Chapter Twenty
The Nice Part
Of Town
Mid-Afternoon
What Victoria knew was that the energy in Salem was most definitely off. The sky was getting gray, and she could feel the energy snapping around her like an electrical storm was brewing. Oh, and it was getting stronger.
Something was coming.
Something bad.
From the way her husband was twitchy, to the fact that the two cops with her seemed jumpy, told her all she needed to know.
Something wicked was heading their way. It was as if they were standing at the mouth of Hell, just waiting for it to go nuclear all around them.
“I don’t like it.”
As they were sitting in the car, Julian lifted a brow.
“Just now you started not liking it? Victoria, I’m hating all of this,” he said. “I’m freaking the fuck out and thinking about how I can pick up this entire business and move it ANYWHERE but here. Salem isn’t feeling safe.”
She could say the same thing, but then again, this tended to be a recurring theme in their lives.
They ran from the West last time. Now, where would they run to?
“We have to make a stand.”
Yeah, he didn’t like that.
Not.
At.
All.
Julian didn’t mind fighting for his business, or for the people they employed, but a demonic entity? One that was elemental and couldn’t be stopped with normal means?
“We did this once before, Victoria. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome.”
She was aware.
“We ran last time, too, and we didn’t beat it. How do we know that this thing wasn’t the same thing last time? Avalon said it was hunting Genesis. It was looking for the people who tried to stop it hundreds of years ago. How do we know that it wasn’t the same thing we fought once before?”
That stole his breath.
Why?
He hadn’t considered that.
Only, Tori wasn’t done.
“Where Genesis was isn’t far from where we were outside of Damascus. What if this thing keeps finding not only Genesis, but us, because we’re supposed to deal with it?”
That hung there.
And he hated that she might be right.
“Victoria, I can’t lose anyone else. We lost two people we loved and had to deal with the ramifications of Nyx’s actions.”
Tori touched his leg.
“And we did, but it’s still here, and it’s back with a vengeance. We need to fight it, Jules. You heard Avalon. A Shaman could help, but we don’t have one. We do have some psychic Natives. I’m asking you to fight, not pick us up and run.”
He was trying to stay strong.
“If I lose you like Ridge lost Wynter, I’m not going to be okay,” he admitted. “I’m not going to survive that, Tor.”
She slipped her hand into his.
“I’m not going to eat a gun, Jules. I’m good. We need to make a stand. Avalon might be able to destroy this, and we’ll have peace. I want our family to be safe, but I also want Genesis to be safe. Make a stand with me so we can stop it once and for all.”
He stared at his wife.
She was the bravest soul he’d ever known. She’d been handed so much shit in her life, from her mother abandoning her and her brother to finding out about Beau years later. From a father who didn’t give a shit, to her PTSD, and she still kept fighting.
“Please,” she said.
He squeezed her hand.
“Okay. We end it here. We get everything we have and be ready to fight it. First, we have to find who is carrying this demonic entity around with him.”
They would.
She put her faith in the family.
“After this, let’s go back to the office and start breaking this down. Avalon is going to fight this in the static, and we are going to do what we do best. Investigate.”
He hoped they survived this.
For his sanity’s sake.
As they drove, Julian needed to work. They were almost at Ridge’s home, and his wife was right. They had to do their part in this, and that was to find the person walking around in Salem carrying this darkness.
This plague.
“Who could it be?” Julian asked. “It has to be someone that Wynter came in contact with to put that pentacle on her.”
She agreed there.
“Here’s our list,” she said.
Then, Tori rattled it off, reading from the little notebook she kept in her pocket while she investigated.
‘Leon Kenyon
Romy Calder
Trent Stevens
Caspian Drake
Jasper Crowley’
When she was done, Julian hoped that they could eliminate any of those people because, to him, they could all have done this. They all had contact with Wynter.
“Well, didn’t they truth test Leon?” Julian asked. “Hart said it wasn’t him.”
Tori agreed.
“I’m keeping him on the list since he was sleeping with his patients. He had contact with all of them—even Lonnie.”
Yeah, that was true.
“So, if he had contact with them, so did Romy Calder, his assistant.”
Julian agreed there.
“We might need to start digging into their lives to see whose family goes back the furthest. Since this is likely a Salem issue, that might be a way to figure it out.”
She kissed him on the cheek.
“Good plan, my love.”
He laughed.
“You are humoring me. I know for damn sure you’re already working on that.”
She laughed.
“I mean, I may or may not have asked our teams to take them and start digging. As soon as we get information back, we should be good.”
