than a little embarrassing for him to admit to his aunt.

When Chas finished the telling, Mom once again tsked her tongue against the roof of her mouth but held back whatever more she was thinking.

“Well,” she said instead, “you were lucky. You’ll most likely be fine, but we need to X-ray those ribs. Nothing feels broken, but I want to check for fractures before I send you back out into the world.”

She opened the door to a narrow closet, extended the jointed arm of the small X-ray machine and positioned the round business end of the thing at Chas’s ribs. A lead-lined gown and a thyroid protector were tucked on a shelf in the closet. When she pulled those out, I didn’t need to be told to leave the room.

A few minutes later, Mom and Chas came out of the office. She helped him up the stairs and I supposed settled him in one of the guest rooms—they had plenty. Then she joined me in the living room.

My mother tended to like antiques, old sofas restuffed with new horsehair—where did she even find horsehair nowadays?—and recovered in new fabric, a 1920s chaise that had belonged to Audrey and Charles, end tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl—that sort of thing. It wasn’t my taste, but it was home.

“He’s going to be okay?” I said.

She nodded. “He’ll be fine. No sign of breaks or fractures.”

“Good,” I said.

Silence set in then. I talked to my mom on the phone at least once a week, so there wasn’t a lot of catching up to do, at least not of the things I was willing to tell her, but she was usually pretty chatty. A frisson of nerves wiggled through me. My mother only got quiet this way when she was working up to saying something she was pretty sure the other person didn’t want to hear.

“I don’t mean to pry,” she said. Which meant she absolutely meant to pry. “But I’ve been told by several sources that you’ve become quite close to the wizard, Diego Adair.”

I’d purposely not told my parents I was dating anyone. They tended to get overly involved, checking the poor guy out, making sure he’s a good candidate for their only child. I sometimes wondered how much that influenced the long periods I tended to go between boyfriends.

I also hadn’t told them what kind of work I was doing. My parents were great, but they knew my empathic and psychic abilities made me vulnerable to strong emotions and that I needed a lot of time to myself to stay sane. They certainly wouldn’t want me out chasing beasts from the Brume or dark-magic killers. I’d seen it as a kindness not to tell them. Why make them worry?

“We’ve been seeing each other for a while,” I said.

Mom’s mouth drew into a line.

“You know he has a reputation,” she said.

I knew, but I was going to let her tell me anyway. For one thing, I couldn’t stop her. For another, she needed to get all her worries out into the open air.

Mom held up her left index finger and touched it with the first finger of her right hand. “One: he’s not known as a man who stays long with one woman.” A second finger went up on her left hand. “Two: he’s run afoul of the magic police more than once for sidestepping the laws.” Another finger joined the group. “Three: he has a dangerous occupation.” And yet another finger. “Four—”

I held up my hand, signaling her to stop with the litany.

“Mom, I get it. You don’t think he’s suitable for me.” I paused, unsure what to say next.

Her tone softened. “I worry about you. You’re my baby. I don’t want you hurt. Your father worries about you, too.”

“I’m twenty-eight. Hardly a baby.”

“You know what I mean,” she said, and I did. I’d always be her baby. I could be fifty and I’d be her baby.

“Plus,” my mother said, “I hear you’re working for the same agency he does. Please tell me you’re not putting yourself in danger.”

“It’s consulting,” I said. “I sell them the benefit of my abilities, that’s all.”

I’d just lied to my mother—something I never did. Guilt wiggled its way through me, making my cheeks hot

She fastened her gaze hard on my face. “None of this is a good idea. You know that, don’t you?”

“I think you should meet Diego,” I said. “It’s not fair to condemn a man based on gossip and rumor. It’s not like you to do that.” I shrugged. “Chas likes him.”

“Chas,” my mother said, “dated a deranged woman with violent friends. I don’t think I’d use his judgment as a character reference.”

She had a point.

“I like him.” We both knew I meant Dee, not Chas. “I’d like for you to know him and for him to know you and Dad. He grew up in some sort of magical commune up north and I think he’d enjoy spending time with a normal family.”

Her eyes widened ever so slightly. “The Grass Valley commune?”

I shook my head. “No. It was somewhere in Palo Alto.”

My mother rolled her eyes heavenward. “It wasn’t called Grass Valley because of the location.”

Okay. Drugs. Yes, some in the magical communities seemed to have substance abuse problems. Dee had introduced me to more than one person who drank too much or really, really liked marijuana—which was perfectly legal in California. I supposed they needed some way to quell all that magic roiling around inside them. Other than the Norco I sometimes took for psychically induced migraines, I didn’t use drugs or drink anything strong than the occasional beer or an even more occasional whiskey. Beer seemed to be the beginning and end of Dee’s mind-altering substances use as well.

I shrugged. “You know how they say kids raised in strict households go wild the first chance they get? It must be the opposite for kids raised in loose households because Diego is one of the straightest, most self-disciplined people I’ve ever known.”

Except lately. Except ever since The Gate disappeared. Now he was all over the place and it was affecting his magic.

Mom gave me one of her ‘I find myself believing you but still have my doubts’ looks.

“Diego has worries of his own right now,” I said. “His mentor and his brother are missing. But later, after they’re found, have us over to dinner. I think you’ll change your mind once you get to know him.”

She considered a moment before speaking. “All right. We’ll meet him, but I’m not guaranteeing either your father or I will like him.”

She said that, but her tone was lighter and more open now. Another thing I liked about my mother—she was willing to change her mind as new facts emerged. My parents were protective, but neither of them was rigid.

I smiled, pleased. “I think you will. He’s rather charming, actually.”

As if on cue, my phone rang. I glanced at the screen and then at my mother. “I need to take this. I’m going to step outside.”

Out in the front yard, I thumbed the phone to accept the call.

“Hey, Dee,” I said. “Any news on The Gate and Gil? What did Jack want?”

His voice rumbled in my ear. “No news. What Jack wanted was to whisk me off to an MP station where I had a nice grilling from his boss regarding what I knew about the disappearances, and why hadn’t I come to them immediately? They also wanted to know all about what you and I knew about the dead man at Alpine Village.”

“Did you tell them nothing more than what we told the council and what we told Jack, which is exactly what we do know?”

“Yeah, I did. Jack’s boss, Macintosh or McKinney or something Irish-sounding, didn’t seem inclined to believe that or leave things there. He wants to talk to you.”

I nodded and then realized, of course, Dee couldn’t see that. “That’s fine, but again, we already told the council. Jack and two of his colleagues were there at the time. Jack and that other man were at Alpine Village. There’s nothing new to say.” I sighed. “When?”

“Tomorrow.” He paused. “How’s Chas?”

“As good as he can be, given that some bikers beat him up. Mom did her healer thing and patched him up. Mom’s patients tend to heal remarkably quickly. She gave him a sedative tea. He’s upstairs in one of the guest rooms, sleeping.”

“Can you come home?” Dee said. “I’m feeling stuck. I need your brains.” He paused. “And I miss you.”

I chuckled low. “We’ve only been apart a few hours.”

“Oh yeah. Right. Hanging out with the magic police makes time drag. I could have sworn it had been days.”

I smiled to myself. “There’s no reason for me to stay here. I can Lyft home.”

“I’ll come get you,” he said.

I considered it, but Mom and I had agreed on a proper dinner at the house as the time and place for them to meet. I didn’t think having him drive up and whisk me away would win any points with her.

“It’s faster if I get a ride. I’ll meet you at your house.” I had a thought. “What about Maurice? Could his troops help look for The Gate and Gil? Don’t they have a network of sorts?”

“Great minds,” Dee said. “I’d been thinking the same thing.”

Chapter Eleven

Maurice the rat lived in a patch of greenery by the tennis courts behind the Hermosa Beach Community Center. Dee had gone out before I arrived and purchased a dozen brownies to take as an offering. One never arrived empty-handed to ask Maurice for help, and sweets were his preferred method of payment.

Growing up, my mother had shape shifters as patients, but Maurice was the first and only magical talking rat I’d met. He was also an expert on metals and a font of general magical knowledge. If you needed some strange magical beast from this world, or another, named, Maurice was your guy. If you found yourself in trouble, Maurice and his crew might mysteriously show up to help. He could be direct to the point of rudeness, but I’d grown fond of him.

We pulled into the parking lot, drove down to the back and parked. I’d been holding the tray of brownies on my lap but handed them off to Dee. Maurice was already waiting on the asphalt by the time we’d exited the car.

“Oh,” he said, eyeing us. “An entire tray. You must have a pretty big question to ask or be in need of a huge favor.”

“Both.” Dee sank down over his ankles and undid the packaging.

Maurice whistled, and half a dozen young rats ran from the greenery. Maurice chattered in rat-talk. One rat eased a brownie from the package and dropped it in front of Maurice. Then that rat and the others worked together to drag the tin back to their home.

Maurice bent down and nibbled at the brownie. He looked up at us. “Not bad, but her homemade are better.”

“Sorry,” Dee said. “There wasn’t time.”

The rat twitched his whiskers. “Frankly, Diego, I’m surprised it took you this long to come to me. Everyone in town knows The Gate and your brother are missing.”

Dee flinched at the words. I saw it. Maurice saw it.

Before her death, Sudie Wakanabe’s bookshop on Pier Avenue had been a hub for community news. Since then, Maurice seemed to have fallen into the role of information central, at least in the South Bay.

The rat nibbled on another crumb of brownie before speaking again. “You’ve already been to Merlin Tattoo, I assume. And presumably upstairs to the apartments.”

Dee nodded.

“Did you give whatever you took from The Gate’s house to Oona to examine?” Maurice asked.

Dee shook his head, not at all surprised Maurice would assume he’d pocketed something.

The rat’s ears flicked, and his whiskers twitched. “Oh, for all the gods’ sakes, Diego. She’s a psychic. Let her give it a feel, see what she picks up.”

“I’m not very good with objects,” I said.

But Dee had already dug in his pocket and pulled free, not only the ring from the apartment, but The Gate’s necklace that we’d found outside the warehouse. He held them out to me.

“The ring probably won’t give you anything,” Dee said. “It’s tied to The Gate as much as your tattoo is bound to you. It’s useless to anyone else. The necklace isn’t as tightly bound.”

I took both objects gingerly.

The ring felt like any other ring in my hand, but power radiated from the silver star. It grew warm against my skin. In my head, I heard The Gate muttering Diego’s name, calling the younger wizard to him. In the background someone screamed.

Pictures flitted through my mind. The tattoo shop. Men in black with balaclavas hiding their faces. The warehouse on Alaska Avenue. A dark room I couldn’t identify. A full moon with clouds scudding across its face. The Gate removing the necklace and leaving it outside the warehouse in a flash moment when no one else was looking.

The visions and sounds faded. I handed the ring and the necklace back and told Dee and Maurice what I’d seen and heard.

“It isn’t necessarily Gil screaming,” I said quickly when Dee’s face grew tight and his hands curled into fists. “The images that don’t mean something specific could be anything. A dark room could be a real place or could mean we feel in the dark about finding the men. Not everything is literal in a vision. The screams could mean our frustration just as easily as they could mean someone’s in trouble or pain.”

Dee let out a shaky breath. His hands stayed clenched.

Maurice had stayed quiet, which wasn’t like him. The rat usually had something to say about everything.

“There’s a rumor going around,” Maurice said finally, his tail twitching. “A sacrifice is planned for the Vulture Moon.”

Dee’s gaze snapped to the rat.

“What’s the Vulture Moon?” I asked.

“Folklore.” Dee’s voice was harsh and cold. Not his usual tone at all.

“The Vulture Moon,” Maurice said matter-of-factly, “is the full moon before the autumn equinox. In the old days, practitioners of the black arts made sacrifices and offerings under the Vulture Moon to grow their power.”

Dee shook his head. “That’s just stories. Like witches flying on broomsticks.” He glared at Maurice. “When is the last time you heard of a sacrifice actually being made under the Vulture Moon?”

The rat scratched at his ear. “A human sacrifice? Not in my lifetime, but in the scheme of things, that isn’t very long. Even if there haven’t been sacrifices in your lifetime, Diego, or in The Gate’s lifetime, that’s nothing over the stretch that magic has been in the world.”

My nerves jangled. “Human sacrifices?”

“We’re not talking flowers and fruits on an altar,” Maurice said. “It’s said that if you sacrifice a wizard under the Vulture Moon, you get his power added to your own. Evil wants all the power and doesn’t care how it’s gathered.”

I raked my fingers through my hair. No wonder Dee wanted to discount the rumors. The Gate was a powerful wizard. If someone wanted that power for himself—

Maurice twitched his tail and said, “Tell me about these deaths going around, magicals and ordins falling over dead for no reason. How close is anyone at figuring it out and stopping it?”

“Not close at all,” Dee said.

Maurice’s whiskers twitched nervously.

“That’s not good,” the rat said. “That’s not good at all. The ordins are saying it’s an unknown virus. They’re calling it a plague, which is overdoing it for only five dead, don’t you think? We rats always get blamed for carrying viruses and spreading plagues. Humans always want someone to blame.” He trained his gaze on us. “You need to sort this out before the ordins come after us with poisons. You know they will. Your species panics so easily.”

“There’s something else strange about these deaths,” Dee said, letting the insult to humanity go by, “beyond that there doesn’t seem to be any reason for them. Oona feels the dead aren’t moving on. That the ghosts are stuck here, like they’re caught on magical flypaper. Not only can’t they move on, they can’t move at all. Each one seems bound to the place where he or she died.”

“Ghosts hang around where they died often enough,” Maurice said.

“Oona says it’s not their choice.”

I hardly listened to what they were saying. Two words rang repeatedly in my mind: human sacrifice

∞∞∞

Our next stop was The Bean Pot, to meet Jack and share any updates we might have. He’d again taken a table in the back as far away from other patrons as he could.

“You hungry” Dee said.

I shook my head. How could I eat with Maurice’s news running ragged in my head? Dee ordered a coffee for me and a coffee and muffin for himself. He was very calm for a man who’d just been told that someone he loved as a second father and his own brother might be human sacrifices. Sometimes Dee’s self-control and ability to compartmentalize gave me the willies, but right now I was happy to see him regain some of it. Maybe he’d realized what I had—his rushing around like a headless chicken was affecting his ability to do magic. Whatever the reason, I was glad for it. I’d held The Gate’s power objects in my hands. I knew The Gate believed himself to be in great danger. I’d checked my phone while Dee had ordered our drinks and food. The next full moon, the Vulture Moon, was three days from now.

“Anything?” Jack said without so much as a hello when we sat at his table.

Dee took the lid off his coffee to let it cool. “One small, maybe unrelated thing. Have you heard any rumors tied to the upcoming Vulture Moon?”

My gaze flickered to him. So, maybe Dee did think there was something in the rumor.

Jack shrugged. “This time of year, there’s always some rumor floating around about what terrible things will happen the night of the Vulture Moon. Nothing ever comes of it.”

“What are the rumors this year?” I asked. “Are they the usual ones, or something different?”

Jack shot me an appraising look. “What have you heard?”

He’d evaded my question and thrown it back on me. Which probably meant he’d heard something that bothered him but didn’t want to speak first.

I glanced at Dee, unsure if he wanted me to repeat what the rat had said. He gave me an almost imperceptible nod.

“Maurice says there are rumors of a human sacrifice planned for the full moon,” I said as calmly as I could manage. I waited for Jack to respond.

I waited a long moment. The policeman didn’t so much as blink, much less speak.

I knew this trick—stay quiet, wait it out until the other person spills more information just to fill the silence. Jack, I realized, was wearing his MP hat, so to speak. He was here more as a cop than as Dee’s friend.

“Your turn,” I said.

Jack picked up a spoon and stirred his coffee.

“The sacrifice rumor is going around.” He looked at Dee. “I can’t avoid putting that together with The Gate and Gil disappearing.”

Dee stiffened. “Putting the two things together, how?”

Jack’s gaze on Dee’s face was steady. “A couple of possibilities. One, The Gate is planning to make the sacrifice, possibly of Gil. He’s a vain man. If he felt his power slipping—” Jack shrugged. “Two, someone else is going to do it with The Gate and/or Gil as his offering.”

The tension and worry pouring off Dee made my stomach churn. He kept his voice even. “Which do you think is more likely?”

“I don’t have a favorite theory. Both seem equally possible to me.”

The burst of anger blowing off Dee was enough to make me physically move my chair back to avoid it, but he only nodded, as if considering the two things equally himself.

Maybe I picked something up from Jack’s subconscious. Maybe the idea came to me on its own, but I knew I was right before I said the words.

“The stuck ghosts have something to do with this too. The same person or people are involved. The murders and The Gate’s and Gil’s disappearances are tied together. The same mind is behind it all.”

The two men turned their heads to look at me. I reached gently into the MP’s mind. Jack immediately shot me a look that said he’d felt me there and he didn’t like it. The magical were extra sensitive to my probing. It was nearly impossible to get in and out of their minds without them knowing, but I’d caught something in his subconscious—a fear that I was right, and the rumor and the deaths were intertwined.

Something else burst into my mind.

“What does Hugo Bernard have to do with it?”

“What?” Dee said.

I focused on Jack. “Hugo Bernard. How is the council member tied in with the disappearances?”

“I don’t know that he is,” Jack said, sounding truly perplexed at the suggestion. “If he is, you tell me how.”

“He hates The Gate,” I said, trying to sort through my feelings. “He doesn’t like Diego, though he doesn’t have much of a reason for that.” I rubbed my eyes and then turned my attention back to Jack. “Diego’s told me why he thinks Hugo doesn’t like him. You tell me why you think it is.”

Jack blinked. He was used to Dee doing most of the talking, and here I was practically interrogating him. I didn’t care. I had to know the answers to try to make any kind of sense of what was going on.

“Well,” he said, “the councilman is resentful that Diego is a full wizard at his age. He’d deny it, but it’s true. Hugo doesn’t like that Diego has taken on an apprentice—you—his girlfriend. It’s mixing things that should stay separate as far as Councilman Bernard is concerned. Don’t be surprised if you find him looking over your shoulders. Any little thing you do outside of the rules—either of you—he’s going to have your asses and enjoy it.”

I let the words percolate through me, feeling for the truth in them. And considering the word apprentice. I hadn’t thought of myself that way. I saw it more as Dee had some skills I didn’t, and he taught them to me when he thought something would be useful or I asked to learn to do a particular thing. I’d taught him to follow a signature, the unique frequency every person had unto themselves. That didn’t make him my apprentice, and I didn’t want to be his. It was much too unequal a relationship for my liking. But I didn’t want to get Dee in trouble either. We’d need to discuss this at some point, I supposed.

