Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Antoinette’s Apartment
East Boston
10:00PM
A ntoinette got up to answer the knock at her door, her silky kimono billowing out behind her.
Stella and Ethan turned around on the couch, preparing to greet Abby and her mates when they came through the door. Stella was eager to see what “surprise” Abby had mentioned.
The door opened and Antoinette rocked back on her heels.
“Hello, Antoinette,” Hawk said from outside in the hall.
Antoinette replied with an accusatory, “Who’s this guy?”
Stella and Ethan both jumped to their feet. Maybe Abby’s surprise wasn’t going to be a good one.
Antoinette’s tall frame blocked the door, giving off a defensive vibe. Had the wolves led an enemy here while under duress?
Magic tingled in Stella’s fingertips, ready to be unleashed.
“Easy,” Ethan murmured, though she could feel the energy spinning within him too.
“It’s a physical witch,” Stella whispered. She could detect the warm, wet-earth smell—familiar, but… “ Oh, shit . ”
“Stella?” Ethan’s magic crackled between them.
“Jun?” Stella called out. “Ha-Jun Kim!”
Ethan’s head jerked toward her, then back toward the door.
“How’d you guess?” Jun asked loudly, though he was still out of sight. He peeked around the edge of the doorframe.
Antoinette glanced back at Stella. “You know this guy?”
“Yes, and so do you,” Abby said from the hallway. Her muffled voice was somehow able to sound simultaneously amused and annoyed. “It’s June Bug.”
“Who?” Antoinette asked, turning back toward the five new arrivals.
“Our time-hopping friend from Baltimore,” Abby reminded her.
Antoinette looked Jun up and down. “The one with the nasty restaurant-carpet anchor?”
“It was the perfect ticket home,” Jun said. “Thanks.”
“You grew up,” Antoinette accused.
“It’s been thirty years,” he reminded her. “At least for some of us.”
“Well, get your asses in here,” Antoinette said as if she hadn’t been the one blocking their paths. “Anyone could be lurking in the hallway.”
She stepped aside, and Hawk, Stryker, Dylan, Abby, and Jun filed into the apartment, all of their eyes darting around the scene.
Stella imagined Antoinette’s interior decorating style was a lot of color and pattern for the shifters to take in all at once, especially since they were used to the more subtle hues of the forest.
Stella rushed around the end of the couch and pulled Jun into a hug. “I tried to find you, but you weren’t on any of the socials. Not even the boring ones. Not even the white pages.”
She released him, and Ethan reached her side. He slipped his arm around her back while giving Jun a firm handshake.
“That’s because I don’t have an online footprint,” Jun explained. “I didn’t want to make things too easy for the Collector.”
“It’s just nice to know you got home safe,” Stella said. “I was worried the portal wouldn’t work.”
“It worked for me on my scouting mission,” Jun reminded her.
“Yeah, but as it turned out, you didn’t travel through time, only space. And you have to remember, it didn’t work out for my mom when she tried to time hop.”
“Your mom might not have known about the need for an anchor,” Hawk said.
“I know,” Stella said. “That’s the conclusion I came to, but I still worried for Jun. For all of them.”
“I don’t know about Frannie and Mary,” Jun said. “But I did track down Alastair. Sort of.”
“Why ‘sort of?’” Ethan asked.
“I found an obituary.”
Abby’s hand flew to her mouth, and Stella felt a wave of sadness rush through her. She may not have been imprisoned with him in the pit, like Abby had, but she’d really come to like the Scotsman during their time together.
“Not his obituary,” Jun said quickly. “His brother’s. It was in a Glasgow paper, and it said the deceased was survived by his mother Margaret McTavish and his brother Alastair. There was a family photograph attached, so I knew it was the right one. The date was two thousand and eight.”
“So, he got home,” Stella said, relieved that she hadn’t sent him through the portal and straight to his death.
“We did hear the Beatles music coming through the portal,” Ethan reminded her. “It was a pretty good sign.”
“Is he still alive?” Abby asked.
“Don’t know,” Jun said. “He traveled farther than I did. He’d be in his late eighties by now.”
“I wish you would’ve come to see us sooner,” Stella said, even though it had only been three weeks since they sent him home. “It would’ve saved me a lot of worry.”
“Who says I didn’t come see you earlier?” Jun asked, and the corner of his mouth quirked.
“What are you saying?” Ethan asked.
