Heartache (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 5) (6 page)

Wind blows in over Lake Michigan, bringing the promise of winter ice. The house is warm but I shiver anyway. It feels odd to be alone. Isolated out here. The houses nearest ours are empty for the winter, and the phone only works when it wants to. I grow bored of watching
The Princess Bride
for the twentieth time. I’m going to wear out out the VHS if I’m not careful.

So library it is. I love the feel of the room, like knowledge is oozing from every polished mahogany shelf. Heavy brass lamps with Tiffany glass line the walls and there are overstuffed leather chairs facing a marble fireplace. And books. Some in cases to protect them, so old that the pages aren’t paper but vellum. I can almost smell the ink.

There’s one line of shelves that draw me, on the wall farthest from the door. The spines of the books are plain leather, no titles or embossment. Some are stacked in a temperature-controlled case, but there is a row, at least twenty books, that are newer and just resting on the shelf. Journals. I’ve seen Samir writing sometimes at night when he thinks I’m asleep. It’s cute how he nibbles on the tip of his pen, sending covert glances my way with half-slit golden eyes. He keeps a diary. I am glad, it makes him less enigmatic, makes him seem more human. More normal.

Curiosity killed the cat
, I think, but remember that satisfaction brought it back, and reach for one. I almost expect them to be warded, but there’s nothing. A thrill goes through me. I know I shouldn’t look. I’d be pissed if he read mine. I mean, if I kept one, which I don’t.

Sheepish, I glance around. Still alone. No lightning bolt from the sky has come down on me. This diary looks older and I crack it open. The date reads nineteen-twenty-seven.

The language is a mix of Latin, Coptic, and Avestan. I’m impressed he knows them. Without my weird talent for languages, there is no way I could read this. I doubt anyone could other than Samir. I wonder exactly how old he is. He told me he was born before Jesus once, but he said it in a joking way, and I’d brushed it off. Suddenly I’m not so sure.

Curiosity and fascination overrule propriety. I ache to know him better, to learn the things he hints at but won’t say. I’ll beg forgiveness later, if I even tell him. I go over to the chairs and curl up, deciding if I’m in for a penny, I might as well shove all in.

Six hours and ten journals later, I flee the house in the dark, my heart in my throat and horror filling my soul.

Because I know one thing, a pattern I read over and over and cannot ignore.

Samir is a monster. Samir is going to kill me, eat my heart, and take my power.

The dreams shift. Me running. Getting afraid. Calling him. Demanding an explanation. Unable to tell him how I knew, but hearing the smooth lie in his voice as he tried to soothe me.

I ran home. Home to Ji-hoon, Sophie, Todd, and Kayla. I doomed them.

Fire. The building is burning. Odd black crystals are strewn across the floor of the old school. I run down the same hallways I always run down in this nightmare. I’ve dreamed it before. A part of me will always be trapped on this night, trying to reach my family before Samir kills them.

The stones have magic. I can hear them. They can hear me. There is some kind of device. I hear them talking. They think it will go off when I open the door, taking us all down. Ji-hoon thinks he can reach the door, get it open before I get there. Set off the bomb. I’m screaming at them to wait even as I hear them taking a vote.

“Live, Jess,” Sophie screams. “Run and live.”

“We love you,” Ji-hoon says in Korean.

The world explodes. Ash and tears are all that is left me as the dream fades and I’m still screaming, screaming that I can save them, screaming until all that is left are words and ghosts.

Sheriff Lee’s voice pulled me from my nightmares and her hand gripping my shoulder yanked me out of the smoke and debris in my head.

My throat felt raw and my eyes and cheeks were wet. I’d been crying in my sleep. Maybe screaming, too.

“You were calling out in Korean,” Lee said, staring at me with curious eyes. “Bad dream?”

The vestiges of the dream still clung to me. Ji-hoon’s voice. Sophie seconding his decision. The bomb going off and the whole world collapsing around me.

“Something like that,” I said, sitting up. “Is that coffee? What time is it?”

“Just past eight,” she said, handing me the mug. “I hope you don’t mind, but I went by your place and got you some clothes. I’ve got your phone and wallet also—I figured you might want them once Perkins springs you. They are still plowing out the main road, but court should open at noon.”

Four more hours.

“Are the phones working yet?” I asked after taking a sip of the coffee and frying the taste buds off my tongue.

“Land line is still irregular, but they have the cell tower working.” She set a duffel bag I recognized as mine next to the bed.

“Can I make a call?” I set down my mug on the floor and then opened the bag. She’d brought me a full change of clothes, right down to underwear. I felt a bit weird about that, since I didn’t know Lee all that well. Hell, I wasn’t even sure what her first name was.

“Not supposed to, but nobody has to know,” Lee said with a smile. “Want a donut, too? You can change back here; the camera is only on the hallway.”

“What is your first name?” I asked her. “Or should I just keep calling you sheriff?”

“Rachel,” she said.

“Are you in trouble because of me?” I thought back to things that Dick and Balls had said the night before.

