Page 5

Chapter Five

“Wanna come play predator?” Lizzie asked.

“Are you talking about gaming or Cestis business?” I hadn’t expected to hear from her again today. On the datapad screen, the circles under her eyes were deep, despite her makeup. After we’d left Berkeley, she’d gone to Spark. I’d come home to Damon’s place where I’d worked for a few hours, crashed for two hours and then gone back to work, eating dinner at my desk because Damon was still at the office. Now it was nearly nine p.m. and I’d been contemplating an early night when Lizzie called.

Lizzie swept a hand at herself. “Do I look like I’m dressed for gaming?”

She wore black. A long-sleeve tee. When we went to gaming clubs with Zee, Lizzie usually dressed in an even brighter version of her neo-anime-meets-chaos-witch style. Not black. I sighed. “No. So what’s wrong?”

“A friend called me. She’s worried about a house in her neighborhood.”

“And this requires me? Not say, Zee or Trick or Cassandra or Ian?”

“Zee has a tournament. Trick is out of town. Cassandra and I discussed it, and she said it would be educational for you. Callum’s coming, too. So, are you joining us?”

That made me feel slightly better. Callum could deal with just about anything we might encounter. And Cassandra wouldn’t send me with Lizzie if it was something she thought I couldn’t handle yet. “This is one of those ‘it’s really more rhetorical’ questions, isn’t it?”

“Yep,” Lizzie said with a tired grin.

Guilt twinged. I doubt she’d managed to work a two-hour nap into her day

“Sure,” I said. “Where are we going?”

“Sea Cliff. We’ll swing by and pick you up,” Lizzie said. “Callum’s on his way. Have coffee ready.”

From the outside, the house, though small, was nothing out of the ordinary. Nondescript even. White, boxy, two stories, with a grayish roof and front door.

The grass was mown and the low maintenance bushes planted in the garden beds trimmed, but there were no plants on the small porch or any other signs of life.

This section of Sea Cliff was hanging on so far, but we passed one other empty house in the street, and there’d been more than a few vacant blocks on our way.

The ocean-view mansions that had lined the cliffs before the Big One were a thing of the past. The cliffs were crumbling and unstable. The houses that survived the earthquake had been declared unsafe. So it had gone from being an enclave for the rich and famous to one for regular people, full of rebuilt properties that attempted to mimic something of the area’s original style but in sensible, smaller, quake-proofed homes.

The fact that some of those were empty in a city that had lost a chunk of its residential space told me people weren’t so keen to make a bet on a suburb so close to the ocean.

It wasn’t a part of the city I’d ever spent much time in. I’d done the obligatory school trips to the old Legion of Honor Museum and the bus drivers had always driven us past all the ritzy real estate as part of the experience, but they’d moved the museum further in toward the center of the city when they’d rebuilt it as the New Legion of Honor, so I hadn’t been back. But even though it wasn’t as upscale as it had once been, it also was nothing like Dockside. It was still a livable neighborhood where people worked, raised families, and played. Quiet at this time of night, but only because most people would be sleeping or getting ready to. It wasn’t the ‘no one’s here because it’s abandoned’ or ‘no one’s out because it’s not safe’ vibe of Dockside. Just an average-looking suburban street.

Hardly the kind of place you’d expect magical oddities to spring up. And it didn’t seem like a place you’d find afrit running around. Certainly I couldn’t sense any trace of magic.

But what did I know?

Lizzie was studying the house, hands on hips, her expression tightly focused.

“You said your friend told you this place was empty, right?” I said.

Lizzie nodded. “Yeah, she’s lived about a street back from here for nearly a year, but she walks her dog in this street. She said this house has never had anyone living in it all that time. No cars or people. No lights at night.”

Someone was cutting the grass, but all that proved was someone was paying for lawn maintenance. “Someone’s taking care of the lawn. I guess that means it’s not just abandoned?”

“Probably.”

“And what bothered your friend?”

“She said she saw lights a few nights ago, but no signs of anyone having moved in. She told the police, but they came around and couldn’t see anyone.”

“Did they go inside?”

“No. I checked their report. No cause to enter. And then yesterday she felt something weird as she was passing.”

“Weird?”

Lizzie wriggled her fingers. “You know, magically weird.”

Callum looked unimpressed with the description. Maybe for a Fae, it would take a lot for magic to be weird.

