Chapter Ten
Angie
Igathered power around me, what little I could reach beneath the null cloak, and moved through the house, watching for the lights and colors of magic.
Vigilant. Trying not to think about what I had just seen on Walter.
On his cheek. On his brand. His slave brand could have been removed at any time in his long life, and his face would have regrown into perfection, the initials of his owner gone.
Why hadn’t he cut away the brand? Wouldn’t anyone remove a slave brand?
Worse, why did a faint green wisp of magic glow from the initials?
And perhaps worst of all, why had I never, in all the years I had known him, asked these questions?
What kind of magic was burned into our bodyguard?
Walter was always distant and had never been my buddy, my pal, but maybe he was under a passive working or a geas, one trapped in his brand. One that made all others accept the brand as normal, natural. He may not even know a geas was burned into his skin.
He had been hunting for his maker for a century and not found the vampire, yet when Willim was in the country he hadn’t tracked down the bloodsucker and killed him. Was the geas meant to protect Willim? Warn Willim when Walter was close? Call Walter? Control Walter?
I hated the last possibilities because they meant I couldn’t protect or trust our bodyguard. A geas made the marked person a danger to everyone and themselves.
I moved through each room in the dark, using a seeing working the low light on the headset and an enhanced light vision working.
It wasn’t as good as turning on the lights, but it was better than nothing.
Checking every nook and cranny as I had been taught by Koun, the queen’s personal guard, I worked the house, my mind turning over possibilities in the background.
Lack of trust had been drilled into me during my last year of marriage.
Always being on guard. Always worried about betrayal.
And this was the result—looking for political and emotional layers piled on top of and beneath other layers within relationships.
Trust and hearts were easily shattered and not so easily mended.
As I moved, I spoke into my headgear comms. “Living room, clear. Coat closet, clear. Powder room, clear. Family room, cl—” The family room was empty of people, but something was off.
A glow came from an outlet. A night-light.
Not activated by magic or motion, but something steady, with a Disney character on it, for children.
A stuffed animal sat on a pillow in the middle of the family room floor, a unicorn in shades of purple.
It was surrounded by tiny soldiers dressed in shades of black.
A kid-sized basketball hoop stood about three feet off the floor.
A small stack of kids’ picture books was beside the fireplace, all of them from the bestselling series about a witch named Beatriz. They had been wildly popular during the war, when witches had the only weapons that might protect people from possession.
A pair of reading glasses rested on a small table beside framed photographs of family groupings. Several generations were included, the family mixed race. Our client appeared in many. The grandmother?
Froufrou pillows and comfy-looking blankets were tossed here and there.
Everything looked normal except one small thing. A crystal bell lay on the floor beside the fireplace, shattered. It had the faintest glow of magic resonating in it. “Living room clear. Ish.”
“What the hell does ‘clear-ish’ mean?” Villetti asked. I ignored him.
I moved through the dining room, which had its own fireplace, through the kitchen, around to the stairs. “Dining room and kitchen clear,” I said softly. When I reached Walter and EJ, I told them about the bell. “We’ll check it when we’re done with the rest of the house. Update?”
“Two internal cams, both off. One safe room indicated in the security wiring,” Walter said. “Best guess is between the kitchen and the dining room.”
I looked back, but there didn’t appear to be space for a room.
“House lights are wired to something,” EJ said. “Got a little ting when I scanned them. No idea what the magic does. Alex and I think we should continue to work in the dark, so I’ll set up illumination workings.” EJ tapped three amulets and placed them here and there.
I turned back to the kitchen, saying, “The only possibility is a space behind the oven and the dining room fireplace. If a safe room is there, it can’t be more than three feet wide, maybe eight feet long. Maybe a pantry, once upon a time? Closed in, hidden, spelled to make it hard to find?”
Together EJ and I searched the walls with eyes, fingertips, and our differing magics. “I don’t see any magic,” I said.
“I don’t hear anything,” EJ replied, “and I don’t see any kind of latch or opening. Walter?”
Walter stopped taking pics for Alex and listened. “No sound of crying.”
