Chapter One #2
Yet, it didn’t escape Gigi’s notice, the enormous number of relatives that still broke off a small piece of one of her creations and fed it to Canary. Discreetly, of course, waiting several heartbeats to see if he would change colours, cark it or worse, explode.
Which he totally hadn’t done for at least a month or so.
And he only tended to do that when Gigi was working alone in her test kitchen, letting her creative freak-flag fly.
She’d never said anything to any of her relatives, but a little trust that she wouldn’t poison or kill them would have been kind of nice, and a little validating. Given she was twenty-nine now, and totally had her magic on lockdown… mostly.
Switching on the lights in the industrial kitchen, Gigi cut the psychic link with Canary.
Surveying the mess. Damn. Finally able to examine the sprawled dead body of the flour and taffy coated shadow intruder with her own eyes.
On slippered feet she approached, kneeling down beside the dropped metal syringe.
No way did she intend to touch that. Her magic kicking in as she studied it, analysing the components of the contents and the amounts present. Yikes.
Two and a half years ago, she wouldn’t have been able to separate the elements within the syringe using her magic with just a concentrated thought.
But something had changed in the Southern Sanctuary recently.
She’d heard on the red hot gossip grapevine that many of her family were experiencing challenges when it came to their powers.
For some, it was changes or variations to the existing magic they held.
For others, new, unfamiliar strong magic was erupting without warning.
Gigi was a poster child for these changes.
Her magic enabling her to sense and weigh up all the elements present around her.
A more recent development was the ability to control those elements.
Such as separating out the contents of someone else’s recently digested meal and recombining the ingredients in a very uncomfortable fashion.
Then there was her new ability to mind-link with Canary. And better still, have the bunny regurgitate anything from the pocket dimension where thousands of thousands of successful and not so successful creations had been disposed of over the years.
Frowning, Gigi double-checked the syringe contents. Harmless now that she’d isolated one component and combined two others. Glancing to the left, she addressed what looked like a swamp coloured badly wrinkled pile of discarded old rags.
“Do me a favour and grab his feet?”
The ball of material rolled across the flour stained floor.
Her bridesmaid dress wasn’t much of a guard dog.
Case in point, it had let Canary do all the heavy lifting tonight.
But it was pretty good at cleaning up any messes that landed on the floor.
Once Gigi had this dead body stowed in the freezer, she’d let it loose in here.
Any splattered taffy wouldn’t stand a chance against the fabulous scouring nature of the fugly ass fabric.
Fortunately, Gigi had a humongous freezer with three separate areas. One section always kept locked, because her employees assumed that was where she kept potentially dangerous creations. Would that it were so.
Opening the special section, Gigi backed in, dragging the body, dropping the dead shadow ninja with a thump, right beside the other dead body already there.
Staring down at the lifeless duo, Gigi huffed out a foggy breath.
Two intruders. One eight nights ago. One tonight.
The first one female, some kind of bird-human hybrid.
Tonight, a male shadow ninja. The only thing the two had in common - besides being dead - was that both had been packing syringes full of some very nasty poison.
It seems someone wanted to hurt her family through Gigi.
After the first body, she’d considered calling someone.
Elijah, Head of the Enforcers. Or Darcy, the Southern Sanctuary Liaison.
Both would take the threat ultra-seriously and rain down misery and death and destruction upon their enemies.
Problem was these intruders were clearly for hire.
Whoever was behind this threat was lurking deep, deep in the background.
After the first intruder, Gigi had casually questioned Darcy about any looming threats. Two hours later, eyes glazed over, she’d begged Darcy to change topics, having learned nothing that might help pinpoint the culprit endeavouring to use Gigi as a conduit for murder.
Deciding to keep the first intruder incident a secret, she’d waited to see what their mysterious benefactor would do next.
With no hireling reporting back on their assigned mission, what would the moneybags puppeteer do next?
Give up? Try a new approach? One that the family Enforcers would no doubt quickly shut down?
Apparently, their strategy was not to reinvent the wheel but instead send in a new hireling with slightly different skills, aimed at the exact same target.
And who exactly was their target?