“No,” I said, coming back to Hugo’s dislike for Dee. “That’s not it. First off, it’s The Gate that Hugo Bernard is angry with. His wife ran to The Gate because he was the stronger wizard. That has nothing to do with Diego.”

Jack tilted his head. “Doesn’t it? Think about it. Hugo lost more than his wife.”

“His children,” I said as it became blazingly clear. “Diego and Gil are like The Gate’s sons. Sons he got to keep while Hugo lost his children. And somehow that’s Diego’s fault. For what? For the respect and love he has for Gate? That’s pretty twisted resentment.”

Jack was only a decade or so older than me, but his face suddenly looked ancient and world-weary.

“Magic doesn’t make us less human,” he said. “It might make us more so.”

Chapter Twelve

Night had fully fallen by the time we left Jack nursing his coffee and probably contemplating the new puzzles we’d given him: were the mysterious deaths and the disappearances connected? If so, how and why? Was someone truly planning a human sacrifice beneath the Vulture Moon?

“Your place or mine?” Dee said as we got into his car.

“Mine—to drop me off. I need to call and see how Chas is doing, and I’m pretty sure my mother will want me to come over, even though it’s getting late.” I touched his arm. “I’d much rather spend the night with you.”

“There are things we should talk about,” he said.

God knew that was right. Things we’d learned—things we’d said or had been said to us. Yeah, we needed to talk. “Okay. Let’s go to my house. I’ll call my mom. If I don’t need to go over, we’ll have time to ourselves.”

I live a fair distance down from the Pier Avenue promenade, hub of most of Hermosa’s nightlife with its many bars and restaurants. Things must have been hopping in downtown tonight because we had to drive almost to the next city before we found a place to park.

We were almost to my house when the veil dropped over us. I felt it like a sudden wet shimmer in the air. Dee cursed under his breath, pushed lightly at my back and said, “Run.”

I leaned forward and crouched slightly, ready for us to try to dash free of the veil that hid us from anyone walking or driving by.

But Dee stood his ground.

I wasn’t going without him. I straightened up and stood beside him.

A tall man, six and a half feet at least, with dark hair and eyes, wearing a long, black robe materialized before us. I heard the word sorcerer in Dee’s mind and felt the twinge of fear and worry that shot through him.

“Wizard,” the sorcerer said. “The men you seek are dead. Pursue this quest no more.”

Dee seemed to ignore what the sorcerer said. “We saw your handiwork at Alpine Village, Halvorsen. You do like to play with fire, don’t you? What had that ordin ever done to you that he deserved that?”

Halvorsen glowered at Dee. “Don’t fuck with me, Wizard, unless you’re anxious to feel my fire on your flesh. The men you’re seeking are dead. Give up the hunt.”

Dee cocked his head slightly. “Did you conjure up the car as well? Not much of a spell. Oona here broke it and, frankly, she’s not all that good at the craft.”

My heart pounded. I couldn’t fathom why Dee would antagonize this sorcerer, especially if Halvorsen had indeed killed that poor man.

The sorcerer turned to me. Anger burned in his eyes, but his voice was almost conversational. “Psychic, reach out and test if my words be true.”

Dee tsked. “Test if my words be true? What century do you think this is, anyway?”

“Give me The Gate’s charm,” I whispered to him.

He stared at me for the briefest moment, then reached into his pocket and handed me the silver star on its silver chain. I closed my hand around it and felt for the man it belonged to.

When I’d held it before, I’d heard The Gate calling Diego’s name and seen disconnected images. Now I heard, saw, and felt—

Absolutely nothing.

Chapter Thirteen

The air shimmered. A cold wind chilled my skin. Halvorsen was gone, taking the veil with him.

A pasty-skinned couple in their forties, I guessed, riding by on rented bicycles did double takes when Dee and I suddenly became visible. They swerved slightly to avoid us but kept peddling. I didn’t know where the obvious tourists were from, but maybe nothing that happened in California could surprise them.

My nerves were still jangling from the nothing I’d felt from The Gate’s power object. When we got to my house, I fumbled with the key to my front door.

“I told you, you should bespell that door,” Dee said.

He knew I hadn’t felt anything from the necklace, knew it could mean The Gate was dead, and still he made light of things. I wasn’t sure what that said about him. Most likely that he didn’t want to think too much about the possibility of his mentor’s death, even though he’d already considered it himself.

I fitted the key in the lock and opened the front door. Dee followed me into the parlor and took his usual spot on the sofa. I sat down next to him.

“What was all that antagonism with Halvorsen about?”

If he wasn’t ready to talk about The Gate, that was okay with me.

Dee pushed his fingers through his hair. “Thomas Halvorsen is almost as stupid as he is cruel. I was hoping to rile him enough for us to learn something useful. It didn’t work out that way.” He got up and headed down the hall toward the kitchen.

I started to say something about how maybe pissing off someone who liked to play with fire wasn’t the best idea, but bit back the words. I had to trust that Dee knew what he was doing, even when it seemed what he was doing was completely crazy.

The sound of the fridge door opening and closing probably meant Dee was getting something to drink and would take a chair at the kitchen table. I stayed in the parlor and dialed my mom.

“How’s Chas doing?” I said once we’d finished greetings.

“He’s feeling better,” she said. “No infections have set in. He wants to go home.”

“Is that a good idea?”

“No,” my mother said firmly. “It’s a very bad idea. There’s nothing to say that the men who beat him won’t return. He needs rest and someone to make sure he gets it. I’d keep him here, but I’m on rotation at the hospital for the next twenty-four hours, and your father’s still in Louisiana on a build.”

I grimaced into the silence. I knew what my mother hoped to hear me say.

“He could stay here, I guess.”

Chas staying at my house might not be the very last thing in the world that I wanted, but it was definitely on the short list. Unfortunately, my mother was right—Chas could be in physical danger if he went home, and I knew for certain he wouldn’t be smart and take it easy. It wasn’t in his nature.

It wasn’t like my mother to impose, but I think she felt protective of my ne’er-do-well cousin. The healer in her couldn’t help but want to keep everyone in her sphere safe and well. It was no wonder she didn’t like the idea of my being with Dee—both her mother and healer sides screaming that doing so might put me in danger. If she knew about things we’d already survived together she’d go crazy.

“Staying with you would be a good solution for him,” my mother said. “Thank you.”

It struck me that in asking me to take Chas in, she was saying in a roundabout way that she trusted my judgment. That made me smile.

I lost my smile thinking that having Chas here meant Dee and I wouldn’t get any time alone together, something it felt like we both needed now.

“Pack him up and call Lyft or Uber to bring him here.”

I looked over and saw Dee standing in the doorway, listening. I shrugged and turned my palms up in a gesture of ‘What else can I do?’ He nodded and turned, heading back to the kitchen.

I rung off with my mother and joined Dee in the kitchen. He’d put two glasses of water out; one for him and one for me

“I’m sorry,” I said, taking a chair. “But he’s family.”

Dee nodded. “It’s the right thing to do.” His eyes clouded. “You didn’t feel The Gate when you held the charm. I saw it in your face.”

I drew in a breath before answering. “No, I didn’t feel him. But I’ve been thinking, and it could have been a trick. We were inside the sorcerer’s veil. What’s to say he didn’t somehow block anything coming through to me? It was his suggestion that I look for Gate and Gil. Would he do that without making sure I wouldn’t feel them as alive? Maybe get a feel for the place they were being held?”

“If Halvorsen pulled that off,” Dee said. “He’s grown a lot more powerful since the last time I saw him. I’ve tried blocking your psychic reach. It’s hard to do.”

“Really?” I said, surprised.

He nodded. “When we first knew each other, and I didn’t want you prowling around in my mind, I was never completely successful.” He huffed out a breath. “If Halvorsen could block you when he wasn’t really there—”

I blinked at his words. “What do you mean, wasn’t really there?”

“What we saw,” he said, “was a fetch, an illusion. I wouldn’t have been so cavalier with my words if Thomas Halvorsen were really standing in front of us. Did you notice how the fetch didn’t answer the direct questions about why he’d killed the man at Alpine Village, or if he’d been the one to conjure the car illusion? I don’t think Halvorsen made the fetch. If he had, the fetch would have had all of Halverson’s memories and answered one way or the other. I think someone else made it and wants us to think Halverson did.”

“Someone you know?” I said.

“Maybe. Or maybe it took more than one person to set the illusion and block you for a length of time.” He nodded to himself. “That makes sense. I don’t think even The Gate could block you by himself for more than a few seconds at a time

. Your abilities are titanic.”

He said it so casually that I was taken aback. I didn’t have anything to compare my psychic abilities against, but Dee seemed to have some idea and he’d rated me high on the scale. Another time I might have taken a moment to be proud and pleased. Now all I could think about was figuring out how to find The Gate and Gil.

“When I saw The Gate and Gil be abducted from the shop, there were half a dozen people there.”

He frowned. “We’re back to what Brittany Keller’s mother said—that Brittany was involved with a coven and dark magic.” He looked at me. “You were right when you asked what a group of wizards was called. It’s a group we’re looking for. A group that’s combined their magic together for massive power.”

“You told me a group of wizards was called an argument, because no two could ever agree on anything. It seems unlikely they’d come together with a common purpose.”

“It would take a strong leader,” Dee said, “and a prize worth winning. I can’t think of anyone other than The Gate with the power and personality to pull it off.”

My eyes widened. “You think The Gate engineered his own kidnapping? And Gil’s? Why?”

Dee tapped his fingers against the water glass on the table in front of him. “I don’t know, but if he did he’d have a good, well-thought-out reason.”

I swallowed hard, not wanting to verbalize what I was thinking. It had to be said though. “That would mean The Gate is behind the murders. I’m sure it’s all tied up together.”

He closed his eyes a moment and sighed. “I hope not. I can’t imagine The Gate willfully causing anyone’s death, but it is starting to seem that way.”

I thought about what Maurice had said about the sacrifice rumors, and Jack’s comment about The Gate’s vanity and what he might be willing to do to hold onto his power. A shiver trembled across my shoulders.

I decided to change the subject. “You were The Gate’s apprentice.”

“Yeah?” he said, clearly wondering why I’d bring this up now.

“Do you think of me as your apprentice?”

He looked startled by the question. “No. We’re partners. We learn from each other.” His brow furrowed. “Do you want to be my formal apprentice? Because I’d have to get certified and—”

I cut him off. “No. I’m happy the way things are. But I worry—”

A knock at the front door interrupted my words. I went to the door and opened it for Chas.

His eyes were puffy and the bruising on his face had deepened to a dark purple. He stood awkwardly on the porch and moved gingerly when I stepped aside to let him in. Behind him, I saw the waxing moon. It would be full soon. The Vulture Moon.

I led Chas into the parlor and sat beside him on the sofa.

“How are you feeling? I said.

“About how I look. Thanks for taking me in. I couldn’t bear to be at Aunt Trina’s a moment longer. I mean, she’s great and she fixed me up, but, you know, she’s kind of judgmental.”

I smiled. “Mom doesn’t hide her thoughts. She says exactly what she thinks.”

I heard Dee’s footsteps in the hall. He reached the door to the parlor and looked in.

“Hey, Chas,” he said, and then to me, “It’s late. I’m going home.”

I felt Chas’ disappointment that my wizard boyfriend was leaving. That’s how Chas thought of Dee—my wizard boyfriend, an object of curiosity. I closed my eyes a moment, stuffing down the annoyance I felt toward my cousin.

I got up and walked Dee to the door. I kissed his cheek and whispered, “The Gate and Gil are alive. I feel it.” I didn’t tell him I felt that they would stay alive until the full moon, but only one would survive after that. I couldn’t feel which of them it would be. Instead I said, “I’ll call you later.”

Dee kissed my forehead, and then he was gone.

Chas was standing, again idly looking at the original blueprints for my house, which were framed and hung on the wall. He turned when I walked back into the parlor.

“I’m sorry Diego left,” he said. “I’ve never known a wizard before. Do you think he could teach me a few tricks?”

“That’s not a good idea,” I said, settling back on the sofa. “Wizards are supposed to keep their abilities confined to the magical world. Diego got in a bit of trouble for the illusions he conjured up to scare off your ex. All it accomplished was to get you beat up.”

Chas arched an eyebrow. “I saw you doing a few things, too.”

Except that I hadn’t. All the magic had been Dee’s. Chas was either talking through his hat or he’d imagined things.

“I’m a psychic. The last spell-caster in the family was Cassie.”

Chas’s face clouded. I’d noticed this before. He always seemed to darken at the mention of his great-grandfather’s sister. I’d never asked him why. The resentment rolling off him now was enough to make a small ache begin behind my eyes.

“What is it about Cassie that pisses you off so much?” I said, deciding to dive right at the heart of things.

He paced toward me. “The glorious Cassie Goodlight? Savior of my great-grandfather, Jimmy Goodlight? Oh, nothing.”

He really was annoying.

“What’s with the attitude?”

“Sorry,” Chas said, and sounded like he meant it. “It’s sort of been handed down to me from my dad, I guess. How Cassie’s side of the family is special, and our side isn’t.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. I didn’t know my cousin Stephen, Chas’ father, very well. He never seemed interested in knowing my parents or me. We were Christmas-card relatives and that was about it, though his wife was close with my mom. Families. Who could explain them?

“I’ve always known you could read people,” Chas said. “Know things about them. I never bothered lying to you because I knew you already had the truth. So maybe you were a little bit psychic or maybe you just paid closer attention than I did. Either way, you didn’t seem all that special.”

Chas paled as he realized what he’d said wasn’t very nice. He didn’t apologize though. He just plunged on.

“Imagine how I felt when I saw Diego doing those things,” he said. “Real magic. It pissed me off that maybe the stories about magic in the world were true, since that meant the family lore about magic people in your family, but not in mine, were probably true, too. But at the same time, the magic was so cool, even if it did bring those damn bikers down on me.” He gently touched his ribs and winced.

I didn’t know what to say. My mother’s healing magic and my psychic ability were so much a part of my life that I never considered what it might be like not to be this way. As much as I wished I could filter out unwanted emotional bombardments, I didn’t want to not have my talent. And I didn’t want to not know the magic I’d learned from Dee.

I put my hand on his knee and pulled it back when he winced. I must have touched an injury.

“We get the gifts we get,” I said. “Your side of the family is better looking than mine.”

Chas smiled slightly. “That’s true.”

I stifled the urge to roll my eyes. It was true, so I let it go.

“Look, Chas, it’s been a long day and I need to get some sleep. I’ll show you where the guest room is.”

Chapter Fourteen

I rang Dee in the morning as soon as I’d shaken the sleep from my brain. He didn’t answer. It was early. He could be in the shower or have stepped outside without his phone. The day was chilly. I rolled over and pulled the covers closer around me.

“Oona?” Chas called from his room across the hall. “You up?”

I groaned. I’d already set my plan for the day—find The Gate and Gil. I’d had strong images holding Gate’s charm a few days ago. I was convinced now that my feeling nothing when I held it yesterday was part of a spell. I wanted to hook up with Dee and try again today—see what I could pick up. I did not want to have to worry about Chas through any of it.

I sighed and called, “I’m up. Give me a few minutes to get dressed. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

I tried Dee’s cell again. It rang four times and went to voice mail.

“Hey, call me when you get this,” I said, and hung up.

I dressed and went downstairs. Chas was already in the kitchen, peering into the opened refrigerator.

“You only have two eggs,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said, still chasing sleep from my brain. “Didn’t know I was going to have a houseguest.”

“What?” Chas said, throwing one hand over his heart in mock horror. “You don’t feed Diego breakfast? What kind of girlfriend are you?”

I sat at the table. “The kind who’s been too busy to get to the store.”

Chas looked chastened as he plopped a mug of microwave-heated tea in front of me. He brought me the ceramic honey jar with a little clay bear on the lid and a bottle of almond milk.

“You’re in a better mood this morning,” I said. “Sorry I snapped at you.”

He didn’t look any better though. The bruises on his face were developing a yellow-green frame around dark purple centers. Since my mother’s powers usually accelerated a person’s healing, Chas must have been hurt more than I’d originally thought.

“I slept like a stone,” he said cheerfully. “That bed is very comfortable.”

Don’t get too comfortable, I thought. You’re out of here as soon as possible.

What I said was, “I’m glad.”

The microwave dinged, and Chas withdrew a second mug from it. He brought the mug with him when he sat across from me at the table.

“So, what are we up to today?” he said.

This, I thought, is exactly why I don’t like people in my house. They’re demanding and draining.

“You are up for nothing but rest,” I said. “I’m probably going out for a while, but I shouldn’t be gone long.”

“Can I go with you?”

I shook my head. “It’s business.”

“How am I supposed to stay here all day when there’s no food in your house?”

I counted to five in my head, but my voice still came out sharp. “Call Uber eats or something. Figure it out.”

Chas’ face fell. “Sorry, Oona. I was only kidding about the food. Well, half-kidding.”

I sighed. He did have part of a point. I looked down at the table. I’d have to leave the house wards off if he was going to have food delivered. After the illusory sorcerer last night confronting us practically on my doorstep, that wasn’t something I wanted to do. But I couldn’t have Chas tagging along with Dee and me all day.

My voice softened. “I’m going upstairs to make a call. There’s oatmeal in the pantry. Feel free to make some for yourself.”

I trotted up the stairs, anxious to get away from Chas and have a moment to myself. I sat on the bed and dialed Dee’s number. Still no answer.

I tried Danyon and Peet.

“Hey, it’s Oona,” I said when Terry, the receptionist, answered. “Has Diego been in this morning?”

“He was for a few minutes. Popped in, talked to Juliana and Tyron for a moment, and then left. Juliana is out, but Tyron is here. Do you want to talk to him?”

“Please,” I said.

Tyron came on the line with a hearty, “Oona! How are you?”

“I’m good,” I said, picturing the big redhead in his oversized black leather executive chair. “I’m looking for Diego. He isn’t answering his phone.”

“He’s pretty distracted about this old teacher of his who’s disappeared,” Tyron said. “He probably walked off and forgot it or something.”

That was possible. It wasn’t likely, given how anal Dee was about his tools of the trade, but it was possible.

“Listen,” Tyron said. “I’m going to tell you the same thing I told him. Forget about Brittany Keller for a few days. Go find this Gate person and both of you come back with your heads in the game, eh? Right now, you’re both useless to me.”

For a moment I thought about reminding him that I was a consultant, he was my client not my boss, and I could work or not work as I choose, but I didn’t. Tyron was a Cadbury egg kind of guy—hard shell outside and all gooey inside—and I liked him.

