Chapter Thirty
My fridge from Robbie had already been plugged in and was whirring quietly in the background. I didn’t have my computer set up yet, but I had my fridge, because … priorities.
There was a knock on the open door, and Elvira squeaked her way across the uneven floorboards to my desk.
‘Well, that’s going to be annoying,’ she said as she sat in my guest chair. ‘Sounds like mice with every step you take.’ She looked around at our somewhat shabby surroundings. ‘Looks like mice,’ she muttered.
‘There are no mice,’ I said firmly. I was probably telling the truth, but I couldn’t deny our new office had a somewhat musty odour.
‘If there are any rodents scurrying around, McCaffrey will let us borrow Miss Marple. She’s already promised.’
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
Elvira shifted in the chair. ‘I let you down,’ she said quietly, looking at her feet.
I snorted. ‘Fuck off. You clocked off. That’s it. That’s your whole crime.’
‘I knew Faraday had called off my replacement. I got the call to go home, and I knew there wasn’t another vehicle replacing me. And I left.’
‘Of course you did. You’d already put in a long-ass day. Put it to bed, Elvira. I don’t blame you. Not one bit.’
‘You got kidnapped!’
‘Yeah. It’s embarrassing.’ I shook my head in mock-disbelief.
It was Elvira’s turn to snort. ‘Not that embarrassing. You came out guns blazing.’ She paused. ‘Well, knives stabbing,’ she amended. ‘Did you see the article The Mystic Informer ran on you? It sang your praises. Whoever is writing these pieces has a crush on you.’
I shot her an ego-shrivelling gaze.
She grinned back, unrepentant kohl-lined eyes looking more like her usual self. ‘All right, so I was just checking that you weren’t holding a grudge.’ She shrugged like it was no big deal.
‘No grudges,’ I confirmed. ‘We’re good.’
‘Good.’
I stood, walked over to the door, and shut it. Then I sat on my desk and leaned close to her. ‘If you’re done having a wobble, I have something serious I need to discuss with you.’
‘No shit. You closed the door and everything.’
I ignored the sass. ‘Have you ever heard of an organisation called the Domini?’
She paled. ‘Well shit. That’s who took you?’
‘I’m not sure if they took me so much as an operative of theirs was part of the kidnapping team, but I can’t rule it out either. I don’t know for sure, but Beeks had their symbol on his shoulder.’
‘Fuck.’ She rubbed both hands over her face. ‘They’re bad news, Stacy. Even for us. Steer clear of them.’
‘That doesn’t appear to be an option. Got kidnapped, remember?’
She worried at her shirt cuffs. ‘All right,’ she said, voice low.
‘If you’re going to go hunting, then you need to know what you’re getting into.
Truthfully, I’ve been looking into them for years.
Really fucking carefully. Here’s what I’ve got so far.
The Domini is an ancient organisation. They’ve existed for hundreds of years, way longer than the Connection.
Rumour has it that some of the Domini leaders set up the Connection to help leverage other species. ’
‘Does that mean the higher-ups in the Connection are Domini?’
She grimaced. ‘Isn’t that the million-pound question?
I don’t know. Why do you think I’m tiptoeing so carefully with this shit?
I came across them much like you did, I guess, in a case.
A messy, horrible case that stayed with me.
I found out the names of the people who pulled the strings to order the death, and that was The Order.
That’s what the Domini call themselves, you know in a fanatical cult-like way. ’
‘Beeks was Anti-Crea. Is there a connection there?’
Elvira shook her head. ‘We don’t think so.’
‘We?’
‘Bland and I have been digging into them in our spare time together.’
‘Romantic,’ I teased.
‘Shove it,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about murderous organisations instead.’
‘By all means, go on.’
‘We’ve had a few incidents where we’ve seen the Domini and Anti-Crea working together, but it seems random.
More on an ad hoc basis when their needs happen to align.
I’ve long suspected that one or more of the Domini are pulling Anti-Crea strings, but that’s a gut feeling.
Historically, the Anti-Crea has always been a slow-lumbering beast. Like all bigots, they have problems with original thought, so the Connection has assessed them as a low threat level.
But lately things have ramped up. A few Connection officers are suspected of being Anti-Crea and I’ve been tasked with making friends with them. ’
I blinked. ‘You’re undercover?’
‘Not really. It’s just when I’m around the wrong sort, I spit out some Anti-Crea shit.’ She grimaced.
‘Who asked you to do that?’
‘Thackeray, but he said to keep it on the down low, not to mention it to anyone, not to report to anyone but him.’