Stella looked at Jun’s face, really looked at it. At first, all she could see was the grown-up version of the kid she’d known. Now, she rifled through the file cabinets of her memories and came up with another context.
She pointed at him. “You’re the guy from HJK Antiques and Collectibles. I knew I smelled magic on that guy. On you! ”
“ HJK …Ha-Jun Kim,” he said proudly.
Stella slapped her hand over her forehead. “I never put that together.”
“Why would you?” Jun asked. “At that point, we’d never met. Or rather, you’d never met me.”
“What are you two talking about?” Hawk asked.
“An antiques dealer—” Stella pointed at Jun. “—from HJK Antiques and Collectibles sold me some used books about a year ago. The dealer said he was familiar with my store and thought I might be interested in purchasing the books for my inventory. And…” Stella paused as it all dawned on her.
Jun’s dark eyes glittered with amusement.
“And one of those books was the book on Germanic runes!” Stella exclaimed. “The book Magnus used to decode the engravings on my mother’s bracelet.”
She held up her hand without really realizing she was doing it, and the bracelet slipped down her arm.
“No shit?” Dylan asked.
“You own an antiques store?” Abby asked.
“That bit was a lie,” Jun said, wrinkling his nose. “The truth is, I saw that book in another bookstore, and I recognized the torn cover with the big green stain. I knew I had to get it to Stella’s store, so it would be there when we needed it.”
“Amazing,” Stryker said. “You did good, kid.”
Jun gave him a chin lift of appreciation.
“This is nice,” Hawk said, “catching up and all. But we didn’t just bring Jun by for a visit.”
“No?” Stella asked, worry suddenly squirming through her stomach. “What is it then? Is something wrong?”
“Tell them,” Hawk ordered.
“Maybe we should sit,” Jun said.
They all found seats—Ethan, Stella, and Abby on the couch, Stryker standing directly behind Abby with his hands on her shoulders. Jun stood to Abby’s left by the edge of the coffee table. Dylan sat on the floor near Ethan. Hawk leaned against the wall in front of Ethan, and Antoinette reclaimed her seat in the black plastic hand chair.
Once they settled, Jun repeated a story he’d obviously already told the wolves because they didn’t look nearly as shellshocked as Stella felt by the idea of Jun trailing the Collector. Was he crazy? That was like spitting in the eye of the dragon.
Still, she had to hand it to the kid…or she guessed she should say man . He was definitely ballsy. The Collector could detect the presence of magic like she could, which meant Jun had taken an enormous risk.
And then he got to the part about the faces. “He can take on the appearance of other people. The face we’ve seen…it’s not the only face he shows.”
Stella put her hand to her chest to quell a weird sort of fluttering sensation. Was that how he’d disappeared on them from Trask’s Mill? Not once, but twice?
She glanced around the room. If they’d seen a stranger’s face, they would have noticed. But not if…
Oh god . Had her father temporarily adopted one of their own faces? Had he been standing there all along? Right in their midst, until he had the chance to slip away?
“But…” Ethan asked, “if he’s wearing different faces, how do you know that it’s him?”
“He has a tell ,” Jun said. “He does this thing with the fingers on his left hand. He puts his thumb to his pinkie…”
He demonstrated while explaining. “Then touches his ring finger, then the middle one, then the index finger. He does it three times in succession and usually, from what I’ve observed, right when he’s walking through a door.”
“That’s true!” Abby said. “He did that when he first entered Trask’s Mill. Back when I was chained to the wall. Well, actually before I was chained, but you know what I mean.”
“And how many different faces have you seen?” Ethan asked.
“Seven,” Jun said.
Stella felt the blood draining from her head.
“Do you have any idea how he’s doing it?” Ethan asked.
“I’ve got a few ideas,” Jun said. “The least likely, based on what I’ve seen, is that he’s creating new appearances from scratch and living multiple lives.”
“What are the more likely options?” Hawk asked.
“That he can temporarily adopt another person’s appearance, with or without their knowledge, or?—”
“Or he’s collecting them , ” Dylan muttered. “Not for their magic, but for their bodies.”
“Wait,” Ethan said. “Are you suggesting that monster has been wearing people around like a cheap suit?”
“That’s nasty,” Antoinette said.
“It would be very on-brand for him,” Stryker said.
Stella’s stomach turned. Her father was spreading his evil everywhere, destroying everything he touched. Using the faces of strangers and probably those of her friends to do god-knows-what.
“It’s crazy,” Abby concluded, and Stryker began massaging her shoulders.
