“You haven’t said anything to her about it, have you?”
“No, she’s at the movies with Jaxon.”
“Good. I think it’s best she doesn’t know. She worries more for you than she does herself, and I’m not sure how she’d take the news.”
“Is Claudius really the high priest of his coven?” It wasn’t like she’d recognize him if she saw him on the street, but he was Abbey’s uncle. How could she not know this?
“Yes, he’s the younger brother of Abigail’s deceased father.”
“That means Abbey’s dad was…”
“The leader of the Northwest. And when Claudius is gone, Abigail will be high priestess.”
Her jaw dropped to her chest. “You’re kidding me. Abbey, a high priestess? Her dad was in charge of all the witches in Northern California?”
Grammy D let out a sigh. “No, sweetie. The northwestern
hemisphere
.”
“Oh. My. God! How could she keep this from me?”
“She doesn’t accept her fate. You know she’s never been one for politics. And now you’re caught in the middle.”
“But you knew about it? You didn’t call me?”
Her voice was hushed. “I’m so sorry. I just found out about the summons, but I’m forbidden to talk to you until this is resolved. I want you to know that I did everything I could these past months to satisfy the council. The ladies and I would still be trying new spells to heal Abbey if the council hadn’t issued an injunction.”
“An injunction? That sounds serious.” She had no idea the witches were that organized. She’d met several of Abbey’s witch friends over the years, but she’d never learned much about the hierarchy.
“Oh, sweetie, I won’t lie and say it isn’t. The council takes all threats against witchkind very seriously. If it had been random human violence, they would have been satisfied with the perpetrator’s death, but when they heard the Fallen were involved…” Her voice trailed away.
Kara swallowed. “What do you mean? Do they have something against the Demiáre?”
“They tolerated their presence while the treaty was being upheld, but now…”
“Now what?”
“You have to understand, with two such powerful groups trying to live outside human knowledge, it’s in our best interests to get along. But the Fallen have taken advantage of our people too many times, Kara. And when the son of an Aniliáre king mutilates the niece of the high priest of the Northwestern Coven, there’s bound to be a reckoning. I held it off as long as I could.”
“A reckoning?” Her mind couldn’t grasp what Dora was saying. “But Abbey’s my best friend.”
“Claudius cannot allow the Fallen to get away with injuring the future high priestess. He turned a blind eye when I swore to him I could heal her, but now, there’s nothing more I can do. Honor demands it.”
“But I killed Gable. Isn’t that retribution enough?”
“According to Claudius, the punishment must be dealt by the hand of the wronged.” She paused, then rushed out, “I have to go.”
“No, wait! Grammy D—” Kara began, but the call disconnected. She put the phone down, placed the decree on the counter with numb fingers and wrapped her hands around her arms. “I am so screwed.”
Not more than a minute later, the sound of Kara’s cell phone ringing brought her head up. She’d known Grammy D wouldn’t leave her hanging like this. But then she looked at the number and sighed.
Crap.
She couldn’t deal with Tray while the witch decree was staring back at her from the kitchen counter with its one angry red seal of an eye.
“Hi, Tray. You just missed Abbey. Again.” But this time it was true. She’d thought Abbey’s brokenhearted ex had given up weeks ago.
“Hey, Kare-bear.” His voice sounded tentative, not at all like the macho San Diego P.D. detective he was. “I was looking for you, actually. That’s why I called
your
phone.”
Tentative—but still a smart-ass. She was proud of herself for not mentioning that when he was looking for Abbey, he’d never had a qualm about blowing up Kara’s phone.
“How are you?” From the sound of his voice, he wasn’t good. And with Abbey unwilling to take his calls, there wasn’t a thing Kara could do for him.
He ignored her question. “I have a favor to ask. I know I haven’t been around much, and this is probably unexpected, but I was hoping I could talk to you tonight.”
“Sure. I’m listening.”
“No, I mean in person.”
