The Coveted (The Unearthly #2)

  “That’s what Hazard said.”

  “It’s fine,” I said to Caleb. I could tell by his eyes that he didn’t find the situation fine.

  “You’ll be back as soon as these murders stop,” he said.

  Although Caleb was trying to make things right between us, he wouldn’t be able to. We might be the same age, in the same class, and interested in the same things, but he’d always be accepted. And I would probably always be fighting the negative stereotypes.

  “But Peel hasn’t had a lockdown in decades, especially not on Samhain,” one of the teachers said.

  “Students also haven’t been murdered on the island in just as long. It’s not happening yet, but it might.”

  The school was thinking of having a lockdown because of the murders?

  “Why doesn’t he expel the girl? She’s only adding to the tension here.”

  They were talking about me. I clutched the strap of my book bag tighter. It was one thing to hear statements like that from students, but another to know my teachers might hold the same opinions.

  “Negative publicity. As soon as they find some hard evidence to link her to the crimes, he’ll send her out of here.” The other nodded.

  I made sure to curtain my hair over my face as they passed so that they wouldn’t recognize me.

  “Gabrielle?”

  I blinked, and Caleb’s face came back into focus. “Sorry. What were you saying?” I asked.

  “I was saying that you’ll be back as soon as these murders are solved.”

  “Sure,” I agreed absentmindedly while I mulled over the teachers’ words.

  It was happening. First my suspension from the Politia, and now the possibility of expulsion loomed on the horizon. Slowly, my life was falling apart, just like the chief constable predicted.

  ***

  Instead of going to my dorm to grab a quick nap like I planned, the teachers’ hushed conversation made me more determined than ever to work on the investigation.

  There was still one aspect of the crimes that I hadn’t researched, and it had been churning in the back of my mind for some time.

  After mentioning to Maggie the possibility that these murders had taken place near entrances into the Otherworld, I’d never quite let go of the thought.

  I wasn’t sure whether the last crime actually had taken place near one of these portals, but the chief constable had said that there were Viking burials that the third victim had come to bless. If cemeteries were a literal place where worlds meet, then this might mean that all three murders happened near Otherworld entrances.

  I dumped my book bag on the table, pulled out my anthropology textbook, and flipped to the section on Samhain.

  There were only two pages of information on the holiday, and most of it had to do with the cultural customs of different supernatural species, but one section in particular jumped out.

  On the evening of Samhain, spirits cross over from their world into ours using special gateways. These gateways are where the veils between worlds are the thinnest.

  The gateways the book mentioned sounded almost identical to the Otherworld entrances I’d been thinking about. If they were one and the same, then that meant that on Samhain, these entrances would be the areas where the worlds overlapped the most.

  I sat there blinking. Otherworld entrances were those areas where the veil between worlds disappeared altogether. The serial killer was marking those entrances with bodies.

  Now I just needed to know why.

  I rubbed my forehead. I knew I was missing something important, and I didn’t know what that something was.

  But I happened to live with someone who just might.

  ***

  After school I rushed to my dorm. Leanne had her last class in one of the castle’s towers, so it always took her a little longer to return to the dorms after class. Hopefully that would give me enough of a head start. I only had about five minutes to search through her notes before she arrived home.

  As soon as I dropped my bag inside the door of our room, I turned my attention to Leanne’s desk. I had no idea what I was looking for, and the jumble of papers that rested on the desk was going to make this neither quick nor easy.

  Most of the papers were copies of essays and misprints of other school assignments. A few of them were Wikipedia articles on different herbs.

  Behind me I could hear someone climbing the stairs.

  You’ve got to be kidding me. It could’ve been anyone climbing those stairs, but knowing my luck, it had to be my roommate. I did one final look through and a piece of notebook paper caught my eye.

  A number of random tasks had been scribbled down to remember. One in particular caught my eye. Look up the properties of ley lines.

  I’d remembered her and Oliver talking about ley lines the day before. If that had been the only mention of them, I might not have thought twice about the note. However, something about seeing the term written down reminded me of the cryptic message Cecilia had sent me. She’d misspelled the word lay so that it was written ley. Maybe it was an innocent mistake. Maybe not.

  The sound of a key sliding into the door’s lock roused me from my thoughts. I darted to the door and opened it for my roommate.

  “Hey Leanne, I just got back from class,” I said, out of breath. Of all the witty, unsuspicious things I could say, I chose that?

  “Me too,” she said, her voice exhausted. Her eyes were still bloodshot and her golden hair hung limp and dull. If I sounded suspicious, she was beyond noticing.

  I bit back the concerned comment on the tip of my tongue. I knew she would just shrug it off or worse, get annoyed at my concern.

  I watched her drop her bags and log onto her computer. When it became clear she didn’t want to chat, I moved over to my own desk and opened my laptop.

