I heard car doors open behind me, but I didn’t waste my focus looking. Eilahn could assess with far more ease and accuracy. Besides, MAC-10 guy hadn’t shot us dead yet, which meant the trap had a different goal in mind.
The back door of the Lexus opened, and James Macklin Farouche stepped smoothly out. I’d never met the man in person, but the pictures I’d seen of him did nothing to convey the confidence with which he carried himself. Immaculately dressed in a perfectly-tailored dark suit, white shirt, and a blue and gold-patterned tie, his steely gaze penetrated, though his expression remained one of utter ease.
Slowly, I crouched and placed my gun on the ground, then straightened and gave a nod. “Mr. Farouche.”
Farouche flicked a glance to my gun then to me as he began a slow approach. “Smart girl,” he said with a confident smile, and I had to fight to control a scowl at the condescension. Not such a saint after all. “No one’s going to get hurt as long as you remain smart,” he continued. “I simply want to talk.”
I lifted my shoulders in a casual shrug. “Then talk.”
“You are holding my people, and I want them back.” His voice reminded me oddly of Mzatal—not in tone, but in expectation of compliance. “Where are they?”
Paul and Thatcher. Now I understood. Farouche was behind the failed raid on my house. “You’re mistaken,” I told him. “I’m not holding your people.”
He was only a few yards away now. “Where are they?” he asked again, voice cool and insistent in a way that wormed itself right into my core.
Tension knotted my back, and I pygahed. “Not on any property of mine,” I answered.
“Indeed true,” he said as though somehow discerning the veracity beyond the words. “Where then? Where are they?”
I sucked in a sharp breath as a sudden and pervasive fear engulfed me like a shroud of frost wrapping around my essence. Part of my mind wondered why I was so weirded out, while the rest of me freaked like a rabbit beneath the eagle’s talons. “Not where you or I can go,” I choked out.
Farouche lowered his head, gaze heavy upon me. “They are returning to you,” he said, and I had the unnerving feeling he’d read it from me. “When?”
The sick fear increased as he took a step closer. I licked dry lips, but somehow managed to stand my ground. How the hell can he read me? “I’m not certain.” It was almost true.
His smile turned predatory as though he knew he closed in on his goal. “They will return in three days?”
Cold sweat pricked my back and underarms, and my pulse slammed an unsteady tempo. “P-possibly.”
Satisfaction lit his eyes. “Sooner, then. Excellent.”
No, he wasn’t reading me. Somehow he could interpret beyond my words, sift truth from lies with glimpses of more. Not that it fucking mattered at this point.
Eilahn let out a hiss, clearly disliking the turn of this conversation. An arcane tingle crackled over my skin as she extended her shielding to me, likely in preparation to make a move. A new rush of fear rolled through me at the thought. “Eilahn! No. It’s . . . it’s okay.”
Farouche flicked a glance at Eilahn, then returned his sharper gaze to me. “You will call me when you have my people on your property again, yes?”
Protest rose within me, followed instantly by a paralyzing sliver of primal terror. I gave a shaky nod. “Yes.”. Immediately the terror faded. Something is seriously wrong, the thought whispered.
“Then we understand one another completely, do we not?” he asked, still holding the predatory smile.
Sweat rolled down my sides. “Yes,” I said. And I meant it.
“Of course we do. I look forward to working with you in the future,” he said with polished confidence. “Have a nice day, Ms. Gillian.” He turned and strode back to his car, slid in and closed the door.
MAC-10 guy kept his eyes and weapon on me for another few seconds, then climbed into the front passenger seat. The car backed, turned and headed away, the crazy fear retreating with it. Sight, sound, and full awareness returned, though I hadn’t realized they’d been diminished.
I glanced to Eilahn, noted her facing the car behind us. I turned, saw the two men with guns still pointed in our direction. One stocky and Caucasian, with an angled face and an expression as hard as the steel of his gun, the other Hispanic, of average height and build with a soft gaze and determined manner. At some unspoken signal they retreated into their car, then drove right past us in the wake of Farouche’s vehicle. I didn’t bother getting their plate number. There was no point. I knew who they were.