Gigi’s customers were mostly the residents of the Southern Sanctuary consisting of her extended family, friends and the large - mostly mundane - artist community living in the nearby town of Reverie Valley.
The only real outsiders in the mix was the occasional busload of tourists, who found themselves mysteriously whisked in and out of the Southern Sanctuary, their visit seeming dreamlike when they looked back on it, though they had some gorgeous goodies in their tote bags and their bank accounts were significantly lighter.
Staring down at the two dead bodies, a multitude of questions whirled around Gigi’s head.
What had been the plan here? Widespread deaths?
Perhaps with the intention of using the resulting panic as a smokescreen to launch an offensive against the Sanctuary?
Whatever was going on, it was clear whoever was behind this was tenacious and had no intention of giving up.
“Damn, this is above my paygrade.”
“Yup.”
“Goddess.” Gigi spun around, hand clutched to her chest, heart beating too fast. “Darcy! Where, in Heaven’s Name, did you come from?”
A fine dark eyebrow arched briefly upwards, clearly querying Gigi’s sanity. Crap, she should have known her casual questions regarding current Sanctuary threats would alert Darcy that something was up.
“Congrats. You finally have a body count.” Clear ice-blue eyes travelled over the bodies. “You and the bunny.”
“Not a gap in my curriculum vitae that I really felt needed filling. How long have you been here?”
“A while. I was starting to think your first intruder was a one-off, then shadow-hole turns up. Those guys are all about the money: there must be mega bucks behind all this. What was in the syringe?”
Gigi described the ingredients and the amounts present.
“Nasty shit.” Darcy huffed a breath. Having inherited a little of her father’s ice magic, her breath failed to fog.
Nor did her cousin look the slightest bit uncomfortable standing in the freezer wearing nothing but thigh-high lime vinyl boots, a blue and lime plaid micro skirt, topped with a pale blue t-shirt with the words ‘High Queen Bitch’ written across the front.
“What are you thinking?” Gigi really wanted to know. “Are these guys supposed to be the first wave of something bigger?”
“I’m not getting that feel.”
“What kind of feeling are you getting?” Darcy was a Spider Mage. She could sense connections and uncover intricate plots like no one else. It was her specialty, her calling.
“Damned if I know.” Unfamiliar frustration brimming in her cousin’s eyes. “If I had to guess, I think this has something to do with the plot by several asshole deities to remake the Earthly Plane into their own little theme park.”
“They want to kill us all?”
“Currently we’re working on the assumption that their aim is to party, smite, and generally be dickheads whilst keeping enough humans around to do their bidding and worship them in order to feed them power.”
“What does any of that have to do with sending expensive contract infiltrators into my shop armed with syringes full of lethal poison?”
“Hmmm.”
Gigi could practically see Darcy making some connections and leaps of deduction.
Despite that, an unfamiliar tinge of frustration lingered in her eyes.
Her cousin wasn’t happy. Things weren’t making sense yet.
Well, join the club. Gigi wasn’t happy someone was trying to use her as a patsy to hurt their family.
The gall, sending these assholes into her place of business, her sacred space.
Speaking of which. “So, I assume I can head back to bed and come morning all this…” She waved a hand at the two dead bodies. “…will just be a distant memory.”
“Yeah, about that.”
Oh, Merciful Lady Above, Gigi really didn’t like the look in Darcy’s serial killer eyes.
“Are you aware that I have the ability to designate emergency Secret Special Liaison Deputies?”
“You what? NO! Are you crazy? Do not even think about it. My appointment calendar is fully booked out. I do not have time for any of your high drama – deities are trying to destroy the world as we know it – intrigue. Besides, I make chocolates and cookies, I’m in no way qualified to be a Special Liaison Deputy. ”
“Secret. Secret Special Liaison Deputy. And what about all those snazzy moves Brodie has been teaching you when it comes to self-defence?”
“Those classes are designed to teach us how to initially surprise and shock our opponents into hesitating or momentarily backing off. The second step being to run away and find someone qualified to deal with the dangerous situation.”
“Then keep the killer bunny nearby.” Darcy leaned over, unerringly finding Canary’s happy spot behind his left ear and giving it a scratch, setting the bunny’s right leg thumping in delight.