Panther Prowling

  “Don’t you dare set the alarm. You sleep as long as you need to.” As she vanished into her room, I turned back to the fridge. I had barely started to sort out my ingredients when Menolly came through the back door. I paused, my hand still holding the knife, as she silently approached me.

  “Kitten, I’m sorry I yelled at you.” She cocked her head to one side, the beads in her corn rows clinking together. “I’ll talk to Nerissa. I’ll figure out something. I don’t want to lose her.”

  And with that, she turned and went toward her bedroom door, the steel of it clanking as it closed behind her. Even though I knew she meant it, I had a bad feeling about the path in front of the pair. There was something melancholy—almost eerie—about their relationship.

  Nerissa really has picked a hard road, loving my sister. Even though she’s a vampire and not a zombie or a ghost, having a relationship with a dead person can’t be easy, a little voice whispered in my mind. Appalled by my own thoughts, I tried to block them out as I continued to work.

  Chapter 6

  By the time breakfast was on the table and the others were making their way into the kitchen, I was thoroughly exhausted. It was seven thirty, and I’d been up far too long. Shade gave me an odd look, but I just shook my head and mouthed, “Tell you later.” I didn’t want to air Menolly’s dirty laundry in front of the others, especially with Nerissa sitting right there. But I did go out of my way to give her a hug before tapping Camille on the shoulder.

  “I need to tell you something. Can I talk to you and Shade alone?” Arial’s revelations were lying heavily on me. While I was glad that I finally knew the truth, it felt like my world had taken a huge shift and yet—nothing was any different except for me knowing more about the truth of my birth.

  “We really should get cracking on researching the sword.” Morio carried his dishes to the sink. “Should we take care of these before Hanna wakes up?”

  “Yes, please. And we won’t be long. After I talk to Camille and Shade, we’ll plan out what we need to do about the sword.” I pushed Camille in front of me, into the living room, leaving the others to tidy up the kitchen. Shade followed behind us. We went into the parlor and I shut the door.

  “What’s going on? Are you okay?” Worry lines creased Camille’s forehead and I realized just how on edge we all were lately.

  “I’m fine. Really. But something happened last night.” Hesitantly, I told them what Arial had revealed, and that I’d spoken to our father’s spirit.

  Camille paled, the color drained out of her face. She stared at me mutely, as if searching for something to say. Shade stood, crossing to the fireplace. He looked over at me, catching my gaze.

  “Did you know?” It was a question I had to ask. I had to know if he’d been in possession of this knowledge all along.

  He inclined his head slightly. “Yes, I did.”

  Camille flashed him an angry look. “You knew all along?”

  I thought about intervening but I wasn’t sure how I felt myself. The fact that he knew something so important about my childhood, about my very birth, and hadn’t told me pissed me off. But then again, Arial had known, Father had known, and Hi’ran had prevented both of them from saying a word.

  “Did the Autumn Lord stay your tongue? Tell us the truth.” If he said yes, then I could live with it. If he said no . . . I’d have a lot to rethink.

  Shade glanced at Camille, then at me. After a long pause, he slowly said, “I knew. Until your father’s death, I couldn’t say a word. The day your father’s body was returned to you, I thought about telling you. But Arial came to me. She told me that the Autumn Lord wanted her to be the one to tell you. I couldn’t very well interfere. I love you, Delilah. But I—like you—am pledged to his service. If he wanted the news to come from your sister, how could I argue?”

  I wavered. What he said made sense. In fact, it made more than sense. But I still wanted to smack him across the chest for keeping it a secret.

  Camille made my mind up for me. “He’s right, Kitten. He’s pledged to the Autumn Lord, the same as you. If the Moon Mother were to force my silence on something—well, I’m her Priestess. I have to obey. Just as you and Shade have to kneel to the Autumn Lord. Like it or not, Shade isn’t to blame.”

  I considered what she said. I wanted to be angry about it. Or maybe I wanted to be angry at someone and I didn’t know why. Maybe it was something else that had pissed me off. Whatever the case, I had to acknowledge that they were both right.

