Shaded Vision: An Otherworld Novel

  “I hate him.” Camille opened the door and crawled back in. “I hate him and I wish he’d fall off the face of the Earth.”

  “You left quite the imprint on his face.” I glanced at her. “What happened?”

  “His hand decided it needed to squeeze my boob. I should just tell Smoky and then we’d be done with it.” She cleared her throat. “So you find anything?”

  “I didn’t have much time to look around, to be honest. We have to get over to Chase’s office. But look—I picked this up near the door.” I handed her what I’d found. It was a pendant, with strange markings on both sides, made of gold, or a gold alloy, and it gave me the creeps.

  She took it. “This clenches matters. It has the stench of Demonkin on it. But more than that—this writing—it’s Runetongue.”

  “Runetongue? What the hell is that?” That alone sounded suspect, but even more worrisome was the fact that it smelled of Demonkin.

  “Sorcerer’s tongue.” She stared at it for a moment, then let out a little gasp. “I know what this is! A trigger talisman. It’s a magical detonator. This is proof that sorcerers are behind this—or someone trafficking with sorcerers.”

  Flipping it over, she paused. “So, we have the stench of Demonkin, Runetongue…and…” She held it to her nose and inhaled deeply, grimacing as she did so. “I can smell the canya on here. I know Chase doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, but we’re right. This was crafted in Otherworld. The alarms are ringing a mile wide.”

  I stared at the pendant in her hand. “Do you think we really could be facing Telazhar?” The thought of facing a necromancer as powerful as he had become over the eons down in the Sub-Realms left me shaky. Facing demons was bad enough, but their powers were usually incidental. A necromancer that ancient and that strong would be like magic incarnate. “The idea of going up against him…He trained Stacia Bonecrusher.”

  “I know. There’s no chance Morio and I can take out someone that powerful, even with our death magic. Even the magic Telazhar taught Stacia was stronger than what we know. But we lucked out with her. When she was in her natural form, she couldn’t use it.” Camille wrapped her hand around the circle of metal and stuffed it in her purse.

  “We’d better go meet Chase. I certainly hope this day gets better.”

  She smiled then, wide and beaming to make me feel like a ray of sunshine had broken through. “It has to. Tonight’s Iris’s wedding, remember?”

  “Right.” I let out a long sigh. Iris’s wedding, and then she and Bruce would be off to Ireland on a their honeymoon via the barrow mounds. Hanna would take over for her until they returned. And as much as I liked Hanna, she just wasn’t Iris.

  When we entered headquarters, Yugi motioned for us to wait. “The Chief asked me to let him know when you got here. He’ll be right out.” The detective looked worried as he punched the intercom.

  “Something wrong, Yugi?” I dreaded getting yet more bad news.

  He frowned, then handed us a newspaper. The Seattle Tattler. We hadn’t had a chance to see it this morning, and as Camille and I opened it up, the front page had a huge spread on the bombing. The slant of the article was congratulatory to whoever had instigated it.

  “We’ve had three calls already this morning since this piece of trash hit the streets. A Were got beat up over in the alley back of Pike Street by a couple of thugs. They kicked him around pretty bad. And an Otherworld visitor—Fae—was accosted downtown. She’s okay because she knew how to fight back, but the guy was out to rape her. I just sent out two of the men to talk to another Were. His house was tagged with graffiti last night. Pervs wrote Back to the doghouse, you filthy Werefuck on it.”

  I bit my lip, thinking how much hatred there was in the world—in both our worlds. People sucked, and I was all too quickly finding out just how much. A glance at Camille told me she was thinking the same thing.

  Just then, Chase came hurrying up, shrugging into a trench coat over his jacket. “Glad you’re here on time. Let’s head out.”

  We climbed into the patrol car with him as Camille ran down what she’d figured out from the pendant we found.

  “Crap.” He paused to buckle his seat belt and motioned for us to do the same. “I guess it was foolish for me to hope this might be a simple hate crime—if there is such a thing as that. So what we’re really looking for here is info that will lead you guys to the sorcerers behind this? Because while I can give you backup, you’re the ones who know the ins and outs of these creeps.”

