shadows of salem 01 - shadow born (13 page)

“Glamour,” Maddock answered, a bite of impatience in his voice. “Both higher and lesser fae learn the skill early on, as our true forms are often…
unpalatable
to the human eye.”

I eyed Maddock warily. “Does that include you?” It would be a relief to know that underneath the sexy skin he wore, Maddock actually looked more like a troll.

A smirk curved his lips for just a moment. “Ye wouldn’t be able to keep yer hands off me if ye saw my true form.”

“Oh, as-if.” I pushed aside the barrage of images my mind spewed as it tried to figure out what Maddock’s true form looked like. “Let’s get back on track. Why did you say it was a waste of time to come here?”

“Because witches have wiped the place clean.” Maddock growled, his eyes narrowing again. “You won’t be able to use your talent to discover anything.”

I stiffened. “What talent?”

Maddock rolled his eyes. “Please, Detective. Dinnae be so naïve to think that ye could hide such a thing from me.”

“Don’t give me that shit.” I propped my fists on my hips and turned to face him. “I don’t believe that you somehow dug up information like that about me. I haven’t told anybody about my talent, not even Tom. I bet you’re bluffing, and you don’t even know what it is.”

“Ye can see into the past by touching objects,” Maddock said dryly. When I gaped at him, he added, “One of my guards reported seeing ye walking around the club and running yer hands across various surfaces. It didn’t take me long to reach that conclusion.”

“Hmph.” I still didn’t quite believe that he’d managed to make the leap that quickly, but he
was
right, so what could I do? “So you’re saying that you don’t think I can find anything here because the place has been wiped clean?”

“Aye.”

“I don’t know about that,” I murmured, moving forward to run my fingers across a mahogany tabletop. “I stopped by the motel room where Tom was murdered and that place seemed to have been wiped clean, too. But whoever did it was sloppy, because they missed a spot, and I got a vision.”

“Did ye?” Maddock stood a little straighter, eyeing me curiously. “What did you see?”

I told him about the mysterious figure in the trench coat who’d set fire to the place, and he frowned.

“And yet ye say the room was untouched by fire, and the clerk said there was no such incident?” he asked.

“That’s right.” I skimmed my fingers over the back of one of the ginormous couches. “Hard to believe, eh?”

“Very,” Maddock said firmly. “It would take an extraordinary level of skill to burn a motel room to ashes and then reconstruct it. It also sounds like a colossal waste of time and energy. I would have simply placed an illusion to make it appear as if the place had burned, and then once the investigation was over, simply lifted the spell so it would return to normal.”

I frowned. “But wouldn’t that also require altering the memories of the staff? And any long-term resident?”

“Aye, but such things are possible.” Maddock regarded me silently for a moment. “Strange, though, that someone would go through such trouble. If they wanted to make it appear as though yer fiancé had died in a fire, why try to cover it up afterward?”

I shrugged. “Maybe in case someone came along and tried to reopen the investigation?”

Maddock arched an eyebrow. “Ye mean someone like yerself?”

I paused. “Are you suggesting that somebody knew I would be coming?”

Maddock snorted. “If I were the one who’d killed yer fiancé, I’d be counting on it. Yer a detective, and you were in love. Why wouldn’t ye come out here to look into things?”

I turned that over in my mind as I finished searching the apartment. Unlike my search of the motel room, I didn’t get lucky—whoever had covered their tracks here had done a good job. Frustrated with my lack of productivity, I kicked at one of the chairs. It moved, fractionally, and something winked from the darkness beneath it.

“Hmm.”

I dropped to my hands and knees, then fished a pearl earring out from beneath the chair. As I held it up to the light filtering in through the curtains, it glowed, and a vision hit me.

“Well shit.” A brunette wearing black skinny jeans and an equally black button up shirt sneered up from above me. A similarly dressed blonde stood next to her, gripping a bloody silver knife in her hand. “What the hell do we do now? We weren’t supposed to kill anyone. Just take him alive.”