Thackeray, like the rest of us, was treading carefully, but he was trying to remove Anti-Crea sentiment, and that made me feel a whole lot better.
Some of his questions about my and Robbie’s relationship had felt …
judgemental. But maybe it had really come from a genuine place of concern. I hoped so.
‘All right, what else do you know about the Domini?’
She sighed. ‘I told all of this to Lucy Barrett.’
‘The werewolf ruler?’
‘Yeah. She’s been hunting down the Domini too. She killed a couple and said Voltaire helped. Kind of. That’s when I learnt what the real purpose of the Red Guard is.’
I blinked. ‘What does the Red Guard have to do with the Domini?’
‘Turns out they’re the Jedi to the Domini’s Sith. Yin and Yang, light and dark. All that shit.’
‘You’re not seriously telling me that Voltaire is head of the good guys in this scenario? He’s an asshole.’
‘I know, right?’ She tossed her glossy mane of hair over one shoulder. ‘But the point is, that’s their job, isn’t it? Hunt down the Domini? Let those beautiful immortal fuckers spend their days trying to bring them down. We can focus on the smaller picture. The rapists and the murderers.’
‘Lucky us,’ I said flatly but I had to concede she had a point. But there was one more thing I couldn’t get out of my head. I leaned forward and dropped my voice further. ‘In my dad’s crime-scene photos, he was holding a pendant with a Domini symbol on it.’
She swore. ‘You’re not going to let this go, are you?’
‘It doesn’t seem likely,’ I admitted.
Elvira looked genuinely worried. ‘This isn’t a good idea, Stacy. Leave it to Lucy, to Voltaire.’
Laura burst in, grinning wildly. ‘Ji-ho has been given the green light! He’s officially transferring to Unit 13!’
I grinned at our beaming admin assistant. ‘Brilliant.’
‘Channing is helping him move his tech and setting him up in the side office next to the interrogation room.’
‘Fantastic. Thank you.’
‘I baked more bikkies last night,’ she continued. ‘And I’ve put them in our own little break room.’
‘That’s so kind of you.’
She looked between Elvira and me. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Sorry I interrupted. The door was closed, but I was excited.’
‘Not a problem. Thanks Laura.’
Elvira and I waited until she left and shut the door.
‘More bloody biscuits,’ Elvira muttered. ‘I’m going to have to work out an extra day a week if this keeps up.’
‘You eat the biscuits,’ I said firmly. ‘Or you take them off-site and dispose of them somewhere she’ll never find.’
Elvira looked at the door Laura had just walked through. ‘I’ll eat the damn biscuits.’ She stood and looked around my meagre office. ‘You really drew the short straw,’ she commented. ‘Even Channing’s room is bigger than this.’
I shrugged, unbothered by the angular room with its beams and sloping ceiling. ‘Loki likes it.’
‘Nice,’ Loki agreed, trilling above us.
‘Well,’ Elvira snickered, ‘as long as the bird is happy, that’s fine. Leave you to it, boss.’
She walked out, leaving the door open since I’d made it clear I intended to implement an actual open-door policy here as opposed to the faux one at headquarters.
With thoughts of the Domini on my mind, I opened up SPEL and tapped out a request for access to Wraithmore. If I could get in to see Amber’s father, maybe he could answer some questions for me.
I hoped he’d answer them willingly, but if he didn’t, I had other options at my disposal. I’d worry about what that meant for my relationship with Amber when we crossed that bridge. After all, maybe he’d simply co-operate. Maybe he wouldn’t.
I licked my lips. I’d used my sub powers again.
It felt like I was on a slippery slope; the more I used them, the easier it became.
The easier it became, the harder it was to pretend it didn’t matter.
Even convenience was starting to feel like justification, and that should have terrified me more than it did.
As long as I was careful.
As long as I didn’t leave loose ends.
As long as no one traced anything back to me.
Back to my mother and father and their decision not to register me.
They’d hidden me to keep me safe, not so I could become someone who bent minds because it made life smoother.
I told myself I’d stop or slow down. Using my powers like this would only lead to one ending.
One where I wasn’t sure who I’d be at the end.
Did the end justify the means? It felt like it did, and that was the nightmare that had woken me today.
Not the deaths of Beeks, Hunter or Kerr, but the invasion of Kerr’s mind.
In the moment it had seemed necessary, but I’d woken to my father’s words of caution urgently ringing in my ears, his spectre damning me.
But it was for him that I already knew I’d cross that line again. I was on the scent of his killers. Finally. I wasn’t letting that go for anything, even at the cost of my soul.