I rung off and sat on my bed. I knew Dee’s signature so well I was sure I could track him no matter where he was. All I had to do was go to his house and follow where his signature led from there. I pulled on a pair of hiking boots, in case following him led me where tennis shoes wouldn’t be the best choice and went back downstairs.

Chas was staring down into a pot on the stove, stirring whatever was in it—presumably oatmeal—without much enthusiasm.

“I’m going out for a while,” I said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be. Just stay in the house and take it easy, all right?”

“Yes, Mother,” he said, but grinned.

I grabbed my purse and my keys, backed my car out of the garage, and headed to Dee’s. On the way I tried his cell again. Still no answer.

I pulled into Dee’s driveway and parked. I wished I could get to his gazing bowls and spell-casting books, but I didn’t know the words to take down the exquisitely strong wards on his wizard’s lair. Poring through his book collection looking for the right spells would take forever anyway. My only option was to physically chase him down.

It took only seconds to pick up his signature and feel which way he’d most recently gone. I backed out again and followed, trying to pick up his thoughts as well, but couldn’t. Either he was too far away or—

I didn’t want to think about or. There wasn’t a good or.

I followed Dee’s signature to the Danyon and Peet office and then back into Torrance, following almost the same streets he and I had taken when we’d gone looking for Gil and The Gate. I wasn’t all that surprised when I wound up back on Alaska Avenue and getting a strong vibe from the same warehouse. The difference now was it was day and the street was parked up with cars. I could see people going in and out of various businesses and the For Lease sign on the warehouse that I hadn’t noticed before.

I found a place to park and walked back to the building. The parking lot beside it held cars, but I was pretty sure they didn’t belong to anyone inside the red brick building with the big metal rollup door around back.

There were people inside though. I felt them, felt that there was something off about them, but I couldn’t tell what. I felt the magic radiating from the building like heat on a hot day. My heart pounded. I’d always been with Dee before in situations like this, always knew he had my back. Even in the Brume when the cloud-beast had whirled Dee away and I thought I’d lost him, he was still somehow there, still watching out and offering protection. Now it was just me.

“Focus,” I muttered to myself.

I reached out with my senses, looking for Dee in the warehouse but didn’t feel him. I was sure his signature led to this building and didn’t lead away again. He had come here and hadn’t left. Why couldn’t I feel him? Why couldn’t I slip into his mind?

I took a deep breath and headed down the side of the building on high alert for any sound or movement. A car alarm screamed across the street and I almost jumped out of my skin. I stood as still as a shadow, waiting for my heartbeat and blood pressure to come back down to normal. Then I went the rest of the way to the warehouse’s back.

The same large trash containers were there as last time. I lifted the lids one after another as quietly as I could, held my breath and looked inside. Nothing but a thin layer of paper trash and some pizza crusts at the bottom. That was a relief.

The big metal door was down. The small door that entered into the kitchen area was closed as well, but it had a small glass window in it. I snuck up and peeked in.

I counted four men in the kitchen, all of them young and all in long brown robes. Acolytes, I realized. Was this all about some sort of religious or cult thing? A leader and followers, I’d felt, and Dee had said. Many people joining together to make the magical strength needed. The energy and vibes pouring off the men was of anticipation. Of the full moon. The Vulture Moon. The sacrifice and the power it would unleash.

My heart pounded, and I could hardly breathe. I still couldn’t feel Dee inside the building, but I was sure he was there. I was pretty sure The Gate and Gil were in there, too, which meant a very strong veil had been thrown over them. I moved away from the door and leaned against a strip of red brick wall between the small door and the larger roll-up one.

There was really only one thing to do. I went to my car and called Jack.

Chapter Fifteen

“Are you driving right now?” Jack asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m sitting in my car, parked half a block down from the warehouse.”

And then I wasn’t. I was standing in the magic police station and Jack was coming down the hallway toward me with fast, determined steps. I’d been in the MP station twice and still had no idea exactly where it was. That’s what happens when you get beamed somewhere.

I’d asked Dee if he could beam places. He’d said even knowing the spell was seriously illegal and using the spell even once was almost a death-sentence offense. Imagining thieves, disgruntled lovers, and those with murderous intent having the ability to beam in and out of anywhere they pleased, especially if they were veiled, made the reasons clear.

Jack stopped a few feet in front of me. His face was tight. “My boss wants to hear what you have to say. “He turned and looked over his shoulder. “If you’ll come with me.”

The cold formality in his tone set my nerves jangling. I followed him back the way he’d come, down a long hall with pea-soup-green walls and cracked brown linoleum on the floor. You’d think they’d at least put a glamour on the place, make it look nice.

Irritation was growing in me. Time was ticking away. Meeting with Jack’s boss meant wasting important minutes that should be spent getting Dee out of the warehouse. The Gate and Gil were safe—safe-ish—until the full moon, but who knew what plans whoever had taken them had for Dee? I couldn’t bear to think about it.

Jack opened a door that looked like every other door on the hallway and motioned me inside a moderately sized office. A man who was probably shorter than me when standing now sat behind a gunmetal gray desk. Jack introduced his boss as Sean McGowan and then left the room.

“Ms. Goodlight,” McGowan said, motioning to a chair in front of his desk. “I understand you have some new information about the unexplained deaths of last week.”

I sat and then stared at him a moment. “No. I called Officer Schneider because I believe I know where The Gate and Gil Adair are being held. I believe Diego Adair is with them. They are in danger.”

McGowan steepled his fingers and looked at me over the tips. “Is this psychic knowledge?”

“No. Yes. Some of it was psychically gained and some from chasing leads. There’s a warehouse in Torrance. A location spell led Diego and me to it. No one was there the first time we went, but I went back today and saw several men in brown robes inside.”

McGowan continued gazing at me as if he had all week to ask questions. “And your theory about the ghosts, is that psychic knowledge?”

Frustration bubbled in me. “Yes. Could you send a squad to the warehouse? The Gate, Gil, and Diego don’t have much time. There’s something planned for tomorrow’s full moon.”

He inclined his head. “And what would that be?”

I hesitated. “A human sacrifice.”

McGowan’s eyebrows rose slightly, but otherwise his expression didn’t change. Then he smiled. “The Vulture Moon. There are often rumors of human sacrifice around the Moon, but it’s never played out. I don’t think your friends are in any danger.” He spread his hands flat on the metal desk. “Tell me about the ghosts. Jack says you believe they are stuck here somehow, unable to move on?”

I raked my fingers through my hair. “They’re being held here. Probably by the same sorcerer who abducted The Gate and Gil. The ghosts are part of this ritual he’s planning.”

“And you know this, how?”

I wanted to scream, but I held my voice steady. “Psychic knowledge.”

Something was very wrong here. I carefully tiptoed into McGowan’s mind.

A jolt of electricity flew through me, physically knocking me back in my chair.

McGowan narrowed his eyes. “You’re wasting your time and mine. Don’t try that again.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled to placate him. I’d only been in his mind a moment, but it was time enough to see that a part of him hoped Diego was with The Gate and Gil and that they all came to a bad end. He threw in wishing I’d share a similar fate. There was no way to go back a second time and try to discover exactly why, but I had my suspicions.

“I think,” I said slowly, “that Hugo Bernard is involved in some way.”

McGowan burst into genuine laughter.

“The law is very clear that no member of the magical community shall bring physical, mental, or magical harm to any other member. Council member Bernard may seethe with hatred for The Gate and others, but he would never even poke at the law, much less bend or break it. You need to look elsewhere to find the culprits.”

His last sentence caught my attention. My gaze snapped to his eyes, trying to read if he was sending me a message or just talking. Not Hugo Bernard. Not any member of the council. Look elsewhere. Look where?

“If you were on this hunt,” I said, “where would you begin looking?”

He steepled his fingers again. “I’m only interested in the unexplained deaths and, perhaps, these stuck ghosts of yours. We are searching every avenue to find the source.”

Heat boiled through me. “It’s all connected. If you’ll send some people to check this warehouse, you’ll find your answers.” I leaned forward. “Please. I know Diego, The Gate, and Gil are in danger. At least send someone to take a look.”

The moment I said it, I knew something was askew. All three were in danger, but the dangers weren’t all the same. I had no idea how they were different though. Damn my psychic ability for giving me partial information.

“I’m afraid we’re stretched rather thin right now,” McGowan said. “But I will give you some advice you’d be wise to follow. Stay away from this investigation. It’s none of your concern.”

None of my concern? The man I probably loved could be murdered tomorrow and it was none of my concern?

I cleared my throat and tried to keep my voice calm. “Thomas Halvorsen.”

McGowan’s gaze hardened. “What about him?”

“It’s likely he killed the man at Alpine Village, right?”

McGowan’s nod was slight.

“Halvorsen showed up near my house as a fetch. He said The Gate and Gil were dead and warned Diego and me to stop looking for them.”

“When was this?” McGowan said.

“Last night. Doesn’t that prove that the deaths and the disappearances are linked?”

“No,” McGowan said. “It doesn’t. Halverson may or may not have killed the man at Alpine Village, but that doesn’t mean he had anything to do with the other five deaths.”

But he did—I felt that strongly.

McGowan continued talking. “It especially proves nothing considering that Halvorsen was found dead two days ago. Sudden cardiac failure.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. How could Halverson’s fetch have been at my house last night if he was dead the day before? What we saw wasn’t a ghost, I was sure of that. So, what was it? And who made it?

Before I could ask any more questions, McGowan waved his hand and I found myself back on Alaska Avenue seated in my car. I clenched my fists to drive back my anger and frustration and tried to think. I didn’t have the kind of magic needed to go up against sorcerers powerful enough to hold Dee, The Gate, and Gil under their spell. I was a psychic with just enough spellcraft to get myself in trouble.

But I knew people.

∞∞∞

“Chas,” I called as soon as I’d stepped through the doorway into my house, once again lamenting having a houseguest. I wanted to get on with finding Dee and the others. Playing hostess wasn’t on my agenda, but I felt compelled to at least check on him and make sure he was mending properly.

“In here,” he said from the parlor.

I hung my purse on the peg in the foyer, strode into the parlor and sat next to him on the sofa. He’d found the stash of cookies I’d bought for Maurice. The empty bag sat on the coffee table next to a pizza box from Mickey’s Deli, also empty.

“I see your ordeal hasn’t hurt your appetite.”

He shrugged. “Stress eating.”

I wasn’t going to ask what stress he was under; I really didn’t want to hear about it. He told me anyway.

“I’m going crazy stuck here in your house. I can’t figure out how to work your TV and your computer is password protected. I feel more like a prisoner on a desert island than a guest.”

“You know, Chas,” I said, irritation plain in my voice, “having you here is a lot like babysitting a five-year-old. It’s not my job to entertain you. There are plenty of books around. You could try reading one.”

He didn’t seem fazed. “Where are you going next? I can see in your face that you’ve just stopped by and are planning to go out again.” He paused. “For that matter, where have you been all morning? At least tell me your adventures, so I can live vicariously.”

Chas might be irritating, but he wasn’t stupid. He was creative. And I really needed to talk to help me sort things out. It should be Dee I was talking to, but—

I told Chas everything, starting with the mysterious deaths, the ghosts that couldn’t move on, the disappearance of The Gate and Gil, and that now I couldn’t reach Diego and was deeply frightened about what might happen under the Vulture Moon.

“Wow, Oona.” His eyes were huge and staring. “I had no idea.” He swallowed hard. “I’m sorry for dragging you into my drama. Makes me and my little problems look silly.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “I’m glad we could help.”

He barely heard me; his mind was whirling on all that I’d told him. He jumped up and grabbed my hand. “Shit, Oona. We have to find Diego.”

I gently freed my hand from his. “I need to go see a friend who might be able to help with that.”

His eyes brightened. “Can I come? You’ve already told me everything. You might as well let me go with.”

I rubbed my chin, thinking. He had a point: I had told him everything. With Dee missing, There wasn’t any danger involved in the errand. But Chas was ordin. I hated that I felt that way—that he was ordin and shouldn’t be involved with magical things or beings. I’d thought I was a better person than that.

“You ate the cookies I was saving for him.”

Chas looked at the empty bag and hung his head in mock shame.

“All right. But for God’s sake, don’t act the fool when you meet Maurice. He’s a magic talking rat,” I said, to prepare him.

Chas’s eyes opened wide and he laughed. His laughter cut off when he saw my face.

“Seriously, Chas. Don’t embarrass me in front of Maurice, or anyone else for that matter.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, truly contrite. “But a magical talking rat? Really?”

I sighed. It wasn’t too long ago that much in the magical world was strange and weird to me. I wondered if I had embarrassed Diego in those days.

I lightly punched Chas’s shoulder. “Let’s go.”

On the way we stopped at a convenience store and picked up some Gummy Bears.

“Your rat friend has a sweet tooth?” Chas said.

I nodded but didn’t answer. My mind was on Dee. On getting him out of that warehouse. If I could just figure out how.

I pulled into the parking lot behind the Community Center, drove to the back and parked. I knew Chas had questions, but he kept his mouth closed. Small favors.

I grabbed the Gummy Bears and opened the car door. Usually Maurice would have ventured out to see what I’d brought him, but not today.

“Maurice,” I called softly. “Come meet my cousin, Chas. And I have some serious business I need to talk to you about.”

Maurice trotted out of the greenery and stood at my feet, looking up. His pink nose twitched.

“Gummy Bears?”

I nodded and opened the bag. I set it down near him then sat cross-legged on the asphalt. Chas sat next to me, a fool’s grin on his face. Maurice nodded to Chas, said, “Pleased to meet you,” and whistled. Three rats came from the greenery and hauled away the candy bag.

“You look grim,” Maurice said to me. “What’s happening?”

I gave him a quick rundown of my trip to the warehouse and my visit with the magic police. His eyes hardened, and his nose stopped twitching as I talked.

“I know you have an extensive rat network,” I said, wrapping up. “Is there a way you could send some of your rats to the warehouse to check if Diego and the others are really there?”

Maurice nodded. “Consider it done. In the meantime, I’d suggest you talk to the fairies. Their warriors are what you need if you want to stage an attack and rescue.”

Maurice’s mind had leapt ahead of my own. He was right, of course. If several sorcerers were involved in the abductions, the chances of my successfully mounting a rescue alone were slim. If I knew for certain where Dee and the others were, I could turn the information over to the magic police and let them get the men out. But my meeting with McGowan, and even Jack’s seeming hesitancy to help, didn’t give me a lot of faith in the MPs believing me and doing something about it.

If I was certain, I could tell Tyron and Juliana and maybe they’d work their ordin police contacts. Except that the ordin police would have no idea how to deal with magic they didn’t know existed.

I licked my lips. “How long until we know if Diego and the others are at the warehouse? And how do I meet with the fairies? I don’t personally know any.”

Maurice sat up on his hindquarters. His whiskers and nose twitched as if he smelled the answers on the air.

Maybe he did, because he said, “All three are at the warehouse, along with a dozen others. Gate and Diego are bespelled. His brother is there but not bespelled.” His nose twitched again. I thought he was accessing a psychic link with his brethren. “My rat in the warehouse says the magic there is very dark.”

My heart turned over in my chest. Plans formed in my mind. I discarded each one as unworkable.

“How do I contact the fairies?” I asked again.

Maurice shrugged his rat shoulders. “I don’t hang out with them myself. No one in my family does. Just go do some magic or something.” He turned and scampered a few feet away before turning back to me. “Hurry, Oona. I have a very bad feeling about this.”

Chapter Sixteen

Chas hadn’t said a word since we’d pulled into the Community Center parking lot and was still quiet as we drove toward my house. My mind was so taken up with worry about Dee and wondering how to find a fairy that I didn’t really register his long silence until I’d pressed the button to open my garage door. I pulled into the garage, shut off the car, and turned to him.

“You can talk now if you want,” I said.

Chas nodded dumbly. I waited.

He drew a deep breath and let it out before saying, “It’s not all fun and games, is it?”

“Magic? The work Diego and I do? No, it’s not.”

Chas nodded again. He opened the door on his side and got out. He stood next to the car a moment, shivered, and took a few steps toward the back door. He stopped, turned, and looked at me.

“Do you use a key for your door?”

I smiled without humor. “Yeah, I lock my doors. I lock the windows. And, except for this morning when you were here, I put up protective wards strong enough to pretty much guaranteed nothing evil can get in.”

Chas’s face looked so stricken, the vibe flowing off of him was so fearful that I touched his arm and said, “It’s not always scary and awful.”

He chuffed softly. “Glad to hear it.”

I took down the wards and unlocked the back door. He followed me into the mudroom and from there into the kitchen.

“Why do you do it?’ Chas asked as we settled at the kitchen table.

I’d met Diego at a murder scene. I’d known Brad Keel, the murdered man, and wanted to help find his killer. Juliana and Tyron had hired me to help with the case. After that, one thing led to another and now here I was.

“To find justice, I guess. To put things gone wrong back right.”

Chas nodded.

“Look,” I said, “I have to go find a fairy and I have no idea how to do that. If you want to come with me, you’re welcome to.”

His eyes shifted back and forth. “Are they dangerous?”

“Fairies? The one’s I’ve met were nice. I haven’t met any of their warriors though.”

Again, I wished I could get into Dee’s house and to his spell books. There was probably an easy way to call a fairy, but I had no idea what it was. I couldn’t call Jack and ask since I’d been told firmly by his boss to stay out of this case.

I drummed my fingers on the kitchen table, wondering how to find a fairy. Maurice’s words came back to me: Do some magic or something.

I had no magic to do in this situation, but I had my psychic abilities and I could feel for magic easily enough. One thing I’d learn, the magical were around all the time; the ordins just didn’t know it.

“I have an idea,” I said. “Grab your jacket. We’re going for a walk.”

We went out the front door to the Strand, the cement walkway between the row of expensive, ocean-facing houses and the beach. I turned left and walked toward Redondo Beach where the shore had a wilder, rockier terrain than the soft sands of Hermosa. My intuition said I was more likely to find a fairy there.

“You want to go on the pier?” Chas asked.

I nodded.

The Hermosa pier was garden variety and basic, a wide wooden finger stretching over the sand and water. The Redondo Beach pier a misshapen rectangle with shops, restaurants, and an arcade called the Fun Factory that was only open on weekends. Food scents mixed with the tang of saltwater and fish as we walked onto the pier. Fisherman lined two sides of the rectangle, their poles bobbing when they’d get a strike, buckets at their feet holding the day’s booty. Seagulls wheeled and called, hoping to snag some of a fisherman’s catch or at least a bite of bait. Night herons stood one-legged on the railings, sleeping while day-life went on around them. A brown pelican strutted around like it owned the place.

