Authors: Jocelynn Drake
“But…” I prodded. As I leaned forward, my hands sank into the back of the sofa. The cool leather crackled and grumbled in the quiet.
“Sadira demanded luxury.” She shrugged. It was one of the rare times she managed to mention her maker without oozing animosity. “One becomes accustomed to it. What about you? Always been a wandering sword for hire?”
Frowning, I looked away from her toward the sofa before me. My life had begun at the opposite end of the spectrum. The only child of a successful politician, I had lived with my mother in a lavish estate a couple of days’ ride outside of Rome. I had every luxury at my fingertips until I entered the military, and even then I would never describe my situation as dire. It wasn’t until I left the military and started to wander that my situation grew grim. Then food was a matter of what I could catch and money came from what random odd jobs I could find. Vast expanses of time were lost to one-room hovels and tiny monastic cells with little more than a straw pallet and a washbasin.
“No,” I found myself saying. “I was the only son of a senator. We were quite wealthy.”
“What happened?”
“My mother was killed,” I lied. Mira didn’t need to know that I had been the one to kill my mother. She didn’t need to know that I still felt no regret or remorse about the act. It was enough that she knew that my mother had been the one to sell me out to the bori for more power. The nightwalker knew too much about me already.
“So you left, turned your back on it all,” she said with an all-too-understanding nod. “It’s late,” she continued before I could comment. “Get some sleep. I’ll call later.”
“Mira, it’s just after midnight,” I needlessly reminded her. It was still early by her standards. There was ample time left to get things accomplished.
She shook her head, her gaze drifting back to the scene on the city streets below her. “Not tonight. I need to think. There are naturi in my city, Danaus. I need to think.”
“We’ll figure this out.”
Mira’s eyes jerked back to my face and she forced a stiff smile onto her lips. “I won’t do anything else regarding this investigation tonight. I promise. Tomorrow night, we’ll pay Gregor a visit.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” I replied, earning a smirk. I followed Mira to the front door. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if she knew what was going on, but I bit back the question. I tightly held the edge of the door as she walked past to the porch. The wall was back up between us and the lack of contact with her emotions left me feeling as if she was no longer real. Resisting the urge to shake my head, I closed the door and locked it. I had my own work that needed to get done and I had only so many hours to accomplish my goal before Mira called upon me again.
SEVENTEEN
T
he sun had just begun to peek over the horizon when I pulled the car up to an empty parking spot along Bay Street. After Mira had dropped me off at the town house, I quickly jumped into the shower, washing off the remains of my encounter with the naturi in the Telfair Conservatory. A brief call to James had the researcher locating Barrett Rainer’s private telephone number for me while I solidified my defenses at Mira’s town house. The place had its own security system, but I had a habit of stashing weapons at strategic locations around any place that I stayed for an extended period of time. More than once, such planning had saved my hide from unexpected intruders. In my line of work, daylight didn’t automatically equate to safety. A vampire’s human associates were just as happy to bring about my death when I was in town threatening their master.
By 2 A.M., I had the number for the Savannah pack alpha. While he was less than enthusiastic to be receiving a call from me so late in the evening, he was willing to set up a meeting with Mira and me for the following evening. After what I had seen at the morgue, I was less inclined to believe that a nightwalker had caused the woman’s death. And while I had my doubts about a lycanthrope being the ultimate culprit, if anyone else saw the body, fingers were going to start pointing in their direction. Barrett needed to be brought up to speed on this matter.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the meeting. The last time I had seen the shapeshifter, I had slammed him into Mira’s refrigerator. I had lost my temper, but then we had all been on edge as we prepared to leave for Machu Picchu and what we all were sure was going to be the end of days for each of us.
Parking the red Lexus, I walked the half block down to the hotel where James was still staying and met the young man in the lobby. He stood staring off into space as he gave a jaw-cracking yawn. I doubted he had grabbed more than three hours of sleep last night because that was about all I had managed to grab between phone calls and the drive back downtown. There was one errand that I wanted to run with James at my side, but I had a feeling that we would have better luck during the daylight hours.
