Chapter 5
“Evidence?” Rich asked, looking from Lina to Liam and back again.
“We located a property owned by one of Mrs. E’s aliases and did a little reconnaissance.
Unfortunately, she had it rigged to blow, and the place is in a million pieces right now,” Liam reported as he opened the door and ushered everyone inside.
“But brilliant Agent Lina grabbed a stack of papers that was on the kitchen table before we hightailed it out of there and jumped off the dock. Could be something in there, or it could be nothing, but we need to take a look and see what we’ve got. ”
They entered a house with very little furniture, but it would do for now. There was a kitchen table and a few chairs, as well as a coffee maker, which Liam started as Lina opened her bag and spread out the slightly soggy papers on the table. Rich didn’t sit, but regarded the papers with interest.
Liam knew Rich’s background. He was a Spec Ops warrior, like Liam himself, but recently retired.
Rich and his two brothers, Billy and Colt, had been a Top-Secret black-ops specialty squad.
All three of the brothers were highly skilled and were also very powerful lion shapeshifters.
They’d been estranged from the Clan because their parents had been young, in love, and had run from both their mother’s magical family and the Clan that disapproved of their mating.
Their mother had been a Rollins, which was a very dark family full of mages with questionable morals.
Their mom, by all accounts, hadn’t been evil like many of her kin, and she’d fallen head over heels in love with their dad, a Kinkaid lion.
The Alpha of the Clan at the time hadn’t approved, and life had been difficult for the young pair.
They’d taken off for parts unknown, distancing themselves from everyone and everything.
They’d had three sons and then were killed tragically, leaving the boys orphans.
The eldest had been old enough to take care of the younger two, and they’d all gone into the military to get their educations and earn their way in the world.
Now they were all older, wiser, and all three had recently mated.
Their reintroduction to the Kinkaid Clan had begun with Rich and the trouble with the Marsh Witches.
Liam and his father, Lester, had been called on to help, which was their first encounter with the brothers.
The relationship progressed through Billy’s mission to safeguard one of the witch’s granddaughters. Liam’s cousin, Gavin, had helped Billy and ended up touring the fey realm, of all things. But they’d formed a solid friendship that had only brought the estranged brothers closer to the Clan.
It had been the youngest brother who’d really cemented the new bonds, however, when he traveled down to Texas, where the Clan was based these days, and helped prevent a demon infestation with the help of his new mate, who was a rare and powerful Demon Slayer.
The two older brothers, Rich and Billy, had settled in this neighborhood with their new mates, surrounded by the coven ladies, while Colt remained in Texas for the time being.
Liam wasn’t sure if Colt would join his brothers here or stay in Texas, but they all had mates to consider now, and it would probably be up to their better halves to decide where they’d live. Lucky bastards.
It was every shifter’s dearest wish to find their one and only true mate. All three of those brothers had. Even Gavin had found his mate recently. But Liam was still looking. Of course, if the fair Lina continued to be as intriguing as she was…
Of course, they had a mission to complete first. He had to keep his head in the game and find Mrs. E before she could wreak any more havoc.
She was a powerful witch with the ability to summon demons, and she was definitely playing for the wrong side.
She had to be stopped, and he fully intended to make that happen.
Coffee made, Liam turned back to the table with three filled mugs in his hands. He served Lina first, then gave a mug to Rich and kept the last for himself as he took a seat at the round table. Rich had sat down at some point, apparently unable to resist looking at the evidence Lina had gathered.
Lina spread the papers out carefully, giving each piece room to dry. She worked methodically, sorting them into piles as Liam and Rich watched.
“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got,” she murmured, more to herself than to them. “Junk mail. Electric bill for Margaret Thornfield. Credit card offer. Water bill.” She pushed those aside into one stack. “All in Margaret’s name. Nothing unusual there.”
“Dead end?” Rich asked.
“Maybe. At least it’s confirmation that she actually owned the place and maybe lived there for a while.” Lina moved to the next items, her brow furrowing. “Here’s something more interesting. A receipt from the Center Moriches Post Office.”
Liam leaned forward. “For what?”
“PO box rental. Six months, paid in cash.” She held it up to the light, squinting at the faded ink. “Name on the receipt is Penelope Atwood.”
“Another alias?” Rich suggested.
“Could be.” Lina pulled out her phone, snapping photos of the receipt from multiple angles. “I’ve got a contact at the postal service who might be able to pull the application for that box. They require an address for PO box registration. She’d have had to provide something, even if it was fake.”
“That could prove fruitful,” Liam said, feeling a spark of hope. Mrs. E was clever, but she’d left breadcrumbs. Intentional or not, they had to follow this trail wherever it led.
“I’ll reach out first thing in the morning.” Lina set the receipt aside with care and reached for the last item on the table.
Liam had noticed it earlier but hadn’t wanted to touch it.
Even from a distance, the thing radiated wrongness.
It was a single page, roughly torn along one edge as if ripped from a larger book.
