“And yet, I haven’t given up hope of it happening one day, preferably on a high-profile case without any other leads to follow. Then bam! A glowing arrow pointing to the bad guy.”
Handing over a bowl of his famously buttery popcorn plus a box of Raisinets and Junior Mints, he tucked me against him. “We can dream.”
We settled down to watch a movie with our most excellent snacks, and I filled him in on my odd call with Lethe while we snuggled. Linus slept on top of the covers with his clothes on. That is to say he made himself comfortable and resumed adding notes to a book he was writing on the goddess-touched condition meant for me and any future goddess-touched necromancers in the family.
I drifted to sleep listening to the scratch of his pen across paper and the soothing coolness of his skin next to mine.
Seven
Linus sat in bed next to Grier and stared at the paragraph he wrote an hour ago. The more times he read over it, the less sense it made. His concentration was shot, so he set aside his work and sucked in a long, calming breath.
The howl of dark magics in his blood demanded satisfaction for Grier’s injuries, and he was tempted to give himself over to that power. But that’s not who he was, and he reined in the familiar impulse with effort that broke sweat across his brow.
He had put off leaving Grier for as long as he dared, but he had business to attend before she rose at dusk. Careful not to wake her, he eased out of bed and exited the room, locking her in before he confronted the guilty wraith.
Fading as the sun rose, Cletus bobbed on unfelt air currents, and Linus waited for him to confess.
“You might as well tell me what you’ve done.” Linus searched the hall and the stairs, but he found nothing amiss on his way to the foyer. “I’m about to find out whether you own up to it or not.”
Stubborn to a fault, a new personality quirk that reminded him painfully of Maud, the wraith kept his silence.
The vampires were nowhere in sight, and Linus sighed with relief. He didn’t mind sharing the house. He would never tell Grier he preferred more victims to shift the target off her back, but she knew him well enough to guess he wouldn’t turn down anyone who could defend themselves if they asked for a room.
“I know you’re out here,” Linus called from the porch after shutting the front door behind him. “The question is why.”
Dark figures loped into view, two large dogs covered in rough scales, their tongues lolling.
When he turned to address Cletus, the wraith was nowhere to be found and refused to answer a summons.
The smaller beast transformed in a swirl of crimson magic into a compact woman with bright-blue hair.
“Cletus appeared to us.” She jogged up the steps and joined him. “He moaned what I interpreted as Grier being in danger.” Lethe spread her hands in a helpless gesture. “So here we are.”
Grier’s relationship with Lethe, Hood, and their pack was best described as…complicated.
Lethe was her best friend, but Grier was also Lethe’s daughter’s godmother. Even if those two things hadn’t been the case, Grier was also a member of the Savannah gwyllgi pack by virtue of a debt Hood and Lethe felt was owed to her on her mother’s behalf.
A magically enforced NDA the alpha pair signed prevented them from sharing the details, but it had been made clear to us that their failure to protect Grier’s mother had created an imbalance, in their minds, in need of rectifying.
Technically, after the wedding, Linus had joined the pack as well. All that added up to a lot of red tape he thought he had already cut through in order to escape with Grier for a handful of days.
“I told her we should call first,” Hood said after his own transformation. “She refused on the basis that Grier is—”
“—my best friend.” Lethe elbowed him in the side, and he bent over coughing.
“Yeah,” Hood wheezed, glaring at her. “That.”
As social intricacies often eluded him, Linus felt no shame in asking, “Am I missing something?”
Hood looked anywhere but at him while Lethe widened her eyes in a failed attempt at innocence.
“You might as well join us.” Linus gestured toward the inn. “A vampire couple showed up last night and requested a room. What are two more guests?”
Lethe bristled, her lip twitching with the promise of a growl. “Anything we should worry about?”
Usually, Linus respected her heightened overprotective streak where her packmates were concerned. Even umbrella members such as Grier and himself. Tonight, he selfishly regretted it. Just a bit.
“I don’t think so.” He hesitated. “They claim they’re here because of the haunting.”
A neat line knitted her brow. “Okay, that’s weird.”
As undead creatures, vampires preferred to surround themselves with life, not death.
“They have evidence that supports their story.”
Lethe wasn’t letting go. “What kind?”
