Chapter 17 I’m Thinking…Burglar?
SEVENTEEN
I’m Thinking…Burglar?
Elizabeth gasped. “What is it?”
Frank, taller than his mom, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.”
I rubbed my forehead. “Let me work on it, okay?”
Elizabeth looked panicked. “Touch him. Read him.”
Frank gave me a sad smile before speaking to his mother. “It hasn’t happened yet. And whatever might happen isn’t my doing or Arwyn would already have her glove off.”
I nodded. “You have brilliant children,” I told her.
“I need some time to—” I reached out and put my gloved hand on Frank’s arm, trying to interpret what I was feeling.
“Don’t trust…someone.” Frustrated, I closed my eyes.
“It’s going to seem completely normal.” I opened my eyes and glared at him, drilling my finger into his chest. “But you’re going to think it’s odd.
This person hasn’t asked or offered whatever it is before.
You’re going to want to write it off as you being too uptight or suspicious or something.
If you ignore your gut, something bad happens.
Don’t do that, okay? Be suspicious as hell of anyone offering you anything. ”
“I promise,” he said.
Stupid tears. I wiped my face. “Don’t do anything until I figure it out.”
“I won’t.” He took in his mom, who was about to lose it, and said, “Let’s go home. We’ll give Arwyn the time and quiet she needs and we’ll all get together Monday night at their new place.” He pulled her toward the door. “Come on.”
“Wait!” I said louder than I should have. “The Three haven’t warded your car or house yet. Now that Faith is one of the Three, there will be threats.”
Faith’s eyes went big. “Is it my fault?” she breathed. “Is what happens to Frank because of me?”
That question set off a new round of emotions rolling through my body. I heard Frank give her a murmured, Of course not, but I was too busy trying to find the answer to comfort her.
When I finally looked up into her glassy eyes, I said, “Not you. It might be me, though.”
I turned to Frank. “I want to roll you in bubble wrap and hide you away somewhere until I know you’re safe.”
His lips kicked up on one side. “I trust you. If anyone can keep me safe, it’s you.”
I waved my mom forward and said, “Bracken, can you hide us while we ward the car? We can do that now. We’re all here. Then we’ll meet at the house and ward that.”
Elizabeth nodded, holding both her children’s hands as she followed Bracken out the back door of the gallery and across the deck to the parking lot.
Mom took my hand and asked on a whisper, “Darling, what did you see?”
I touched the side of my head. “So much pain. I don’t know if he survives it.”
She pulled me along. “No more.” She shook her head fiercely. “No more death. We’re not losing anyone else. Let’s get to work.”
Declan and Carter trailed us with Hester following.
“Dec and I can guard you while you work,” Carter said.
“I feel so useless,” Hester mumbled.
I turned to reassure her, but Declan was already there, his arm around her shoulders. “You do something every day. I’ve seen the way you watch over them, making sure they’re all right, that no customers are being disrespectful. You’re like their fairy godmother.”
She huffed a laugh.
Warding the car didn’t take anywhere near as long as the house, property, and greenhouse. We needed to make sure the whole family was safe in their home. I also wove in a spell against the Swans and black magic.
On the drive home, Declan put my seat back and covered me with a flannel coat he had in the back seat. The coat was huge, so I used it like a blanket.
“Are you okay?” he said. “I can hear your teeth are chattering and it’s sixty degrees out.”
I nodded, the coat covering half my face to help warm me up. “I think I’m just tired.”
Declan’s phone rang through the screen on his SUV. Osso. Tapping the screen, he answered with a “Hey.”
“Oh, good,” Osso said. “I was at the gallery and your place. Are you home?”
“We’re driving home now,” Declan replied. “Why? What’s the problem?”
“Good. Don’t go home. Go to Orla’s bookstore. She says she found something in the woods we need to see.”
Declan glanced over at me. “Now’s not good. Arwyn is worn out. She needs food and sleep.”
I pushed down the coat, so it wasn’t covering my mouth.
“Did Orla say what it was?” Orla was an owl shifter we’d met recently.
She was a member of a supernatural group Declan and I were a part of.
We worked with Detective Osso, his cousin Officer Garra, and an assortment of other supernaturals to hunt down and deal with supernatural criminals.
We couldn’t leave it to the human police to catch and punish vampires or the fae or whatever.
That was where we came in. Orla was new to the group but was proving to be extremely useful.
She owned Night Owl Books, a bookshop in a converted Victorian mansion butted up against the woods. As she was nocturnal, the bookshop was only open from eight at night to six in the morning. It was an insomniac’s dream.
“No. She didn’t say,” Osso replied. “She said it would make more sense if we saw it ourselves.”
“I’m okay,” I said. I checked the time on the screen. “It’s only a little after ten. I’m fine.”
“You’ve been working since six,” Declan argued. “You need sleep.”
I patted his arm. “And I will. Afterward.”
He growled, said, “Fine,” and stabbed the screen to end the call. “It’s too much,” he finally said. “Everyone treats you like you’re on call twenty-four-seven. This is going to get more difficult as you get farther along.”
“Who would you have me say no to?” I cut in.
“Should I let Frank die so I can nap in peace? Should I let all those horribly murdered people remain hidden and forgotten so I can get some rest? Maybe I’ll sit back and let the Swans use their black magic, profaning the Goddess’s gifts, while they attack our home. ”
I threw my hands up in frustration. “Telling me to stop doing so much without taking into account the real problems that have to be dealt with is going to make flames pop out of my head.”