The blonde’s cruel features screwed up in distaste. “We’ll have to hide her somewhere. Not that it’ll be easy lugging this fat bitch around.” She kicked at something I couldn’t see in front of her, something I suspected was a dead body. “Where can we bury her, that the cops won’t dig her up?”

“The old mill up in Wenham,” the brunette said. “It’s well-shielded, and nobody’ll think to look in there.” She glanced over her shoulder. “But first, we have to get him back to the coven before he wakes up. It was hard enough taking him out the first time.”

The vision faded. A sinking feeling started in the pit of my stomach as I stared at the pearl earring, processing what I’d just seen.

“I’m guessing ye saw something?” Maddock’s deep voice drew my gaze toward him, and he nodded toward the pearl earring in my fingers. “Your aura changed when you picked that up.”

I frowned. “You can see my aura?”

Maddock shrugged. “Aura, life force, whatever ye’d like to call it. It makes it easy for me to tell when someone is using magic, which ye clearly were just now.”

I shifted uncomfortably on my knees, not sure how I felt about that. I didn’t really consider my talent to be magic, but what else could I call it? It also had me wondering what else he could tell about me from my aura…such as my unwelcome attraction to him.

“Yeah,” I said, scowling now. “Apparently your giant had a lady friend. The two women who came here to capture him killed her. I saw them discussing how to dispose of her body. They mentioned a mill in Wenham.”

Maddock blinked. “I dinnae know of any mill up in Wenham.”

I smiled, then pulled my phone from my pocket. “That’s what Google Maps is for.”

Maddock brought me back to my apartment so I could change, but once I was showered and clothed, I refused to let him teleport me again. Since my Jeep was still at the precinct, he reluctantly agreed to have someone bring his Mercedes around, and we drove to the mill in comfort and style.

On the way there, I called Baxter and told him that I was checking on a lead in connection with one of our cold cases and would be running a little late. He had questions, of course, and I was forced to give him vague answers—after all, I couldn’t very well tell him I was investigating the murder of a Giant’s lover.

Our little field trip took us north, onto the highway for a few miles, and then into Wenham itself, which was a small town with colonial style homes tucked away into neighborhoods with narrow, winding roads shielded by oak and maple trees. There were plenty of dirt and paved roads that branched off the main road, leading up to houses or fields where animals grazed, and my GPS led us up one of those dirt roads.

“Bloody hell,” Maddock growled as a stone shot out from beneath one of his tires and pinged against the underbelly of his car. He scowled, clenching his jaw. “I should have called for the Land Rover instead.”

I snorted. “Spoken like an entitled rich guy.”

He swung his glare toward me, but I ignored him and pretended to examine my nails instead. So what if he was annoyed? Maddock seemed to be perpetually irritated about my existence, so I might as well make the most of it. Besides, most of the time he annoyed the shit out of me too.

“There it is.” I pointed to a crumbling stone structure, about twenty feet tall and half-covered with moss and ivy, jutting out of the field to our left. A rickety-looking waterwheel hung off the side, suspended over a dry creek-bed that had once turned it and powered the structure. Maddock parked on the side of the road, and we picked our way along the small path leading up to the door.

“There’s a faint glamour covering this place,” Maddock murmured as he held up a hand, signaling for me to stop. “A simple one that shields it from anyone who wouldn’t already know it was there.”

“Which explains why we can see it.” I tapped my foot impatiently. “Is there anything else I should be aware of? Like traps?”

Maddock studied the building, then shook his head. “All seems clear.” He gestured to the large, wooden double doors. “Ye can go on in.”

I lifted an eyebrow, a little smirk playing on my lips. “Not going to open the door for the lady?”

Maddock eyed the large metal rings on each door that served as handles with distaste. “Those are made of iron.”

“Oh.” Understanding, I curled my hand around the cold metal and gave it a tug. The door opened with a loud, rusty creak, and I wrinkled my nose at the smell of moldy hay, freshly-turned earth, and…blood.