Eilahn came around the car, scooped my gun from the ground and put it in the console between the seats. “I will drive,” she told me as she took me by the arm then walked me to the passenger side and stuffed me into the vehicle. “Bad,” she muttered. “Very, very bad.”
“What the hell was that?” I asked after she slid behind the wheel. “I said I was going to call him.” I scowled, shook my head. “Like that would ever . . .” I trailed off as my chest tightened in vague panic. I knew the truth. “Eilahn,” I gasped out, “I’ll call him when they get back. If I even think about not calling him . . .” I clenched my teeth on a mewling whimper as a surge of terror left me shaking. It passed within seconds, leaving its mark like a trail of slime.
“You will not call him,” she stated as she drove toward the house. “I will sit on you until Mzatal can assess what has happened.” Her hands tightened on the wheel. “I also felt it, though it did not affect me.”
I rubbed at my eyes, clung rigidly to the knowledge that my current mental state wasn’t right, even though I knew in my gut that accepting the fear as normal would ease it. “Maybe Zack can fix this or . . .” Nausea roiled at the thought of fixing it. “Shit. This is vicious. No, call Ryan.” The fist in my chest tightened, and I gasped. “No.” I shook my head almost frantically. “No, I’m okay with it now. It’s cool.” The fist eased, the nausea retreated.
Fortunately, Eilahn didn’t agree with me one tiny bit. Her face remained locked in a fierce scowl as she drove one-handed and called Ryan on my phone with the other.
“Come home,” she said when he answered. “She needs you.” I couldn’t hear his response. She simply repeated, “She needs you,” then hung up and drove like a hell-bound demon the rest of the way home.
I found myself comparing the bizarre incident to Elinor’s influence, yet where her touch was subtle, Farouche’s overwhelmed. I knew, knew, that if I stopped fighting his influence, relaxed into it, the unnatural fear would subside, but I’d lose all ability to maintain distance. It would become an ingrained part of me. I couldn’t, wouldn’t let that happen, and so I danced its dance without allowing it to take me home for the night.
The car crunched along the gravel of the drive. Eilahn looked over at me. “Ryan will be here in ten minutes.”
“I told you I don’t need Ryan. I’m cool,” I insisted through clenched teeth.
“He is coming anyway,” she insisted right back as she parked the car.
I managed a nod, flung open the car door and staggered out. I made it into the house and collapsed onto the living room sofa with a groan, ignoring the growl of Fuzzykins as I disturbed her gestational nap at the other end. In the background, I heard Eilahn on the phone with Zack.
“Zack is on the property adding warding to the perimeter,” she told me. “He is coming in.”
I didn’t try to respond. I curled on my side, focused on telling myself over and over that this was wrong. I backed off when I felt the fear about to drown me and pushed more when it receded. I danced the dance.
A few minutes later, Zack crouched beside me. “Kara, I’m here. Ryan will be here in a minute.”
“I’m fine,” I insisted, shivering. “I’m cool.”
“You are sooo fine, and the coolest,” Zack said, light tone tinged with worry. “It’s why Ryan is coming to see you.”
I gave a nod. “Yeah. Sure,” I said. “This is wrong.” Terror flared, and I gaspe
d out a whimper. I backed off and did my best to keep dancing.
I heard the door, then Ryan’s voice. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Zack stood. “Kara ran into some trouble with Farouche,” he told Ryan. “You know how you do the memory shift thing? I think she needs help like that. He’s got some sort of fear compulsion bullshit going on with her. You up for giving it a try?”
My nails dug into my palms as I clenched my hands hard. “Hurry,” I said, then hissed through my teeth and squeezed my eyes shut. This was nothing, nothing, compared to what Rhyzkahl had done to me. I silently repeated that over and over, still barely able to hold on against the rising tide of fear.