Jun pulled out his phone, opened the photo app. He reached across Abby to hand his phone to Stella. “Here’s one of the faces he’s used. Have you seen this face in Salem?”
She took the phone and studied the picture. It was a man in his late sixties with thinning white hair but a thick mustache.
Ethan shook his head. “Never seen him before.”
“Me neither,” Stella said.
Antoinette exited the hand chair, offered the seat to Jun, then squeezed in between Stella and Abby on the couch. She leaned closer to see each photo as Stella scrolled through the next two images—one older man, one younger. Both impeccably dressed.
“The photos are a little too grainy to be sure of anything,” Ethan said with some obvious disappointment. “But I don’t think I’ve seen these people before.”
Jun leaned forward in the hand chair and—“ Whoa! ”—had to catch his balance when the base rocked. “Sometimes I had to zoom-in more than my phone could handle, but they’re not all bad.”
“Stella?” Ethan asked. “Antoinette? Any of these faces ringing a bell for you?”
Stella scrolled to next photo—another man.
“Not yet,” Antoinette said. “But white dudes all look alike.”
Ethan gave her a deadpan expression that made Antoinette cackle.
“Think hard,” Hawk said, putting his hip to the wall.
Stella scrolled to the next photo, then the next, which was a photo of three dark-haired little girls—clearly Jun’s daughters—and she realized she’d scrolled too far.
“Wait,” Ethan said. “Go back to that last one.”
Stella scrolled back.
Ethan used two fingers to enlarge the photo. “I know this guy.”
“You do?” Stella asked. It was a photo of a well-dressed man in his mid-forties. His dark hair had a thick white streak toward the front.
“I’ve known him for years,” Ethan said incredulously. “I just saw him four months ago at one of my campaign fundraisers.” He turned his head toward her. “The same event where I first met you.”
“Who is it?” Abby asked, leaning over Antoinette’s lap to get a better look at the photo. “I mean…whose face is it?”
“David Hurley,” Ethan said. “He’s the senior managing partner at Beach and Flanagan, one of the biggest law firms in Boston.”
“Are you sure?” Stella asked. “These photos aren’t the clearest.”
“This one is clear enough,” Ethan said. “See his rounded nose and that white streak in his dark hair? They’re too distinctive. This is definitely him. I’m one-hundred percent positive.”
“Where did you take the photo?” Stella asked Jun.
Jun got out of the plastic hand chair and moved closer to see which image they were looking at.
“Right.” Jun reclaimed his seat. “I figured you’d have the best shot at recognizing that one. All the other photos were taken in Baltimore and Providence, but that one… That one I got last weekend, here in Boston.”
“Are you saying you trailed the Collector from Baltimore to Boston?” Stella asked.
“No,” Jun said, shaking his head. “I was here last weekend on a family vacation. We were doing a walking tour of the Freedom Trail, and I about shit myself when I saw that man coming out of Faneuil Hall and doing that thing with his fingers. I followed him for a while?—”
He caught Stella’s eye and added quickly, “while keeping a very safe distance, to make sure it was really him.”
Ethan quickly closed the photo, handed the phone back to Jun, then curled his fingers around Stella’s knee.
He seemed to know what she needed. Him. Comfort. Connection. His warm touch pulled Stella out of her gloom, and she wished they were alone, where he could quiet her noisy head and force her focus onto just themselves.
Ethan gave her a reassuring smile. He read her so well. And he was so damn rock solid. She could depend on that, even if she didn’t understand it. No matter what Jun said next, they would handle it. Together.
“Just my two cents,” Ethan said, “but in my mind, your least likely theory is so unlikely it can be ruled out entirely. He’s not coming up with identities from scratch and living seven different lives.”
“Why are you so sure?” Hawk asked.
“Because he wouldn’t have time to live David Hurley’s life. Hurley is one of the top dogs at his firm. Big law firm lawyers have big law firm caseloads. They put in a ton of hours. And you don’t hold on to a gig like that if you’re always disappearing, especially for long stretches, which the Collector has been doing with all his time hopping and magic collections.”
“In that case,” Hawk said, “using similar logic, that probably eliminates the possibility that he’s killing these people. If he killed them, then took off with their faces for long periods of time, there’d be missing person reports.”
Stella was pretty sure her father wasn’t killing people for their faces. If that were true—to disappear on them at Trask’s Mill—he would have had to kill one of them to take over their appearance.