  “Creep is a good word for them…but not nearly powerful enough. Speaking of…I guess you heard about Andy Gambit?” I stared at my hands. We’d already had a number of run-ins with him, and Chase had tried to get us to ignore him, but when the little freak got in our faces, none of us were capable of holding our tempers.

  “Yeah, he’s already out on bail and no doubt writing up a lawsuit protesting police brutality. Camille, did you want to press harassment charges against him?”

  She leaned forward from the backseat, snickering. “What do you think? Should I? Especially since Smoky will find out what happened? Because frankly, I’m tempted to just tell my husbands and then Gambit would never bother us again.”

  “Don’t say things like that in front of me! I’m supposed to keep people from getting murdered, not encourage it!” Chase gulped. “No. Definitely not. Although it might solve the problem in the short run, in the long run somebody worse would take his place. No, give Gambit enough rope and he’s going to hang himself. You wait and see. His kind always do.”

  As we eased out of the parking lot, he motioned for me to flip open his notebook. “Where are we headed first? Your call.”

  I glanced over the names. “Let’s go talk to Claudia. She mentioned Exo recently turned down the conference with somebody he felt was ‘off’…plus, her guilt is eating her up. I think she could use a visit.”

  Privately, I was worried about the werewolf. When Weres lost their mates, it was like any other couple except the animal side came out too easily under the stress of the grief. And then the loss became dangerous to others. If Claudia lost control of herself, she could end up roaming the city in wolf form, attacking from the frenzy of her grief.

  Claudia and Exo’s house was in the Queen Anne neighborhood. Quiet, classy, understated. We parked in the driveway next to the chain-link fence that prevented her children from running out in the road. The kids were out in the yard, home from school, and their older brother was watching over them. I did a double take. He could have been a carbon copy of Exo, only years younger.

  As we swung out of the cruiser and headed up the walk, I jammed my hands into my pockets and shook my head. At least the hardest part was over—notifying her of the loss. But now we were intruding into her sorrow and pain. I hated what we were about to do.

  As we entered the gated yard, the kids gave us a brief glance, then went back to their games. The teenager watching them nodded but kept quiet. His eyes were ringed and red, and I could tell he’d been crying.

  Chase knocked on the door and Claudia opened it, standing back silently as we filed into the house. She motioned to the living room, and we gingerly sat on the sofa as she quietly lowered herself into a wooden rocking chair and pulled an afghan over her legs. An older man came out—he also looked a lot like Exo—and gave us the once-over.

  “Orick, this is Chief Johnson from the Faerie-Human Crime Scene Investigation team. And Delilah and Camille D’Artigo. Orick is…was…he’s Exo’s brother.” She said the last in a flurry of words infused with pain. As she said Exo’s name, she cringed, then hung her head. “Please, some tea?”

  “Of course, Claudia.” Orick gave us a two-fingered salute and retreated into what was probably the kitchen.

  “Excuse us for intruding, but last night you said that Exo had refused to book a convention?” Chase quietly slid out his pencil and notebook and flipped it open. He kept a gentle eye contact with Claudia, but a nonthreatening one, letting her know through body
language that the lead was hers. Wise move. Very wise move. Chase had learned a lot since we first met him.

  Claudia paused, then motioned to an appointment book on the coffee table. “I don’t know who it was. Like I said last night, we had a fight over the fact that he turned them down, but I was mostly concerned with the money he said no to.” She coughed, wiping her nose with a tissue.

  “That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? I was worried about money…I didn’t trust his judgment and now look what happened.”

  “It’s not your fault, Claudia. You didn’t do anything to cause this.” Chase started to pat her hand, then stopped, merely flashing her a gentle smile.