“Okay. So bad vibes,” I said. “Got it.”

“Yep. When she was walking her dog this morning, she got the same feeling. So she called me.”

“What does she do?”

“Well, she’s an attorney. But she’s also a witch.”

So, potentially someone who wasn’t deep in the magical world. But obviously someone Lizzie considered credible. And in the end, Lizzie, as a member of the Cestis, had to make the call about what got investigated and what didn’t.

I glanced down the street. The houses all had their blinds drawn, most of them with no lights shining around the edges. The only things moving in the street were us and the wind through the trees planted next to the sidewalk in front of every other house.

This wasn’t Dockside. It was the sort of place where, if someone spotted three strangers dressed in various forms of tactical black, complete, in my and Callum’s cases with weapons strapped to our backs and thighs, in front of an abandoned house at this time of night, they’d probably call the cops.

And because Sea Cliff was still a neighborhood, not an abandoned hellhole like Dockside, the cops would respond.

Lizzie would no doubt handle them. Pull out her Cestis badge or whatever it was she actually used to prove her credentials, but better if she didn’t have to. “We should get moving,” I said. “Or your friend won’t be the only one noticing something weird.” I took a step toward the front gate.

“Wards,” said Lizzie.

I froze. Damn. Rookie mistake. I knew better. But I hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in several days and it was starting to show. I stepped back as Lizzie raised her hands, shifting my sight to study the property.

I couldn’t see much. A few faint shimmers at random intervals along the fence but nothing resembling a fully functional ward. Whoever was paying for the yard work wasn’t paying for the wards to be maintained.

Lizzie seemed to come to the same conclusion.

She dropped her hands and stepped back, looking at Callum.

“What do you think?” she said. “All I get is remnants.”

“That is what I also see,” Callum said. “There were wards once, but they have long since been broken.”

Lizzie nodded. “I checked the records. The house still has an active connection to the solar grid, so someone’s paying the power bill. Couldn’t find any record of a current vidlink.”

No vidlink equaled no communications. And hopefully no monitored security. But it didn’t rule out your basic ‘make enough noise until the neighbors call the cops’ type alarm. “Do you know who owns the place?”

“No. We can dig into that later. But if there’s power, there could be an alarm system.” She studied the house. Probably looking for cameras.

“We can check out the battery array. The control box should tell us what’s connected. If there’s an alarm, well, you two are the ones who sneak around at night for a living. What do you usually do?”

“It is not my area of expertise. Wards, yes. Alarms, no. I do not usually have a need to break into human houses,” Callum said.

Lizzie smiled smugly. “Sometimes I do.”

Did she mean recently or when she’d been living in abandoned buildings as a teenager? Probably not the right time to ask.

“Then you can figure out what to do if there’s an alarm,” I said. “I vote we go around the back, scope out the battery array, take it from there.”

I peered at the house, wishing there was more light. There were no obvious cameras, but cameras could be tiny. Or tucked away in places we didn’t have a line of sight to. Two standard exterior lights were positioned on the front of the porch, either side of the stairs. I found a loose stone on the street and threw it toward the front door. The clatter it made landing on the porch was way too loud, but no lights came on. “No motion sensors. That’s helpful.”

Lizzie waited, watching, but must have agreed with me because she headed for the gate, motioning for us to follow.

Like most of its neighbors, the blinds in the large windows were drawn. Lizzie skirted the direct approach to the porch, instead heading left, where access to the backyard was blocked by a wooden fence with a locked gate. I boosted Lizzie over and Callum helped me. He, of course, almost vaulted over it. Mere mortal gates were no obstacle when you’re a Fae warrior.

Lizzie rolled her eyes at me as he landed. I hid a smile. Callum was showy and cocky, but his confidence was warranted, backed by his magic and his centuries of experience. I didn’t want him leaving in a huff. We kept moving. No lights came on, no alarms blared, and I began to relax a tiny bit. It was probably messed up that I was more worried about the police arriving than an afrit, but I was confident that Lizzie and Callum could take care of an afrit. Whereas I didn’t need the headache of the newslinks getting wind of Damon Riley’s girlfriend being caught breaking and entering.

The paparazzi were bad enough, even when I wasn’t doing anything illegal.

The backyard wasn’t much bigger than the front and not much different. The grass was trimmed and the beds planted with the same generic green blob bushes. Zero sign of anyone living in the house.

