Chapter 4
“We were here for coffee,” I start, perching on the edge of a table.
I eye the cell phone on the ground, half covered with broken glass.
I need it so I can delete the footage. “And that thing came in.” Shit.
No. I close my eyes in a long blink and run my hand over my forehead.
EMTs are here, attending to the guy on the floor.
And Officer Beasley is asking me questions. So far, it feels very off the record, but still…none of this is going to make sense. I’m either going to make myself seem incredibly dumb or incapable. Both, most likely.
“It took me off guard.”
“Yeah, it’d take me off guard too,” Nick agrees.
“And I didn’t have my gun on me.”
“Right. It’s the last thing you expected, being on vacation and all.”
“Exactly.” I blink, swallowing my pounding heart.
I need to keep my calm but not appear too collected.
I’m shaken, after all, from seeing what I did.
“I thought it was a prank at first, to be honest.” I make sure my body language matches what I’m trying to portray.
“Then some guys came running in from the street telling everyone to clear out.”
Nick chuckles. “And you didn’t listen.”
“Of course not.” I let out a breath and rub my forehead. I’m bruised and a little bloody but don’t feel all that bad. But I’m thinking I’m going to have to play up my injuries to get out of here.
“So what was it?” Nick asks, looking around the cafe. “Someone in an Ironman suit?”
“Something like that.” I shake my head. “I was able to get one mask off.” I motion to the broken clay on the ground. “But I didn’t get a clear look at the guy under it. He hurt my friend and then ran out the back.”
“This is a shit storm.”
“You’re telling me,” I agree, and playfully nudge Nick in the arm. “I’ve never been gladder to be on vacation before.”
“Don’t be surprised if you get a call,” he only half jokes. “Weird stuff is right up your alley.”
I grimace. “What’s the death count? Do we know yet?”
“Three so far.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. As if mass shootings aren’t enough to worry about.”
I close my eyes and bring my hand to my head, making sure to play up the pain and anguish. Nick buys it and suggests I see the EMTs. Aware I’m not acting like my normal, stubborn self, I agree and let them check me out.
On my way, I scoop up the cell phone and slip it into my pocket. The screen is cracked, but it’s still recording.
Thank fucking God.
That ups my odds that I can get in without worrying about cracking a passcode. Jacques, who’s wearing Hasan’s jacket to cover up the rips on his shirt, torn from when he ripped off the charm and revealed his wings, is standing in the back, taking everything in.
Hasan declines medical attention again, and I think we can try to slip out of here. I have to find Tom and Gil still, and then figure out what the fuck is actually going on.
Because there’s no denying it now.
That golem was sent for me.
“Way to fucking call me,” Gemma says dryly when we walk into the house. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are wide.
“Sorry,” I say, and take off my jacket.
“I thought you were dead.”
“Nah, I’m not that easy to kill.”
“Really?” Gemma arcs her eyebrows. “You’re bloody.”
“Most of it isn’t my blood.” I turn, waiting for the guys to shuffle in. Hasan’s back got cut pretty bad. I had Thomas swipe supplies from an open ambulance, and I cleaned Hasan up the best I could. “Speaking of…”
“Yeah?”
“Can you take a look at Hasan? He got cut with glass. I don’t think I got it all out. The guys heal during the day, but we still have hours until dawn.”
“Of course.” Gemma, who’s a nurse, motions to the kitchen. “There’s better lighting in here. Can you get me tweezers?”
I go upstairs to grab some along with extra towels and washcloths. Thomas and Gilbert are going toward the front door, looking on edge, when I come back down the stairs.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Gemma said she thought she heard someone out here about twenty minutes after we left,” Gil says, shooting back the deadbolt.
“What?” I ask, even though I heard him correctly.
“She said it sounded like someone walking. She got scared and stayed hidden.”
“Smart on her part.”
Gil opens the door and Thomas steps out, bending down to pick something up.
“It’s a letter,” he says, flipping it over. “Addressed to you, Ace.”
He extends it, and I hesitate. Whoever left the letter knew we left. They saw all five of us leave the house and squeeze into my car. But they weren’t counting on Gemma being here, it seems.
“It’s handwritten.” I take the letter and look at my name scrawled across the off-white paper making up this thick envelope. “What do you think the chances are it’s my letter to Hogwarts?”
Gil shakes his head. “Sorry to disappoint. That’s not the Hogwarts crest.”
I flip the letter over and look at a design stamped into a wax seal. “No, that’s definitely not the Hogwarts crest.” The symbol is robust, consisting of a rising sun inside a triangle. “Do you know what that is?”