My fingers tingled, feeling magic rise from below. I peered over the railing to the water caressing the sea rocks. I couldn’t spot anyone, but I knew someone magical was there. Even if it wasn’t a fairy, it might be someone who could tell me how to contact them.

One of the spells I knew was a way to make myself known to other magical beings. There was no guarantee that just because I advertised my presence someone would come up and say hello, but it seemed like my best shot. I turned slightly away from Chas for privacy—weird, I know, but it seemed right—and muttered the spell.

I felt my body glow with a light I couldn’t see with normal human vision, but only with magical sight. Chas stood next to me, casually looking down at the ocean over the same railing I leaned on. If there was some visible, aural, or olfactory change that ordinary people could perceive, I was sure Chas would mention it. Hey, Oona! You’re glowing! Or God, Oona! What’s that smell? Something along those lines.

I stood as still as I could for several minutes, still chanting the spell in my head, in case that made a difference. Finally, I felt a small tug at my pant leg. I looked down and saw a tiny winged being—a fairy right out of a children’s story with delicate green dragonfly-like wings. I nodded to the fairy and, under my breath, greeted her and asked to talk.

The fairy tilted her head, and, in my mind, I heard her say, “Think and I will hear.”

A psychic fairy. That was good fortune. Though maybe all fairies were psychic. I had no way of knowing. I’d only today learned that Maurice communicated mind-to-mind with his extended rat pack.

I thought my request to her: to meet with a warrior leader and beg for the fairies to help me mount a rescue of abducted wizards.

The fairy flew up next to my ear and said in a spoken voice that tinkled like tiny bells, “Loose the ordin and go to the Ladies. My commander will meet you there and hear your plea.”

“Sorry,” I said to Chas. “I need—” I tilted my head toward the public restrooms.

The restroom was deserted when I walked in, all the stall doors ajar. I turned on the water at the sink and slowly washed my hands. A minute or so later a tall, muscular woman with pink hair strode in. She wore leopard-print leggings and a yellow T-shirt that hung past her hips.

“Here I am,” she said in a gravelly voice that completely fit her persona. “Talk.”

I turned to face her.

She peered at me. “You’re with that wizard, aren’t you? What’s his name? Adair?” Understanding blossomed in her eyes. “I heard The Gate and some other wizard got snatched. That’s what you’re here about, right?”

I quickly sketched out everything I knew about the abduction of The Gate and Gil and Dee’s disappearance. I told her the rats had confirmed that the three were in the warehouse in Torrance. I told her what I feared about the Vulture Moon.

“That’s tomorrow,” she said. “Not a lot of time. I’m assuming you want our help mounting a rescue.”

I liked this fairy woman. Liked that she grasped things quickly and seemed willing to help. I knew there would be a price, but if I could I would pay it.

“Can you help?” I said.

The tall fairy shrugged one strong shoulder and nodded. “I can pull together a squad for tonight. Darkness is best. Say, three a.m.?”

“Yes. I’ll be there.” I hesitated but had to ask, “What would you want in return?”

Her voice flattened and grew cold. “I want the wizard.”

My heart thudded. “Which one?”

“The dark one. The one willing to kill for power. A wizard like that is a blight that must be stamped out.”

“The sorcerer,” I said, needing to draw a clear line between practitioners of bright and dark magic.

She sneered. “Wizard. Sorcerer. Wizard turned sorcerer. I don’t care what you call him. He’s my price.”

Everything seemed to freeze inside me. What if The Gate was behind the abductions and did plan a human sacrifice to up his personal power? From what little I knew of him, I thought The Gate was capable of most anything. Was I about to promise Dee’s mentor to the fairies in payment for freeing him?

No matter who was behind it all, who was I to promise any human being to this fairy warrior? A warrior who didn’t seem to have anything good in mind for the human.

A human sorcerer who planned something horrible for Dee and people he loved.

“Well?” the fairy warrior said, her hands on her hips, her elbows akimbo. “Do we have a deal or don’t we?”

I swallowed hard. “We do.”

“Three a.m.,” the fairy woman said. “I’m Elgrin.”

“Oona,” I said.

Elgrin nodded and then was gone in a sprinkle of green sparks.

When I returned to Chas on the pier, his eyes were wide with question and expectation.

“You were gone a long time? Meet anyone interesting?”

Maybe it had been a mistake to let Chas come along. He was too excited by all things magical and didn’t have the good sense God gave a goose. The last thing I wanted was him knowing that the fairies and I would try to liberate the men tonight. He’d want to come along and pout when I said no. I didn’t need any added stress.

I shook my head and sighed loudly. “I don’t think this is going to work. There don’t seem to be any fairies around. Let’s go back to my place. I have to figure out some other way to reach them.”

Chas shot me a look that said he didn’t quite believe me. I peeked inside his mind and saw that he’d seen the tall woman walk into the restroom. He’d kept watch and hadn’t seen her come out, even after I walked back over to him. His two-plus-two equaled the suspicion I was lying, but he wasn’t sure enough to push it.

Lucky for me, his mental image of a fairy was in line with the one I’d spoken with first—a small and delicate Tinkerbelle-like thing. The tall, muscular woman confused him even as he suspected she was somehow connected with the magical world.

The sun was moving westward, reaching toward the horizon. I pulled out my phone and checked the time—6:30 p.m. No wonder my stomach was growling. I hadn’t eaten all day.

“How about we stop at Mickey’s Deli on the way back,” I said. “Pick up a pizza or a couple of subs for dinner.”

“Yeah, okay,” he said, but the usual enthusiasm he showed for food was absent from his voice.

He touched my shoulder as I turned to go. “Oona, when are you going to tell me the truth about everything?”

Chapter Seventeen

“Listen, Chas,” I said, “for your safety you need to understand—there are wicked things out there. This isn’t scaring your ex with conjured dogs. Whoever is behind this is evil and planning more evil. This isn’t anything you want to be deeply involved in.”

He leaned toward me. “You’re going to try to rescue Diego, aren’t you?”

Maybe I shouldn’t have taken Chas with me to meet with Maurice. But since he knew what I was planning, I was going to have to trust his discretion.

This was a weird spot to be in—desperate to get Dee out of whatever trouble he was in, and nearly as desperate that Chas not know what I was up to lest he wanted to come along—or something worse.

He stared at me. “You think I’m going to ring your parents and tell them or something? Give me some credit, Oona.”

I opened my mouth and then shut it. He was right on both fronts: I was worried he’d tell my parents, and I wasn’t giving him the credit he deserved.

“Sorry.”

His face stayed serious. “I’m going with you.”

That wasn’t going to happen.

“Right now,” I said lightly, “I’m going home.”

I turned and started walking on the pier, heading back toward Hermosa.

“I’m going with you, Oona,” Chas said again. “I won’t let you go into danger alone.”

I kept walking. He grabbed my arm, turning me back toward him. I yanked free of his hold.

“Think about it, Chas. If I was planning on doing something as stupid as storming the Bastille, what good would a non-magical, recently beat up, still sore-ribbed and sore-shouldered person be?”

His face showed the pain my words caused. “I just want to help.”

I sighed. “I know. I appreciate that.” I sighed again. “There will be an attempt tonight, but I will be tucked up safe in bed when it happens. I’ve hired the fairies. They’ll be the only ones trying to free Diego and the others.”

I was becoming quite the little liar. I didn’t much like it.

The relief in Chas’ vibe only made me feel worse about lying to him.

“Okay, then” he said. “I’m thinking pizza with everything on it for dinner.”

∞∞∞

The clock on my bedside table said 2:15. I reached out with my sense and poked around in Chas’s mind. He was deeply asleep, dreaming about motorcycles and women with long streaming hair. I smiled in spite of myself. It seemed so Chas for him to be having a dream like that.

I slipped out of bed and quietly got dressed in black cargo pants and a black sweatshirt. I carried my high-tops in my hands. Bare feet were quieter on the stairs. I carefully lifted my purse and keys from the pegs in the foyer and tiptoed down the hall to go out the back door to the garage.

The garage door squealed as it opened. I really needed to oil those hinges. But even if the noise woke Chas, it was too late for him to do anything. I backed out into the alley and headed toward Torrance through dark, nearly empty streets. Seeing a car pass me now and then was reassuring—the world was still there. People were still there. The fairy-warriors would come. I wasn’t alone.

Alaska Avenue was deserted when I arrived. I cast out my senses and didn’t pick up so much as a security guard or homeless person tucked up behind a building, out of the wind. I searched for Dee’s signature and couldn’t find it. That didn’t mean he wasn’t here. The warehouse was probably heavily veiled, hiding whoever was in there.

I wondered briefly how the fairies would transport themselves as I pulled my car to the curb half a block down from the warehouse. I didn’t want to park in front, in case someone was keeping watch. I checked the safety on my Smith and Wesson before I tucked it into a pants pocket. I got out of the car, locked it, then put my keys in a different pocket than the gun. I glanced up at the sky. The moon was nearly full, the stars all but hidden in the ambient light on the street. I sent my sense into the warehouse as I walked toward it. If my sense was to be believed, there was no one inside. Veiled, I decided. There, but hidden. They had to be there. If they weren’t, I was running out of time to find Dee and the others before the Vulture Moon.

The back of my neck prickled. I couldn’t hear footsteps, but I knew someone was following me and closing the gap between us. I spun to face whoever it was, spell words at the ready.

Elgrin put a finger to her lips. Behind her followed half a dozen fairy-women dressed completely in black with swords on their backs, staves in their hands, or knives in their belts. Each was as tall or nearly so as her leader and equally powerful-looking. The fairy women stood upright but floated a few inches above the sidewalk, their large, translucent dragonfly-wings propelling them forward. The only sound was a soft whir of wings and the quiet slap of my shoes on the sidewalk. I was half surprised I couldn’t also hear the pounding of my nervous heart.

My mouth was dry from fear and nerves as we came around the back of the building and approached the smaller door. But really, wasn’t this a lot like hockey? It was my nature to press forward, but I was smart enough to go around obstacles in my way, rather than try to run over them. I wasn’t strong enough to beat the men with my physical size or speed, so I had to be smarter than my opponent, anticipate better, be better prepared. It was the same here. I’d need to be smarter than whatever waited for us inside. I was as prepared as I would ever be. And completely focused now on reaching my goal—Dee—and getting the win.

Elgrin stepped up to walk beside me. I pointed to the warehouse as we approached it. She nodded, gestured to her troops, then took the lead going around the side and to the back. At the small back door, she motioned to me and stroked her hair in sign that I should use my psychic powers now. I had been all along, and I still wasn’t registering anyone inside. I drew my hand over my face to indicate a veil. She frowned but nodded.

I reached to try the door, but the fairy leader pushed my hand away. She peered at it a moment, then cupped both hands around the knob. I heard a very quiet click. Elgrin slowly turned the knob and opened the back door a tiny crack. She signaled her troops to ready themselves, then threw the door open wide. The fairy warriors streamed into the small kitchen. The motion-sensor-controlled lights switched on.

A quick glance around showed that the room seemed abandoned. There were no dishes in the sink or empty take-out cartons lying on the table or in the trash bin this time. The air smelled stale, as if this room had been closed and deserted for weeks. Still, now that we’d breached the threshold, I felt the hum of magic. From their body language, I thought the fairies felt it too.

I carefully cracked open the door to the office and looked around. No one was there that I could see. I cast my sense out again, focusing on Dee, his particular flavor of magic and his personal signature. My heart fell when I didn’t feel anything of him here. Had I recruited the fairies and broken into this building for nothing?

Not nothing. Magic was here. Present magic—not some left-behind spell. Which meant someone was here even if hidden by a veil. Maybe The Gate. Maybe Gil. Maybe Dee, though I’d have thought I’d feel his signature no matter how strong the veil around him. It seemed arrogance now on my part, to think my magic would always find his no matter what. Or maybe Dee wasn’t with them anymore, not if Maurice’s rat was right and all three had been here earlier.

It was too many questions. I needed answers.

I pointed toward the door at the back of the kitchen that led into the main warehouse. Elgrin glared at the sensor and said something I didn’t understand. The lights in the kitchen and office went out. Just enough light streamed in the small window in the door from the streetlamps in the alley for us to dimly see each other.

Elgrin turned her palms up and raised her arms in sign for the warriors to move forward. Each warrior lifted a few inches off the ground, her wings beating, making a soft whir. I moved as quietly as I could in my rubber-soled shoes, wishing I had a silencing spell to hide the sound completely.

My mental list of things to learn once Dee, The Gate, and Gil were freed was growing longer and longer. Maybe I should move into Dee’s house for a while and do nothing but read through his library once this was over.

But first, we had to get the men out of here, if they were here, and figure a way to stop the sorcerer from trying again with different victims. Elgrin wanted the sorcerer responsible for the dark plan, but he had acolytes. What was to stop one of them from stepping into his leader’s corrupted shoes?

Elgrin cautiously cracked open the door to the main warehouse. She carefully peeked around as best she could, then turned her gaze to me. She shook her head to indicate she couldn’t see anyone in the black hole of the warehouse.

Magic crackled through the small opening in the doorway. I knew someone was out there in the darkness. Many someones from the itch between my shoulder blades—none of whom felt like Dee.

Hesitating wasn’t going to make whoever or whatever waited in the warehouse change. Better to leap in and get it over with. I stepped up beside Elgrin and motioned for her to open the door wide. She raised her eyebrows at me but nodded and signaled her warriors to be ready. She flung the door open so hard it banged loudly against a wall.

The fairies swarmed into the huge, open warehouse. Once the door shut again behind us, it was as black as oil inside. I blinked, trying to help my eyes adjust. Again, I sent out my psychic sense looking for Dee, but didn’t find his signature.

A shot of lightning flew crackling and hissing across the room, striking one warrior in the chest. The fairy grunted and hit the cement floor with a thud. She struggled back to her feet. I lost sight of her as the room fell back into darkness.

Another bolt flew across the room toward us. In the sudden light I made out six men in brown robes working in concert, their arms upraised and stretched out before them, the fingers of their hands extended. I’d once seen Dee shoot lightning from his fingers. He’d said not every wizard could do it. It seemed to take all six of these brown-robed sorcerers to throw a bolt. That was good. That meant the lightning would come one shot at a time. The room went black.

Lightning flew a third time, from a different place in the room. The acolytes had shifted their position. A new thud sounded to my left. I swung my gaze toward the sound and saw a fairy warrior on the floor, her wings on fire. Another fairy kneeled beside her, beating at her companion’s wings with her hands, trying to put out the blaze. The burning fairy’s face contorted with pain. None of the sorcerer’s seemed to have been hurt or injured. If Elgrin’s warriors kept getting hurt at this rate, she might call for retreat and I’d lose my chance to search the warehouse for the missing men.

The cavernous space went dark again. I ran along one wall. In the brief light, I hadn’t seen other doorways that might lead to other rooms where Dee, The Gate, and Gil could be being held. A veil could hide them, but I guessed that whoever was holding them here wouldn’t want them hurt before the Vulture Moon. I’d spotted a tall stack of pallets when I was here before. The men could be hidden behind it, safely out of the fight.

Lightning flashed again, and again the acolytes had moved. The fairies seemed not to be able to find the sorcerers but they found a fairy with almost every strike.

Elgrin must have figured out how the acolyte sorcerers were moving, a pattern. She said something in a language I didn’t understand. Three of her warriors darted forward, swords drawn. I itched to help the fairies fight, but that wasn’t my role here. My job was to find the missing men.

When blackness returned, I sprinted through the dark toward the pallets, hoping light would return before I crashed into the hill of wood. In the next blast of light, I saw two brown-robed men were down, their heads bleeding. I had to let run the rest of the way to the pallets before dark fell again. I ran but kept my sight on the battle.

In the momentary light, the fairies swung their weapons toward the men, only to be beaten back by magic that threw one warriors completely across the room. She smashed against a brick wall and fell to the cement floor, unmoving.

I reached the pallets just as the light was lost to darkness. I stretched my hand out to touch the pallets and held still, waiting. Screams tore the darkness. Male screams.

A bright, incandescent light filled the warehouse. I blinked my eyes. Either one of the fairies had found the switch or the sorcerers had decided they’d rather see what they fought against than not.

I ducked behind the pallets, fully expecting to see Dee and the other men there. Maybe restrained. More likely bespelled.

What I saw was nothing.

My heart sank. If Dee wasn’t in the kitchen or office and he wasn’t behind the one available hiding place in the otherwise empty warehouse, where was he? Maurice’s rats had said he was here only hours ago.

I moved through the maybe six-foot wide area behind the pallets, my arms outstretched. If the men were veiled I wouldn’t see them, but I’d feel them. I moved slowly, covering every inch of space carefully even while screams rent the air around me. No one was here. So, where were they? The acolytes might know. Probably did know.

Beyond the pallets, the sounds of the battle raged. My own rage built toward what I knew was a stupid move, but I did it anyway. I loosed the gun from my pocket and took it out. I stepped around from behind the pallets, dropped down the safety, and fired into the air.

“Next person who moves, dies,” I called out, stalking toward where the fairies and sorcerers were.

The sorcerers had gotten the worst of it in the fight. Only two were still standing. They froze as if bespelled at my words. Besides the fairy with the burnt wings, three more were down. One had a wing dangling, nearly torn off her body. The other cradled her arm in her other hand, the white of bone poking through her forearm.

“Please,” I said to the fairy leader, keeping my gun trained on the brown-robed men. “tend to your wounded. And if one of you could bind these two sorcerers, hands behind their back, I’d like to talk with them.”

The fairies set to helping their comrades; all except one who ran into the kitchen/office area and returned with bungee cords she’d found and used to bind the men.

I used the barrel of my gun to motion the men toward the kitchen. Inside, I motioned for them to sit in two of the plastic chairs set by a small square table with a white melamine top. I saw that they weren’t men at all, just boys—seventeen, eighteen at the most.

“Where are the wizards you were holding prisoner here?” I asked.

Elgrin stepped into the kitchen and demanded in her rough, gravelly voice, “Where is your overlord?”

Fear widened the boys’ eyes. One looked at the other, and then away. Neither spoke.

Elgrin crouched down next to the one who looked most afraid. “Do you know about the fairies, boy? Do you know the revenge we exact from those who hurt our kind? How it is slow, painful, and fatal?”

Her voice was so cold it made me shiver. Both brown-robed boys visibly shook, but both kept their mouths clamped shut. What scared them more than the fairy’s threat?

I slipped inside the oldest boy’s mind. He was scared all right, scared half to death by the fairy but more afraid of someone else. I reached for a name, but Master was all I got. I looked in his mind for a visual of his master’s face but saw only something that looked like a television picture scrambled by static. I tried the other boy’s mind, but it was the same. It was a good guess the “master” had bespelled the boys to scramble the sorcerer’s face in their memories, just in case a psychic happened along, or the magic police caught them.