No shoes at the back door. No kid’s toys or play equipment. No garden tools. No table or chairs on the tiny patio area.

The place felt empty in a vaguely disturbing way.

So much for starting to feel relaxed. Something about the house made my instincts nervous. I looked again for wards, but still nothing. The faintest of gleams on one side of the back door, perhaps. I squinted at it and then decided to leave it to the experts and turned my attention to the battery array.

The control panel was in the usual place. A basic model. Though there were some old screw holes in the wall above it like someone had had a more sophisticated system set up and removed it when they moved out.

I’d grown spoiled living with Damon. I had to remember normal people didn’t know that things that went bump in the night were real, didn’t have to deal with potential kidnappers and crazy fans, and didn’t need twenty-four-hour live monitored security and state-of-the-art vidlinks and house comps.

Most people would put in a security system they could afford and call it a day. This one didn’t even have a palm scan to open the metal control box. It was locked with a padlock.

“This looks easy enough,” I said, waving Lizzie forward.

She took my place, peering at the box, while pulling on a pair of latex gloves. No fingerprints. Right.

“Oh, yeah. I know this kind. Icy.” She produced a set of lockpicks from a pocket inside her jacket and made short work of the padlock. She and Zee had taught me to pick locks when I’d found them practicing one day a few months ago. I could handle basic locks now, but I wasn’t anywhere near as smooth as Lizzie.

She swapped the picks for a penknife one-handed as she flipped open the control panel door, in an impressively well-practiced move. She selected a blade and did something I couldn’t see to the interior of the box. Something else I should ask her to teach me.

“Done. Alarm connection taken care of.” She straightened, closed the panel and replaced the padlock.

“What happens if there’s stuff inside? Valuables or whatever. People might steal it if there’s no alarm?” I asked.

“I’ll ward the control panel and send someone round to fix the connection. No one will even know we were here. Speaking of which.” She paused and dug into yet another pocket. “Gloves.” She passed us each a pair. “No point leaving fingerprints if we can avoid it.”

“Do the gloves not interfere with your magic?” Callum asked, pulling a face as he slid his on.

“Not so far,” Lizzie said. “Though, Maggie, I wouldn’t recommend throwing flame with them on. They might melt. That would be unpleasant.”

Couldn’t argue with that. I pulled on the gloves. “What exactly are we looking for?”

“At a guess, traces of magic,” Lizzie said.

“Your friend didn’t mention giant bugs?”

“No. Lights. Weird vibe. Something setting off her spidey sense, but not giant bugs.”

“Is she the kind of witch who would know what an afrit is if she saw it?”

Lizzie shook her head. “I don’t think so. But a hella big bug would have caught her attention. And if she does know, well, she would have mentioned it.”

“But if there is an afrit?” Fire was the easiest weapon against demonkind. Though starting one inside a building was a bad idea. Fighting Jack’s imps had left me with a shell of burned-out walls instead of a house.

“Let me and Callum take care of it,” Lizzie said.

“And if there’s a silent alarm?”

“Stop worrying so hard. I’ll deal with an alarm if I have to. But I don’t think there is one.”

I hoped not. But she was probably right. The system was cheap and we hadn’t tripped anything so far. It seemed unlikely anyone was monitoring the house. But someone could still show up. It’s not like someone had helpfully invented teleports so a security team could instantly be on-site. After we’d returned from the realm I’d asked Damon if he thought humans might ever invent something close to the Ways the Fae used to cover distances fast, but he’d said he had no idea. Sigh. With all the traveling between San Francisco and Berkeley I did, a teleport would be handy.

But for now I was stuck with commuting, and trusting Lizzie to deal with rent-a-cops if they arrived.

I joined Lizzie at the back door while Callum watched us. There was a palm scan by the door but whatever Lizzie had done had disabled it, too, because it didn’t light up when she waved her hand near the plate. Satisfied, she demonstrated her lockpicking skills yet again and cautiously pushed the door inwards, leaning forward to peer into the darkened hallway. No lights sprang on. So we could rule out a rat or something setting off a sensor light to explain what Lizzie’s friend had seen.

I extended my magic, searching for traces of demonkind, but got nothing. I twisted back to Callum. “You should go next.”

“You won’t learn if you always go last.”