  Throwing a surreptitious glance over my shoulder, I searched the term ley lines. My eyes moved over an article on them. All I managed to find was that the term was coined by some amateur archaeologist, and ley lines were thought to be straight lines where ceremonial processions took place.

  Then a line caught my eye.

  In the New Age movement, the term ley line has largely replaced some of its more traditional names such as spirit path, fairy path, corpse road.

  Corpse road. That was the term Cecilia used in that cryptic poem. I spent the next hour researching all I could about this idea of an energy line. By the time I was finished, I’d learned that these energy lines, which were in fact roads for certain types of beings, could be found all over the globe, and that time worked a little differently for those walking along a ley line.

  I still had no idea what was so significant about ley lines, and I wasn’t positive they had anything at all to do with the investigation I was working on. However, if both Leanne and Cecilia thought they were important enough to write down, then there had to be something significant about them.

  I just needed to figure out what that was.

  ***

  That night I fell asleep thinking of Andre. Only, the deeper I sank, the more Andre’s face shifted.

  He tucked a piece of hair behind my ear as I looked around. Candlelight flickered off the stone walls. Maybe this was another room in Bishopcourt that I hadn’t yet seen.

  Andre—or the man who had once been Andre—wrapped his arms around me, and I sunk into them. I breathed in the smell of ash and smoke, a distinctly non-Andre smell.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you, consort,” he whispered.

  My sense of peace shattered.

  “Who are you?” I asked, pushing the man away.

  The man clucked his tongue. “That information comes at a price.” His gaze slid down my chest, lingering on the exposed cleavage the low cut dress displayed. Wait, when did
I put on a dress?

  The disorientation I’d felt started to evaporate. “This is a dream,” I said. “And you must be an incubus.”

  The seductive glint in his eyes hardened to something more wicked. I needed to get out of here now.

  Wake up, I commanded myself. Nothing. I couldn’t do it this time.

  I closed my eyes, and tried again. Wake up.

  My eyelids lifted and the incubus stared back at me, his gaze thinning. “What are you doing?” He took one ominous step forward, and I backed up.

  Understanding flittered over his face. “You are trying to leave.” His muscles tensed and his weight shifted. I didn’t wait to see what else would happen. I turned and ran blindly . . . right into the wall.

  My body jolted and I woke up. My eyes darted around my dorm room. The demon hadn’t made it along with me.

  I breathed out a sigh of relief and sank back down into my bed. Next to me, Oliver slept peacefully and Leanne fitfully. Both, however, were unaware that I had woken up.

  I chewed on my lip, reluctant to fall back asleep in case some other demon waited for me. This dream had been different, the incubus more pushy and powerful.

  Either Samhain intensified the demon’s presence, or Andre’s threat had done nothing but bait them.

  ***

  The next evening I perused some of the books in Andre’s library. Now that I knew it existed, I preferred working here to his study. Considering that he was the one who brought me to his secret room this evening, I think he shared my preference.

  “What do you know about ley lines?” I asked him, glancing over my shoulder. Andre lounged against the couch in his private library watching me move over his collection.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I’ve come across the term a few times and I think—well more like hope—it has something to do with our murders.”

  Now I turned to Andre. His face remained carefully blank as he studied the coffee table in front of him.

  He didn’t respond, so I decided to drop the other piece of information I learned. “By the way, I think you’re right that these murders might have something to do with Samhain. The murders all seem to take place near entrances to the Otherworld.” Entrances whose barriers were normally thin and would only get thinner as Samhain approached. And the holiday was only three days away.

  Andre drew his gaze up from the coffee table to look at me. “Entrances?” His eyes looked through me, mulling over my words.

  He stood up suddenly. “Of course—of course. You are brilliant.”

  I didn’t feel very brilliant, but I’d take the compliment. My heart pounded a little quicker. “What is it?” I asked.

  He focused intensely on me. “I know why the murders didn’t seem like the work of a vampire—it’s because they weren’t.” Andre ran a hand through his hair. “They were the work of a demon.”

  Chapter 16

  Demon. The thought had never crossed my mind because I’d never heard of a demon killing people. Scratch that, I’d never heard of a demon existing until a bunch of Don Juan’s decided to jump into my bed

  “Despite the signs that all the victims were scared, none of them smelled like fear, a scent that lingers on the skin even after death. That’s what was wrong with the bodies, I hadn’t realized it until now.”

  “I’m not following you at all.”

  “Demons feed off of fear, so the smell wouldn’t be present.” Oh. Ew.

  “What about the religious symbols?” I asked.

  Andre paused. “If you position both the cross and the pentagram upside-down, they become Satanic symbols. The swastika goes without explanation.” This whole time we’d assumed they were holy symbols, when in reality they were intended as signs of the devil.