Whoever Master was, he seemed to have carefully thought through his plans. I’d have to be smarter than him, then. And lucky.

The door to the kitchen opened and the fairies brought in their injured companions. The anger flowing off Elgrin as she gazed on her wounded troops twisted my stomach. She jerked one of the brown-robed boys to his feet by the collar.

“Take them both,” she said.

Desperate fear flowed from the boys. My head started to ache. I dipped into the fairy leader’s head just long enough to know any pleas for mercy for the boys were useless. Fairy justice was sure, swift, and unbending.

Two fairies took each boy by the arms and marched him toward the small back door. My throat dried with worry for the boys. I knew that was crazy. They would have harmed me without a thought. Still—

A great wind suddenly pushed the backdoor wide open. We all turned to look, the warriors crouching into a ready position. A sound like electricity crackled in the air. A long tongue of fire streaked through the room. The boys screamed.

The fairies who’d held the boys now held nothing. At their feet lay two small piles of ashes and bone shards. The room smelled of burning flesh.

I ran out the door and threw up by the large blue metal trashcans.

Chapter Eighteen

The fairy-warrior leader walked over and stood impassively beside me as I straightened up and wiped my mouth. She wrinkled her nose.

“Let’s move away from the stink.”

Heat rose in my cheeks, both from embarrassment and anger. We’d just seen two people burned alive and it seemed not to bother the fairy at all.

“Did anyone check on the sorcerers still inside the warehouse?” I said.

Elgrin nodded. “Ash and bone. All of them.” She wrinkled her nose again, but I didn’t know if it was the stink still bothering her or the senseless destruction of the six acolytes. I hoped it was the latter.

We walked back over by the door and watched the fairies bring out their wounded and then disappear in a shower of multicolored sparks until only Elgrin and I remained.

My mouth tasted like vomit. My throat was dry. My stomach was tight, and tears stung my eyes. I needed water to wash the taste from my mouth. What I wanted more than anything was to be home with Dee with all of this behind us. That wasn’t going to happen if I didn’t stop failing to find him.

“Why weren’t your warriors burned by the fire?” I asked.

Elgrin shrugged as if it were not important. “Fairies are immune to human magic.”

“Your warriors were harmed by the acolyte-sorcerers’ lightning.”

Elgin shrugged. “That magic wasn’t purely human-made; it was boosted by something from the other side. But the fire that killed the brown-robes was human-sent. Human only. Nothing else.” She peered at me. “I wonder why their master didn’t burn you up as well and get you off his trail? You’re human.” She peered at me again. “Mostly, though there is something else in you, too.”

“They say my great-grandfather was a selkie,” I said.

“Ah. Something of the fae in your blood, but not enough, I think, to have provided immunity. Does this sorcerer have plans for you?”

I blinked, taken aback. “I don’t think so. I hope not.”

“Maybe not,” Elgrin said with a shrug. “Maybe he doesn’t perceive you as enough of a threat to remove. Fortunate for you if that’s the case. Or maybe he sees you as a toy, something to play with—something to be teased and led on merry chases for his amusement.”

I considered all that. There was a definite sense of being led around. I trusted Dee’s divination that had brought us to the warehouse the first time, but the rest of it could have been orchestrated. Gil’s supposed call to his girlfriend that sent us to Alpine Village. The rat’s word that all three men were in the warehouse. I could trust only what came directly from Dee or my own abilities. Everything else had to be suspect.

“What happens now?” I said.

Elgrin tilted her head and looked at me. “You owe me for the job done. The dark wizard.” She corrected herself. “Sorcerer.”

“We didn’t find the men we came for, much less rescue them,” I said.

The fairy-warrior shrugged. “If you gamble and lose, you still must pay the house.”

She made a grabbing motion in the air and held out a small gold whistle—more an elongated, flattish boson’s whistle than a bulbous referee-type. “When you have the sorcerer, this whistle will call me. I’ll come collect my payment.”

I took it and nodded dumbly.

She leaned toward me. “Can you get yourself home in your vehicle? I can send you via magic if you can’t drive.”

I ran my hands through my hair. “I can drive.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t find the wizards you are seeking,” Elgrin said, her face and tone softening. “If I hear any news of them, I’ll be in touch. Keep the whistle with you at all times. I’ll find you through it.”

I nodded in acknowledgement.

She nodded slightly in return and disappeared in her own burst of sparks.

My steps were slow and heavy as I walked back to my car. There was no traffic on Alaska Avenue; no burst of headlights to show me human life was still going on around me, only a gray-striped feral cat mewling on the sidewalk as I trudged by. I cast my sense out. The cat was just a cat. I bent down to scratch its head, but it bolted away.

There was nothing more I could do here. I started the car and drove home.

The hazy first light of the day was warming the sky as I pulled into my garage. When I went into the house, Chas was sitting at the kitchen table, a mug of tea in front of him. He looked up and started to say something. I raised one hand, palm out in clear warning that I didn’t want to hear it—whatever it was.

“I’m going to bed. I’ll talk to you when I get up.”

Chas looked ready to speak again.

I cut him off with a glare. “Seriously, Chas. Don’t say even one word. I cannot take anything more right now.”

And with that, I dragged myself up the stairs, fell onto my bed, and was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

Four hours later, I stumbled downstairs. Chas, bless him, got up from the sofa, went into the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with a cup of strong, well-sugared black tea.

He also had the decency to wait until I’d drunk it before asking, “Are you going to tell me where you were all night and what you did?”

He could have saved himself the trouble of actually asking the questions. Curiosity wafted off him like smoke. I already knew what he wanted to hear. I had no interest in the reliving that the telling would be. He wouldn’t stop poking at me until I did, though. I knew that too.

“I tried to find Diego and get him out of whatever trouble he’s gotten himself into. I didn’t find him. Instead, several fairies were hurt, some badly, and six people died who didn’t need to. It was horrible and I’m not going to talk about it anymore than this.”

“People died?” Chas said.

“Yes.”

“Did you kill any of them?”

Stunned that he’d ask that question, I stared at him. “No.”

Chas let out a long slow breath, “Okay. I won’t ask you anything more now. Maybe later you’ll decide to trust me with your secrets.”

“Thanks,” I muttered just as my phone started ringing. I leapt for it, hoping it was Dee.

It wasn’t. It was Jack.

He started in on me the moment I said hello.

“I’ve been tasked by my boss to discover exactly what happened in that warehouse last night.”

“What warehouse?” I said, all innocent indignity at his tone.

Jack scoffed. “Don’t play me like a fool, Psychic Goodlight.”

My heart pounded. Jack always called me Oona. To hear him pronounce my talent and my last name with such anger sent shivers racing through my body.

He went on without pausing. “Did you think that much magic could happen on my patch and I wouldn’t know about it? Did you think no one in the community would feel the deaths? We had calls. You need to explain the piles of ash and bone right now.”

Chas put his hand on my arm. Concern for me radiated from him. I shrugged with tight shoulders and moved my arm from under his hand. I got up and walked toward the mudroom at the opposite end of the house saying, “Give me a moment, Jack.”

“Officer Schneider,” he said firmly. As if I hadn’t already figured out this was not a social but an official call.

“Explain those deaths,” he said. “And those people better have been dead before they were burned.”

I snagged a kitchen chair and brought it with me into the mudroom where my laundry waited to be put in the washer and dryer. I was too agitated to sit. I shut the door and paced in the small square room, seeing again in my mind’s eye the moment those two brown-robed young men burst into flame.

“At least two weren’t,” I said. My throat was dry, my eyes growing wet. It was hard to get the words out. “It was awful.”

Jack’s tone softened slightly. “Tell me what happened, from the beginning.”

I sighed deeply and sank into the chair. “I was chasing down leads to find Diego.”

I went on to tell him everything, from Maurice’s rats saying Dee and the others were in the warehouse to my contacting the fairies for help at the warehouse, to seeing the two boys burst into flames that didn’t so much as singe the fairies who held the boys’ arms at the time.

Jack had listened without interruption.

“You’re damn lucky you didn’t wind up a pile of ash yourself,” he said when I finished. “What if the sorcerer had been there? What if he or she decided you’d make a nice pile of ash? You could have run into a den of drug dealers protecting their stash or thieves divvying up the loot in an empty warehouse for all you knew. Magicals or just your garden-variety ordin kind. Either one could have killed you and all the fairy warriors you dragged into the place. You had nothing but the word of a few rats to go on, but do you call me and tell me your suspicions? No, you go breaking into private property like Rambo or something. What were you thinking?”

Anger seethed in my blood. How dare he lecture me?

“First of all,” I said coolly, “since you and your boss expressly told me to stay out of this case, it’s hardly likely I would tell you about anything I learned. Second, as to what was I thinking? I was trying to save some lives.”

“Yeah? And how did that work out for you?”

Six humans dead. Several fairies injured. No Dee, The Gate, or Gil rescued. No closer to finding them than I was yesterday morning. Thanks, Jack, for throwing it all in my face.

He broke the brief silence. “This is not something you should be involved in. Stay out of it before more people are hurt—or killed.”

I wished he’d shut up.

“Don’t think for an instant that I’ll turn a blind eye to your shenanigans,” he said.

I knew a spell to shut people up. Dee had taught it to me almost as a joke after some woman had cornered me on the street and gone on and on about a local political issue.

“I may be Diego’s friend but that won’t stop me from doing what’s right in the law.”

I muttered the spell in Jack’s direction, sending it off with a great burst of angry power.

I waited for his next tirade, but there was nothing. Only a long, long silence.

My heartbeat sped into overdrive. “Jack? Are you still there?”

I glanced at the phone’s screen. The call was still connected.

“Shit,” I muttered, realizing what I’d done. Dee never taught me a spell without also teaching me how to undo it. I said the words and again sent it with a burst of my personal will and power.

“Don’t ever do that to me again,” Jack said, his voice icy.

“I’m sorry. I had no idea. Through the phone? How does that work?”

Jack huffed an angry breath. “Connection is connection. It matters more than distance.” He paused. “You are very lucky it’s me you discovered this fact with. That is exactly the sort of mistake that can get you into a big pile of steaming trouble. As an apprentice wizard, that kind of thing will get you expelled from the magic community.”

I thought again about Dee’s self-control. A wizard who let their emotions have free rein could do all sorts of damage. But Dee wasn’t so self-controlled lately and I was pretty sure that lack of focus helped get him in trouble.

“Keep in mind,” he said, “that Diego, as your mentor, would also be sanctioned.”

“I will,” I said, but all I could think was if Dee met his end under the Vulture Moon, none of it would mean a damn. Never mind that I wasn’t his apprentice, making that second part an empty threat.

I let a small moment go by. “What are you going to do about finding Diego, The Gate, and Gil?”

Jack’s voice kept its cutting edge. “We’re looking into the apparent abduction of The Gate and Gil Adair. We have a few leads that I’m not going to share with you, so do not try invading my mind to find out. I will know, and I will not keep that transgression secret.”

I pushed down my frustration. “What about Diego? Are you looking for him? I’m sure all three are together.”

Jack’s words were clipped. “There is no indication that Wizard Adair was abducted. He may just not want to see or talk to you right now.”

I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it. I couldn’t believe the words coming from it. All this oh-so-professional Wizard Adair and not keep that transgression secret crap was making my bones ache. And saying that Diego just didn’t want to see me right now? Yeah, I didn’t think that was the case.

“If you’re trying to rile me, Jack, it’s not going to work. The Vulture Moon is tonight. What, exactly, are you doing to find them?”

“As I’ve said pretty plainly, that’s police business, not yours.”

I scoffed as I suddenly felt him as clearly as if he were standing next to me and speaking the wishes of his secret heart. At least now things made sense.

“You’re angry I didn’t call you to go with us last night,” I said. “You’re almost as worried about Diego and the others as I am. You know in your gut I’m right about what someone has planned for tonight. You know we’re running out of time.”

Jack didn’t reply. His silence said more than any words could.

“I will find them, Jack, with or without you. You want to arrest me or whatever it is you do when people don’t just sit around waiting for the magic police to get off their butts and do their jobs, fine. But I’m telling you I will do whatever needs to be done to make sure there is no human sacrifice under the Vulture Moon.”

Chapter Nineteen

Jack was silent long moment, then said, “Yes, I believe you would.”

“So, come with me,” I said, my voice friendlier now, cajoling. “Call in sick and take the day off. We’ll be a lot more effective working together than against each other.”

I waited while he worked through whatever machinations he needed to justify doing what I now realized he wanted. I threw out what I hoped would be the final point that made his decision.

“I’m floundering, Jack. Without your expertise, without you, I don’t know if I can find them in time. They’re going to die. I know it. You know it. Please.”

Another long silence filled the air.

“All right,” he said. “This evening. Say, five-thirty. I’m on duty now.”

My heart sank. It was not quite one now. Too many hours. Too much time to waste. But I knew I couldn’t do this on my own. I needed Jack’s help.

The sacrifice was tied to the full moon. I had to believe the men would be safe until full dark. I took a breath. “Thank you. I need to talk to Maurice again and would like you to be there to hear what he says. I’ll meet you behind the Community Center.”

“I’ll be there,” he said, but he didn’t sound all that happy about it. Evidently duty and rules versus personal desire wasn’t an easy choice for him.

I thumbed the phone off. My thoughts turned to the problem of Chas. He was feeling better and his bruises were fading. I knew he was antsy and wanted out of the house but didn’t seem inclined to go home. I supposed the vicarious excitement kept him wanting to stay close to me. His fascination with the magic world seemed to only deepen as things became grimmer. He didn’t know Diego well enough to be sincerely concerned for him.

It dawned on me then what an idiot I’d been. I’d sold my cousin cheaply, thinking it was the thrill that kept him wanting to be involved. He was worried I’d be hurt. I was so concerned about Dee that it hadn’t crossed my mind that Chas might be worried about me.

I walked back to the parlor and sat next to him on the sofa.

“That was Jack Schneider on the phone. He’s an old friend of Diego’s and a member of the magic police. He and I are going to search for Diego and the others together. Jack’s very, very good at what he does. He’ll keep me safe.”

“Yeah?” Chas said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Really.”

Relief poured off my cousin like running water.

“Okay, then,” he said. “That’s good, but it would be better if you let the magic police or whatever do the job for you. Let this Jack fellow find Diego and the others.”

I shook my head. “I can’t just sit here and wait. I’d go crazy.”

“I know,” he said, and laid his hand on top of mine. “It’s not your nature to sit around and wait, but I’d be happier if you did. My mom says you’re the type that would run into a burning building, not only to save someone in danger, but just to see if you could do it and come out alive.”

I looked at him askance. “I don’t think so.”

“Mmm. There’s a bit of that in you, Oona. Your first and greatest concern is for Diego and the others, but there’s a part of you—”

I smiled thinly. “You should go home, Chas. Tawny and her brother won’t bother you again. Call some friends. Go out on the town or something. Keep busy. I’ll call you when we’ve gotten everyone back.”

He moved his hand to rub his chin and then nodded. “Promise me you won’t be stupid.”

“I promise,” I said.

“Drive me home?”

I glanced at the clock. I had hours and hours to kill before meeting up with Jack. “Sure.”

He gave me a hopeful smile. “And maybe put some of those ward things on my place?”

I thought about it. “Maybe not wards. You’d have to learn to take them down and remember to put them up every time you left your house. But we can smudge the place to clean out any leftover bad energy and I can do some protection spells.”

Chas grinned. “I knew it wasn’t all Diego. I knew you could do magic yourself.”

Yeah. That cat was way out of the bag.

“Let’s keep it between us, okay? Don’t go telling everyone on your side of the family or your friends and whatnot.”

Chas put up a hand and waved it around a little. “Because us normal folks aren’t supposed to know the magic world lives side-by-side with us. I get it.”

I leaned over and kissed his cheek. “You’re the best.”

Chas grinned. “Yeah. I know.”

∞∞∞

I drove Chas home, smudged his place, and put up some protection spells that would delay anyone with bad intent from crossing his threshold. Hopefully, the delay would give Chas time to be smart enough to not invite them in.

I still had a few hours left before I was to meet Jack. I went home, changed into shorts and flip-flops and walked down to the ocean. I waded into the waves and let the water lap around me, filling me with peace and strength. After, I went home, changed again into black cargo pants and a black sweatshirt, and went to meet Jack.

∞∞∞

On the way to the Community Center I stopped at a convenience store and bought half a dozen tubes of Pixy Stix. I was a little surprise to see that Jack had arrived before me and was already talking to Maurice. Jack wore street clothes—jeans, a madras shirt, tennis shoes—rather than his MP whites, which relieved me.

I sat down beside them and gave Maurice the candy. He twitched his nose and whiskers, then turned to Jack.

“You see, that’s how it’s done. You want my help, you bring a gift.”

Jack frowned at the rat. “The magic police don’t pay for information. Not even with a gift of Pixy Stix.”

I’d never seen an animal roll its eyes, but Maurice rolled his.

“Maurice,” I said, cutting off whatever Jack and the rat had been discussing before I came—I didn’t think it was only Jack’s lack of a proper bribe. “I need your help again. I went to the warehouse last night.”

“So I’ve been told.” Maurice glanced at Jack while using a paw to scratch his ear.

“Diego wasn’t there. Neither were The Gate or Gil. There was a veil spell, but I psychically and physically felt around and couldn’t find them.”

The rat stopped scratching. “Veil spell or not, Diego would have found a way to let you know he was there if he was. They must have been moved, which indicates that whoever has them knew you were coming.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I thought that, too.”

I’d come to the realization late that the brown-robed sorcerers had been waiting for us. I hadn’t yet figured out how the kidnapper could have known though. I didn’t believe the fairies had said anything—unless there was a traitor among them. I could believe Chas might have told someone innocently, not realizing who he was talking to, but I was pretty sure he would have told me if anyone had shown up at the house or he’d gone out and run into someone. I’d had my phone with me, so he couldn’t have answered a call and unwittingly spilled the news.

The only answer I could come up with was divination. If someone was divining my future moves that wiped out any chance I had for surprise. As to who that might be? The Gate was pretty damn good at it.

“Could your rats look for them?” I said. “And while they’re at it, look for any kind of table that might look useful for a sacrifice. Probably outdoors.”

Maurice hunched his shoulders. “I sent the word for my family to look for the wizards as soon as this one,” he sent Jack a dismissive look, “told me you still hadn’t found Diego and the others. An altar, though. That’s what you’re looking for. Not a table, an altar.” He nodded to himself. “I should have already thought of that. Must be getting old.” He shook his body nose to tail. “Yes. I’ll have them keep an eye out for an altar.”