  “Okay, then. But now we know. We know why Father and Mother never told us about Arial all those years. And we know why she ended up at Haseofon and why I’m pledged to the Autumn Lord. It feels like it should make a giant shift in my life—like it should be this dramatic ‘aha’ moment.”

  “But it’s not.” Shade crossed his arms, gently smiling at me. “Ever since you found out about Arial, this has been a puzzle piece that’s eluded you. Now you’ve solved it, but it changes nothing really.”

  “Gee, thanks.” As he grimaced, I relented. “I’m sorry. I know that you had nothing to do with it. I understand that you couldn’t tell me about it, nor could Arial or Mother or Father . . . but . . .”

  “What now?” Camille interjected. “Now we know, and nothing has changed. We know, but everything goes on as it has.”

  “Right.” I was getting tired of talking myself into a tailspin, so I decided to let it be. “You’re both right. Nothing has changed. Now we know, and there’s nothing . . . earth-shattering that’s come of it. I guess we just get on with the day, right?”

  “You’re disappointed.” It was a statement, not a question, as Shade crossed the room and took me in his arms. “You thought it would make everything make sense, but it hasn’t. You feel cheated.”

  I leaned my head against his shoulder. “Yes, and what’s worse, I know I have no right to feel that way.”

  Camille patted my shoulder as she headed to the door. “We’d better get to work on figuring out what’s going on with the sword. I’ll meet you two in the kitchen. By now the dishes should be done and we can break out the laptop and try to dig up some dirt. Come on, Kitten. You know you love stuff like that.”

  That was also the truth. I let out a long sigh. “You know, sometimes I wish I could just turn into Tabby and stay there. Life would be so much simpler.”

  “I think you’d eventually get bored,” Shade murmured, guiding me with a hand on my back as we headed out of the parlor. The damned thing was, I knew he was right. Again.

  * * *

  “What do we know about the sword?” I booted up the laptop and opened a browser, surfing over to my favorite search engine. I glanced up at the clock. It was around ten o’clock but felt like it was late afternoon.

  “Nothing. But we know that Leif Engberg owned it, and that he lives in the Vista View Towers. We also know his father owned the sword. His name was Karl.” Camille pulled out a steno pad—the kind with pale green paper and a line down the center of the page. She liked them the way some people liked blank books or were partial to one type of pen.

  I typed in Leif’s name to the search engine and immediately got a string of URLs a mile long. “Well, there’s no lack of information about him. Let me add sword and . . . what else, to the terms?”

  “Try antique sword,” Camille said.

  When I hit REFRESH, the results were a lot more limited. Out of curiosity, I clicked over to the Image function, and scanned through the pictures. If I could find an image of the sword, it might be quicker that way. A moment later, I hit pay dirt. There was a picture, and when I clicked on it, the picture linked to a story in a magazine about antiquities by the name of Amazing Artifacts.

  Luckily, the back issues were archived online. The story had come out last October—just three months ago—and while it wasn’t just about the sword, mention of the blade was also included in the article about
Leif’s entire art collection. Someone named Davis Jones had written the piece. As I began skimming the article, the phone rang. Camille went to answer it. About three paragraphs in, I found what we were looking for.

  Among his other antiquities, Engberg also possesses a rare find passed down to him by his father: a sword that still bears the blood of its enemies. The sword belonged to Einar den Blodige, or Einar the Bloody as he was known—a vicious, cruel warrior from a rough, mountainous region.

  An ancestor of the Engbergs, Einar ruled in an isolated part of Norway during the late 800s CE. Invading village after village, Einar was considered a scourge on the countryside, until he ran into Harald Hårfagre, who went on to unify the country.

  Harald’s warriors drove Einar’s army back into the mountainous lands from where they’d come. There, his enemies closer at hand took the opportunity to strike. Einar’s second in command beheaded the Viking chieftain during dinner one night, and took over rule, meeting with Hårfagre to iron out a treaty. A curse was supposedly placed on Einar as he died, but what that curse was, no one seems to know.

