Chapter 9
The bonus of being a vampire was that Luke didn’t have to struggle to keep his hands steady. He’d practiced picking enough locks as a mortal that he’d gotten pretty good then, but becoming undead had given him a huge boon.
But the lock in front of him kept slipping, and all the tumblers fell back down once more.
He ran his fingers across the metal again.
There wasn’t a tingle of magic since Clint had dispelled the wards on the door, yet he’d been attempting to unlock the damn thing for the last five minutes without a win.
He was off his game because he’d dared to hope someone might like him. Such a dumb fucking reason. He slipped his picks back into their discreet pocket and stood up. He bumped the wooden rook in his pocket. So much for being a lucky charm.
“Are you done?” Clint asked, brow furrowed. He had his staff in his right hand.
“One second.” Luke took a step back, judged the distance, and readjusted his stance. Then he delivered a swift kick to the spot just below the doorknob. The metal screeched and bent but didn’t give. So he relied on his vampiric strength and delivered another sharp blow.
This time, the lock broke through the frame, and the door rocketed on its hinges to slam into the wall. It bounced back, swinging slowly toward them, but remained open.
Luke gestured toward the open door with a bow. “Now I’m done.”
“Hardly discreet,” Clint grumbled as he walked into the apartment.
Luke trailed after him. “You dropped the wards, and I was fiddling around for far too long. If this Oz guy is here, he’s had a chance to clear out or set up a trap, and I don’t feel the magic of a trap.”
“Hmm,” Clint grunted in agreement.
I’m not going to be hurt that he gave me the brush-off.
He was right. We should focus. I need to keep my head in the game, or I’ll lose it.
Luke crossed his arms and quickly scanned the living room.
The building itself was decent, though not as flashy as mages tended to live in.
Other than a few occult books on the coffee table, nothing about the living room revealed that the apartment belonged to a magic practitioner.
While Clint went deeper into the apartment, Luke let his mind drift in order to soak in the little details he was taking in.
The TV remote had a thin layer of dust on it, and so did the screen.
Though the leather couch was broken in, one side clearly saw more use.
There were two cups of old coffee, one old enough that it had dried into the bottom.
Beside the occult books was a journal. Luke picked it up and began leafing through the pages, skimming the pages as he continued to scan his surroundings.
The early pages were legible and dated roughly eighteen months back.
Oz went on for pages about hating Clint for Sloane’s death.
He seemed to believe that Clint should have been able to help Sloane or stop him instead of murdering him.
He mentioned that the apartment was lonelier than ever now that his brother no longer came to visit.
Their parents were gone, long dead in some scuffle between mages and warlocks.
From what Luke could hear, Clint was searching drawers and knocking around walls for hidden spots, which wasn’t a terrible idea, though Luke wasn’t sure it would do much good.
His own instincts insisted that there was something here, but not in the way Clint would expect.
He had no idea how he knew exactly. However, the few times he’d felt this sort of unnerving certainty and followed through, he’d either completed a challenging job or cleaned up at a blackjack table.
A hint of old sweat and pungent fear came on the air from the kitchen, which was odd.
Kitchens were places of comfort. They tended to smell of hard work, not dread.
Luke frowned as he skirted around a dining room table with more tomes scattered across it.
He headed into the kitchen, allowing his fingers to keep turning pages that he wasn’t looking at.
“Fuck,” Clint said to himself down the hall. In a louder voice, he called out, “Are you having any luck?”
“I’m onto something,” Luke replied. “You should check the dining room.”
Clint came down the hall, stopping at the other entrance to the kitchen. “I was looking for anything hidden.”
“He lives alone. I don’t think he bothers hiding much of anything.”
“What are you doing in the kitchen if you want me to check the dining room?” Clint asked. “What do you have in your hands?”
“Oz’s journal.” Luke brushed his thumb across a page. The ink was scored into the paper, written in a harsher script than Oz’s earlier entries. He glanced down, but Oz was only complaining about his lack of power. “Would you say this guy is a talented practitioner of the arcane arts?”
“Honestly, I barely know him. If he didn’t look so much like Sloane, I might have forgotten his face.”