“You know,” I said, thinking more about it. “The altar probably will be indoors if they’re in the South Bay. There aren’t a lot of outdoor places with enough privacy for what they’re planning.”

“A church?” Maurice asked.

“Maybe,” I said, and hoped not.

“Could be in a home,” Jack said.

“Could be anywhere,” I said, my heart sinking. “We need a wizard with a good dowsing spell.”

Maurice and I both looked at Jack.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them and said, “You realize what you’re asking of me? It’s one thing to be here chatting about general news. It’s another for me to be actively involved and using magic to help you. I could lose my job.”

I flicked into his thoughts for a moment, risking his ire, but I needed to know how serious he thought the threat to his job was.

Very serious. In that brief moment I saw something else as well—being a policeman was more than a job to him, it was a calling. It was the way he defined himself.

I stood and took a step away from him, backing off physically as well as emotionally. It was Jack’s decision to make. I wasn’t going to pressure him. If he wouldn’t do it, I’d figure another way to find Dee and the others.

Except time was passing quickly. The faint full moon already rode visible in the dusky sky. We had only hours left. I didn’t know how many hours but guessed that whoever was planning the sacrifice would wait at least until full dark. There was no guarantee though.

Jack let out a loud breath. “Fine.”

“Thank you.” My voice was a whisper.

Jack acknowledged my words with a nod. “We’re assuming they’re all together, right? I need something from one of them, something for the spell to fasten on.”

Presumably Dee had The Gate’s ring and neck charm with him. But I had something of Dee’s—a note written in his hand and one small smear of his blood.

Dee didn’t write a lot of love notes, if I could even call it that. It was just a scrawled, Off to earn my keep and an almighty dollar or two. See you tonight. He’d signed it with an XO. Hugs and kisses. It was about as mushy as he ever got.

He told me later he’d cut himself shaving and the piece of tissue he’d used to stop the bleeding had dropped onto the note, leaving a smear, He’d been in a rush and hadn’t rewritten the note on a fresh paper; he hoped I didn’t mind. I’m ridiculously sentimental. I’d put the note in my purse to carry around with me.

I handed the paper to Jack. He scanned the message and raised his eyebrows at me. I shrugged.

Jack gathered himself together—I felt power surging in him—and brought the paper close to his mouth as if speaking directly to it. He mumbled words I couldn’t make out, then touched the note to the spot above my nose between my eyebrows.

My eyes widened as power and knowledge rushed through me. I could follow a signature, but the small smear of Dee’s blood tugged and pulled at me as if I were on a leash. Following a signature was a choice; finding the blood’s owner was a need.

Jack handed me the note.

“Seek, Oona,” he said softly. “Where is Diego? Find him.”

“Car,” I said, clutching the note with one hand and fishing in my purse for my keys with the other.

I turned left onto Pacific Coast Highway and headed through Hermosa and into Redondo Beach. Traffic was heavy, and we hit more than a few red lights. I banged my palm impatiently against the steering wheel and wished hard for Dee’s traffic clearing spell, but it wasn’t one I’d learned. Finally, we made it through the densely crowded streets and began climbing the hill toward Palos Verdes.

I hunted for Dee’s signature. If I found it, I’d have more trust that I was taking us to him. I shook my head, trying to clear away my panicky thoughts and let the calm core of me search. I couldn’t catch even a whiff of his signature. Either I was completely off course or whoever had Dee had veiled him so completely that, even with the strong connection between us, Dee was hidden from me.

I could think of only two wizards powerful enough to do that—Dee himself and The Gate. But then I didn’t know every wizard in the South Bay. Just because Dee had never mentioned another wizard equal to The Gate in power didn’t mean there wasn’t one.

The further we went into Palos Verdes, the less dense the houses were. This was as country as the South Bay got, homes on large lots, some with horses corralled in the yards, signs for bridle paths. We passed casually dressed men and women walking large dogs or jogging on the wooded trails above the road. I loved being up on the hill in what passed for country around here. Any other time I would have slowed and enjoyed the scenery. Now I pressed my foot down harder on the gas pedal.

The call of Dee’s blood led me off the main road onto a series of smaller avenues winding deep into tree-lined streets and large, expensive houses. This wasn’t my usual stomping ground. I patted the side pocket of my purse to reassure myself my phone was there. Once it was full dark, I’d probably need turn-by-turn directions to get home.

For reasons I’d never understood, along with a scarcity of sidewalks there were no street lamps on the hill. Maybe the ultra-wealthy who lived here thought they were immune from crime. If I were a burglar, this would definitely be my preferred hunting ground. Nothing like unlit streets at night for facilitating clean getaways.

Dark streets were also great for someone wanting to perform a magical ritual under the blaze of the full moon without a lot of ambient light getting in the way.

My heart thudded in my chest. My palms felt suddenly as slick as if they’d been oiled. I gripped the steering wheel tighter.

All this time Jack hadn’t said a word. I glanced over at him and saw he had his eyes closed and was mouthing words without any sound. I reached out with my senses and felt his conflicting emotions, his sincere worry about his job, his greater worry for Diego’s safety, his curiosity about who was behind the plague-deaths and the deaths at the warehouse, his determination to bring whoever it was to justice.

“We want the same things,” I said to him.

“I know that, Oona.” His voice was flat, his focus elsewhere.

We circled by a large, spreading ranch-style house set back from the road at the end of a cul-de-sac. A huge magnolia tree in the front yard loomed dark and solid in the dying light. My shoulders hunched up close by my suddenly ringing ears. The skin on my palms itched and the back of my neck prickled. A small pain started behind my temples. Dee’s blood called to me: Here. Now.

“That’s the place,” I said.

Jack turned his head to look at the house.

“I’ll go down a ways and park,” I said.

Chapter Twenty

I went down almost to the end of the short block, turned off the engine and started to open my door.

“The house will be warded,” Jack said. “You know that, don’t you?”

Of course it would. Which meant there was no way I could get inside. I ward my own house. Whatever sorcerers had snatched the men would certainly ward this place.

It dawned on me that the warehouse had purposely been left without wards and unprotected. That first Dee and me, then me alone, and then me with the fairies were meant to have easy access. That the men we sought were never going to be there when we were. That someone was indeed leading me around on a string for his own amusement.

That really pissed me off.

“There may be alarm wards further down the street as well,” Jack said.

I swallowed. “So we can’t approach the house at all?”

He pressed his lips together before speaking. “I can’t. Not safely. The alarm wards would most likely be set to detect a certain degree of magic ability. I’d set any alarm wards blaring.”

I had no idea what level of magical ability Jack had, but assumed one didn’t get to be high in the MPs without being having a fair bit of power and being damn good with a spell.

“But I can approach the house,” I said, glad for once that while my psychic abilities were strong and I had total faith in them, my magic was still paltry. I reached for the door again.

He stayed me with a hand on my arm. “Bad idea. With your cowboy attitude and single-minded focus of finding Diego you’re likely to do more harm than good. We don’t know who or what is in that house. We’ve worked on the assumption that only humans engineered the abductions and only humans hold them now. The truth is we don’t know who or what is behind this. We don’t know who or what might be in that house. We do know that they possess a high magic.”

“The fairies said that whoever killed the acolytes was definitely human and using human magic.”

Jack shrugged. “And you believed them?”

“The fire didn’t affect the fairies because they’re immune to human magic. They could have been lying about that, but what would be the point?”

“If fairies took the men—” he said.

“No. I’d have felt any duplicity on their side.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “Human duplicity. But fairy? How could you know?”

He had a point. “So what do we do?”

“I call for backup and you let the police handle this, the way you and Diego should have done to begin with.”

“The magic police?”

He scowled at me. “Of course the magic police.”

I thought of his partner, Matthew, rattling off some angry Spanish at Dee—had that pinche pendejo been directed toward the dark sorcerer they’d been talking about or toward Diego? Jack’s boss, McGowan, had dismissed my worries about Dee, The Gate, and Gil out of hand. If Jack called, the MPs would show up and someone would go to the house, but I wasn’t convinced they’d ask the right questions or make a thorough search.

I sat back as Jack pulled out his phone to make the call. As soon as his eyes were cast down, focused on the instrument, I threw my door open and jumped out.

“Damn it,” he yelled.

I ran toward the back of the cul-de-sac. When I didn’t hear Jack’s footfalls behind me, I glanced over my shoulder and saw him still sitting in the car, talking furiously on the phone. I wasn’t going to get much time before the MPs showed up, but I slowed my steps to a casual walk anyway. No point in drawing attention from anyone in the house.

If there were alarm wards, as Jack had said, I reasoned they’d have to be set for a fairly high level of magic before they’d go off. Otherwise every dog walker, jogger, and nanny with kids in tow who possessed a modicum of natural magic would set the alarms blaring. I was ridiculous grateful my own level of magic was so low.

There would be wards on the house. That was fine. I wasn’t planning on knocking on the door or trying to break in an unguarded window. All I needed to do was find out if Dee and the others were there. If I could sneak up to a window, maybe I could find the answer. If I could pick up Dee’s thoughts, I wouldn’t even need to get to a window.

The white ranch house with gray slate roof tiles meandered across the entire curve of the cul-de-sac. I saw now what I hadn’t noticed when we’d driven by: the house backed onto what looked like acres of open land—a preserve of some sort. The short street itself, which would have had twelve or more houses on it down in the flatlands, had only two other homes on each side of the road. It was a perfect spot for stashing abducted wizards. The gazebo I spotted in the backyard looked like a good place for performing a hidden ritual.

I stopped maybe fifty feet from the house and felt for Dee’s signature. It rang out to me and for a moment my feet seemed ready to run to the front door and my arms to batter that door down without any input from my brain. I made myself stand perfectly still and reached out for his thoughts. They were muddied and muddled. That worried me. I knew Dee’s mind, what it felt like, how his thought patterns worked. What I felt now wasn’t normal. Dee was drugged or bespelled—I was sure of that. Which meant he’d be useless in any sort of rescue attempt, just deadwood.

I reached out for The Gate. His thoughts were just as muddied and muddled, and tinged with a deep sadness.

The only person left to check on was Gil. It made sense that the three of them were together but I searched for his mind as well, just to be sure.

A frisson of nerves shot through me. Gil’s mind was as clear as running water. No drugs or spells clouded it. I tried to slip in to read his thoughts, but some barrier kept me from hearing anything. All I got was anger so strong that the sigil tattooed on my left arm tingled and warmed. The Gate had bespelled the ink so that negative emotions sent my way would be transformed into positive energy for me. This anger wasn’t focused on me specifically, but I was collateral to whoever or whatever it was focused on, so that the sigil fired up.

It had to be anger at Dee. It was his sign on my upper arm that protected me. Dee who I was so intertwined with that anger at him felt almost like anger at me. Dee who I’d run into a burning building to save.

I rolled my shoulders and refocused, sending my senses deep into Gil’s thoughts. A jolt like a punch made me physically step back. The sigil grew warmer. Positive energy flowed through me. Whoever was in charge in the house knew I was here, or at least that I was poking around. I turned and walked back to the car before someone decided to come out and take a look.

Jack was scowling when I opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat.

“They’re here,” I said, ignoring his look. “All three of them. Diego and The Gate feel drugged or bespelled. Their minds are vague and hazy. Gil is here too.” I reached into my memory and felt that barrier again, puzzling over what caused it. “Gil, I think, is under some sort of control. Someone or something is running him. His thoughts are clear but dark.” I glanced back toward the house. “There’s a lot of anger in that place. A lot of jealousy.”

Jack continued to scowl but, I realized, not at me or my running off to the house.

“What is it?” I said. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re not coming,” he said. “No back up. We’re a small force and some trouble in El Segundo has every available officer occupied.”

I rubbed a sudden itch in my nose. “Do you believe that?”

“Of course.”

I didn’t believe he believed the excuse.

“McGowan,” I said, sure I was right. “And Hugo Bernard. They don’t want to send any help for The Gate. They’d just as soon he came to some unpleasant end.”

“McGowan and Bernard are close friends,” Jack said in a most non-committal voice, staring through the windshield toward the house.

Something prickled all down my spine. I wriggled, trying to rub the prickle away. My shoulders started to itch, and then my arms. I scratched, wondering if Hugo Bernard had power enough to control Gil? He certainly hated The Gate enough to be behind this, no matter that McGowan had scoffed at the idea.

My scalp itched. I used both hands to scratch. Then my arms started to itch again.

“Someone is letting you know he knows you’re here,” Jack said. His voice was distracted. He’d only glanced at me before turning his gaze back to the house.

I didn’t know where to scratch first. When I scratched my arms, my scalp demanded attention again. I switched to my scalp and my back began to prickle and itch.

“What are you talking about?” I scratched at my skin.

“The itching is being imposed on you,” he said, looking at me again. His forehead creased a bit. “Someone has an odd sense of humor.”

I rubbed again at my itchy nose. “Can you make it stop? Veil me or something?”

“You have to do it yourself. MPs aren’t allowed to veil civilians except to save them from immediate harm. Itching doesn’t qualify.” He peered at me. “Diego didn’t teach you how to veil yourself? That’s unconscionable.”

“You teach me,” I said, my fingernails raking over my itchy thighs. “I’m a fast study.”

Jack thought it over. Probably he, like Dee, wasn’t authorized to teach magic. Probably I was asking him to do yet another thing that could get him in trouble or cost him his job.

“Argh,” I groaned and ripped off my shoe to scratch the bottom of my foot.

Jack’s face screwed up almost as if he could feel my torment.

“Repeat after me,” he said and chanted a few words.

I repeated them as best I could while madly scratching at my feet. He chanted a few more words and I repeated those. It seemed like a very long spell though it probably wasn’t. With the last word uttered, the itching stopped. I sighed with relief.

“You have a natural knack for magic,” Jack said.

I smiled. It was the first nice thing he’d said to me for a while, and I appreciated it. “Thanks.”

An idea struck me. “I’m veiled now, right?”

He nodded.

“So whoever is in the house can’t see or feel my presence.”

Jack glared in my direction. So much for our brief bout of mutual friendliness.

“Don’t go getting more cowboy ideas,” he said coolly. “First of all, whoever made you itch already knows you’re here. Just because you pop out of his magical senses doesn’t mean he forgot you. Second, anyone in the house can hear you, just like I do. I can’t see or sense you, it’s true, but I hear your voice. They would hear your footsteps. They’d hear if you spoke to Diego. They would see and hear doors or windows opening. Veiling works best for those who hold still and are quiet.”

“That’s not true,” I blurted, forgetting to be polite. “When Halverson’s fetch confronted Diego and me in front of my house, I’m sure no one heard our conversation. I kept half an eye on passersby and people would have turned their heads and looked around if they heard conversation but couldn’t see who was speaking. No one did.”

Jack’s neck colored with a slight blush. “I, uh, only gave you a minimal cloaking spell.”

“Why?”

The blush on his neck deepened in color. “Because if, later, I have to account for giving you the spell, I can say it was a minor one that wouldn’t last long. I also threw an extra bit on you so you’d forget the words and couldn’t use the spell in the future.”

I tried to speak but all that came out was a sort of frustrated croak. Jack wanted to save the kidnapped men but his MP rules were too ingrained—he couldn’t bring himself to give what I needed to achieve our shared goal. It seemed crazy to me, but as Jack had once said, being magical didn’t make one less human. I’d have to work with what he was willing to give and drag him slowly into providing more.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll just quietly snoop around and see what we can discover.”

“We?”

“Of course, we.” I poked him gently in the side with my elbow. “The cavalry isn’t coming. It’s up to us cowboys. Get yourself veiled and we’ll head to the house.”

He didn’t look happy, but he chanted low and disappeared from my sight. The car felt suddenly empty of anyone but me. It was very odd not to at least feel his presence.

“Jack?” I said.

I reached out with my psychic senses and registered the faintest feel of him. I relaxed slightly.

“Okay,” I said. “I get it. Stay quiet, don’t move, and be practically undetectable. Unfortunately we really have to get up to the house and see what we can see. Let’s go.”

I opened my door and the door on the passenger side opened as well. It was weird having to trust that he’d gotten out and was beside me. I started walking toward the back of the cul-de-sac and was happy to hear the faint footfalls of Jack keeping pace with me.

We were nearly to the house when I felt a new presence moving alongside us. My stomach began to knot.

Ghost. At least one, maybe more.

I’d almost forgotten about the ghosts of those poor, murdered plague victims. Almost forgotten how their spirits were being held on this plane. How I’d been sure the ghosts and the sacrifice planned for the Vulture Moon were tied together.

I wasn’t forgetting them now. Not when cold hands closed around my throat.

Chapter Twenty-one

The pressure on my windpipe made me gag. How could insubstantial hands press so hard? I clawed at the very strong nothings tightening around my throat. My hands went right through and I scratched my neck hard enough I thought I might have drawn blood. Jack had undone his veil—so I could see he, too, had been attacked, I thought. How could we fight invisible attackers?

The same way you fight a visible opponent, I reasoned. I brought my forearms together in front of my throat, my palms touching, and then sprung my arms out hard to the sides.

The pressure on my throat released. I brought my knee up hard to where I hoped the ghost’s groin was. There was nothing there and the momentum of my thrust made me stagger back to catch my balance. As I did, I glanced over to see that Jack seemed to float an inch or two above the sidewalk.

Which I thought meant that even though the ghosts might feel insubstantial, they weren’t completely. Which maybe meant that what substance was there was could be bound.

Stupid me. Of course the ghosts could be bound. Someone or something had already bound them to this plane, bound them for a while in the place they died and then brought them here. They were being controlled, but how? I had to figure that out before I could figure a way to turn the spirits back on their killer.

If it could be done, wouldn’t Jack have already done it?

The ghost he was tussling with seemed to have gotten the better of him. Jack lay on his back, gasping. I took a step toward him only to feel cold, hard grips on my arms. The ghost spun me halfway around and kicked my legs out from under me.

I hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. Hands wrapped around my throat again and squeezed. Evidently the ghosts were quick learners. Something pinned down my arms.

It didn’t make sense that a spirit could have this much strength and intelligence. The sigil on my arm had barely tingled or warmed—so the ghost didn’t have any animosity toward me. Was the same entity that controlled Gil also controlling these poor trapped souls? Souls that did their master’s bidding without feeling?

Dammit. I needed strength and energy from the sigil. Why wasn’t it working?

I brought my hips and my knees up fast and hard, knocking the ghost off me. Since I couldn’t see it, I had to guess where it might be. I lunged to the side and clipped something. An arm, maybe.

