Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Ophelia has to be familiar with a person’s energy to find them in the astral plane.
A personal item helps strengthen that connection—and it doesn’t get much more personal than underwear—but her Traveling isn’t GPS.
Catching the edges of Topher’s energies still means Ophelia has to wander around playing hot or cold to follow it to the source.
An extremely awkward rideshare later, Mateo types in a generous tip to a baffled driver and gets out of the car. He has to jog to catch up with Ophelia, who’s already half a block away.
“It’s pastel,” Ophelia says as he comes up beside her, gaze directed at a particular picture-perfect, cute-ass San Francisco row home.
With what the Evil Wizard had been wearing, Mateo expected spires, dark brick work, and some stained glass. “Hiding in plain sight?” he suggests.
Ophelia frowns at the pale blue home. “Same energy as Christopher’s office and Linnéa’s door. Same bad cleanup. And I can see a line of Topher’s weird haze if I concentrate.”
Seeing Topher’s haze here is good, right? Because seeing it means Topher’s still alive. Probably. He doesn’t ask in case the answer is not necessarily, and they keep standing there because their plan hadn’t gone any further than find the place and text Ulla.
Mateo flexes and unflexes his hands, trying to will the claws out. Unfortunately, his new weird shit isn’t interested in being helpful, his hands offering only normal human nails that could use some polish. Amazingly typical that it won’t come out when he wants it.
They really should wait for Ulla and Linnéa. They’re not human. Way magic. Scary. Ulla has a dagger. She’ll know what to do.
Except, standing yards from where Topher might be dying, it’s obviously impossible to wait for the luck sisters who are an unknown amount of San Francisco traffic away.
He doesn’t discuss this bad idea so much as just starts doing it. “Should we knock?”
Ophelia joins right in. “I guess.”
He cranes around to see the neighborhood.
Pristine little flower boxes. Unassuming.
He turns back to the house. An L-shaped staircase with two pillars carved with floral flourishes leads to the front door.
The cost and view must be insane because it sits on one of those vertical streets San Francisco’s famous for, right on the edge of the neighborhood and overlooking the bay.
The other homes are in neat, connected rows, but this one’s got its own lot.
Topher is being held in one of the most charming houses Mateo’s ever seen and it’s extra scary suddenly.
The lack of a plan, their cluelessness, and the fact that Topher might already be dead.
There’s no sign of Mateo’s constant companion despite the adrenaline—not even sharp teeth.
He’s just a guy, back slick with sweat because Ophelia’s just a girl, and basically made of spun sugar.
“Maybe you should wait out here,” Mateo tries.
“No,” Ophelia says, shoving her hand into her knit bag, rummaging, and presenting a switchblade.
“If things go weird, we run away screaming. The nearest house is right there.” Intentions established, she drops the blade into the volume of her flowy dress where a pocket must exist, and starts for the house.
Mateo catches Ophelia’s skirt and shares an exchange of meaningful looks based on years of exasperation. He can’t stop her from coming, but he should be in front.
The whole way up the steps, Mateo expects a single shot to ring out.
A magical lightning zap. Something. But now he’s in front of the door and nothing’s happened, so he pushes the doorbell.
A merry little tune, the kind that seems like it would get annoying real quick, is audible through the door.
Evil Wizard is a masochist, then. Terrible addition to the lore.
The song plays for a good twenty seconds, and Mateo strains to hear anything around it. Belatedly, he realizes there’s one of those peephole cameras that hook into an app and that the Evil Wizard might have been staring at his face this whole time. But then the door opens.
A very California woman in yoga-lady prime form stands there.
She’s blond, tall, and fit as all hell—six-pack abs on display in a matching yoga pant and crop tank set.
The whole thing is that horrid purple-pink color all girls’ things come in to show that femininity isn’t bad but pink is going too far so here’s this one oppressively florid purple.
Her hair is in a high ponytail, her feet are bare, and there’s not a single drop of sweat anywhere.
“Hello,” she says brightly, like she loves having strangers drop by.
It’s disorienting, especially because she’s rocking an expertly applied natural makeup look, the barest gloss of pink lips with evenly applied primer and concealer, and perfectly clump-less mascara.
There’s no reason he’s focused on this except his brain is having trouble with the idea that the Evil Wizard is a fitness nut who works out in a full face of boring makeup.
“Hi,” he says, thrown and unsure how to recover.
This is the place. Ophelia saw magic and auras.
This is the Evil Wizard. Or the Evil Wizard is in the house.
The Evil Wizard is somewhere, so they have to get inside.
“Is your spouse home?” he tries. Her outfit is cute, which is a far cry from the all-black industrial getup worn while throwing him out a window.
Her smile somehow brightens. “Oh, sure. You’re clients?” She steps back, holding the door wide for them to follow.
“Yep,” he says, and looks at Ophelia. Her shoulders pop up in a shrug, so they follow Yoga Wife in.
As soon as boots cross threshold, he expects a wall of force or a two-by-four upside the skull.
There’s just a low shoe rack—they remove their shoes—and then they’re led into a home office.
It’s old-timey, tufted velvet couch in teal, low coffee table with smart person books atop, and built-ins on one wall filled with more pretentious-looking books.
“I’ll let him know and bring some tea,” Yoga Wife says serenely, leaving them there without so much as a sideways glance. If she thinks it’s weird her possibly Evil Wizard husband has a goth and a boho chick over unannounced, she isn’t showing it.
“There’s no way it’s a different house?” Mateo asks under his breath, moving to the bookshelf to look for evil clues.
“No way,” Ophelia says just as softly, her interest in the desk at the window side of the room. It’s neat like the rest of the room, but there’s a few notebooks she starts leafing through.
Unless you love the magic of reading, there’s nothing magical on the shelves.
Classics, leatherbound with gold foil titles of tiresome two-word names from the eighteen hundreds.
His fingers hover over a small section of newer paperbacks, but they’re about the economy, like a boring English professor who has an eye on retirement.
He’s about to ask if Ophelia’s found anything, but a haunting aroma fills his head, flash baking his throat and sinuses.
It’s exactly like getting a pound of masticated saltines shoved down his gullet plus the scent of rotting cheese.
It’s been over a decade since he’s experienced this cloying, paralytic scent.
It’s the same half-remembered noxious yellow smoke his mother used on him as a child.
He doesn’t realize he’s stumbled until his hand catches the edge of the bookshelf. It only holds for a second before he drops, smacking into the ground without even the barest attempt to brace or soften the impact.
Dimly, he’s aware that it should have hurt, but the world, his body included, is underwater a million miles away.
Even duller beneath that is panic, forcing his gaze to track across the room, trying to see Ophelia.
That might be her hand, sticking out behind the desk, but the haze is increasing, suffocating, and his vision swims violently.
For a hysterical moment, he thinks it’s his mother. The half-buried memory of yellow smoke, helplessness, and pain awakening a primal terror he hasn’t had to deal with in years.
Bare feet come into view. Pink painted toenails.
Not his mother.
There’s no relief in this realization.
He wants to look up but he’s a boneless and gasping fish on land, unable to summon the coordination of limb or strength to turn his head.
One of those feet lifts, presses to his chest, and rolls him onto his back.
From this new angle he can see up into the face of the Yoga Wife.
She’s holding something loosely in one hand, a black metal base all he can see from the floor.
Wisps of yellowed smoke vomit gently out of it.
He’s transfixed for a moment, but then drags his gaze up.
Her bright, unrelenting smile is the last thing he sees before everything cuts to black.