  “Yeah, right.” She let out a shudder, then said, “You might find something in his appointment book. This happened about a week ago. It was on a Wednesday, I remember. Thursday is garbage day and I was fretting that Exo had forgotten to put the cans out. He took off for the hotel after the fight, and so I remember asking my son to do it instead.” She lingered over the words, as if simple memories of daily life could erase the pain.

  “I suppose we want to look for something that seems out of the ordinary around that time.” I picked up the book as Chase continued to gently question Claudia. As I flipped through, her voice echoed softly through the room. Camille scooted close to me, peering over my shoulder.

  I flipped back to a week and a half ago, starting on Monday. Nothing seemed odd there. Nor on Tuesday. But Wednesday there was a meeting penciled in between two and three p.m. The notation read V & J/The Energy Exchange.

  “V & J? Van and Jaycee?” The words burst out of my mouth before I could stop them as I jerked my head up, looking at Camille.

  Camille blanched, slowly shaking her head. “The Energy Exchange. Fuck. We should have checked that place out before. I knew it was trouble from the first time we saw the sign. And I’ll bet…we suspected they had something to do with it.” She looked up as Claudia leaned forward.

  Claudia started. “Yes, that was the place he mentioned. I remember now, he said it was a convention for a group of…vampires? No…not vampires, but…I don’t know. I can’t remember.”

  As we gathered our things to leave, taking the appointment book with us, I wondered just what we were facing. We’d suspected Van and Jaycee were involved with the club—but we’d gotten sidetracked after we shut down the Koyanni the first time. We suspected the Energy Exchange of being a hangout for the magical set—namely sorcerers. It wouldn’t surprise me if it also attracted necromancers as well. The two groups weren’t all that different. Which might just point to a connection between the pair and Telazhar.

  Thanking Claudia, we exited back to the prowl car. All I could think of was I wanted this over and soon. But a creeping feeling in the back of my neck left me thinking we had a bumpy ride ahead of us.

  Chapter 6

  Back in the fresh air, which hung heavy with the scents of rain dripping from cedars, we paused by the children, who were playing on the swing set.

  “They have no father now,” Camille said, biting her lip. “But at least they knew he loved them.”

  I knew she was thinking about our own father. “True…but not all fathers can show their feelings in the right way. They’ll be okay.” I touched her arm lightly. “They have a strong mother. Claudia will continue to run the hotel. She won’t let Exo’s dream die.”

  My cell jangled as I slid into the passenger seat. It was a text message from Tim Winthrop. Tim—aka Cleo Blanco, female impersonator turned computer whiz—ran the website for the Supe Community Council. I scanned his text and sighed.

  “People have been overwhelming the site with e-mails—wondering what to do now. And a few of the more shallow have been whining about the dance and asking where it’s going to be held now.”

  “Callous idiots, worried about a dance after what happened.” Camille leaned forward between the front seats, as far as the bulletproof glass would allow. “Frostling was right. We need to call an emergency meeting—but we’d better not advertise it. Go through the phone trees. We don’t want these freaks setting off a bomb in the main area when there’s a big gathering.”

  “I don’t know why they didn’t wait till the actual dance.” I pondered the thought and the more I poked at it, the more it bothered me. “Why not?”

  “Why not what?” Chase asked, pulling into the right-turn lane. We were headed to Marion’s café next.

  “Why not wait until the dance? Why set off the bomb with only a handful of victims inside? Wait a few weeks and they could have had a lot more casualties. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. If they were going after volume, you’re right. But maybe they were looking to instill fear instead?” Chase pulled into the parking lot to the side of the Supe-Urban Café. “Let’s run with the thought that they weren’t just looking to kill Supes…what else could they want?”

  “To stir up unrest?” Camille said.

  “Maybe.” I thought about it for a moment. “What about to throw suspicion on somebody else? To start a hate war between the FBHs and the Supes?”

  “But there was clear evidence of who created it—wouldn’t they take the trouble to hide the canya if they were trying to bring it on between the FBHs and us?” Camille shook her head. “There has to be more to it than that.”

