“A body has been found along the waterfront. Both the Agency and the local police department are investigating this matter. At this time, there is no further information I can give you concerning the victim’s identity or a probable cause of death. When we are at liberty to discuss these matters, a statement will be issued. Now, questions.”
Every hand went up. She pointed at a short man in the front. “Aren’t you the one who saved Mayor Grant in the New Year’s raid?”
“I am Walker Juliana Norris with the Agency and yes, that was me. Second question?”
“Come on, you can’t count that,” came a cry from the back. “That was a horrible question. Everyone knew that.”
“Everyone but him apparently,” she said with a half smile. “If you can do better, what’s your question?”
“Rumor has it you took over the investigation on the Thief. Was the victim one of the missing children?”
“You know I’m not going to answer that.” She pointed to another man in the back.
“Was the body you found the Thief?”
“I’m not going to answer that, either. But off the record, if it were, I’d be buying you all a round at the pub, not talking to you here. Does anyone have a question I might feasibly be able to answer on the record?”
A woman on the right waved her hand in the air and Juliana gestured to her. “Why are the Wardens of the High Order here?”
“Now, that one I can answer.”
The reporter beamed.
“When I received the call regarding the crime scene, I wasn’t in a position to immediately secure it. There was some question as to the scene remaining secure if it wasn’t done in a certain time frame so I called in the Wardens. As you can see, they’ve done a remarkable job.”
“So the Wardens are working for you?” someone shouted.
She arched a brow. “The Wardens work for themselves. But you know that. And that’s five questions.”
Shouted protests filled the air.
“The lady said five questions,” Deke boomed from beside her and she turned to go.
“Isn’t there anything else you can tell us?” said a voice so quiet she almost didn’t hear it. She ran her eyes over the crowd to the petite woman in the front to the left. Juliana could almost feel the fear radiating off her.
Everyone fell silent when she faced them again. “Listen. I know you’re scared. You’re scared to let your children outside, to let them go to school, even to take your eyes off them for a second. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry that this madman has made you live in fear. What I can tell you is that we’re all looking for him and we’re looking for those children. And we will find them. We’ll find him and we’ll stop him. I promise you that.” With that, she walked back behind the perimeter.
“That’s a big promise,” Jeremiah said.
She just looked at him. What did he want her to say? She knew that but she had to say something. Besides, it wasn’t as if they had a choice. They had to find this bastard and stop him, no matter what it took.
“That was a big sound bite,” Clayton said with a wry twist of his lips. “Hope you’re prepared to be on every news station on the west coast.”
Crap. She hadn’t thought of that. She groaned. “Let’s go check with Taft. I’m ready to get out of here.”
The techs were packing up when they got back to the pier. She looked at Clayton. “I just realized that I have to touch that spell to remove it. The water’s going to bury me unless you cast yours to replace it.”
He nodded. “I told you I can do it, but there’s no guarantee you’ll stay completely dry.”
“As long as I don’t drown I think I’ll be good.” She looked at Leo and Jeremiah. “Why don’t you take off? We’ll meet at the hotel in the morning.”
They nodded and waved as they left. She turned to Taft. “You can go, too. I’ll take a portal out of here.”
“I’d like to watch if you don’t mind,” he said.
She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Clayton stayed right behind her as they moved to the wall of water. She flashed on her gift and reached out to snag the spell between her fingers. “I’m ready whenever you are.”
“On three then,” he said and began making a complicated series of hand gestures in the air. “One. Two. And three.” When he said three, Juliana yanked backward on the spell, pulling it away from the water. It clung to it momentarily, then snapped away and dissolved. There was a half-second gap between that spell vanishing and Clayton’s sliding into place. Half a second was long enough for their shoes and the bottom of their legs to become completely soaked.
They both looked at each other and laughed in relief that they’d done it, that it wasn’t worse. They trudged up the stairs, wet boots and all. Once they reached the top, they turned back, Clayton made several gestures in the air again, and his spell faded away. The water took its natural place in a rush. Tension Juliana hadn’t even been aware of flowed from her shoulders leaving a nagging ache in its wake. Exhaustion came quick behind it.
“That’s finished. Let’s get out of here.” She rubbed a hand along the back of her neck.