“Video and photos from the house during previous years.”
“Have you spoken to the owners?” Hood stared off in the direction of a small cottage set behind the main house. “Someone had to check them in, right?”
“They self-checked, but I spoke to Mr. Oliphant first. He wanted to make certain we didn’t mind the intrusion.” He thought back on the conversation, but their host had been courteous to a fault, the same as he had been at their own check-in. “The Rogoffs claim to be regular patrons, but he didn’t recognize their names. That’s to be expected. It’s not as if they could use the same identity each time without drawing suspicion.”
An inn this small, in a town so remote, with a history so dark, could use all the business it could get. It could be the owners didn’t mind who filled the rooms as long as they got paid. Shortsighted if this event was a draw for regular customers, since he and Grier wouldn’t be coming back, but it was hard to turn down the promise of a rather large payday, regardless of what future complications their present actions set in motion.
“Let’s give it a few hours.” Hood flared his nostrils. “Then I think we should go talk to them.”
“Not all vampires are murderous fiends,” Linus said dryly. “Most are perfectly average.”
“I’m not saying the whole species is a wash,” Lethe countered, arms crossed, “but even you have to admit they tend to kidnap first and ask questions never around Grier.”
Forced to agree with her, Linus summoned Cletus. “Go check on the Oliphants.”
The wraith shimmered, a faint smudge, then vanished again, off to fulfil its duty.
“Are you going to tell Grier we’re here?” Lethe scuffed her boot in the grass. “I don’t want her to think I’m a codependent psycho who can’t deal with her best friend leaving for a few days.”
The lack of eye contact made him curious. “How did you get here so fast?”
Savannah was an eight-hour drive or about a four-hour flight, counting the unavoidable layover, if they left from Atlanta. The incident with Grier on the stairs happened only a few hours earlier. Cletus could appear to Lethe and Hood to convey his message in an instant, but they couldn’t traverse space in a blink the same way.
“She’s a codependent psycho who can’t deal with her best friend leaving for a few days.” Hood wiped the smile off his face with his hand, but his eyes still grinned. “We were already on our way when the wraith popped in to say hello.”
Lethe and Grier were as close as sisters, but Lethe wasn’t usually this clingy. “Any particular reason why you’re worried about Grier?”
Lethe scrunched up her face, working through her options, which didn’t bode well, when Cletus shot a warning jolt down the bond he shared with Linus. The connection was instinctual after so many years together, and he peered through the wraith’s eyes to view the issue.
“We have a problem.” He spared one last glance toward the inn before an ingrained sense of duty from his tenure as the Potentate of Atlanta urged him toward the cottage. Vision flickering between his own and Cletus’s, he picked his way across the unfamiliar landscape. “We need to go to the Oliphants.”
The gwyllgi followed him, but they hung back when they reached the cottage.
“I smell it.” Lethe rubbed at her nose. “This is not going to be a social call.”
Again, he found himself staring after the inn. And again, he forced his thoughts back on task.
“There are bodies in there,” Hood confirmed. “Fresh ones.”
“The Oliphants.” Linus had already viewed the brutal tableau secondhand. “They’re both dead.”
Kylie was around the same age as Grier was when she stumbled across Maud in a pool of blood gone cold. Linus regretted that security had been ripped away from them both so young, but this time he could ward the cottage and spare Kylie from the nightmares Grier still carried with her. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do. That, and find the person or persons responsible.
A hazy dawn broke before he could order Cletus back to Grier. With the vampires asleep for the day, and the shadow cats banished until nightfall, she would be safe behind the sigil on her door. He had the time before she woke to begin working toward justice for the Oliphants.
“The door is locked.” Falling into old habits, he began his investigation. “Windows are too.” He circled the cottage, checking all entry points until he reached the back door. “There are signs this lock was jimmied.” He examined it more closely. “The wood has weathered beneath the damage. That means it’s old.” He straightened. “This was not how the killers gained access.”
“Agree,” the gwyllgi chimed in.
Consulting with the alpha pair, he gave them room to work. “Are you picking up any unusual scents?”
“Human and vampire.” Hood checked with Lethe. “The human ones are layered, a product of time. They belonged to the residents. The vampires are new and recent.”