He was quiet for a long time. “I don’t want you to combust.” He reached under the coat and took my hand.
“I see all the pressure piling up on you and it kills me that I can’t take it on for you.
I don’t have your gifts. I can’t do what you do.
Apparently, all I can do is nag and add to the pressure. ”
He drove through the neighborhood nearing the forest, then turned up Orla’s long drive to her house on the hill.
I squeezed his hand. “It’s not all you do. I know I’m a pain—”
“I’m not saying that. I love you. And I worry.”
“I worry too,” I whispered. “But before, it was always me alone in the night worrying. Now I have you to make sure I eat and sleep. You hold me so the nightmares don’t chip away at my sanity. You’re what makes this new life of mine worth living.”
I brought his hand to my lips as he parked.
“I’ve lived longer than any Cassandra I’ve ever heard of.
I’m actually having my own child. I’ve seen and experienced so many horrors, but having you gives me the light my life was missing.
I need to use my gifts. I can’t turn them off.
It runs through my veins. Having you here, though, afterward, loving me, taking care of me, it means the world to me. So don’t call it nagging.”
On a sigh, he leaned over and kissed me.
We both jumped at the rap on his window. Declan growled loudly, his eyes turning gold.
Osso held up his hands and waved us in before heading up the stairs to the bookstore front door.
Declan breathed slowly for a few moments, getting himself back under control. “If I don’t kill him in the next few months, it’ll be a miracle.”
I undid my seat belt, leaned over, and turned his face back to mine for another kiss. “You know, the weird thing is he knows I’m pregnant. He won’t say anything, because I haven’t said anything, but he knows. He’s been uncharacteristically concerned about my well-being.”
He blew out a breath. “Fine. I won’t kill him. Let’s get this over with so we can go home.”
Orla had remodeled her Victorian home so the first two floors were now a high-ceilinged bookshop with tall, too-full bookcases on the first floor. A narrow staircase on the right led up to her private apartment on what had been the third floor.
Orla, tall and thin, with long light brown hair and large golden-bordering-on-orange eyes, stood behind a table she used as her checkout counter. She took in my appearance and asked, “Were you burgling?”
From anyone else, I’d take that as snark.
Orla was different, though. She was, as far as we could tell, the last Eurasian eagle-owl shifter in the world.
Her parents had died many years ago and she’d spent much of her life alone, reading her vast collection of books, which she occasionally sold to people wandering into her bookshop in the wee hours of the night.
What she knew of the world seemed to come from her books.
There was no judgment or snark in the question.
Given that I was dressed all in black, she surmised I must have been burgling. She was kind of adorable.
I shook my head. “The gallery was open today, so I was going for emo, misunderstood artist.”
One long, slow blink as she processed that and nodded. “I see your vision.” She glanced around. “Are we all here?”
Nick Garra was a younger cousin of Osso’s.
From what I’d gathered, there was a large population of black bear shifters in Monterey County, so there seemed to be no end to cousins.
Like the detective, Nick was a tall, broad-shouldered Black man, but unlike Osso, Nick had an open, friendly personality and dimples.
I was also pretty sure Nick was sweet on Orla.
Osso nodded. “Yes. We’re it tonight.”
Orla went to the front door, turned the lock, and put up a Closed sign. Waving for us to follow her, she went through the bookstore to the back door. Once we’d assembled on her porch, she pointed to a pile of little rocks and sticks on the top of the railing.
“New gifts from Tyrion?” Nick asked.
Orla nodded. To the rest of us, she explained. “I have a crow friend. He brings me little gifts, and I give him nuts and berries.”
“Okay,” Osso said, clearly confused as to why we were there.
“He brought me a button along with all of this.” She took a small baggie out of her pocket, handing it to Osso. “Smell that.”
Brow furrowed, he opened the baggie, took a sniff, and reared back before trying to hand the baggie to Declan.
“I can smell the rot from here,” Declan said. “You found a dead body?” he asked Orla.
“Maybe,” she replied. “That’s why I wanted you to come. I flew there, but I know the way by foot.” She walked to the end of the porch and stepped off, waiting for us to follow.
Declan glanced at me, then asked, “How far?”
She considered the question. “Perhaps a quarter of a mile. It’s in my woods, but on the side that butts up against a little neighborhood.”
Declan crouched down in front of me. “Climb on.”
“Don’t be silly. I can walk.” The other three were watching us and it was embarrassing.
“Ursula, with the way you stomp through underbrush, you’ll wake her neighbors and have people training their shotguns on us. Take the ride.”
“Rude,” I grumbled as I climbed onto his back. If my arms were a little too tight around his neck, well, so be it.
Declan stood with his arms under my legs, and we all followed Orla into the woods. Let me tell you, shifters are remarkably silent. As much as I hated to admit it, Declan was right. There was no way I’d have been able to keep up with them in the pitch dark without tripping and falling loudly.
Heat radiated from Declan’s back, so I snuggled in, rested my head on his shoulder, and had started to drift when they stopped.
Declan jostled me awake. “We’re here, sleepyhead. Can I put you down?”
Damn. On a sigh, I said, “Yeah.” I slid down his back. Luckily, he kept his hands on me, so I didn’t lose my balance. “Where are we looking?” I asked.
The shifters all pointed to a mound of dirt and leaves. I didn’t have their night vision, but… “Is that an arm?”