Chapter 37
The chat window erupted into a frantic, overlapping mess.
On top of Cassidy’s building, that door Angel and I fell through? I saw the residue of one in my apartment after it was ransacked.
Did that mean Cassidy could travel across the Veil to anywhere? Or was this bigger than Cassidy? What a terrifying thought.
I think the purple line I saw in his building was his way of channeling power to open a tear. The one in Bowman’s building was small, but I think he and his family were the only ones killed. Anyone know how many from Cassidy’s building went missing?
There was a pause in the chat.
Tiana:
Thirteen unaccounted for.
Fuck.
Angel:
Anyone have details on Bowman’s building yet?
Wade:
Only three.
Did that mean he hadn’t finished, or it had been some quick and dirty magic to tear a hole he hoped would expand?
Wade:
Explain how you closed the tear at Bowman’s.
Ezra:
Is Angel okay?
Asshole, I wanted to growl. As if I’d hurt Angel again.
Wade:
Angel is fine. I just delivered groceries to them.
Angel:
I’m fine. Jude wove the tear together. He didn’t need my energy at all.
It was small. A few feet wide at most.
Kerry:
The Reaper was able to help?
I glanced at Angel, who shrugged. “I asked for ideas. We’ve all met a Reaper or two in our time. Nat is the only one I know where to find on the regular. He helps the vampires a lot. Reapers are a type of woven magic wielder. They have to see the threads of a person to understand their fate.”
Nat helped.
Ezra:
Now he’s beholden to the dead? Great.
Victor:
Better a Reaper than the goddess.
Remi:
You closed a tear. Is it stable? Could you do it again?
Maybe? I honestly didn’t know. Not that I could even hope to fix any of the larger, more settled tears.
Our worlds were hopelessly merged. Undoing it seemed impossible or a death wish on my part, as I was certain my head would explode trying.
And the immersion continued, until I suspected our worlds would eventually be intertwined with no Veil at all between.
An end of the world, or a new beginning to a terrifying future?
The messages rolled by, a dozen questions cast my way, but Angel remained at my side, arm wrapped around me, steady and strong. And Nox’s tingle of magic warmed the line of our bond.
Ivan bumped my hip from the other side. “Still the same weird big brother,” he mumbled around a mouthful of strawberry, as he curled in beside me, another small, but solid anchor in the storm of digital panic.
The chat scrolled in a whirlwind.
Victor:
If you can close tears, even small ones, it is an advantage we have never possessed. But can you also detect them before they are fully formed? Stop a tear from opening at all?
Ezra:
If the cultists learn what he can do, he becomes their primary target. And anyone near him becomes collateral. We should be distancing ourselves, not diving deeper.
Wade:
He’s already a target. Hiding won’t protect him; it just makes us unprepared. We need to be ready.
Remi:
If Jude can see the residue, he might be able to follow the cultists before they attack again. Bodies are piling up, and who knows how many we’ve missed.
Bobby:
Did you see a door at Bowman’s?
I never went inside. Only stood in the doorway.
Kerry:
Is the door related to the tear, or the ritual? Or does it predate both?
Victor:
Good question. And how can they create a door that isn’t a tear? A portal?
Wade:
From beyond the Veil to anywhere in the mortal realm, maybe? Sounds like a nightmare.
Tiana:
Especially if he can pop out of nowhere and grab Jude.
Ivan shivered beside me, and I wondered if I could convince him to distract himself with video games or something. No reason the kid needed this kind of stress.
“We are already across the Veil,” Ivan said. “Can he create a door within the Veil?”
“The one on top of Cassidy’s building was on this side,” I said.
“And we fell through, landing on the other side,” Angel agreed.
“Which was soon pulled across the Veil, too. I wonder if it’s still there.” I added my spoken thoughts to the chat to catch everyone who wasn’t in the room with us up.
“But this is Xavier’s building,” Ivan said, though he nervously scanned the corners of the studio with his gaze as if worried something would pop out any second. “He wouldn’t let anything through, right?”
“The building is pretty heavily warded,” Angel said. “And Xavier would sense it. He’s across the hall and up a floor but would be here fast if something happened.”
“Never thought I’d be happy to hear our creepy landlord has eyes on us,” I grumbled, and focused back on the chat to catch up.
Bobby:
Jude should walk Bowman’s apartment, look for the door, and anything else that might have been missed.
Ezra:
We are officially OFF the Bowman case. Hanna made that abundantly clear. Jude is benched until he’s trained or the military drags him off.
Angel:
Military can’t have him.
Tiana:
Hanna gave us boxes of classified cold case files. I’ve already been working on sorting and categorizing it. Lots of ritual murders, unexpected Veil tears, and missing people.
Bobby:
Share the data, and I’ll cross-reference locations of new tears with any cases Cassidy was working on.
Wade:
If we can get Jude to a few locations to see if they have residue of a door, we can confirm a connection and put ourselves officially back on the case.
Ezra:
Or a target for the military.
“Would the military really drag you away?” Ivan asked, sounding worried.
“I won’t let that happen,” Angel promised my brother.
Tiana:
Cassidy was a regular detective. He shouldn’t have been involved with anything supernatural. How did this all start to begin with? Bowman was a patrol cop; how is that related? I’m going to dig through their socials.
Cassidy hadn’t been the best detective in our PD.
I’d outperformed him a dozen times over, and he’d tried more than once to get Joe to switch teams after he lost yet another partner.
But Joe and I had worked well together, and our boss had been unwilling to put me—the detective with the highest solve rate in the Twin Cities—with a detective who had a stack of complaints against him for coercion and abuse of power.
Cassidy was a terrible detective. But he was obsessed with power. If he found cold cases with unexplained elements—missing bodies, weird energy signatures—he might have seen them as a roadmap.
“Or maybe he met something that could offer him power in exchange for luring people to their deaths,” Angel offered, and added it to the chat.
Victor:
A valid theory. The Shadow God, and a lot of other darker species, will trade favors for power. Humanity offers an endless supply of sentient energy snacks for a supernatural god to suck on.
Gross.
Kerry:
Humans will always outnumber supes.
Bobby:
And humans always crave more power.
The truth of it settled in the room like a shroud. Cassidy had made a deal. He’d opened a door and invited the nightmare in. One we all had to battle.
Angel:
Tiana, Bobby, and Wade, you’re on the cold cases.
Look for anything that screams “ritual” or “unexplained disappearance cluster” and map it.
Victor, see if your network has heard whispers about Erlik or the changeling.
We need to know what their endgame is. Total world domination, or are they seeking something we don’t see yet?
Remi:
And we get Jude into Bowman’s. If Cassidy is using these old murders as a template, the Bowman scene is the freshest, most intact example we have. Jude might see something Forensics missed. Something only a Weaver can see.
Ezra:
This is a big risk for a “might.” Holt is unpredictable at best.
Angel:
And the only option to get ahead of this. We’re running blind. We need to be proactive rather than reactive.
Remi:
I can get a handful of us in unseen, but it will have to be fast.
Angel:
Meet you at the 1st Ave Diner?
Remi:
Late, but yes. Midnight. Get Jude fed and rested in case he needs to use his powers.
That sounded ominous. I glanced at Angel, and we shared a nod. We needed answers, and I wasn’t about to hide in the corner hoping it would all be over. But that gave us a few hours to prepare, me to study, and to find the safest place to hide my kid brother in case the worst happened.