Taft nodded. “Come on, I’ll take you back to the hotel.”
“Couple of the boys would like to take you out for a drink first,” Clayton said.
She looked up at him in surprise, suddenly not feeling tired at all. The Wardens fascinated her, they always had. And she could definitely use a drink.
“I don’t think I’m really up for a beer,” Taft said.
Clayton huffed. “That’s good, because you weren’t invited. I’ll make sure she gets home.”
Taft’s cheeks flushed, but he ignored Clayton and looked at her. “Are you sure? You don’t really know these guys.”
She didn’t know him either, but she refrained from saying it. Thomas trusted them, was one of them. And he’d told Jeremiah to call them to help her. That was good enough for her. “I’ll be fine. See you in the morning.”
Chapter Ten
“Your woman has had a shitty day. You need to talk to her.” Hamilton Clayton’s gruff voice came over the line as Thomas flew home. The hum of the plane vibrated through his bones, reminding him of the distance between him and his bride.
“I’ll call her when we’re through.” He hated that he’d had to send others in his place when she needed help, but he was thankful the Wardens had been available.
Hamilton laughed. “Yeah. You do that. I like her. We all do. She’s tough.”
The corner of Thomas’s mouth curved into a smile. He knew they’d like her once they met her, but having it confirmed relieved some of his fears. Other than Michael and the coven, the Wardens were the people he spent the most time with. It would be most unfortunate if they didn’t get along with his mate. “What happened?”
Hamilton’s voice dropped. “Hang on.” The noise in the background flared and then faded away. “They found another one. It was bad. Brutal. The kind of thing that’ll eat you up inside if you don’t get it out. Catch my drift?”
“Yes, I understand.” His friend had evidently caught onto the fact that Juliana tended to internalize things rather than dealing with them. He was going to have to do his best to change that. There was no reason for her to do everything on her own any more. He was back and he wasn’t going anywhere ever again.
There was a long stretch of silence. “She’s smart.”
Thomas smiled. “Yes, she is.”
“Pretty, too.”
“Gorgeous.”
“Is she as lethal as I think she is?”
“More so. She is also mine.”
Hamilton laughed again. “Don’t think I don’t know it. You might want to talk to Deke, though. He likes her, too.”
Juliana leaving him for an ogre didn’t even make it onto the list of things he was concerned about at the moment. Though weirder things had happened.
The background noise flared again. “Hold on, there’s someone else who needs to have a word with you.”
He shifted in his seat and leaned his head against the back. For the hundredth time since he boarded the plane, he rotated the box he held in his hand around. He glanced at the clock across the cabin and wondered if it was too late to call Juliana.
“Hello?” her voice said in his ear.
He straightened. “
Joya
?”
She laughed, the sound sending a tremor through him. Gods, he needed to get home. “Yes, it’s me. Some of your friends took me out for a drink.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Which friends?”
“Let’s see, Clayton, Deke and Rebel. He won’t tell me his real name.”
“His name’s Joshua.” He was also a notorious flirt. Thomas forced himself to relax. Hamilton wouldn’t let Rebel get out of line.
“He’s a djinn. Did you know that?” Her words slurred slightly, though that was just as likely to be from exhaustion as intoxication. Juliana had always been able to hold her liquor.
Thomas’s lips twitched. “Yes, I’m aware. How much have you had to drink exactly?”
For a minute, all he could hear were the sounds of the bar. “Not enough. Not nearly enough.”
Her words and the angst in them tore at his heart. “I’m on my way,
Joya.
I’ll be there before you wake.” He glanced at the clock again. “It’s after midnight. That means your birthday is tomorrow.”
“Not really.”
“You can’t know that for sure. Maybe I’m a good guesser.” Since she had no memory of the first twelve years of her life, Juliana had no knowledge of when her birthday was either. They’d picked a day and celebrated. Halloween seemed as good a day as any other, plus it suited her personality. “I got you a present.”
She fell silent again. “Hamilton’s trying to recruit me,” she said suddenly.
Thomas sat up in his seat. “Good night, Juliana. I’ll see you in the morning. Put Hamilton back on the phone, please.”
Hamilton was laughing when he came back onto the line.
“When I told you I didn’t want her being a Walker, I was not implying that she become a Warden instead. That is, in fact, quite possibly the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
“Not really up to you,” his friend said and disconnected the call.