  Andre paced across the room. “The crime scenes didn’t smell of sulfur—which they should’ve if a demon was responsible for the attacks—but if the crimes were committed along ley lines, the smell could be hidden—either intentionally or unintentionally.”

  I was officially out of my element. “Wait, the crimes were on ley lines?” I could feel a headache blossoming. “I thought they took place near entrances to the Otherworld.”

  “They took place along both.” His eyes shone brightly.

  I still wasn’t following completely, but I ran with the theory. “So a demon killed all those victims?”

  “Yes.” Andre rubbed his chin. “I’m not surprised no one’s put together the connection. While demons can cross through to our world, as soon as they leave the ley line, they lose their ability to take on solid forms for more than a short while—those incubi are a perfect example of this. Once you wake up, they can only stick around for a few seconds.

  “However, at certain gateways the worlds are stacked one on top of another.” Andre demonstrated this with his hands. “Because of this, any form a demon can take in one world they can take in another.”

  “Is that a fancy way of saying that a demon can take on a solid form in our world?”

  “Exactly.”

  ***

  I scrubbed my face with my hand. “But I still don’t get this whole ley line and Otherworld entrance thing. Are the two terms interchangeable?”

  “Yes and no,” Andre said, still pacing the room. Gee, that was helpful.

  Seeing my confused expression, Andre backtracked. “Gateways are points along ley lines. They’re like subway stops for those that travel along them. Demons are just one of those travelers.”

  My mouth formed the shape of an “O”. The pieces fell into place. The demon traveled along a ley line to get to an entrance, where it waited for a victim to show up. Once they did, the demon solidified, killed its victim, and left along the line.

  I scrambled over to my bag and dug out the files I had on the victims.

  “What are you doing?” Andre asked from behind me.

  His voice rubbed like silk along my skin. “Just checking your theory.”

  I pulled out the files and a pen and placed them on the coffee table. I flipped through them, but they didn’t contain what I was looking for.

  “Do you have a large map of the island?”

  A spark of understanding flared in his eyes. He moved across the room and came back with a folded up map of the Isle of Man.

  I opened it up and searched for Glen Maye, the site of the first crime scene. It rested just below Peel and slightly more inland. I placed a dot there. Then my eyes moved over to the east side of the island, where the port city of Douglas was located.

  Andre leaned in and pointed to a plot of land labeled Douglas Cemetery, where the second victim was found. I placed another dot there.

  I took the spine of one of the files and used it like a ruler to make a straight line between the two points, my representation of a ley line.

  Andre reached over my shoulder and touched a point on the map. “That’s where the third body was found.” I followed his finger, and my heart beat loudly. The third crime scene fell perfectly under the line.

  Our theory was no longer a theory. The murders were all committed along a ley line.

  ***

  “We have to call the Politia.” Now that we knew who—or rather what—had killed those people, we might be able to prevent more deaths—both human and vampire.

  “No,” Andre said, “you have to call the Politia.”

  “Why me?”

  “They trust you. You work for them.”

  “Not at the moment. They suspended me because of the murders.”

  “But they know you didn’t commit them.”

  He had a point, but I wasn’t convinced they’d trust my opinion over Andre’s. Reluctantly I grabbed the phone from my bag. “Do you get reception in here?” I
asked.

  Andre gave me a look.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  I dialed the Politia. “Politia Headquarters, this is Anna speaking,” the receptionist said.

  “Hi Anna, this is Gabrielle. I have information on the open investigation.”

  “Which one?”

  Oh, right. There were probably several open investigations. “The vampire one.”

  I heard rapid-fire typing on the other end of the line.

  “Okay, what information would you like to discuss with the department?”

  “I know who the murderer is.”

  ***

  “A freaking appointment? They scheduled me in for a freaking appointment after I told them the information I had?” I squeezed the cellphone in my hands, only loosening my grip once I heard the crack of plastic. I was to meet with an inspector tomorrow after class.

  Andre lifted a shoulder as he flipped through the files. “They are a bureaucracy; they are inefficient.”

  “I don’t think so.” Anna the receptionist immediately dismissed the information I had as soon as I told her that the perpetrator appeared to be a demon. I knew Andre should’ve called. “What if someone dies tonight?”

  “That’s on their heads now.”

  “But we could stop a crime from being committed.”

  “Where exactly would you like to go? To the Viking burials? The cemetery? Glen Maye? Those areas are sealed off. No one will venture there unless they already have a death wish. And we do not know where any other gateways are on the island.”

  I studied Andre, who wore a carefully blank expression. “You do though, don’t you? You must know of the other entrances. You’ve had centuries to find out.”

  “Perhaps a bigger concern is why a demon would be allowed to kill,” Andre said, sidestepping my accusation. He was slippery like that. He also knew exactly what to say to veer my thoughts off course.