  Einar’s sword was passed down through his surviving kin, and has always been carefully kept and cared for. Engberg laughed off the rumor stating that if the sword falls into the hands of someone not of Einar’s blood, then Einar will return to avenge both his death and the loss of the sword. The sword passed to Engberg from his father, Karl, and it does, indeed, still bear the blood of Einar’s last victim.

  I sat back in my chair, staring at the screen, rubbing my chin. So Leif’s sword had belonged to a power-hungry Viking chieftain, who had been betrayed by his closest allies. Add to that a curse as he died. Definitely some bad mojo tied up with the sword. The rest of the article went into some of Leif’s other objets d’art, none of which held the remotest interest for me.

  Pushing the computer back, I looked up as Camille hung up the phone. She pulled out a chair and sat down, looking rather bewildered.

  “Something wrong?”

  With a shake of the head, she said, “No, not really. But I have news. That was Siobhan on the phone.”

  Siobhan Morgan was a friend of ours. She was a selkie—a seal shifter—and she was married to a carpenter named Mitch. Or at least he’d been a carpenter before an old enemy of Siobhan’s had left him disabled. Siobhan and Mitch had a daughter, who had been born back in the Isle of Man Selkie Pod, where Siobhan originally came from.

  I picked up an apple—it was the only thing close enough without having to get out of my chair—and bit into it. “Is she okay? Are the Meré after her again?” The Finfolk—commonly known as mermen and mermaids by the FBH community—were a vicious, brutish race of water breathers who were pillagers of the ocean. They were particularly vicious toward the selkie.

  “No, actually.” Camille looked over at me with wide eyes. “Siobhan’s been called home to the Isle of Man. Her grandmother died and Siobhan has to take over leadership of the Pod.”

  Choking on the apple, I spit it out into my hand. “First Sharah, now Siobhan? Is everybody we know closet royalty?” I pushed myself out of my chair and tossed the apple in the compost bucket, then dug a package of cookies out of the cupboards. I loved sweets. I lived on sweets, and I wasn’t planning on stopping anytime soon.

  “Seems like it lately, doesn’t it?” Camille held out her hand. “Give me one of those.” As I crossed her palm with an Oreo, she bit into it, wiping her chin as a shower of crumbs fell.

  “So Siobhan is going home? Is she going for good?” I liked Siobhan, and would be sorry to see her go.

  Camille nodded. “She and Mitch have put the house up for sale. They’re leaving in a week. Baby Marion will grow up among her great-grandmother’s people, and watch her mother become a queen.”

  It struck me that we probably wouldn’t see her again. Mitch would transfer his allegiance to her Pod, and they’d be halfway across the world. We didn’t get to see her very often, but we’d become pretty good friends over the past couple of years, and we’d helped save her and Mitch from her stalker.

  “I’ll miss them. Are they having a going-away party?”

  My voice must have been wistful, because Camille gave me a gentle smile. “I’m sorry, Kitten, but no. At least not for anybody outside the Puget Sound Harbor Seal Pod. She just wanted to tell us good-bye before they left.”

  I contemplated the news. “At least she’ll be okay. At least she’s leaving because she’s needed—not because . . .” Stopping, I didn’t even finish the sentence. No use inviting bad luck.

  “I know what you mean.” Camille let out a deep sigh, then leaned forward, took another cookie, and motioned to the laptop. “So you find anything?”

  “Yeah, here . . . take a look at this.” I turned the screen around so that she could read what I’d found. She scanned the words quickly.

  “Great. I’ll give you one guess as to who’s holed up in that sword there. And want to make a bet the curse stuck him in there?” She rolled her eyes. “So we have a crazed Viking chieftain locked in a sword, who was so horrible even his allies decided they could do better without him. Kind of makes me think he’s better off staying in the sword. I wonder if his Viking buddies are there to help him out of the sword . . . or keep him in it?”

  “Good question. What happens if we give the sword back to Leif? Maybe Einar will calm down?” I usually didn’t like passing the buck, but if we could pawn off the problem onto Einar’s descendant, I wasn’t above at least considering the thought.

  Camille burst my bubble, though. “Until Leif dies. What if he doesn’t have kids? What if he gets drunk and loses the sword? What if he decides to party it up some night and decides to let his great-great-great . . . whatever Einar is to him, out of the sword?”