“No, not you. Stupid paper-pushing bullshit. This county has always run a little differently, on account of the special nature of many of our citizens. Some people who shouldn’t have are starting to take notice. It’ll blow over. Always does.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know this situation isn’t helping.”

“You didn’t kill Steve, did you?” She stared at me evenly, her face unreadable.

“What? No.”

“Then this is also not your fault. We’ll find the man who did. You focus on staying safe, all right?”

She left then, hopefully to go get me a donut and my phone. I gulped down more coffee and did the world’s fastest clothing change. It felt good to be pulling on my own socks, to have a body clean of blood and clothes that smelled only of Tide detergent.

I was going to focus on staying safe. Sort of. Mostly I wanted the hell out of here so I could track down Samir and do terrible things to him. Starting and ending with ripping out his fucking heart. I didn’t say any of that to Rachel as she returned with an Old Fashioned and my cell.

Hoping that Harper and the crew were at the Henhouse plotting Samir’s doom with brilliant ideas, safe in front of a nice fire, I punched in a number and held my breath. My phone had two tiny bars of reception but Harper picked up on the second ring.

“Jade? Are you out of jail?” Harper’s voice was the best salve to my ruined nerves.

“No, not yet. Perky is coming later to get me. I should be out by one or so. Where are you guys? Is everyone okay?”

“I’m at the college with Ezee and Levi. We got snowed in, but I warned Mom and Junebug. Talked to them about half an hour ago. They are at the Henhouse, but in the spare room in the barn, just in case.”

So much for my hopeful vision of all my friends together around a roaring fire plotting revenge.

“Is it true,” Harper said then, her voice getting quieter. “Steve?”

“Yeah,” I said just as softly, my throat closing up again. “Samir killed him. I tried to stop it, Harper. I did.”

“I know you did,” she said. “Lee said you were half dead when they brought you in. She was real worried but I figured if you weren’t dead, you weren’t dying, so I called Perky.”

“That’s because you are the best,” I said. “You should have seen the two jerks I got stuck with. It was like a bad ripoff of
The Closer
. Perky shut them down hard.”

We were both silent for a moment, me thinking about Steve and what I would do next, Harper thinking about who knew what.

Harper broke the silence first. “Alek is on his way back. He was trying to get a seat on stand-by when I called him last night.”

I felt a twinge of guilt. Maybe I should have tried to call Alek first, but he was supposed to be across the country and safe. Damnit.

“I haven’t called him yet. I will.” Rachel was giving me the eye from the hallway where she stood pretending not to overhear us. “Look, I am not supposed to have a phone and I don’t want to get the sheriff in trouble. I’ll call you again as soon as I’m out. Get everyone together and stay safe. I don’t know what Samir will do next, but he’ll come after us again. This is going to get worse.”

“Of course it is,” Harper said. “It’s the boss fight.”

I could almost hear her attempt at a smile. “We’ll get him,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “For Steve.”

“For Steve,” Harper said, her voice grim.

After that, there was nothing more to say.

Alek’s phone went straight to voice mail. I tried not to let it worry me. If he was on a plane, it would be off, right? Nope, not worried at all. I wanted him away from danger, but I also knew he was a badass who could handle himself. If yesterday had taught me anything, it was that going up against Samir wasn’t going to be as simple as “throw a lot of magic at him and win.” He wasn’t playing fairly.

He’d isolated me. I was sure he’d waited until I was alone in my shop. I had a suspicion he was behind the trouble with the building and Brie’s shop. I doubted he had anything to do with Fey business, but the timing was suspicious as well. Maybe he was behind Alek going to New Orleans. It was hard to quell my paranoid thoughts as I sat alone in the jail cell and waited for Kate Perkins to come bail me out.

When she showed up, she wasn’t alone, and I knew from the look on her face that something had happened.

Rachel unlocked my cell and motioned for me to come out. Out in the bull pen, Kate Perkins stood talking to two new detectives. I assumed they were detectives, anyway, from how they stood and the clothing they were wearing.

One was a Hispanic male, somewhere in his thirties, with short brown hair and watchful, heavy-lidded brown eyes. He wore a navy-blue suit without a tie, the cut and material of which was understated but had clearly been tailored for him. He kept in shape from the way he filled it out. I saw no badge, but he was carrying a gun in a shoulder holster under the suit jacket. I’d lived with Alek enough to recognize the shape.

His partner was a stout white woman in her fifties, crow’s-feet and worry lines clashing with the laugh lines in her sharp face. Her hair was also cut short and iron grey. She had on a thick sweater and dark jeans, with her badge and gun clipped to her belt. She looked me over with a cool, assessing gaze, and I couldn’t tell if she liked what she saw.

I followed Rachel over to them. We were the only ones in the building and it felt strangely subdued. A shiver of foreboding crawled up my spine but I shoved it away. I wasn’t handcuffed, and at least Dick and Balls weren’t here with their accusing, closed-minded looks. Things could’ve been worse.

“What happened?” I asked as I stopped next to Kate.