He cursed and tossed the phone on the table beside him.
“A Warden? Really?” Michael asked from his seat on the other side of the aisle.
Thomas glowered at him.
“I’ll just go check in with the tracker again, shall I?”
The tracker had traced the spell to one of the Council’s portal mages, as they’d feared. Several of Thomas’s men had already taken her into custody and were holding her discreetly under a dampening spell. Thus far the woman wasn’t talking and the tracker was still trying to determine where the portal had taken DeSoto. If the Council took offense to his methods, Thomas would defend his position to them as Juliana’s mate. The longer it took them to discover exactly what it was up to, the more time he had to come up with that defense, however. For now, it was best kept quiet. He even knew a mage or two that might be able to cast a memory spell on the portal mage and she’d never remember they’d taken her.
Thomas waited for Michael to disappear through the door in the back before opening the box in his hand to study the ring within once more. A full-carat solitaire diamond with filigreed scrollwork up both sides of the white-gold band. The ring was at least a hundred years old and he only hoped he could get Juliana to accept it. Yes, they were United, bound together for eternity whether she liked it or not, but he wanted her to agree to be his wife in the human sense. To choose him again. And he was terrified that she’d refuse him.
Juliana leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms above her head. Coming out with Thomas’s friends was just what she needed. Just a few minutes where she could think about something else for a while, where no one was expecting something from her. Clayton and Deke were talking about another case on the far side of the table. Rebel meanwhile had decided to attempt to impress her by shifting into his ethereal form. He kept flitting in and out of existence around her head. She’d already told him three times to knock it off. She wasn’t telling him a fourth.
She flipped on her gift so she could still him when he disappeared and snatched him out of the air. Ignoring his protests, she reached across the table and grabbed one of Clayton’s empty beer bottles. She shoved Rebel inside and put her palm over the opening. Dipping her head she peered into the bottle to find a miniature Rebel pounding little fists on the side of the glass. She glanced up to find the other two watching her with wide eyes. “I feel like I should start singing, ‘I’ve got a genie in a bottle.’”
They both broke into snorting laughter. Rebel did not look nearly as amused as he started to tap his little foot and crossed his arms over his chest. Her phone rang and she decided to give him a break. She moved her hand to pull her phone out of her pocket. He shot out of the mouth of the bottle and immediately turned back into his normal human form. “She caught me,” he said in absolute disbelief. Awe laced his tone. “How in the hell did she do that?”
She was laughing as she answered her phone. “Norris.”
“Hey, it’s me,” Jeremiah said.
Cold shards of dread shot straight through her. She couldn’t take another body. Not tonight. “What’s up?”
“I did some checking on your ghoul. He doesn’t have a record to speak of, but he was sued last year by the school.”
“What for?”
“Evidently the surveillance equipment on his mausoleum was picking up a substantial amount of the school grounds. The administration said it was a violation of the children’s rights.”
“I knew it. I asked him earlier and he said he only filmed the area immediately around his home.”
“That’s the line he gave the court too until his recordings were subpoenaed. Anyway, the court found that he wasn’t making a profit off the surveillance or using it in a salacious manner. There’s something else, too. I called the Agency to check our messages. Nothing out of the ordinary except Oliver called you.”
“What was the message?”
“Just a phone number.”
“Hold on.” She made the universal symbol of a pen writing in the air and Clayton produced one from his shirt pocket. A napkin on the table provided the writing surface. “Okay.”
She jotted the number down as he read it off to her. “Thanks. And get me that warrant.”
“Already working on it. It’s not easy finding someone willing to disturb a judge at this hour on a supposition.”
“So don’t wait for them, do it yourself. Ulysses Johns will do it if you explain what’s going on. Tell him we need those recordings, but I want to search the house as well. It’s just as possible that he was picking out victims on his cameras and something in the house could give us the lead we need.”
“Will do.”
She disconnected and quickly dialed the number Oliver had left. After the twentieth ring, she hung up. She tapped the pen on the table and debated what to do. All she
wanted
to do was crawl into bed and get some sleep. But he wouldn’t have called her without a reason. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that the ghoul knew more than he let on that afternoon. Maybe he was feeling guilty and wanted to confess.