Julian wasn’t surprised.
“As for Trent, he hired us. He still had dead in his place. Maybe his dead would cover for him. It was his cameras that picked up that person, and they were hazy.”
Tori considered it.
“I mean, we’ve been lied to before. He did say his family was from here, and they were wealthy like the Vanderbilts.”
Exactly.
Julian kept going down the list that Tori had made.
“Caspian Drake had slept with one of the victims, and he’s part of the witch community. Only, his name hasn’t come back up again. We encountered it once, and that was it.”
She was aware.
“If we keep him on the list, we might have to add every single male that came in contact with the women,” Julian admitted. “Like the new resident who lives next door to the latest victim. What was his name again?”
Tori recalled it.
“Victor Lang?”
He nodded.
“That’s it.”
Tori considered what he was saying.
“This list has the potential to get really long.”
And that was a problem for them.
Julian continued.
“Last is my frontrunner in this. Good old Jasper, the shop worker. He fed us the line about how someone came and ‘picked up’ the medallions, and then, he’s the one who does the delivery to Trent’s house.”
She knew what he was saying.
“Yeah, and Wynter went in there a couple of times. Once with Booth, and once by herself.”
He nodded.
“For all we know, that second time was when he slipped that medallion into her pocket.”
That was true.
As Bishop and Honor pulled into Ridge and Wynter’s driveway, Tori and Julian kept driving by and went into Lucian and Bishop’s driveway, instead. They were going to sneak into the house by avoiding any media.
It was for the best.
Punching in the code to Lucian’s gate, it slowly opened, and they accessed the man’s garage.
“We are going to have to deep dive them,” Tori stated. “For sure. I don’t think we’re going to get our answers easily.”
That was his concern.
“Let’s get into Ridge and Wynter’s house and see what we can find there. Maybe we’ll get lucky,” he admitted, but deep down, he didn’t think they would.
How did he know?
Oh, call it a hunch.
Heading out, Tori saw a flash out of her peripheral, and it caught her off guard.
When it happened again, she turned quickly, trying to catch whatever it was that had blown by her.
“What?” Julian asked, as he came to a stop outside of their garage, and saw his wife was acting…weird.
She told him.
“I just saw a spirit. It wasn’t directly, but out of my peripheral.”
He opened his doors and scanned the whole area. There was nothing around, but there was this…sound.
“Do you hear that?” he asked.
It was…static-y.
Tori opened her doors and scanned too. She didn’t see a single soul, but she did hear something.
“Yeah, I do. What the fuck is that?” she asked, as it sounded ominous.
He had no clue.
Before he could say anything else, Bishop appeared and waved to them from Ridge’s yard.
They figured the coast was clear and headed toward her.
“Don’t do anything crazy,” Bishop stated. “Just look for Wynter and be careful. I can’t shoot a spirit,” she stated.
Oh, and they knew why she was edgy.
The energy inside the house…
IT.
WAS.
BAD.
There was that humming, and it was emanating from somewhere inside the mansion.
And Julian didn’t like it.
“Oh, being careful is my plan,” Julian stated.
Along with tossing his wife over his shoulder and running for the fucking hills if need be.
Trust and believe.
“We were just going over the people who might be carrying this entity,” Julian stated, as they walked around their friends’ home.
Honor was curious.
“What did you come up with?” she asked. “Because we were going over the names, too, and nothing is connecting. That seems to be the issue from the start.”
Tori went there before her husband could share.
“By any chance did you guys look at any suicides that happened in Utah? You know, since this thing has been tracking Genesis?”
Both of them stopped dead in their tracks.
“Uh, no,” Bishop said. “Because we didn’t know it was following Genesis until we were vetted in by Avalon. We can start doing that, though.”
That was probably a good idea.
Julian shared what they’d discussed.
“We were plagued with a darkness when we were out there. It was demonic, and one of our employees had played games with it.”
Oh, they knew the lore.
Everyone who worked with, or was part of the Littlemoon family, knew about Julian’s penchant to hate anything Nyx-related. She’d burned them by doing some dark things.
“You think that you encountered it out there?” Bishop asked.
Tori nodded.
“It disappeared when we ran from that area, and now it’s back. If this person is psychic, and was in the static like Avalon Carter, who's to say it didn’t know that this was all going to happen?” she asked. “What if it was testing us, and learning?”
That was a good point.
They were dealing with a strong psychic who wanted to end Oracle so it could have the darkness take over. The static was a bottomless pit of souls to snack on.