“Wake up,” I growled as I approached him.
James gave a startled little jump and then sheepishly smiled at me. “Sorry about that. Haven’t slept much recently,” he said.
“You can catch up on your sleep tonight,” I said, motioning for us to cut through the hotel to the back entrance that led to River Street.
“I know. Ryan is sending me back,” James replied.
“Really?” I asked before I could stop myself. The warlock had given me the impression that he wanted the researcher at my side, but now he was pulling him back to London. It didn’t make any sense.
James shrugged as we stepped onto the elevator. He pushed the button that would take us down to the ground floor. “You know Ryan.”
I did know Ryan. The warlock never did anything unless he had a very good reason. For some reason, he didn’t want James helping me any longer, and I didn’t like it.
“Is he going back as well?” I asked.
I caught James’s furrowed brow reflected in the silver doors of the elevator just before they slid open. “I thought he had already left. He hasn’t contacted me since I returned to the hotel.”
Shaking my head, I stepped out of the elevator and walked toward the doors that led out to River Street. “I don’t know what Ryan is up to. Can you tell me what he was doing with Mira?” I held the door open for him, forcing him to meet my gaze for a moment as he walked past me. The young man glared at me, knowing that I was ultimately catching him between his two masters.
A long silence stretched between us as we walked down the block in the cold morning air. The sidewalk was empty of tourists and most of the shops were still closed at this hour. We had the riverfront area almost completely to ourselves with the exception of the occasional homeless person settled in a shelter alcove or along the boardwalk.
“They were hunting naturi up in Scotland,” James said at last when I had become sure that he wasn’t going to answer me at all. “I was sent a couple weeks ago to pick her up. I wasn’t there, but I booked the flight. They went up to Edinburgh, hunting an earth clan naturi. Afterward, she returned to the Compound. She was in a series of meetings with Ryan, but she also met with me. She told me things.” He hesitated a moment, licking his lips as he thought about his next comment. “She told me things about nightwalkers and lycanthropes and the naturi. But I—I don’t know how much I should believe.”
Pausing at a corner, I shoved my hands in my pockets and gazed up the alleyway that led to Factors Walk. “Believe her,” I said grudgingly. Mira wasn’t one to sugarcoat the truth. If anything, she had a tendency to take a bleak look at the world around her.
“But it means that so much of what I’ve studied is wrong,” James said, frustration eating away at his voice. “So much of the world that I thought I understood has been wrong. I can’t believe that Ryan has the same misunderstanding and yet he’s done nothing to set us on the right path. If Themis is wallowing in centuries of untruths, then I can’t in good conscience remain there. It doesn’t make any sense. We’re not helping anyone. If anything, we’re perpetuating more untruths.”
With a frown, I stared out at the river as it wound its way past the city and down toward the massive shipping docks that were just around the bend. These were the same thoughts that had begun to plague me. I knew my time was growing short with Themis, but standing here with James, I knew that it was time to let the research group go. I had already seen and experienced more things during my time with Mira than James ever would, and if I honestly faced the facts of those events, I knew that many of the things I had learned with Themis were painfully wrong, resulting in the deaths of people who had done nothing to deserve their execution.
“And if we leave Themis, where do we find a place in this world?” I asked.
James heaved a heavy sigh and shook his head. “I don’t think there is a place for us yet.”
Those with knowledge of the others didn’t find an easy home within this world. The everyday world in which most people existed seemed like a pale, gray-shaded lie that left a nasty taste in the back of your throat. We had to maintain some kind of link to the others if we were to remain sane, if we were to find some way to sleep at night, even if it was with a knife under our pillow.
“Not yet, but after the Great Awakening, the world will make a place for us,” I commented, starting up the hill toward Factors Walk.