She tossed Clayton’s pen across the table to him. “Anyone up for a middle-of-the-night run by the cemetery?”
* * *
They all piled in Clayton’s car and headed to the cemetery. The gates were chained shut so she instructed him to park on the street directly in front of the mausoleum. She got out and leaned back in the window. “You guys wait in the car. I’ll be right back.”
“Did she just tell us to wait in the car? Aren’t we supposed to say that?” one of the guys said behind her. She smiled as she climbed over the top of the fence and dropped down on the far side. The impact rocked through her legs and she stayed crouched for a minute until the feeling subsided.
She straightened and scanned the area. A few ghosts flitted about, but nothing out of the norm. A quick check with her gift revealed nothing hiding either. She shut it back off and approached the door of the mausoleum. The porch light was shattered. It hadn’t been when they were here this afternoon. Foreboding flared within her. While there could be a million innocent reasons for that light to have broken, it was the million not so innocent ones that worried her.
Drawing her gun, she gestured for the guys to join her before she went any farther. Rebel genied a door in the fence and they all hurried through. Bastard. He could have mentioned that before she climbed. “What is it?” Clayton asked when they reached her.
“The porch light’s broken. It wasn’t earlier. Could be nothing, but I don’t like it. Especially when you add in the fact that he tried to call me and now I can’t get him to answer his phone.” She’d tried again two more times on the way to the cemetery.
He nodded once. “It’s your scene, you lead.”
“Clayton, you’re with me. You two do a perimeter check.”
Clayton fell in beside her and the other two went in opposite directions around the building. She walked up the steps and pushed the button. The same hollow ring sounded that she’d heard earlier. There was no response from inside.
“Walker,” Clayton said. She glanced at him and he gestured to the door with his chin. “That door’s open.”
Sure enough, she could see a small crack around the door where it hadn’t been closed all the way. She opened the door to reveal stairs yawning into the darkness below. “Oliver?” she yelled. There was no response.
She glanced at Clayton.
“This doesn’t look right. I’ll back you up on the entry.” What he meant was, if a shit storm came down because she’d entered a private residence without a warrant, he’d confirm they’d been concerned about the welfare of the resident.
He held his palm out and conjured up a ball of white energy. It wasn’t much but it would light their way. She flipped the switch on the wall to no avail. A quick inspection showed the bulb broken in the light fixture here as well. She crept down the long flight of stairs listening for any indication they weren’t alone. At the bottom of the stairs, there was another switch. This one worked and the space filled with hazy light.
Destruction reigned. Toppled shelves littered the room. Paper lay scattered across the floor. Even the couch cushions had been tossed aside. “Oliver?” she tried again, knowing it wouldn’t do any good.
Deke joined them. “I left Joshua up top.”
His voice spurred her into moving again. “I guess we’ll split up. See what you can find.”
She’d been right about the interior of the mausoleum being completely different from the outside. Inside, it looked like a normal home with midgrade furniture and she got the impression that it had been neat until someone destroyed it. And that’s precisely what they’d done. This wasn’t the kind of damage that happened when someone was searching through things looking for something. No, this kind of destruction was purposeful, intended. Someone was very angry with her ghoul. Or he’d flipped out and done the damage himself.
Juliana was the one to find the security room. “In here,” she yelled.
The others came up behind her and Clayton grunted. “Nice set up.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Report the damage, would you? Tell them they’re going to have to use portals or cut the chain on the gate.” She stepped into the room. Three large flat-screen monitors sat lined up on a long desk. There was also a keyboard and a simple control board. A large hard drive hummed under the table. The switches for all the cameras were turned off. She glanced over her shoulder. “You got any—”
The question wasn’t even finished, and Deke was handing her a pair of gloves. She nodded her thanks as she snapped them on. She flipped on the cameras one at a time, checked their angle and then turned them back off. When the next to last camera turned on it revealed an unobstructed view of the entire playground, the swing set in the foreground. “Son of a bitch.”
She wasn’t even sure who she was cursing—Oliver, the Thief or just fate in general. She suddenly felt every minute of lost sleep from the last few weeks. The sound of the technicians arriving filtered through. She turned to find Clayton watching her. “He told me none of his cameras were pointed at the school. That they didn’t catch anything.”