Jack had gotten the best of his ghosts again. At least it looked that way with him kneeling as though something lay beneath him and hitting the air below him but pulling his punches each time so he wouldn’t slam his fist into the concrete.

If any of the very few neighbors looked out their windows or a hapless jogger came around the corner onto this crazy scene, I hoped they’d call the cops.

Except that I was still veiled. Anyone looking would see Jack, who’d been smart enough to make himself visible, but that’s all. Since the ghost seemed to have no trouble finding me even though I was invisible; the veil was no advantage.

“Jack,” I yelled. “Can you unveil me?”

“No,” he yelled back.

No one could see me, but they could hear me. I started screaming, pushing my voice out in front of my mouth, making the wail as loud as possible. I screamed and screamed.

And in the midst of a scream remembered that while Dee hadn’t taught me a veil spell, he had taught me a universal key to undo any spell a student like me might cast on herself. I cut off my scream, muttered the undo spell, and suddenly could see my solid body. I started screaming again.

A front door opened and a man’s voice called, “Hey! What’s going on out there?”

I heard hard footsteps coming rapidly toward us. The icy cold of the ghost’s body moved off me. Jack rolled over and lay panting on the sidewalk, his ghost evidently gone as well.

A pair of blue jean-clad legs came into my line of sight.

I looked up at a man probably in his thirties, of medium height but more than medium weight. His hair was brown and a little shaggy. His hands were on his hips, his elbows thrust out at his sides

My mind spun formulating some sort of story or excuse to give him. I pulled myself to my feet and dusted dirt off my pants and shirt.

“Did you get the time?” I said to Jack.

The policeman looked at me like I’d lost my mind, but was quick enough to glance at his watch and say, “Yep.”

I nodded and held out my hand to the man.

“Oona Goodlight,” I said. “This is Officer Jack Conroy. We’re conducting a neighborhood lookout exercise. I have to commend you. You, sir, are a good neighbor. It took you less than a minute after hearing a woman scream to not only look to see what was happening but to step into the fray yourself.”

The man had been looking at us with skeptical eyes, but straightened himself and stood a little taller when I named him a hero.

I leaned forward and dropped my voice, as if sharing a secret. “You know, in some neighborhoods, no one ever comes to help. They don’t even make a call to the police. Can you imagine?”

“Well,” the man fumbled, not sure what to say.

“That’s the best thing to do, you know,” I continued in my conspirator voice. “Call the cops.”

“That makes sense,” the man said.

“Come on,” Jack said to me. “We’re due down in Malaga Cove for the next trial.”

I smiled at the man as we walked toward my car.

“Jack Conroy?” he said once we were out of earshot, arching an eyebrow at me.

I shrugged. “I didn’t want to give your real last name. Chances are he’ll never mentioned this to anyone even remotely connected to the Magic Police, but I didn’t want to take any chances.”

“Hmmm,” he said. “Considerate and a fast thinker.”

I almost blushed.

Back in the car, I drove around the corner and half a block down, then parked.

The sun had long since set. This being Palos Verdes, there were no streetlamps to snap on with comforting light. The only light came from inside houses or the headlamps of passing cars. If the night were cloudless, light would come soon from the stars and full moon. I made myself not think about the darkness, to stay calm and focused on getting Dee and the others out of that house, not on what could happen if we failed.

“Okay,” I said. “Obviously they know we’re here and can guess why. I’m not sure what the best next step would be.”

Jack grinned. “Next, we cowboy.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Twenty or so minutes later, Jack and I had devised a plan. Or rather, Jack had devised a plan. It seemed sketchy to me, but since I couldn’t come up with anything better we were going with it.

I’m a fast study and it was true that in the Brume I’d learn the spell Dee recited for me the first time through—but I wasn’t in the Brume now and Jack wasn’t Dee. He spoke the veil spell phrase by phrase again and I repeated it until I vanished from view. He’d also worked out a spell we hoped would hide me from any spirits hanging around. No point in sneaking up on the house again just to be attacked by ghosts.

“Be careful,” Jack said to the spot where he’d last seen me.

“I will,” I said and started toward the house at the back of the street. No one could see me, but I approached cautiously anyway. Anyone near could hear the soft slap of my rubber-soled red high-tops. If someone accidently touched or knocked into me, they’d feel the same solid me as if I were visible. The man who’d come out in response to my screams was back in his house, but you never knew if someone might take it in their head to walk the dog or something.

My mission was simple—locate exactly where Dee and the others were in the house and, if I could, get to them psychically and ascertain if any of them were coherent enough to help in the rescue. I also wanted to figure out who or what was in charge, to know what we were up against. If I could tell Jack that, he could better formulate the magic we needed to combat him, her, or it.

Spiky nerves ran through me as I came close to the house. Ghost sentries were still around but they were back in that frozen limbo state I’d felt before. There had to be a reason for it. It seemed unlikely that whoever was in charge believed Jack and I had run off and were no longer a threat. Maybe the ghosts needed to recharge after our fight. Maybe the dark sorcerer needed to recharge his or her magic as well. I hoped that was the case. Hoped that his or her resources were low—too low to spend any of what was left on harming the three men. Or in keeping track of a veiled psychic.

When I reached where the edge of the houses’ walkway and the sidewalk met, I sent my senses into the house. Dee felt groggy but not as bespelled or drugged as he had before. Either he was shaking off whatever had been done to him or his captor was bringing Dee back to consciousness for reasons of his own. I felt around for The Gate. He was as still and unresponsive as before. He felt how I imagined a coma patient might—someone so deep in sleep that nothing that happened in the lively world meant anything to them. I reached out to feel for Gil and gasped.

Anger. Fury. Rage. Gil’s emotions were so strong that even though they weren’t directed at me, my sigil tingled and warmed. My head throbbed and my stomach cramped. I’d thought that someone or something had sway over Gil. I’d been wrong. No one was controlling him.

I closed my eyes and focused on the prize—getting Dee safely out of the house. Getting The Gate out. I snuck up under a window of the room where I felt strong emotions, carefully eased myself up and peeked in the window. Dee sat stiffly in a hardback chair in an otherwise furnitureless room. He wasn’t physically bound, but either something magical held him or he was doing a good job of faking it. Gil was with him.

“—always you, little brother,” Gil was saying, his voice cold and biting.

I slipped into Dee’s mind. His thoughts were hazy but he could hear Gil, comprehend what his brother was saying. I felt his frustration. His worry for The Gate. For himself. He knew what Gil was after, and it scared him.

I felt the new worry in Dee as he recognized the tickle inside his skull and realized I was close. I wished for maybe the hundredth time that I could make him hear my thoughts, but my psychic abilities were a one-way street.

Gil paced the room the room. “Fucking adults. ‘Tremendous natural ability,’ they’d say about you, oohing and ahhing over some simple spell you’d mastered. ‘Gil will never be the wizard Diego will.’

I moved over some and tried to see Dee’s eyes but couldn’t. I slid back into his thoughts and saw him stiffen slightly when he felt me again. He didn’t want me at the house. I was one more thing to worry about. But he was glad I was there, too. Felt stronger himself for my presence. His thoughts clattered in and out of lucidity, clear one moment, fogged the next.

Gil drew in a breath and blew it out harshly. “And your damn mother. Sauntering into our lives and stealing my father away as if it was her right. The beautiful Imelda, the renowned bruja. ‘It’s in the blood,’ they’d say about you. Well, what does that say about me, with a mother who is a talented wizard but not up to the dazzling Imelda?”

God, the venom in his voice as he lay out every grievance, real or imagined, of his entire lifetime. Dee was the better skater and had moved into being a goalie only because he felt sorry for Gil—the older brother constantly shown up on the ice by the younger. Dee’s sisters were mean bitches who’d ruined his tenth birthday celebration, among other sins. Dee’s mother looked down on him.

He hunkered down in front of his brother, their faces level.

“My hand put every protective rune and sigil on your body,” he said, “and I never cheated. Every single time I did my best. And you know why, Diego? Not because I loved you and wanted you to be safe. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about that. I did it because I am fucking great at my art and I wouldn’t compromise that even to see you hurt. Hell, I even did a fan-fucking-tastic job on your girl friend’s sigil.”

Screw you, I wanted to yell. You aren’t the wronged party here. You aren’t the good guy.

He turned suddenly in my direction. I was veiled but still blanched, fearful he somehow knew I was here. I carefully felt into his mind. No. It was coincidence he’d mentioned me and then looked toward where I stood. He didn’t seem to have noticed I’d slipped into his thoughts either. He was too consumed with his rage and hate.

“But tonight, little bro,” he said, “I will have my perfect revenge. I will be more powerful than you ever were. I will be more powerful than The Gate. My one regret is than neither of you will survive to see it. Well, you will, for that brief time after The Gate’s death pours his magic into me and before your own death gives me your powers.”

My heart thumped hard and my stomach cramped. I fought back the nausea while my head swam with questions. If Dee was the stronger wizard, how was Gil keeping him enchanted? Not only Dee, but The Gate as well.

The ghosts tethered outside the house began to stir. Were they the source of Gil’s power somehow? There were three dead magicals that I knew of. He might have control of the six dead acolytes as well. There could be additional dead we didn’t know about. Had Gil stolen the ghosts’ magic for himself?

In any event, there were more of them than I could handle if they all came for me. I knew I should get back to Jack and tell him what I’d found out, but I couldn’t make myself leave Dee in Gil’s control.

Through the window, I saw Gil glance at his wristwatch.

“It’s 9:15,” he said. “The moon reaches peak fullness at 9:33. Eighteen minutes until I sacrifice The Gate and gain his powers. You will follow, little brother. That gives you a bit more than twenty minutes to live.”

Panic ran through me. I had to leave now, get back to Jack, and put his plan into motion.

I couldn’t leave. I had to find a way into that room and stop Gil.

The ghosts were still stirring around me, but they didn’t move. They swayed wildly back and forth as if a strong wind buffeted them but their feet were anchored to the ground. Anger swirled in some and fury in others—all focused on the men inside the house. Their emotions made my head feel ready to crack open.

Gil leaned close to Dee’s ear but spoke loudly enough that I could still hear.

“What will you think about in those remaining minutes? All the things you planned that will never happen? Will you worry what will happen to your mother and sisters once I have The Gate’s power and yours in me? Will you think about Oona? I know what you feel for her. I saw it in your eyes that day at the shop.”

I’m an empath. I knew what Dee felt for me, had known the moment ‘liking a lot’ had slid into love. Knew the moment my heart had flipped from one to the other as well. Knew I’d stop Gil from hurting Dee, whatever it took.

The window was opened more than a crack. If I eased it up, could I climb in before Gil noticed?

I sucked in the sigh that fought to escape my mouth. It was a stupid idea. He’d hear the window rising. What good would getting caught myself do?

Gil pulled to his feet and paced the room again.

“I’ve been planning this day for years,” he said. “Slowly building up my power, learning how to kill and put the spirits of the dead under my thrall. All those mysterious deaths, people dying when there seemed to be no reason for it—that was me.”

The confirmation that I’d been right brought me no joy.

“The ghosts know they are under my control and hate me for it,” he said. “Their hate fuels me. Their hatred gave me the power to overcome The Gate. When you so foolishly came to pick me up when I called to say I’d “escaped,” it was the energy of their hatred that let me overcome you.” He stood up and glared down at Dee. “Who’s the clever brother now, eh, Diego?”

If Gil’s words were true and he’d done the best job he could on the sigils, why wasn’t Dee’s tattoo transforming Gil’s hate into positive power for him? I slid back into Dee’s thoughts.

His voice blasted in my own mind, his thoughts sharp and clear.

Get out, Oona. Run.

I wanted to shout in triumph. There was no failure in the sigil. Dee had laid low, gathered his energy and will, faking weakness until Gil let down his guard. I felt irrationally proud of him.

I wanted to tell him Jack was here, too. I wanted Dee to know we’d fight alongside him. That Gil would be stopped. I thought it hard in his direction even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. Then I turned and snuck away from the house.

Chapter Twenty-three

Jack startled when I opened the car door and slid in behind the wheel.

“Well?” he said, recovering his composure.

I unveiled myself and the words tumbled out. “It’s Gil. Gil is behind it all—abducting The Gate, luring Diego into his hold, the mysterious deaths. All for power. Gil is going to sacrifice The Gate and then Diego to steal their power in—” I looked at my watch. “—fifteen minutes.”

Jack kept his face remarkably placid but I felt the worry in him.

“There’s no time for second thoughts, Jack. We have a plan. We have to go with it.” I looked at my watch again. “Fourteen minutes.”

He rubbed at his mouth. “It’ll work. Magic is as magic does.”

I had no idea what that meant.

“Come on, cowboy,” I said, putting a load of confidence I didn’t feel into my voice. “Cast your spells.”

Jack opened his door and stepped out onto the street. I followed and came around the back of the car to stand next to him. I didn’t have the kind of magic needed now, but I could give him a companion, someone who believed with every thread of her life that we would free Dee and The Gate.

Jack drew in a breath and I felt him draw in power along with it. He closed his eyes, muttered some words and flicked his hands in, then out.

Sirens blared. A dozen police cars screamed past us and turned onto the cul-de-sac; the black-and-whites of the regular police and the all-white vehicles of the MPs, all of them tearing straight up the short block toward the ranch house at the back.

I was already running up the street, following the sirens. I heard the car door slam behind me and the slap of Jack’s feet. When I reached the house, a couple dozen policemen and women had lined up blocking any exit from the front or sides. One had a bullhorn held in his right hand. He had turned away from the house and had his eyes focused on Jack.

We came up beside that man and Jack took the bullhorn from him.

“Gil Adair,” Jack said through the horn. The loudness made me cringe. “You are surrounded. Come out with your hands up and your magic left behind.”

I glanced down the street and saw lights coming on in three of the four other houses on the cul-de-sac, people coming out to see what the commotion was about. That was good. Witnesses put more pressure on Gil.

But Gil didn’t come out and give himself up.

“Gil Adair,” Jack called again through the horn. “This is your last chance. Come out now with your hands up and attempt no magic.”

Seconds passed. Long, dry, terrifying moments where I worried what desperate measures Gil might be taking against The Gate and Dee.

The front door opened. Gil stepped onto the narrow porch and cast his gaze over the scene in front of him.

A slow smile spread across his mouth. “Well, if it isn’t Diego’s girlfriend, Oona Goodlight, and Officer Jack Schneider of the magic police.” His gaze again swept over the police surrounding his house. “And friends.” He chortled. “Not real friends though, are they?”

My breath caught in my chest. Gil wasn’t fooled by Jack’s illusions. I’d worried it was a weak idea. Gil was a wizard, not some ordin with no idea something could look real but not be. So now what?

My sigil tingled and a stream of power flowed through me. Easy enough to think it was because Gil was sending evil thoughts my way—he certainly was—but I also felt Dee in that burst of strength.

Gil swung his gaze toward where I stood and laughed. “You’re pretty naive if you think that’ll help, Oona.”

Shit. Had he felt Dee transferring power to me? Or did he mean the sigil? Had he found a way to counteract its magic?

Gil locked his eyes on me and raised his hands. I felt him gathering his will, his energy, and his magic. But Jack was faster. From the corner of my eye I saw the fireball he loosed in Gil’s direction.

Gil pivoted and used the will and magic he’d gathered against me to stop the fireball in midflight and send it hurtling back. Jack put up his hand to counter the spell, but the other man’s magic was stronger. The fireball slammed into Jack’s palm. He bellowed and grabbed his burned hand with the other.

Gil laughed and cast a freezing spell on Jack, leaving the injured man looking like a demented statue, one hand held in the other, his face distorted with pain.

I’d used a freezing spell on Petra. I tried the undoing words for that spell, but Jack remained a grimacing statue. Maybe I had the words wrong. Maybe only the caster could undo it.

When Jack froze, the illusion of police he’d conjured vanished.

Gil turned his attention back to me. My heart hammered in my chest. If he used the same spell on me, I had no way to counter it. Evidently I had no way to counter any spell Gill cast my way.

The sigil on my arm burned. Energy poured through me, joining what Dee had sent. My mind kicked into overdrive, searching for a way to at least distract Gil before he could freeze or otherwise bespell me. Something to keep him occupied long enough for me to get into the house and find Dee and The Gate.

Dee had taught me how to conjure real things. The conjured wouldn’t exist for long, but they were as real as anything while they lasted. Jack had made a mistake when he used illusion for the police and police cars.

I bolted forward, reaching into my pocket for loose change as I ran—something real for the magic to anchor on. I had only seconds to act. I conjured a nest of bullet ants and pitched it straight at Gil’s head.

Someone once described being stung by bullet ants as like walking over flaming charcoal with a three-inch nail embedded in your heel. Gil screamed and batted at the ants crawling over and stinging his head, face, and neck. I leapt toward him, meaning to push past him into the house. He shouted something unintelligible, his voice carrying the force of his anger, hatred, and physical pain. A gale wind rose up, driving me back and blasting the ants off his body.

A flash of motion flared behind Gil—Dee running out the front door at full speed. He smashed into Gil from behind, pushing his brother down on the cement porch. Dee’s fell on top.

The two men tumbled across the porch to the lawn. Both pulled to their feet and faced each other across a two-foot divide. They could have fought hand to hand or Dee might have found a knife or other instrument in the house to use, but they were wizards and magic was their weapon of choice.

Magic in the real world wasn’t like Harry Potter with two wizards facing off with wands at twenty paces. The real world was a lot messier than that.

Jack was still frozen and couldn’t physically help, but I felt him transfusing his energy and magic to Dee. I sucked air across my teeth, frustrated that I didn’t know how to transfer my own energy and power to him without physically touching him. There was so much I needed to learn. Gil had the energy and power he could draw from all the dead he’d enslaved. Dee could use any strength, power, or help we could give him.

And I knew a freezing spell. I could do to Gil what he’d done to Jack and end this now. I readied the spell in my mind, drew in my will and power, and started the words.

Don’t, Oona, Dee shouted in my head.

I cut off the chant, listening to hear if he’d say more.

Don’t draw attention to yourself. Gil is strong. Your spells won’t affect him. You don’t have the power. I can’t protect you and fight him at the same time. Don’t draw his attention and risk winding up like Jack.

I hated that I saw he could be right. Hated that the best way I could help Dee was to be quiet and unnoticeable. It wasn’t my nature to hang back.

Magic crackled in the air as the two men focused their wills and readied their powers.

Gil struck first, aiming a blast of icy air—much stronger than the blast he’d sent at me—and driving it straight toward Dee.