“Never seen it before.” Thomas closes the front door and makes sure the locks are all in place. “But we know someone who might.”
“Right.” I tuck the towels under my arm and go back into the kitchen. Hasan is sitting at the table, leaning forward so Gemma can pick pieces of glass out of his back. She’s pulling the bandages off and disinfecting the wounds now.
“Was there anything out there?” she asks, carefully blotting the biggest cut with an alcohol swab. “I feel silly getting scared, but I’m a little paranoid.”
“You’re not paranoid,” I tell her. “You were right.” I put the towels and tweezers on the table and step over to Jacques. “Someone left this on the porch.”
Jacques’s chocolate brown eyes cloud with worry as he takes the envelope from me. “This looks vaguely familiar.” He runs his finger over the seal. “Though both symbols are commonplace in magical symbolism.”
“Should I open it?”
“It could be filled with poison,” Gemma says seriously. “Maybe you should call the pol—oh, you are the police.”
“This isn’t something the law can handle,” I say with certainty. “None of this is anymore.”
Jacques flips the letter over and then holds it up to the light. “The parchment is too thick to see through.” He brings it to his nose and inhales. “It smells of sage.”
“So did the files.” I look into his eyes. “Whoever sent those files left this letter.”
Jacques nods. “It appears so.”
“Open it,” Thomas encourages. “Unless it’s cursed or something.”
“Can you get cursed from opening a letter?” I ask.
“I suppose,” Jacques says after a moment’s consideration. “Though it would require very strong magic and we’d already have felt the effects from holding it by now. Someone left this letter with the intention of you reading it. I say we open it.”
Nodding, I take the letter back and sit at the table across from Hasan. He’s watching curiously, almost as if he’s totally unaware of Gemma pulling glass from his wounds.
Heart beating fast, I carefully peel up part of the paper, breaking the wax seal. The lights don’t dim. No magic wind blows through the house. My throat isn’t closing up and foam isn’t choking me.
So far so good.
I open the envelope, peering inside for clues—or poison, Gemma could be right—and then pull out a plain piece of white paper.
Like my name, the letter is also handwritten.
It’s only a few sentences long, and the writing is neat and evenly spaced.
If it wasn’t for a bit of smeared ink, I would have thought this was some fancy handwritten font meant to look like calligraphy.
“Acelina,” I read out loud. “I believe you have something I’ve been searching for and I’d like to offer you a trade. You’ve already received my first gift with nothing expected in return. However, if you’d like to continue with the case, I need something in exchange.”
“That’s it?” Thomas asks.
“Yeah.” I shake my head, reading the letter to myself again. “It doesn’t really make sense.”
“I think that’s the point,” Jacques suggests. “The case files you were sent…you’ve been obsessing. Whoever sent them knew what it would do to you. And the ambiguous letter is another catalyst to drive you crazy with trying to solve your parents’ murder.”
“Funny, too, how the letter came right after we left,” Gilbert muses. “You’re being set up, and I don’t like this at all. I’m gonna find the asshole doing this and beat some answers out of him.”
“Thanks.” I smile at Gil. “There’s nothing like a threat of violence to melt a girl’s heart.” I curl my lips over my teeth and shake my head. “What do I have that someone would want? I mean, they must want it really fucking bad.”
“Powers?” Gemma suggests, sticking the tweezers in a bowl of peroxide to disinfect them. “You have badass powers. I’d imagine a lot of people would want them.”
“Oh, for sure. But can you just take powers like that?”
“Not anyone could,” Jacques says, speaking slow. “But I’ve heard of rituals. Complicated, dangerous rituals where the spell caster doesn’t always make it out alive.”
“The golem knew my name,” I say, still staring at the letter.
“What?” everyone asks at once.
I look at Hasan. “Didn’t you hear it?”
He shakes his head. “It didn’t speak.”
“Yes, it did. Right before it charged at me and you pulled me out of the way.”
His brows furrow. “That’s why you froze?”
“I didn’t freeze,” I counter. “I was listening to it.”
“Golems can’t speak,” Jacques says softly.
“It wasn’t really the golem,” I start, feeling like this is going to be a hard one to explain. “Something was speaking through it. And it said my name.”
Gemma sets down the tweezers and wipes blood off her hands. “So let me get this straight.” She grabs a bandage. “Someone sends you mysterious case files about your parents’ deaths. Someone creates a golem to terrorize the city. And someone left this cryptic note on the porch.”
“The only way we knew to kill the golem was with fire,” Thomas says. “And you have fire power.”