“Upstairs,” I ordered. “Stay behind me.”
“Who died and made you queen?” EJ asked. A childhood tease. But this time I gave him an answer.
“Her name was Grace,” I murmured, my words soft, as I led them up the stairs.
The carpet muffled our footsteps, but the house felt tense, restless, as if it was primed for…
something. Empty houses didn’t feel like this.
“Grace challenged Asshat for leader of the blood family,” I said.
“He killed her. Very slowly. Her death was what he called the death of a thousand cuts. It was a warning to his people. He claimed it was the only way to keep me safe. But he was lying. He enjoyed it.” At the top of the stairs, I looked up and down the hallway leading to the bedrooms.
“Karson had always called me a queen, like an endearment. That night, because of Grace, I started to become a queen for real, queen of my own destiny. Queen of my own heart.”
“A warrior queen,” Walter said. As if he knew the story.
And of course he knew, I thought. That was part of why he was with us in the first place. “Any music?” I asked EJ.
“No.” EJ was closed down, an expression I had never seen before on his face.
“I’ll tell all later,” I murmured again. “What’s happening now might have some bearing on what happened before my divorce.”
“Fine,” EJ said. He didn’t mean fine. He meant he’d have words for me later, but I could live with that. With a flick of his fingers, he sent the illumination workings down the hallway.
“No signs of disarray,” Walter said.
I looked back at his face. The brand was still leaking low-level magical energies, like nothing I had seen before. But now wasn’t the time to talk about his brand. I wasn’t sure there would ever be a right time for those words, for dredging up that past.
I entered the primary bedroom. The dim light of magic gleamed from multiple sources. Passive magic, defensive magic. Half a dozen glamour trinkets in the primary bath. Little workings, for the people who could afford them, to be more comfortable than with tech alone.
In the other rooms we found more: a very small, localized hedge, one made by the Nashville coven. Warming workings on a bed and on the tiled hall bathroom floor.
There was a single powerful hedge in a room that was clearly for children. Here were two more bells that carried attack workings designed to temporarily incapacitate a vampire, made by the Connecticut coven.
“Interesting,” Walter said. “Why have attack workings in the children’s bedroom?”
As we worked I kept a close eye on them.
EJ moved like a warrior, like Koun, who had trained me in swordplay and battle magic.
Twice, Walter rubbed the brand on his cheek.
Walter never touched the brand. Never. Yeah, something was going on with that brand.
And the man who gave it to him was in town and sporting around with Asshat.
Too much coincidence going back too many years.
Asshat was not bright enough to pull off a decades-long (centuries-long?) operation, so one of the other vamps in town was pulling strings.
Our client was dead. Londyn dead. A Rus in town, sleeping with my ex-husband. Edmund in town. Walter potentially under a geas. A vampire was in PsyLED custody, cops taking her to the queen…where Edmund was. Was the trapped vampire a trap herself?
I tapped my comms. “Alex. Keep Edmund away from the prisoners heading your way.”
“Uhhh. Yeah. Copy that,” he said, his last words clipped, understanding my warning.
It took us half an hour to clear the upstairs. When the second story of the house was safe, I said, “Upstairs clear,” to Alex, as I led the way back downstairs.
“Good,” he said. “Confirmed a safe room, between the stove and fireplace.”
To EJ, I said, “Tell Villetti we need to get the kids free before anyone human comes inside, in case there’s a spell on that room like the hedge on the bedroom.”
Villetti’s voice came to me on speaker. “The kids’ parents are here. They say there is no hidden room and they are having a…what do you call it? A conniption? Make it fast.”
I stopped myself before I said, Yeah? Well, they better hope so, or it means someone kidnapped the kids. I kept that one in, and said instead, “We’re doing what we do best. Leave us alone.” I ended the connection. “Anyone got any ideas?”
EJ was smiling slightly.
“What?”
“Nothing,” EJ said. “The bell in the family room might have been broken on purpose to set off a protection in the safe room. It looked like an air-witch amulet. It might be tied to the electrical box and the faint ting of magic I heard through the lights. I’m going to recheck the junction box and then see to the bell. ”