  “We don’t know he can do that. And we didn’t even know about the sword until last night—it’s not like this was destined to be our problem.” I didn’t usually argue against logic but truth was, I just didn’t want to deal with this.

  “Maybe not, but now it appears to have latched itself on to us. At least, on to our cousin. And whoever charmed Daniel into stealing that sword—and by now I think he was charmed—may make another attempt if the sword goes back to Leif.”

  My cell phone rang at that moment, putting an end to our debate. I glanced at the number. “The Wayfarer? It isn’t even open yet. Has to be one of the staff.” But as I answered, I was surprised to hear Chase’s voice on the other end of the line.

  “Delilah, I know Menolly’s asleep in her lair, but you and Camille need to get down here. There’s a situation at the bar. We’re headed there now.”

  “Please, oh please, tell me that the bar didn’t burn down again?” The fear that Menolly’s bar had been torched again raced through me, and I swear, I stopped breathing.

  “No, nothing like that. But someone broke in and they knocked out the portal guard. Derrick says it looks like they were searching for something.” Chase shouted something to somebody, then came back on the line. “Derrick says no money was taken from the till, but he says something about the door to the safe room was opened.”

  “Oh, hell! The sword!”

  “What sword?” Now Chase just sounded confused.

  “Stay there. Camille and I are on the way. Tell Derrick . . . never mind—we’ll tell him when we get there.” I ended the call. “Code E—for emergency. Somebody broke into the Wayfarer. Derrick says the basement door is open and the guard was knocked out. The safe room is open.”

  “Oh hell!” Camille jumped up. “You get Shade. I’ll grab Smoky and Morio. Trillian, Vanzir, and Roz can stay here to watch over the house.”

  I still hadn’t told her what had gone down with Roz and Hanna. “Um, let’s take Roz with us. Smoky can stay. Always good to leave a dragon around.” At her look, I just shook my head. “I’ll tell you later. It’s a mess, though.”

  “Okay, I’
ll go grab Morio and Roz, you get Shade.” She crossed to the kitchen door. “The guys are supposed to be over at Iris’s today, beefing up the greenhouse . . . so to speak.” With a laugh, she slipped out to the back porch.

  Shade was in the living room, reading a book—Quantum Physics in Action. I did a double take, but then remembered how fascinated he’d been by some of the documentaries we had watched. I’d watched them primarily as a give-back since he sat through Jerry Springer with me. I loved nature documentaries, and shows about other countries, but the workings of the universe were a mystery to me. Camille and Menolly liked them, though.

  “Get your butt out of the chair, honey. Somebody broke into the Wayfarer, and Camille and I have a nasty suspicion they might have the sword. Chase and his men are down there now.”

  I grabbed my jacket from the coat rack, as Shade marked his place in the book with a Post-it Note and followed me to the door. Camille was already outside, Morio and Rozurial in tow. Shade and I took my Jeep, while Camille, Morio, and Roz went in her Lexus. We needed her car along since the trunk was secure, should we have to move the sword. And with the men around, we actually could move it, without Camille or me getting burned.

  As Camille pulled out of the driveway, I plugged my phone into the car charger, then followed her, easing the Jeep down the drive and onto the road. As we headed toward the Wayfarer, I filled Shade in on what I’d discovered about the sword.

  He groaned. “Wonderful. With what I felt from that thing? We’re definitely dealing with Einar’s spirit, and my guess is the curse served to trap him in the sword. The energy would certainly fit. Especially if he’s been in there for . . . oh . . . twelve hundred years or so.” He stared out the window for a moment, then turned back to me. “Is everything okay? You seem a little depressed today.”

  Shade was good at reading my moods. I turned on the windshield wipers as the clouds opened and the rain began to pour. “Honestly, I am a little pensive. After I woke up from being in Haseofon last night, I went downstairs to talk to Menolly, and . . . well . . .” I told him all about the incident with Roz, Fraale, and Hanna, and before I realized what I was doing, I was into the problems between Menolly and Nerissa. I felt a little guilty, but I knew that Shade would never mention it outside the car.