“After hearing Mira’s thoughts on that auspicious event, I have to admit that I’m not particularly looking forward to it. I can’t imagine that it’s going to go smoothly, no matter when it happens,” James said, walking just a couple steps behind me. “I mean, people just don’t like being lied to. They don’t like secrets.”
I stopped when we reached Factors Walk and looked up and down the wide alley. We were only a few dozen feet away from the apartment building where Abigail Bradford had been killed. The area was still blanketed with heavy shadows, but my keen eyesight could easily pierce the darkest corners. From what I could see, we were alone.
“What are we doing back here?” James finally asked after nearly a minute of silence.
“I was down here yesterday morning and a girl stopped me from walking up here,” I replied, slowly turning back to face the alley that linked Factors Walk and River Street. “She made it sound like she had seen the killer.”
“Really?” James demanded, coming alive and awake for the first time since meeting me that morning. His doubts about Themis and Ryan were temporarily forgotten as he turned his mind back to the mystery currently at his fingertips. “What’s her name? Can we speak with her again? Did you get any kind of description?”
“No, no name. She ran off before I could catch her name or any additional details.” I shook my head and walked back down toward River Street. “She called Factors Walk the Dark Walk.”
“Fitting,” James mumbled as he walked beside me.
“She said that the thing that killed the girl has been lingering around the region and that it’s unlike anything that’s been here before.”
“But—” James started, but abruptly stopped as if the thought caused him enough of a problem to halt his feet. “But that makes it sound like she knows about creatures like nightwalkers and shifters. Could she know about…the others?” he asked, lowering his voice to a whisper.
“Why not? You do,” I said with a smirk that finally got him walking again.
“Yes, but who is she?”
“Another homeless soul. This city has more than a few of them,” I said, crossing the street to walk along the boardwalk. “She looks to be around twelve to fourteen years old. Brown hair. Brown eyes. A little over five feet tall. Slender, with a worn backpack and dirty jeans.”
“Is that why we’re out this morning? Looking for her?”
I weaved around a park bench and regained the sidewalk near the cobblestone street. “Yes,” I admitted. “She was scared of me that last time. I thought maybe if I brought you along, she might be more willing to talk.”
“You think two strange men are better than one?” he inquired incredulously.
“You don’t have a very threatening manner,” I said.
James fell silent after my less-than-flattering assessment of his person and we continued down the walk until it finally wound away from River Street and followed the river into a park-like setting. I was about to give up and head back to Factors Walk when we finally spotted her sitting against the bronze Waving Girl statue, weaving Savannah roses with dried palm leaves.
Her head snapped up at the sound of James’s footsteps as we turned the corner. She placed one hand on the ground and was preparing to surge to her feet and bolt out of the area at the first sight of me.
“Wait!” I commanded. “We’re not going to hurt you.”
“Please!” James called after me. “We’ve got questions.”
The girl paused, standing, clutching a half-finished rose in her left hand and a pair of scissors in the other. Her bag was still on the ground along with a half dozen finished palm-leaf roses. If she ran now, she would be forced to leave all of her stuff behind if she had any hope of escaping both of us.
“What do you want?” she demanded belligerently, pointing the scissors at me like a knife.
“My name is James and this is Danaus,” James calmly said, with his smooth British accent and impeccable manners. “We’re looking into the murder of that poor woman who lived over on River Street. Danaus indicated to me that you might have seen the person who killed her. We are simply looking for a little information.”
The girl directed her gaze over at me, arching one eyebrow and crinkling her nose. “Is he serious?”
“Very,” I replied around a half smile. Sometimes James could be a bit stuffy, but I had a feeling that that was half the reason that Mira liked him as much as she did. He was easy to tease.
The girl frowned, as she squinted her eyes at James, carefully looking him over before turning her gaze to me, weighing me with the same heavy stare. “Just hang around River Street or even any one of the churches. It’ll show up eventually,” she said at last, as she plopped back on the ground next to her things and resumed the task of weaving another rose.
“What is it?” James inquired, slowly edging closer one step.