Dance By Midnight (3 page)

"Seattle Police contacted me. They found Teresa's body in her home, ripped apart. Said it looked like some kind of animal had mauled her. I had to account for my whereabouts…." He looked at me. "Like I could ever do that to Teresa?"

"No."

"I didn't know how to tell Brendi. She was at school when I got the call. I'd put her in a private school—that's what I needed financial help with. So after I hung up with the police I called the school to arrange to pick her up early. But they told me she wasn't there. She'd been counted absent." He looked down. "I dropped her off that morning, just like I always did. I walked inside, kissed her cheek, and watched her go into her room. There was no way she wasn't there."

"What did you do?"

"I raised holy hell is what I did. I stormed into that school—I was so angry, Darren. I terrified teachers and students when I demanded to know where she was. I pointed at the kids that'd greeted her that morning and they lied to my face. They said they never saw me. So did the teacher. And my performance didn't ingratiate me with the police. They arrested me and then held me pending finding my daughter. When they coordinated with the Seattle PD, they decided I had something to do with Teresa's murder and my daughter's disappearance.

"I tried calling you but you didn't answer. I did get hold of Stella and she arranged bail. Hired me a lawyer and then told me you'd vanished. You told her you were meeting up with friends to head over to Maureen's apartment and never came back. All your things were still over in her garage."

I remembered that. I'd gone over to Nona Martinique's botanica because of the Grimoire and Bonville and…

That's where those memories ended.

But I remembered Stella. So…why hadn't I called her? I'd actually forgotten her name until Mike brought her up.

"You don't remember Stella?" Mike watched my face.

"Yeah I do. I just…so what happened?" I needed to get the focus off of me.

"I'm technically out on bail. They ruled Teresa's death not a homicide because the ME there insisted she'd been killed by an animal, not a man. And too many witnesses placed me in Georgia at the time. They shipped her body back to South Carolina, but her parents wouldn't let me attend the funeral. They're the ones pressing charges. They say I killed Brendi, Darren. But I didn't."

Shit. Fuck. All of my troubles,
magic-book-fused-to-soul
aside, seemed ridiculously petty. Mike had lost his ex-wife, someone he'd considered a close friend, as well as his daughter. I'd never married or even considered having kids…so I couldn't imagine the heartache he felt.

I thought Sam was going to approach Mike, but she walked past him to me and put a hand to my chest. Something fluttered inside and for a second Sam appeared to glow a bright blue white. It was the color of the symbols I'd seen her use in the cemetery.

"I'm here to help Mike find his daughter and make sure the Planars responsible for this are punished. Your appearance here, the coming of the
Grimoire
inside of you, is a sign from the Mother that you're meant to help us."

"You…you think someone from one of the planes killed Teresa and took Brendi?"

"I don't think. I
know
. My partner can smell them. That's how I was able to find you in the cemetery. Through your smell."

"Your partner?" I glanced at Mike.

"Grey. You met her in the graveyard."

The wolf?

I looked at Mike, hoping he could help me understand this. But he was still looking out the window.

The door behind her moved just a bit and the wolf I'd seen earlier, the one that'd guarded me while Sam banished the Angel, sidled in and sat beside Sam's feet. She was even more magnificent in the daylight.

Sam rested her hand on the wolf's neck. "To her, they have a smell. And that is an odor that does not belong in this plane, Mr. McConnell. And as a Sentinel, it's been mine and my siblings' job since the Great Massacre, to kick their sorry asses back to their own plane."

I shook my head. "The Great Massacre?"

"The Bulwark."

I really needed to read up on that.

FAiRiES WILL EAT YOUR FACE

Mike cooked while I explored. Sam took Grey out for a walk. I didn't realize I'd been asleep for so long. The last thing I remembered was being in the cemetery around two in the morning. Color me shocked when Mike offered to make hamburgers for
lunch
.

I looked around while he told me his version of last night. He was nearby in his jeep waiting on a signal from Sam to let him know she'd found the Planar. He'd been shocked when he'd walked up and saw me there, beaten, and not moving.

"So uh…." Mike began from where he stood at the stove. He'd already made five patties of meat. How many burgers was he gonna eat? "You had a real Cherubim on your ass?"

I was at the sliding door, looking at the small but immaculate deck. The wood looked newly stained and the black iron banister shined under the southern sun. The rest of the yard, though small, reminded me of an English garden. Enclosed by a seven-foot fence draped in variegated ivy, a pond and fountain decorated the back half of the yard, with a semi-circle pattern mirrored on either side, filled in with different plants. I was pretty sure the whole back yard bloomed in an array of colors in the spring. "Yeah. I did." I stopped myself from telling him why Gabriel felt the need to knock me around.

I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell the world how I'd been bullied away from everyone who knew me by a dick-head Ethereal. But that'd been part of the deal.

I leave.

They survive.

And I tell…no one.

My biggest regret in making the deal was the memory of one woman's expression forever burned into my mind when I told her…

When I told her I hated her.

It'd been a cruel thing to do. But it was the only way to push her away. To keep her and everyone else…safe.

"Dags?"

I blinked and looked over at him. The townhouse was nice. The living room and dining area were wide open, and a marble counter top separated the kitchen and pantry. Two sets of stairs lead to the second floor—one near the front door, the other beside the pantry door. The bedroom I'd slept in was on the second floor. Mike's was on the third. "Sorry. I think I'm still a little tired."

"It's okay. You've got a lot to process." He flipped the last three burgers onto the pile he'd made on a platter and turned off the stove. When he turned to look at me, I noticed he'd aged more than two years. More than he should have. What he'd gone through had really taken it out of him. "I'm in Savannah because Sam says the way to my daughter is here. Why are
you
here and not in Atlanta?"