“Damn right I’ll try.” Ryan shoved the coffee table out of the way and helped me sit up, then crouched in front of me and took my head between his hands in a firm grip. “Hang in there, Kara,” he said. His eyes locked on mine, and a heartbeat later his face went stony, and his jaw tightened. Ryan couldn’t read minds—if he could, Zack wouldn’t let him anywhere near me since he’d pick up the truth about Ryan/Szerain—but he could feel into a person and muddle recent memories. Ryan considered it a quirky talent. In reality it was a hint of Szerain’s mind reading and manipulation ability that bled through. The hope intruded that Szerain could surface enough to actually neutralize this, yet terror followed close in its wake.
I gripped Ryan’s wrists and gave a half-hearted tug. “I’m fine!”
“Hold still, damn it,” he said, mouth tight in concentration. “This is . . . I don’t know.”
Sick fear rose, and I tried harder to pull his hands away. “No. I’m okay. Really.”
Wasn’t I?
Vertigo struck as a fragment of the dream flooded me. I threw my arms wide as my inner world tipped, and I lost my footing on the plain of glass.
Memory whispered like falling sand.
Rowan.
“Kara!” Zack said forcefully. “Kara. Be still.” His voice cut through the fear and the dance and the dream and all of the bullshit. I dropped my hands to my sides, clenched them in the fabric of the couch.
Ryan shifted his grip. “You’re not okay. This doesn’t feel right. I don’t understand what it is, but I’m going to try to make it feel like . . . you. Do your best to relax.”
I unclenched my hands and tried to focus on something, anything besides fear or not-fear or the horrible sense of my Self sliding into oblivion. The cat hissed at me again. Fuzzykins. I could focus on our mutual-hate relationship. I closed my eyes, imagined a world without cats who wanted to claw my face off.
The next thing I knew, Ryan withdrew his hands from my head. “That feels better to me now,” he said. I opened my eyes to see him peering at me critically. “How are you doing?”
I shook my head to clear it. The cat wasn’t on the sofa anymore. “Wow. That was totally bizarre.” Frowning, I rubbed my temples. “It’s still there, but not at all like before.”
Ryan sat beside me. “What the hell happened?”
I gave him the rundown about the roadblock and the conversation with Farouche. “Ryan, it was crazy. There was one time when it seemed as if he read my thoughts, but mostly it was like he could tell whether or not I was telling the truth, and he narrowed my answers down to what he wanted to know.” I shook my head. “All that’s bad enough, but he has this fear thing going on too. When he told me to call him when Thatcher and Paul got back, the mere thought of disobeying him was utterly terrifying.” I rubbed at my temples. “It’s still there, but muffled. I can handle it, at least for now.”
“That sounds like what Paul and Mzatal told you about,” he said. “I didn’t really get it before, but damn, it really had you.”
“Looks like Farouche’s halo is pretty fucking tarnished,” I said.
“He’s very dangerous,” Zack agreed. “Now that you’re stable, I’m going to go back and finish my perimeter inspection.”
“Thanks, Zack,” I said. “I have some things I need to talk to you about. I’ll check in with you in a bit.”
He gave me a nod and disappeared out the door.
“Are you going to be all right?” Ryan asked, concern in his eyes.
I gave him a reassuring nod. “That shook me up, but I’m good now. I’ll call if anything else comes up.” I slanted a look over to Eilahn. “Or Eilahn will. She doesn’t listen to me when I’m acting all crazy.” The syraza returned the look with a smugly pleased one of her own.
Ryan snorted. “You mean most of the time then.”
Laughing, I snatched up the sofa cushion and smacked him with it. “You’d better get back to work, fed boy.”
“There are better ways to get attention you know,” he said with a grin, then wisely fled the house before I could hurl the pillow at him.
Chapter 18
I took some time to take care of a few mundane household tasks, both to settle myself and to see if any weird feelings or sensations cropped up. All seemed fairly normal, and since I didn’t feel a sudden burning need to betray anyone who depended on me, I went out to look for Zack.
I found him busily reworking wards by the back fence beyond the pond. Since I had three hot topics to pursue with him—the attempted raid, Farouche’s assault on me, and Tessa’s weird behavior—I decided to get the least disturbing out of the way first.
“Hey,” I said as I sauntered up, “you find out anything more about how they tried to get in?”