Maybe not, but in this situation, I was willing to hang back. Whatever we found in the house, I’d be more use backing Lizzie and him up than trying to lead the charge.

Lizzie moved deeper into the house and Callum glided after her, moving in the silent way he always did in our training sessions. A s’ealg oiche on the hunt. Focused and deadly.

I should attempt to channel that energy. I was a hunter, too.

I followed Callum, closing the back door once I was inside. The hallway was dark without the moonlight, and I blinked, trying to get my eyes to adjust. I could barely make out Callum’s hand stretched toward what I assumed was a light switch.

“No. I don’t want to draw attention,” Lizzie said. She summoned a globe of dim light in her left hand. “This will do.”

“Ah,” Callum said, “Yes, that is sensible.” He followed Lizzie’s example and also summoned a small light, setting it to hover by his shoulder. I couldn’t do the hovering part yet, but I could summon a light to my hand, like Lizzie.

My sight adjusted to the small amount of light, showing me a central hall painted some light color that was hard to make out by the witchlight. There were two doors on each side, painted a deeper shade of whatever the color was, then the hall ended at a more open area at the front of the house.

The air was musty, like the house had been closed up for a long time. Someone might have been taking care of the garden, but no one was coming in to clean judging by the layer of dust gathered on everything and the cobwebs stretched over some of the doors.

I shivered at the sight of them. Since the bruadhsiu, spiders creeped me out. And the webs reminded me of the sticky sensation of Cerridwen’s lure. The one that had drawn an afrit in. I reached for my magic. I didn’t get the same sensation here, but that didn’t mean anything. There are many different types of afrit.

I took a few more breaths of the stale air, but all I got was dust and the fading heat of the day. None of the acid-rot smell of demonkind.

I blew out a breath, some of the tension in my shoulders easing.

Lizzie pointed down the corridor, gesturing at the doors. “Which one?”

One of them might hide a staircase, though that was more likely to be near the front. More likely the doors led to the kitchen and laundry room. Maybe a powder room and home office. The bedrooms were usually upstairs.

“Can you hear anything?” I asked Callum. His hearing was way more sensitive than ours would be. It might be smarter to check upstairs first, make sure the place was truly empty. But if it was, it didn’t make much difference what order we checked the rooms.

“No,” he admitted.

“So we take one room at a time?” I asked. “Stay together.”

He nodded. “That seems wise.”

Lizzie opened the nearest door, the first room to the left, revealing a laundry room. Washer, dryer, laundry sink with a floor-to-ceiling cabinet next to them lined one wall. A counter with cabinets above and below filled the other. They might have been white, but mostly looked grimy gray under the dust.

The appliances were covered in dust, too.

Lizzie opened the tall cabinet. Her brows drew down as she stared at the contents.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She waved a hand at the cabinet. “Whoever lived here left a bunch of stuff.”

I peered past her shoulder. She was right. The cabinet was full. Iron and ironing board, a robot vacuum on a docking station and shelves full of the random junk that accumulates in cabinets. Garbage bags, detergent, cleaning supplies.

“Well, some people are messy when they leave,” I said. “Or it could be a furnished rental?”

“Who leaves a rental empty long enough for all this dust to accumulate in this city?” Pivoting she started opening the cabinets on the other wall. They also held cleaning supplies. “I think they left in a hurry.”

“If they did, it wasn’t recently,” I said. “Let’s keep looking.”

Lizzie grimaced but nodded. With three of us, it didn’t take long to go through the cabinets. No sign of afrit or magical artifacts of any kind.

We moved on to the next room. An office but, unlike the laundry, it didn’t look well-used. There was a large desk in the far corner with the kind of starter kit office chair you buy from big box office supply stores tucked up against it. Most of the wall opposite the desk was taken up with built-in storage cabinets that, unlike the laundry, were empty. And lacking any of the scuff marks or left behind bits and pieces to suggest they’d ever been in use. I mean, if whoever lived here had vacated in a rush, surely there’d be crap in this room, too?

The only evidence humans had ever been inside this room, other than the furniture, was a charging cable plugged into a socket in the wall.

My turn to frown. “If they used this as a home office, there should be more stuff in here. And if they didn’t, why isn’t it a junk room?”

“Some people are tidier than you,” Lizzie said with a grin.