Apparently the saying was true—when it rained, it poured. Kara balled her hand into a fist and silently shook it at the heavens. “I, ah…don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come over, Tray. Abbey will be home in a couple of hours.”
“I can meet you. Please.”
“Can you give me a hint as to why?”
Tray sighed. “I’d rather not. I need you to trust me. You did once.”
Yeah, before you became Scary Stalker Boyfriend, she thought. But that wasn’t fair. Tray had been through as much hell as any of them, maybe more. “Name the place.”
She jotted the address on a sticky note, then quickly changed into jeans and a black sweater and pulled her long brown hair back in a ponytail. She was in no mood for sparkly eye shadow, leather skirts and boots that could stomp someone’s skull in. The witch summons and Grammy D’s subsequent refusal to talk to Kara were skull-shattering enough.
Kara shoved the summons into her pocket and a minute later exited the lobby onto the busy street. With only a couple weeks of daylight savings time left, tourists crowded the streets. It was like a snapshot on the front of a greeting card that she could count on no matter what craziness was happening around her. Once it started getting cold, the homeless would retreat to shelters and the tourists would thin out. Still, in San Diego, even Christmas Day could be a sunny seventy-five degrees.
She skirted a family with a double stroller and two crying babies, then glanced at the sticky note, trying to visualize the restaurants in the area where Tray wanted to meet. Maybe it was a coffee house.
She looked up at the scaffolding above her before walking into a tunnel made of plywood and two-by-fours. Something was always under construction downtown. She hated the cramped walkways, but they protected people from falling debris and kept pedicabs off the footpaths.
The cranes hefting huge steel beams to the top of the latest high-rise condominiums were shut down for the night. Kara stepped to the side for a happy young couple who had their arms twined around each other’s backs. When the guy leaned in and nuzzled the girl’s neck, she giggled and reproached him, “Not out here. You’re gonna have to wait.” But then she sashayed her hip against his, probably just to drive him crazy.
Kara inwardly rolled her eyes, glad they were going in the opposite direction. With the mood she was in, she couldn’t stomach more of the sugary display.
She was no more than five steps past them when the world exploded around her.
Kara’s ears buzzed with a sound like static over a broken radio. Her neck craned at an awkward angle, and the feeling was just coming back to her extremities. Every nerve ending hurt.
She opened her eyes, but the night sky was darker than it should have been. It took her a moment to grasp that the hard, pockmarked surface under her cheek was the sidewalk. Her neck twisted sideways because there was something heavy on her head, but when she tried to lift her hand to push off the oppressive weight, she realized her arm was pinned.
She groaned and wriggled her arm inch by inch into the shelter of her body until her fingers brushed her chest. Pricks of pain dotted her skin. She blinked up at broken shards of compressed wood, just inches from her face.
“Kara!” someone called. Still hearing the fuzzy sound, she wasn’t sure if it was her imagination.
“Kara,” it came again, as the pressure on her legs suddenly relented. Grunting replaced the static as someone worked over her. “Take my phone and press speed dial one,” a man’s voice said. “I’m a police officer. When you get someone on the line, tell them the location and that Tray Oaks is already on the scene.”
“Tray?” Kara murmured. What was he doing here?
“Hold on, Kara. I’ll have this off of you in a second. Someone grab that side and lift on the count of three. One. Two.
Three
!”
Suddenly, Kara could move again. Her neck throbbed as she slowly rolled to her back. The first things she saw were a crowd beginning to form around her and Tray’s anguished face dropping down beside her. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“I think so.” She tested her moving parts. They all seemed to be working. “What the hell happen—” she began but was cut off by a stifled gasp.
“Oh my God! There are two more under there, and they’re not moving,” a woman cried.
“Where?” the man beside her asked.
The woman pointed a shaky finger at the demolished walkway. “U-under the beam. The whole thing came down on top of them.” It sounded like she was hyperventilating.
Seeing images of the young lovers in her mind, Kara tried to sit. They might be hurt. “Help me up.”