“The body’s definitely here somewhere,” I insisted as I stepped inside the mill.

My eyes widened as I took in the main room. The same symbol I’d seen in my living room was painted across the millstone in the center, and different symbols were painted on the walls in what had to be more blood.

“Wait.” Maddock made a grab for my arm as I moved toward the millstone, but I was already there, my hand on it, and—

The little boy screamed and writhed, his naked skin chafing against the millstone as he tried to break free. Ram’s horns curled back from his temple, and though his small face should have been smooth and unlined, it was shriveled and wizened like an old man’s.

Rope crisscrossed over his torso, holding him to the stone, and his vertical pupils rolled with fear as he stared up at the naked woman looking down at him. Other naked people frolicked around them in a circle, men and women dancing and chanting in a strange language that sent a crackle up my spine.

“Please don’t,” the boy sobbed, and then suddenly
I
was the boy, tied to the millstone as golden tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. “Please don’t kill me. I can be useful, I swear.” My voice was weak and feeble, as if I were at the tail-end of my strength.

“Your time has come.” The woman stepped forward, her voice distant, a faraway look in her cool grey eyes. “You will serve the Onyx Order in death, as you have done in life.”

She lifted the blade—a black-handled dagger with a five-pointed star carved just above the hilt. The chanting rose, gradually coming to a fever pitch, and as the edge of the blade flashed in the moonlight, the woman brought the blade down, straight toward my heaving torso.

I screamed.

“Brooke!” Maddock’s powerful fingers dug painfully into my shoulders as he shook me. “Brooke, wake up! It’s not real.”

“What?” I blinked up at him, shielding my eyes with my right hand. It was too bright in here, with the sunlight streaming in through the windows—it had been night, the only light coming from flickering torches and the moon just a few seconds ago in my vision. “Oh, right. Sorry, I just…I was having a vision.”

“I noticed.” Lines of disapproval bracketed Maddock’s mouth. “I told ye to wait, but ye went charging in and touching things anyway. Symbols like these tend to hold power long after they’ve been used.”

“Well, that explains why that happened,” I muttered, batting Maddock’s hands away and rising to my feet.

“
What
happened?” Maddock demanded, rising with me.

I told him about the vision I’d witnessed. “I’ve never had that happen before,” I admitted, a little shaky. “Usually when I get a flash, I’m just an observer. I’ve never suddenly
become
one of the victims before.”

“Perhaps this will teach ye to be more careful next time before rushing to touch things in an old ritual site,” Maddock said dryly. His piercing green eyes searched my face. “Are ye sure yer all right?”

“I’m fine. Why?”

“Because,” he said softly, lifting a finger to touch my cheek. “Yer cryin’.”

It was only when his warm finger slid up the curve of my cheek that I realized there was cold wetness there—tear tracks. Mortification made my cheeks bloom with heat, not just because of the tears on my face but because of the way his eyes softened with something that looked suspiciously like sympathy.

“It’s just an after-effect from the vision.” I swatted his hand away, then briskly wiped the tears away from my cheeks. “The boy I became was about to be stabbed by a crazy naked woman with a wicked-looking knife, so it’s not really surprising that he was crying.” I paused, remembering the ram’s horns curling from his scalp and the strange wrinkles on his skin. “I’m guessing he was fae?”

“That would be the logical assumption.” Maddock pressed his lips together. “Fecking witches, thinking they have the right to take our young and steal their power.”

“Young?” I echoed. “So you’re thinking he was a boy even though he had all those wrinkles?”

Maddock’s eyes flashed dangerously as he glared at me. “The reason he had those ‘wrinkles,’ Detective, is because those witches drained him of his life-force. True witches depend upon fae magic for their powers, and when they can get their greedy little hands on one of our people, it’s like Christmas morning because they can chain us down and use us as a never-ending supply source. They drain us over and over again, until something finally breaks and we can no longer serve as their magical battery. Once that happens, they squeeze our last drops of magic out of us in one of their depraved rituals, then seek out another fae to draw from instead.”