  “Not if they didn’t think we’d recognize the smell. After all, we aren’t sorcerers. It was Shamas who recognized the scent. And that talisman, it was just luck that we found it. By rights, that metal should have melted in the fire.”

  “You have a point there. Then maybe they were trying to drive a schism even deeper between the FBHs and the Supes. But why?” Camille chewed on her lip. “Whatever the answer, we’ve got to find them and soon. We can’t let this happen again.”

  Chase cleared his throat. “Yeah. Tell me about it.” He fell silent, then let out a long sigh. “I have something to tell you. I got the results of my tests from the Triple Threat. Aeval summoned me to come out to her barrow at five this morning.”

  “And?” We were all ears. Ever since Chase had been given the Nectar of Life, he’d been changing. Powers that had been lying latent within him were coming to the surface, and we’d seen some interesting flashes of what he might become, but nobody was quite sure what the potion had done to him. So Camille had talked to Titania and Aeval, and they had grudgingly agreed to test him in order to ascertain just what was going on below the surface.

  As he parked the car, then turned off the ignition, his hand seemed to shake for a moment. “They said they’ve never seen anything quite like it. Most humans, when they drink the Nectar of Life, pretty much just stay the way they are only…a little stretched out as the years go by. They looked into my past—I don’t know how, so don’t ask—and Aeval said that I don’t have Fae in my background, but I do appear to have had some great-great-great-great-and-so-on grandmother or grandfather who was part elf. It’s not much—just a drop in the bucket—but enough to set off my powers.”

  Camille snapped her fingers. “I knew it had to be something. You always had a glimmer that was beyond the normal human energy signature, but I knew it wasn’t Fae. But that means…”

  He grimaced. “What it means, apparently, according to Aeval, is that I’m related to my girlfriend. And to Queen Asteria. They were able to trace it.”

  As Camille sputtered, I stifled a laugh. It seemed so ridiculous…our detective, who was so very human, was related to the Elfin Queen.

  “That’s why you have been having these bursts of power come through. It’s coming from the buried elfin heritage.” Camille nodded as if she’d just made a discovery. “Of course…but it’s going to be severely fucked with due to the fact that you are mostly human. You’re going to be in the same position, relatively, to my sisters and me—powers amok because of the mixed blood.”

  “That’s pretty much what Aeval said. As I said, my elfin heritage is terribly diluted—so much that I wouldn’t ever think to call myself an elf.
But it’s apparently enough that the Nectar of Life set things off. She couldn’t tell me exactly what those powers are, except that I’ll have my best attempts if I learn magic dealing with the astral plane or with the voice. Language, commands, communications, and astral travel are apparently my strong areas.”

  He stared up at the sky. The clouds were thick, promising fat raindrops, and while the chill of winter snow was gone, now we were in the throes of the days of icy rain. Everything felt waterlogged: the ground spongy, the very air laden with moisture.

  “I have no idea what to do or where to go from here,” he said softly.

  “Take it one day at a time.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “And about being related to Sharah—you’re such distant relations, that isn’t a problem.”

  “No,” he whispered. “I suppose not.”

  Then, turning, he headed for the door and we followed, just as silently.

  Marion was in her office. The smells of hefty biscuits and pie and old-fashioned meat loaf smothered in gravy filled the diner, which was packed as usual. The Supe-Urban Café served Supes from all over the city, but also a fair number of FBHs came here to eat, totally stoked by the quality of the food.

  My mouth began to salivate as we entered the room, and I decided that I wouldn’t be leaving without one of her cinnamon buns. But for now, we followed the waitress through the maze of tables to the back, where we found Marion hunched over her desk, patiently adding up a column of numbers.

  Her face was placid, calm—and I wondered just how the coyote shifters dealt with death. They followed the Great Trickster, and where he walked, danger always followed.

  As soon as we entered the room, she popped her head up and gave us a half smile, rising to greet us. She motioned for us to sit down and we did so, Camille and I in the chairs in front of her desk, Chase taking a side seat as he once again pulled out his notebook.