“Who was Sloane? Why’d you kill him?” Luke asked quietly. He was distracted by the scent in the kitchen. It was off in a non-mortal way.
So he almost missed how Clint tightened his shoulders and grip on his staff.
Clint’s expression was stormy. He was out of touch with Chicago’s supernaturals because he’d stayed holed up in his over-the-top magical fortress.
Luke had assumed that gaining trust from him was hard because, well, he had tried to steal from him, but one didn’t need to read emotions to see that Clint did not want to talk about Sloane.
The tumblers on the lock of one of Clint’s secrets clicked open as Luke put the information together.
Sometimes the simplest answer was the right one.
I’ve been the one to betray a lover often enough to know what that reaction looks like.
Whatever Sloane was up to was worse than nicking a few bucks here and there.
Luke opened his mouth, then thought better of it and shut it.
“What?” Clint demanded.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I doubt that.”
“All right. Sloane wasn’t some random warlock you investigated and had to put down. He was someone special to you. I’m guessing a lover?” Luke said carefully.
Clint’s ruddy undertone reddened. “The journal doesn’t say?”
“About six months ago, Oz starts writing about gaining power. But he doesn’t say what he wants it for, only that he can’t seem to manifest greater magic on his own,” Luke replied. He skimmed a few more pages. “His writing’s more frantic. He’s practically cutting the pages as he’s going.”
“Hmph.”
Luke held the journal out toward Clint. “He’s clearly getting into some dangerous research. I’ll find a bag and gather these tomes and whatever else catches my interest. I think you’ll want to add it to that hoard in your basement.”
“What makes you say that?” Clint asked gruffly.
“Something’s not right. Can’t you feel it?
The whole vibe in this apartment is just …
wrong.” Luke went out into the hallway and rummaged first through the closet there and then through the bedroom closet.
He found a duffle bag and a suitcase. He filled the suitcase with the tomes, starting with the ones on the coffee table and the few on the bookcase in the living room.
Clint was going over the ones in the dining room by the time Luke made his way over to them. He had set Oz’s journal down and was leafing through a book. But he shut it and slid it Luke’s way. “He was seeking a demon pact. There had to be an easier one to reach than Valgaruz.”
“Demons can be hard to control,” Luke replied. “Maybe he figured that a powerful one in a box would be grateful for release and get revenge on you all at the same time.”
“Maybe,” Clint murmured. He sighed heavily. “This isn’t going to find him. The longer we spend here, the more time he and his minions have to complete their ritual.”
“Can’t you do a locator spell with something of his? The journal should work, right?” Luke asked.
“I already tried. He’s put up a spell to defend against scrying. If I had his blood, I could break through.” Clint paused and stroked his beard. “Though the blood of someone with him could work.”
“I know you drive like you can fly, but you don’t actually teleport,” Luke said. To contain his nervousness about climbing back into Clint’s car, he hurriedly packed a few more books into the suitcase. “Going all the way back out to your tower will cost us precious time.”
“We don’t have to go anywhere.”
“Why wouldn’t we …” Luke remembered the photos that Price had given Clint. The thief he’d bitten had stayed with Miranda, even though the others had run. “You’re not going to try to make me vomit, are you? Because if your driving didn’t, I don’t think anything will.”
“I don’t think blood remains in your stomach, though I’ll admit that I only know the basics of vampire anatomy and metaphysics,” Clint said.
“But you are connected to the thief through his blood. I can strengthen that bond, bringing him to the surface, and then your blood would be close enough to his to work for a locator spell.”
“Why didn’t you suggest this from the get-go?” Luke asked.
“Because there could be side effects,” Clint replied.
“Like what?”
“Assuming you feed like a normal vampire, blood is actually the conduit for how your kind takes a small piece of an individual’s spirit,” Clint said. “For the length of the spell, that piece of his spirit would override yours. It’s still very tied to him, so you might experience a vision.”
“I could wind up seeing what he’s doing,” Luke said.
“Or a past event or even a strong dream.”
“Why did you say ‘assuming you feed like a normal vampire’?” Luke folded his arms over his chest and walked over to Clint’s side. The magus didn’t look his way until Luke was right up against him.