When she reached for Tray’s arm and began to turn to assess the damage, he pulled her to his chest like a father protecting his child. “Don’t look, Kara.”
“What?” She pushed away and searched the rubble until she saw them.
Oh my God
was right. They weren’t merely dead. They were flattened. Two pairs of shoes peeked out from underneath splintered boards and a thousand pounds of steel. A thick, red pool of blood ringed the edges of the debris.
“No. I don’t understand. How could this happen? How could a beam fall from out of nowhere?”
Everything ached, but nothing as much as her throat when she tried to hold back her rising bile. She’d never seen anything like it up close. Yes, she dealt with victims of abuse on a regular basis, but she hunted criminals with a certain sense of detachment just to keep herself sane. She couldn’t find that same distance now.
Bright lights flashed as patrol cars descended upon the scene. Their sirens were silent, and it seemed right that they should be. The whole city should have stilled and bowed its head for the lovers.
A man in a navy SDPD uniform stepped out of his cruiser for only a moment before ducking back in and radioing for an ambulance. When he was done, he jogged to Tray. His short black hair clung to his head as if he’d just removed his cap, and his dark brown eyes stood out on his pale skin. “Oaks? Were you hurt?”
“No. Just my friend here. There are two people trapped under the beam, but they didn’t make it.”
Kara braced a hand under her and tried to rise.
“What are you doing? You need an ambulance,” Tray said.
Kara lowered her voice. “The beam didn’t get me—just the plywood. If nothing’s badly broken, you know I’ll be fine.”
“Let them check you out, please.” The look he gave her told her to play human and go along with it, but the last thing she wanted was an EMT seeing her small cuts mending before his eyes.
“I’ll probably heal better at home.” She was wearing jeans and a sweater, but gouges and scrapes were visible through the tears in her clothing. She already felt the burning itch of skin regenerating on her scuffed cheek.
He frowned, then understanding lit his eyes. “Johnson, get me a couple of blankets from the trunk of your car. Miss Reed wants to sit up. We’ll put her in the back of your cruiser for now.”
When Johnson returned with the blankets, Tray wrapped Kara in the thin wool. She tried to avert her eyes as the other officer ushered her past the fallen beam and into his car. Already, a cluster of uniforms gathered around the unfortunate couple.
“Hey, isn’t this your ex-girlfriend’s pal?” Johnson said to Tray. “Abbey’s friend…” He seemed to be talking to himself. “Kara?”
Kara nodded. She didn’t care at the moment what Tray’s coworkers might think about him being out with his ex’s best friend. What was Tray doing here anyway? She was still blocks from where they’d planned to meet.
An ambulance wound its way through the parked police cars. At the other end of the street, an industrious officer with a whistle waved pedestrians and vehicles down a perpendicular side street.
Tray rested his arm on the open car door and studied Kara. Nestled into the back of the cruiser, she was wrapped head to toe in charcoal-colored blankets as if it were the dead of winter instead of a balmy October night. But at least her healing wounds were covered. Given her chattering teeth and uncontrollable trembling, if being cold wasn’t an excuse for being swaddled, shock certainly was.
Another man in uniform approached the car. “Are you all right, ma’am?” Then without waiting for a response, he asked Tray, “Do you think she can answer a few questions about what happened?”
Tray nodded brusquely and allowed the other officer to question Kara. She cooperated the best she could, but there wasn’t much she could tell them that they couldn’t see with their own eyes.
When the firemen began lifting the beam from the couple, Kara sucked in a breath. Tray clenched his fists and turned toward the men. “I saw the whole thing. I can tell you what happened. At approximately—” he glanced at his watch, “—7:55 p.m., a fucking beam came loose and pole-axed a man—I’d say early twenties—and the girl he was walking with. Kara Reed was standing outside of the primary impact zone. She’s declining medical treatment. I’m off duty, and I’m going to walk her home now. Any other questions?”