Zack glanced back at me. “Not a lot. There were five of them, judging by the tracks outside the fence.” His mouth tightened. “They managed to get within about ten feet which means they were determined enough to work through the aversions.”
“It sucks ass to be under attack at my own house,” I said with a scowl. I moved up to the fence and peered at the intricate ward. “Farouche isn’t playing around. And meanwhile, Katashi has Idris who the hell knows where.”
Zack continued to trace arcane sigils, fluidly weaving them into protective wards. “I have a bad feeling it’ll get worse before everything settles down . . . oh, in a few hundred years or so.”
I groaned. “I’m going to pretend you’re kidding even if you aren’t.” The demonic lords and the demahnk were several thousand years old, which meant it was possible Zack was being completely serious. “It feels as if we’ve done nothing but chase leads and put out fires since I got back,” I said. “I haven’t had the chance to thank you for the fence and gate, and all the improvements in the house.” I smiled wryly. “I admit, I had a moment where it bugged me, but I got over it. Anyway, I really appreciate it, and I know all this must have cost you a fortune.”
Zack laughed and began another ward. “Yes, it did, but you don’t need to worry about that. I have my ways. Not unlimited ways, but we’re good for now.”
Too weird. A demon masquerading as a human with a trust fund. “The fence is awesome,” I said, “but I wish we’d been able to get a look at the intruders. What do you think about a camera surveillance system for the perimeter?”
“I think it’s needed.” He smiled. “And no, I don’t mind footing the bill. I can handle it.”
“Farouche is a confident, aggressive son of a bitch. I wouldn’t put it past him to try again.” A touch of fear whispered through me as I spoke of him. I breathed through it and used it as a segue to the second hot topic. “He didn’t even touch me. How the hell could he affect me so heavily?”
Zack’s hand stilled, sigil half traced. He looked back over his shoulder at me, shook his head slowly, lips pressed together. “Think of a qaztahl’s aura, but specialized. With Farouche, if you can feel it, he can affect you. It’s disturbing.” He went quiet, but it was one of those pauses where I could tell he had more to say. “Kara, I’d like to encourage Jill to move in for a while. I have her house warded, but right now we all need to be together.”
“I’m cool with that,” I replied, “especially now that we know Farouche is an exceptionally dangerous asshole.” Plus, Jill would have more time with Zack if she moved
here, which might ease some of the tension between them. “But I have two questions for you. First, she’s a pretty independent chick. You think she’d agree to it?”
“Nope. I’ve tried. For months,” he said with undisguised frustration. “That’s why I’m enlisting you.”
“Gee, thanks.” Changing Jill’s mind wouldn’t be a walk in the park. “Let’s say, by some miracle, she does agree. My second question is where do you intend to put her?”
“For now I figured an RV—one of the really nice big ones—near the tree line on the east side of the house would work,” he said as he finished another sigil. “She’d have some privacy, I’d ward the hell out of it, and, because it would be within the fence and these perimeter wards, it would be as safe as your house.”
“The RV plan might work, but privacy?” I raised an eyebrow. “Puhleeease. It’s still me, you, Ryan, and Eilahn next door. Plus Thatcher and Paul when they get back, for who knows how long. And Mzatal when he’s here. Can’t forget the demonic lord.” I leveled a smirk at him. “If I were you, I wouldn’t try to sell her on the privacy part.”
He smirked right back at me. “Good. At least you know what not to use in your persuasive approach with her. I’m telling you. She won’t hear it from me.”
“Okay okay okay.” I lifted my hands in surrender. “Since I think it’s for a good cause, I’ll try to convince her.” I shook my head. “Not sure she’ll listen to me any more than to you though.”
Zack exhaled. “You’d be surprised. Anyway, thanks.”
“No problem.” Now for the last of the hot topics. “I have a new issue that’s bothering me, and I hope you can help me get some perspective.”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“It’s Tessa. I think she’s been manipulated.”
Zack stopped tracing a sigil, dispersed it with a sweep of his hand and turned to face me. “Why do you think that?”