Stella leaned forward and put her elbows to her knees, her face to her palms. The very idea of her father taking over the body of one of her friends was enough to make her shudder. So much so, she couldn’t bring herself to share her theory. Shit . She couldn’t even look at them.
“So we think he’s adopting different faces for the short-term?” Antoinette asked.
“Sounds risky,” Dylan said. “If he’s walking around wearing someone else’s face, what happens if they run into each other? I can’t imagine the Collector would want to cause a big scene.”
“Dylan’s got a point,” Stryker said, and he leaned over the back of the couch to wrap his arms around Abby’s neck and shoulders. “The Collector is all about stealth and hiding. So, why would he choose a face that’s so identifiable as this David Hurley? Why not pick an average face that disappears into a crowd?”
“You said David Hurley is an attorney?” Antoinette asked Ethan.
“The most senior partner at Beach and Flanagan,” he confirmed.
Antoinette sucked the back of her teeth. “Then my guess is the Collector picked a face that carries some clout and would get him into places regular folk can’t get into. At least not easily. He’s using this attorney’s face to get something he wants.”
“Or it’s a mutual thing,” Hawk said. “Maybe all those people knowingly loaned out their faces because they’re getting something of value in return.”
Stella lifted her head from her hands. Hawk’s theory might be true for some, but if her own theory was correct, it wasn’t true for all. She opened her mouth to finally contribute to the conversation, but nothing came out.
“Like…what would they be getting from him?” Dylan asked Hawk.
“Money,” Antoinette said. “Expensive cars. He’s got to have weaseled away a ton of wealth, time hopping like he does. He’s probably been playing the stock market for centuries, and he’s got all the inside tea.”
“If you’re right,” Ethan said, “I hope Hurley was a recent transaction. I can’t stomach the possibility that I spent thirty minutes talking to this guy at my fundraiser, and it was the Collector the whole time.”
“If we could get in front of David Hurley,” Abby said, looking up. “Stella could tell if he’s really the Collector in disguise.”
All eyes turned toward Stella.
“Oh.” Stella cleared her throat. “Yeah. Of course. If David Hurley is my fa?—”
“If he’s the Collector ,” Antoinette said, admonishingly.
“If he’s really the Collector in disguise, the scent of his magic will be an amalgam of all the magic he’s stolen.”
“Could you tell if it was just a mask?” Abby asked. “Or if he’d taken over the man’s body?”
“You mean if he killed the man to do an entire-body takeover? If he’s literally wearing death?” Stella wrinkled her nose at the thought. “I don’t think that’ll be the case, but if I’m wrong, the stench of that much blood magic would knock me on my ass.”
Everyone seemed satisfied by that, and they resumed their conversation while Stella’s thoughts drifted toward a basement room beneath a tattoo parlor not far from where they currently sat.
She recalled the beetles scurrying over the floor, the charmed armoire that rattled its invisible chains, and all the dark spells locked behind its doors. The rotting scent of so much blood magic had nearly bowled her over. This time, would her father do the same?
“We should call Hurley’s law firm and make an appointment to see him,” Abby declared. “Face him head on.”
“It would have to be a meeting for all eight of us,” Antoinette said. “No one goes in alone. As soon as that maniac realizes we’re on to him, it’ll be on like Donkey Kong.”
“Or he’ll just disappear again,” Hawk said. “He’ll take on another face and we’ll lose him.”
“He does have a way of doing that,” Jun murmured.
“The guy is as slippery as an eel and mayonnaise sandwich,” Dylan muttered.
Stella placed her hand over her stomach. Her big Italian dinner was considering a revolt, and Dylan’s quip made it all the more imminent.
“We don’t need to make an appointment,” Ethan said.
“You’ve got a better idea?” Hawk asked.
Ethan nodded slowly. “I know where David Hurley will be tomorrow night.”
He did? Ethan was all kinds of resourceful, but Stella couldn’t fathom how he could know something like that. He didn’t have his mother’s prophetic gifts.
“How in the hell would you know that?” Hawk asked, folding his arms but still leaning nonchalantly against the wall.
Ethan looked up and waggled his eyebrows at Hawk. “Magic.”
Hawk grunted and looked out the dark window.
Ethan pulled his phone from his pocket and hit a button. A second later a muffled voice came over the line. “E?”
“Yeah, Doherty. It’s me. Say, I’ve changed my mind. Put me down as a ‘yes’ for tomorrow, and I’ll be bringing several guests. I forgot how much I loved a masquerade.”