The parchment, not paper, looked ancient, yellowed and brittle at the edges.
It seemed innocuous at first, if a bit odd, but it was what was written on it that made his inner lion recoil.
Runes covered the page in precise, spidery handwriting.
Not the clean, standardized runes he’d seen in books about Norse mythology or Celtic tradition.
These were twisted, malformed things that hurt to look at directly.
Between the runes were symbols he didn’t recognize, geometric patterns that seemed to shift when he wasn’t looking at them straight on, and scattered throughout were words in languages he couldn’t identify, along with sequences of numbers that followed no logical pattern he could discern.
The whole thing practically hummed with dark energy.
“Don’t touch it,” Rich hissed, his hand shooting out to stop Lina as she reached for the page.
She froze, then slowly withdrew her hand. “You feel it too?”
“Yeah.” Rich’s expression was grim. “That’s some old magic, right there. Dark magic. Nothing good was ever written on that page.”
Liam carefully slid a clean piece of paper beneath the parchment, using it to lift the page without making direct contact. Even through the barrier of modern paper, he felt the malevolence radiating from it. “This was torn from a book. A grimoire, I’m guessing.”
“A very old one, by the look of it,” Lina agreed. She’d pulled back from the table slightly, her inner lynx clearly as disturbed by the thing as Liam’s lion was. “Question is, why did Mrs. E have a page from it lying on her kitchen table?”
“She was either studying it or preparing to use whatever spell is written there,” Rich said. He stood and walked around the table to get a different angle on the parchment, careful not to get too close. “We need an expert.”
“Do you have anyone in mind?” Liam asked.
Rich nodded slowly. “Mrs. Peabody. She’s one of the coven elders, and she’s been practicing for more than seventy years.
Probably longer. If anyone can decipher this, it’s her.
Plus, she has access to the coven’s library, which I’ve heard has books on dark magic that most modern witches have never even guessed at. ”
“Can you arrange a meeting?” Lina asked.
“I can. She’s usually up early. I’ll call her first thing in the morning and explain the situation.
She knows Liam from when they were attacked, and he led the contingent that backed us up during the battle.
” Rich pulled out his phone and made a note.
“Fair warning, though. She’s sharp as a tack and doesn’t suffer fools.
Don’t let her little old lady looks fool you.
Come prepared with questions and don’t waste her time. ”
“Understood,” Liam said. He looked down at the grimoire page again, trying to make sense of it, but the symbols seemed to writhe away from his gaze. “In the meantime, we need to secure this. Do you have anything we could store it in? Something that might contain the energy coming off it?”
Rich thought for a moment. “There’s a wooden lockbox in the hall closet of this house. It’s lined with cotton and wool. We keep them in some of the houses for storing magical items that need to be contained. I’ve learned that natural fibers and materials are the way to go with such things.”
“I’ll get it,” Lina volunteered, already standing.
While she was gone, Liam studied the other papers again, making sure they hadn’t missed anything. But it was just bills and junk mail. The detritus of a fake life that Mrs. E had constructed and then abandoned.
Lina returned with a small wooden box, its surface carved with protective symbols. She set it on the table and opened the lid, revealing a cloth-lined interior.
Very carefully, using only the blank paper to handle it, Liam transferred the grimoire page into the box. The moment the lid closed, the oppressive feeling in the room lessened noticeably. All three of them let out simultaneous breaths of relief.
“That’s better,” Rich muttered.
“Much better,” Lina agreed. She looked at the receipt and the stack of bills. “So we’ve got two possible leads. The PO box in Center Moriches under the name Penelope Atwood, and that grimoire page.”
“It’s more than we had this morning,” Liam pointed out. “And we confirmed Mrs. E was in the area recently. She might still be close by.”
“Whatever she’s planning, that page suggests it’s nothing good.” Rich shook his head.
Liam met Lina’s eyes across the table. Despite the exhaustion he saw there, despite the damp hair and the lingering smell of smoke and water, her gaze was steady and determined.
“We’ll find her,” she said quietly. “Whatever it takes.”
Rich glanced between them, a knowing look crossing his face, but he didn’t comment. Instead, he stood and stretched. “I should get back to my mate. I’ll confirm your meeting with Mrs. P in the morning after I talk to her. Give me a call after you meet with her.”
“Will do,” Liam promised, walking him to the door.
After Rich left, the house seemed very quiet. Liam turned to find Lina staring at the lockbox with a troubled expression.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Just thinking about what kind of spell might be on that page.” She looked up at him. “And wondering if we’re really going to be able to stop her before she casts it.”
Liam moved closer, drawn by the worry in her voice. “We’ll stop her.”
She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “You sound awfully confident for someone who just almost got blown up.”
“That’s because I’ve got a brilliant FBI agent on my team who had the good sense to grab evidence before running for her life,” he said. “We’re going to catch her, Lina. I promise you that.”
This time, her smile was real. “I’m going to hold you to that, Kinkaid.”