"Ah…." I shrugged and shoved my hands into my pockets as I walked to the counter. "I had to get away. Things in Atlanta…."

"Hard not remembering?"

"Yeah…being around everyone and not understanding sometimes the way they looked at me. They all knew things about the past year that I didn't. So I headed south."

"And they all know about the book?"

"Yes."

"So…is it like Sam said? It's a Book of Shadows?"

"I don't know if I'd call it that, but I think the principle's the same. Nona—she was the woman who knew the most about it—told me it was a compendium, a collection of spells dating back over a millennium."

"That's one old book."

"I don't think the physical book is that old, but the spells are. They were written down by an Abysmal Planar." I wasn't sure how much Mike really understood. I noticed an odd exchange in terms since waking up. Instead of Ethereal and Abysmal, Sam had a tendency to call those planes the Light World and Dark worlds. They used angel and demon more than I ever had. Given Sam's personality and the fact it appeared she held nothing back—I assumed he knew everything if not more than me. "She was an Abysmal First Born. Do you know what that is?"

"A vampire?"

Again, impressed. "So you know about their origin?"

"Yeah. They're called Revenants or something. They were born as demons and inhabit the bodies of humans and drink blood. But they're more of a symbiotic relationship, not one of master and slave. Doesn't mean I like it." He pursed his lips. "So the book in your soul was written by a vamp. You know how Hollywood movie that sounds?"

"Yeah I do. But, it's the truth. She didn't write all of it. There's centuries of spells in it."

He leaned forward on the counter and rested his elbows on the surface. "You think maybe—given what I've overheard you and Sam talk about—you're a part of the book now? Or is the book a part of you? I mean, if it's keeping you alive, is it possible you're keeping it alive?"

That was a damn good question—and just a bit too quantum physics for me. "I don't know Mike."

"Well let's say you're part of each other." He shrugged. "Then shouldn't you be able to see what's in the book?"

"I don't know." I realized my tone was harsh so I softened it. "Nona said I should be able to access the book's spells. But I don't know how. And I didn't stay long enough to find out."

"So…you could be like Sam?"

"A Sentinel?"

"I guess. You could do magic?"

I hated sounding like a parrot. "I don't know." I should have stayed in Atlanta. I should have learned everything I could. But not when an Ethereal threatened everyone's lives.

"But why Savannah?"

I hadn't considered that part of the question, which was Mike's original. "I don't know."

"You really don't know much, dude."

I dismissed his comment. He was right. Why argue? "I just felt like it was a good place to start over. Find me. See about regaining that year."

Mike shrugged. "Sounds cool. So you
could
help Sam and I."

"Not sure how. I can't fire a gun and I can't hit the left side of a building with a sword. Knives terrify me. So I'm not sure how that helps."

"You were always good with research, Dags. Remember? If I ever had a question about something that came into my shop, I could always trust you to find out what it was. I mean…who else would know what the hell a
Cozen
was?"

Without knowing it, Mike struck to the very heart of what had been eating me since leaving Atlanta. I'd been in Savannah nearly a month, walked everywhere, probably taken every tourist train the city had, and when it came right down to it—I'd had no idea what to do. I had money. A lot of it. And I'd made sure it could only be accessed by me so the people I left couldn't take it back.

I put my hands on the back of a chair at the counter. "So…what is it you want me to research?"

He straightened up and fixed me with an intense stare. "Changelings."

* * *

My only knowledge of a changeling came from old fairy tales I'd read as a child, back when I believed in things like fairies, elves, pixies, leprechauns and the Easter Bunny. Though, given the track my life jumped this past year—I don't think I'd be surprised if the Easter Bunny was real.

And ate children in egg salad.

Mike's computer was a newer model, the kind with the touch screen. And it was big. I sat in front of it for a few hours searching, using a few old access codes to information sites not readily available to the general public. Those places had the best info and I ended up meeting a few old friends in one of the secured chats. Seemed everyone thought I'd died.

>
IndigoCypher
: Heard some serious rumors jumping from board to board. That local nut job, Fafner? Had a nice cool 50 Gs up to anyone who knew where you were.

>
Me
: 50 Gs? I'm surprised no one tried to score.

>
IndigoCypher
: Oh they did, just no one could find you. Then we heard Fafner bit it somewhere north of the city. Had his eyes burned out.

>
Me
: Wow. No idea what that was about, Cy. But I need info on changelings.

>
IndigoCypher
: You wanna know about faeries? You got a real death wish, bro? Stay the hell away from them. Nothing good comes from messing with them. All that shit in movies and tv about them being all pretty with wings and dust? Pure BS. Bad rumors to get us humans into their cairns.

>
Me
: Cairns. I didn't think those were real.

>
IndigoCypher
: You said your mom used to dig them out of your yard, didn't you?

>Me:
Yeah but me and the gardeners always thought she was crazy.

>IndigoCypher:
Nope. They're real. Cairns are their place between us and where they come from. Truth is they feed on us, just like vamps and other unworldly creatures of the night. They'll take you in with dust man. You let that shit get on you and then they get in your heads. One of my sources told me he had one in his house. Got his dog, and the dog just stopped eating and starved to death. Looked like a mummy by the time the little fucker was done with it.

I sat back and mulled over what Cypher typed. I realized he and most of the others didn't know the truth of how things worked. They didn't know about the planes, and the things that existed inside them. So, on the surface his information always read as a bit over the top. But deep down there was a bigger meaning. Sort of like myth with truth inside it, as a nugget of gold.