Dee stumbled back several steps but caught his footing, steadying himself. He hurled a concussive wave of sound that boomed over the yard. Gil was knocked down from the force of the wave but pulled back up to his feet almost immediately. He shouted something and flung his right hand toward the magnolia tree in the yard. The massive crack of a huge limb tearing itself away from the trunk was probably heard two blocks over. The limb flew straight toward Dee, guided by Gil’s magic.

Dee countered with fire. The limb burst into flames midair, swung around and sped back toward Gil.

Gil shouted again. The fire went out and the burnt limb fell to the ground with a heavy thud.

My hand itched for the Smith & Wesson locked in my car. I couldn’t bear to stand by and watch Dee and Gil fight to defeat each other. I didn’t doubt Dee’s skills and abilities, but I knew I could help even though he’d warned me not to try.

A whistling sound drew my eyes skyward. A stone the size of a car tire was falling from out of nowhere directly toward Dee. He saw it coming and leapt away. The stone thudded into the ground throwing fallen magnolia leaves and bits of dirt and grass into the air.

Dee waved his hands and Gil tumbled backwards, ass over teakettle. He pulled to his feet, snarling. He held his arms out in front of his body and began chanting. The stone he’d conjured slowly began to rise.

Dee took the same stance, chanting the same words Gil was but a moment or two behind so it sounded like one of those kid’s round-songs—“Frère Jacques” or “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” Except this was deadly serious.

The stone raised head height and moved slowly toward Dee. I felt the tethered ghosts on the lawn swaying as though wild winds blew across them. Gil stealing their energy and their magic, I thought.

The stone picked up speed, flying toward Dee. He chanted faster, his words catching up with and matching Gil’s. The stone stopped in mid-air, then began moving toward Gil.

I shook myself out of the nearly mesmerized state watching the wizards had brought on, bent down and scooped up a handful of leaves from the lawn.

To conjure a real thing, you needed something real for the magic to grow on.

The stone moved slowly in Gil’s direction. Both men wore looks of intense concentration. Sweat ran down their faces.

I cupped the leaves in my hands and began muttering the conjuring spell.

The stone halted, then began moving back toward Dee.

A loud crack broke my concentration on the spell. A jagged shard flew off the stone and racked across Gil’s arm, drawing blood.

His anger, his hatred for his brother ratcheted up. I felt Gil summon more energy from his ghosts for a final push, gathering his will, fueling himself with rage that it was the sigils and runes he’d inked on Dee that gave his younger brother the strength, focus, and power to fight him.

The stone, already moving toward Dee, picked up speed.

Dee’s power felt like an avalanche held in check only by the strength of his wish not to destroy his brother. He’d do it though, if it came to that. I felt his resignation to the possibility, his reluctant willingness to be the instrument of his brother’s death to save The Gate, Jack, me, himself, and all those Gil could harm if he won.

The stone stopped only a few feet in front of Dee, hovered for a moment, then started back toward Gil

Not a choice I’d want to make. A choice I could spare him from. I started the conjuring spell again.

As always when I conjured something real, I didn’t see the moment when the leaves in my hand transformed to a twin to my Smith and Wesson. I dropped down the safety, cocked the gun, and pointed it at Gil’s chest.

“It’s over, Gil,” I yelled. “Surrender, or I fucking swear I will shoot you.”

He glared at me, his thoughts so loud I didn’t need to slip in to his mind to hear them.

I could kill you in a heartbeat.

“Not if I kill you first,” I said aloud.

There was a gun, the power from the sigils, a lot of focused magic, and the flying stone all bearing down on him.

Seconds ticked by. The stone moved faster toward Gil now that his attention on it had wavered. I kept the gun trained on him and wondered if Dee would let the stone smash into his brother.

Gil glanced at the stone, coming toward his head and not slowing. He ducked in a panic and threw his hands up in surrender. I guessed it surprised him as much as it had me that Dee would have slung that huge stone into his brother.

Dee stopped the stone midflight and eased it back until it was halfway between the brothers, then shattered it into hundreds of small stones that fell on the ground between them. Gil kept his hands in the air, his furious glare on his brother.

Dee undid the spell on Jack, then walked slowly up to Gil.

“You should have told me all that stuff a long time ago,” he said.

My heart broke for the sorrow in Dee’s voice, for the pain that must be in his heart.

“We could have worked things out,” he said. “You have no idea how many times I was jealous of you or how hard I worked to be as good as my older brother. I wanted us to be. . . I don’t know. Better to each other than our parents had been, I guess.”

He held his hand out to Gil.

Gil spat at Dee’s feet. “Fuck you, brother.”

Jack stepped up and muttered some words I took to be a binding spell since Gil’s body went rigid and his eyes glazed. My ears pricked up at the sound of sirens. Real ones this time.

“Take him inside,” Dee said. “I’ll work on getting the neighbors to forget what they saw and heard tonight before the cops arrive.”

“Where’s The Gate?” I said.

Dee motioned toward the house. Jack gave Gil a nudge in the back. “Get going.”

Gil obeyed Jack the same way his enslaved ghosts had obeyed him. There was irony in that, but no pleasure in it for me. Nor I suspected for Dee or Jack. I followed the two men through the door. Inside, Jack made a gesture and the door locked and bolted itself behind us.

“I’m going to look for The Gate,” I said and headed down the hall, throwing open closed doors as I went. The Gate wasn’t in any of the rooms in the house.

The gazebo.

I raced out the back door into the yard. The fifteen-by-fifteen foot square gazebo’s canvas sides were rolled down so I couldn’t see inside. I could see, though, that the roof had been removed, leaving the interior open to the moonlight. I knew The Gate was alive, felt it clearly, but had no idea what kind of shape he might be in. I found a corner where two sheets of canvas met, pulled one back and stepped inside.

The Gate was sitting cross-legged on a stone table—an altar—his eyes slightly glazed, like a man who’d woken unexpectedly and wasn’t quite functioning yet. A silver knife covered in runes lay next to his right knee. He wore a long gray gown with a deep V slit down the front—the better to cut his heart out, I thought. My stomach turned over at the implication. His eyes glittered when he spotted me.

“Ah, fierce little lamb,” he said. “I am pleased to see you. And very pleased that our side won.”

I nodded dumbly.

He picked up the knife and stared at it a moment before turning his attention back to me. “And Diego? How is he?”

I swallowed hard. “Devastated. Doing what needs to be done, like always.”

“Ah,” The Gate said and sighed.

How else would a man be who’d been prepared to kill his own brother?

That went both ways. Gil had been ready to kill his brother as well. And his mentor. What sort of anger did it take to be willing—anxious—to do those things?

The Gate had once said it was tradition for a wizard to try to kill his teacher once he’d learned all he could. If Gil had thought himself ready for that, he’d been wrong. Dee had proven him wrong.

“Can I help you down?” I said and put out my hand.

I had that same feeling I’d had when I first met him, as if The Gate was looking straight through my skin to my soul. He grinned, but there was no humor or pleasure in it.

“I think I’ll sit here a moment longer, catch my breath.”

I nodded, wondering if I should stay with him or go get Dee and bring him here.

“Oh,” The Gate said, the word a quick exhalation of breath. His face took on a stricken look. “Go to Diego and Gil. Now.”

I spun around and ran back into the house. The Gate’s voice had been firm, his words a clear order. My heart pounded. Had Gil regained his strength? Was he attacking Dee again?

I came in the back door and rushed down the hall.

In the living room I saw the reason The Gate had sent me back in the house. My mouth went dry.

Elgrin, the fairy-warrior, stood with her hands on her hips, glaring in my direction. Jack stood next to her and I had the feeling they’d been arguing before the sound of my running footsteps had stopped their conversation. Gil, still magically bound, sat on the couch. Diego stood nearby—straight and tall, but I felt his exhaustion, his anguish.

I closed my eyes a moment, calming myself. I knew why Elgrin had come.

“This man,” she said, infusing the word with venom and gesturing toward Jack, “is refusing to hand over my payment. Perhaps you can explain to him that a deal is a deal.” She turned her harsh gaze on the policeman. “I think you know cheating the fairies is not a good idea.”

I walked toward her. “Of course he can’t make the payment. You struck the deal with me.”

She unfurled her large wings, expanding the space she took up in the room. “Fine. You’re here now. Hand over the sorcerer.”

My mind spun, looking for a way out. I went for clean, honest truth. “The sorcerer is brother to wizard Adair, who is dear to me. When I made the bargain, I didn’t know the prize would be family.”

She made a scoffing sound. “That makes no difference. I and my troops held up our end—at some cost to us, if you will remember.”

I did remember: the fairy with burned wings, another with a wing half torn off, the ones with broken arms and damaged legs from the acolytes’ staffs.

I’d threatened to shoot Gil and probably would have done it at the moment to free Dee and The Gate. But now? Gill was a murderer and probably dangerously insane, but should he suffer what Elgrin had described as a ‘slow, painful, and fatal’ fate for his crimes? Was it fair to let the fairies have him, denying the families of the humans he’d killed a chance to confront him and have their say? To deny Dee’s family the chance to forgive Gil or not while he still lived?

Jack took a step toward the fairy warrior. “You know I’m Magic Police. You know that asking for a life in payment for anything is illegal. The fairies like to think they are outside the law, but they aren’t. You aren’t. I won’t let you take the man as payment. You’ll have to come to some other agreement with Oona.”

Elgrin slowly beat her wings. “The magic police hold no sway over the fairies, and human morality is none of my concern.”

Gils’ fate had never been my decision to make, but it wasn’t Elgrin’s either.

I cleared my throat. “Look, instead—”

The fairy cut me off with a sharp wave of her hand. “Enough!”

A thick blue fog filled the room, making me cough so hard my vision blurred. When the fog lifted, the fairy warrior and Gil had vanished.

Chapter Twenty-four

I didn’t see Dee for the next two days and he didn’t answer his phone when I called.

“Give him some room,” my mother said. “He must be miserable over what happened.”

My mother is a wise woman.

The entire magical community was awash with the story. Too many people knew about it and the fairies had been quite public about Gil’s fate. It helped fuel the fear of crossing them, I supposed.

I was cleaning up after breakfast when I felt Dee so strongly that I headed down the hallway toward the front door before he knocked.

He stood on my porch and reached out to me. We wrapped our arms tightly around the other and stood in the doorway swaying together for a long, long moment. I wanted to hold our embrace forever but people passing by on the Strand were beginning to stare.

“Come inside,” I said.

He followed me into the parlor and we sat together on the sofa, holding hands as if the only thing that could save us from the pain of this world was the touch of the other.

“How have you been?” I said finally.

He sighed deeply and shrugged. Really, what words were there?

“Have you talked to The Gate?” I said.

Dee nodded. “You were right. He’d left his star charm in hope I’d find it and know we were on the right trail.”

I nodded, encouraging him to go on. I could see he needed to talk, to get it all out.

“You know The Gate is accomplished at divination,” Dee said. “He knew it was coming. The abduction. The attempt at a sacrifice. All of it.”

“He knew,” I said aghast, “and let it happen anyway?”

“Not all the exact details, but he knew Gil would try to kill him.”

“And he let it go on anyway? That’s crazy.”

“It’s a rite of passage for wizards,” Dee said. “You know that. The Gate divined that Gil would come for him, but he thought he’d gently put Gil in his place and they’d go on like always. He didn’t know Gil had gone to black magic. Didn’t know about the people he’d killed to steal their power. Not just the ones we knew about. After Thomas Halverson killed the man at Alpine Village at Gil’s order, he killed Halverson. It was Gil who sent the fetch.”

I sighed. “The Gate must have been distressed when he realized.”

“He was, yeah. And yet he’s already thinking of taking on a new apprentice. The Gate is a teacher. That’s always going to be true.”

I thought about The Gate, the way he always seemed to see deeply into my soul. Had he, in fact, known everything all along and let it proceed as one of the “life lessons” he was so fond of? The thought appalled me.

“I want to thank you,” Dee said. “At the house. You were—” His voice trailed off.

“What?” I said.

He smiled, the first genuine smile I seen on him in a while.

“Seriously badass,” he said.

I smiled back, but it was thin. I felt he’d come to say something important but was reluctant, and it surely wasn’t to tell me how badass I was.

“Spit it out, Dee,” I said kindly. “Say what you came to say.”

He drew in a breath. “I’m going home for a while.”

My heart rate sped. “To the commune?”

He nodded. “My father, Gil’s mother, my mother, my sisters, everyone we grew up with are overwhelmed by what happened. No one can understand it. My dad and his mom are completely destroyed knowing what Gil did, knowing that the fairies—” He paused, gathering himself together. “I should be with them.”

The fairies had Gil because of me. I didn’t feel resentment or anger from Dee over my part in what happened to his brother. He knew I never would have agreed to the price if I’d known Gil was the sorcerer. His understanding only intensified the guilt I felt.

“Going home is the right thing to do.” I squeezed his hand lightly. “Do you want company? A traveling companion?”

His lips tightened into a line and I knew the answer before he said it.

“I need some time to myself. I keep running over things that happened when we were kids, wondering if this or that had gone differently would Gil not have hated me. I need time with my family now, away from . . . this life. Time to try and process everything.”

I understood that need for time to oneself well enough. Time to think things through. Time to heal. Still, a worry rolled through me. “Are we breaking up?”

Dee loved me and I loved him. It didn’t mean we would be together no matter what. My mother’s words came back to me: ‘He’s not known as a man who stays long with one woman.’

Diego glanced down and shook his head. I couldn’t tell if that meant no, we weren’t breaking up or I don’t want to tell you, but we are breaking up.

He sighed and looked at me. “I don’t know. I hope not, but, Oona, when my magic faltered, when I thought I might lose it, it was like I lost myself. If I’m not a wizard, if I’m not a damn good wizard, what am I? What do I have to offer you?”

I fought back the tears threatening behind my eyes. The last thing Dee needed now was his girlfriend crying for his misery.

“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard,” I said.

He stared at me, incredulous.

“Really, Dee,” I said. “You honestly think I’m with you because you’re a ‘damn good wizard?’ Have you been sitting around these last few days second guessing yourself and worrying about what and who are you if you’re not the second best wizard in town? You’re Diego Adair—first, last, and always. Diego Adair who is a friend to and adored by more people than I can count. A kind and compassionate man. And a helluva goalie.”

He started to say something but I cut him off with a flick of my wrist. Since I was on a roll, I might as well keep going.

“And fine looking, too, now that I think about it. Not that I’m the sort to be drawn to a man just because he’s better looking that anyone has a right to be, but it doesn’t hurt as an add-on. Did I mention how good you are in bed?”

Dee held up a hand. “Stop. You’re making me blush.”

I smiled, then sobered. “You’re right about going home for a while. Your family needs you and right now you need them. Go home. Have an existential crisis if you need to. Maybe I’ll have one of my own while you’re gone.”

“You don’t seem the existential crisis type.”

“You’d be surprised.”

He chuffed a small laugh. “I might be at that. You’re full of the unexpected.”

His muscles began to relax and his tension lightened. He slipped his arm over my shoulders and drew me to him. We sat together quietly.

“I have a favor to ask,” I said. “Would you be willing to give me the spell to open your wizard’s lair? I’d like to use your library.”

He cocked his head, puzzled.

“I could have done so much more to find you if I’d had more magic. A dowsing spell. More magical power. I could have helped more with everything. So much grief would have been spared.”

“Of course,” he said. “Take whatever books interest you. You can use my supplies to practice potions. Use the gazing bowls. Whatever you want.”

“Thanks.”

Another long silence set in. Finally Dee said, “I’d better get going.”

He stood, then bent over and kissed my forehead, leaving his lips on my skin a long moment. I wanted to throw my arms around him and hold him until all the pain in him was gone. I didn’t though. We can’t fix things for people; they have to fix themselves. And we have to let them.

“Will you keep in touch?” I said.

“I’ll call,” he said.

“Dee,” I said but he shook his head.

“I have to go.”

I watched him walk away and heard the front door close. I felt the wards go back up and the frizz of a bit of extra magic he added, an extra dash of protection.

"Thanks, Dee," I said softly.

I sat a long time in the parlor. I cried a little, sad for all that had happened, all that Gil had changed and damaged and destroyed. Cried for Dee and how awful he must feel. Cried for how much I already missed him and how lonely I suddenly felt.

Finally I made myself get up. I washed my face and went to the garage to pack my hockey bag for tonight’s game. I didn’t feel much like playing, but that was the thing about life—most times the best move you could make was to just get on with it.

Thank you for reading this book. I would be most grateful if you’d take a moment to leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads. Thank you.

Also by Alexes Razevich

The Oona Goodlight series

Ice-Cold Death

Barbed Wire Heart

The Ahsenthe Cycle

If you enjoy being immersed in an alien world and like stories with strong female characters, The Ahsenthe Cycle has everything you’re looking for.

Book one: Khe

Book two: Ashes and Rain

Companion story: Gama and Hest

Book Three: By the Shining Sea

The Girl with Stars in her Hair – Cassie Goodlight has one year to save her kidnapped brother. Magic is the only way.  Not exactly a prequel to the Oona Goodlight stories, but interesting for those wanting to know more about Oona’s ancestors.

Shadowline Drift – A psychological thriller with science fiction and fantasy elements. Perfect for fans of Inception or Lost.

Jumper: A short story in which world-class shopper, Maddie Bresslin, accidently remakes the world. Magical realism, a little strange, and not for everyone. A nice read during a lunch break or while waiting at the doctor’s or dentist’s office.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Dan McNeil, Richard Casey, and my amazing editor, Christina Frey, for their help in shaping this story.

Much love to Chris, Colin, and Larkin Razevich—the three greatest gifts of my life.

Cover design by Deranged Doctor Design

About the Author

Alexes Razevich writes speculative fiction. She attended California State University San Francisco where she earned a degree in Creative Writing. After a successful career on the fringe of the electronics industry, including stints as Director of Marketing for a major trade show management company and as an editor for Electronic Engineering Times, she returned to her first love — fiction. She lives in Southern California with her husband. When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found playing hockey or traveling somewhere she hasn’t been before.

Email:  LxsRaz@yahoo.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lxsraz

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Website: http://www.alexesrazevich.com/

Table of Contents

- Chapter One
- Chapter Two
- Chapter Three
- Chapter Four
- Chapter Five
- Chapter Six
- Chapter Seven
- Chapter Eight
- Chapter Nine
- Chapter Ten
- Chapter Eleven
- Chapter Twelve
- Chapter Thirteen
- Chapter Fourteen
- Chapter Fifteen
- Chapter Sixteen
- Chapter Seventeen
- Chapter Eighteen
- Chapter Nineteen
- Chapter Twenty
- Chapter Twenty-one
- Chapter Twenty-two
- Chapter Twenty-three
- Chapter Twenty-four