“I’m tidy enough. Most people still end up with junk in a spare room, even if it’s temporary.” I shot a glance at Callum. I didn’t know if he had a house in the realm, though the fact that Lady Morgain had called him Lord Duinne at some point suggested he did. If he did, I couldn’t picture it as anything less than immaculate. No junk rooms for Fae. “Unless, of course, they can magically expand their houses.”

“Going to guess that doesn’t apply here,” Lizzie said. “But there’s nothing we need to worry about.”

We moved on. The second door on the left was a powder room. Not many places for afrit to hide there, unless they were swimming up and down the sewer lines. I shuddered at the thought and pushed it away. That was one nightmare image I didn’t need.

Backing out of the room, I stopped for a moment and studied the floorboards.

Lizzie almost crashed into me. “What are you looking at?”

“The floor is too clean,” I said. “Everything else is dusty but there’s a clear path along the corridor. Someone’s swept or vacuumed or something.”

“Could be a cleaning service?”

“A cleaning service that only does a strip of floor? Nope.”

“Someone covering their tracks,” Callum said. “If the floor was deep in dust, there would be footprints.”

Exactly. But there were none. And it had to have been recent because the dust hadn’t yet started to spread out over the surface again.

Lizzie crouched down, one hand spread, fingers touching the floor lightly. She closed her eyes, forehead wrinkling in concentration. She climbed back to her feet. “Well, if someone was here, they didn’t clean the floor with magic.”

“Your friend said she saw lights. Someone moving around in here is the simplest explanation,” I pointed out. At least it possibly ruled out demonkind. I doubted imps cared much about housekeeping and afrit couldn’t use a broom. But a human trying not to leave traces behind might clean up after themselves.

I extended my magic again, feeling for anything strange. But no. Nothing. More points to the no-demonkind theory.

I walked up to the end of the corridor, sticking to the clear parts of the floor. As I’d suspected, there was a staircase leading up to the first floor on the left and to the right a living area. Two beige sofas were angled toward the far wall where a monitor hung. No pictures, no knickknacks.

The place was beginning to creep me out again. There was no trace of anything indicating demonkind, but Lizzie’s friend was right. There was a weird vibe. I would be happy to get out of there and never come back. Callum tipped each of the sofas up onto one end in turn, moving the heavy furniture as easily as I might pick up a cushion, but nothing scuttled out from under them.

“Kitchen, then upstairs?” I asked.

Lizzie nodded. Her expression was focused as she scanned the room a final time. “Kitchen.”

The kitchen didn’t make the creepiness any less. When we opened the door, there was a sour smell that had me reaching for my gun. Until Lizzie said, “Well, whoever lived here, they didn’t take out the garbage when they left.”

The kitchen was a mess. There were fast-food bags on the table, and unwashed—now covered in mold—plates and glasses in the sink. Lizzie flicked on the fan over the stove but it only made the smell worse. Callum, covering his mouth with one hand, grimaced, then waved his hand in a complicated gesture. The room instantly smelled fresher.

Lizzie arched an eyebrow. “What was that?”

“A scent ward,” Callum said. “The smell is still there but we won’t notice it.”

“Right,” Lizzie said. “Handy. Can you teach it to me?”

Callum nodded with a half-shrug I interpreted as ‘I can try’. Fae magic and witch magic were different. I had a better chance of learning Fae magic, because I hadn’t been steeped in witch magic since I was thirteen like most witches. So, depending on how Callum’s ward worked, it might not be something Lizzie could replicate.

Without the smell, it was easier to focus on the room, not the garbage. Whoever built the place was team storage. Lots of cabinets. A bonus if you wanted to live there. Less so if you were hunting creatures that could fit in small spaces. I decided to start with the pantry. When I pulled the double doors open, a light inside came on automatically, nearly blinding me.

I threw up a hand, eyes watering. “Crap.” I blinked back the tears, and froze as my vision cleared, revealing what was on the shelves. Bags of chips and other junk and a bunch of canned sodas and bottled water filled the middle shelf, convenient for grabbing stuff, but otherwise the shelves were full of things that could be used for doing magic.

“Maggie?” Lizzie asked, straightening from where she’d been examining the cabinet under the sink.

“I think you should come see this,” I said, trying to sound calm. No need for immediate panic. I couldn’t feel any magic. I hadn’t tripped a ward. There were magical supplies, yes. But they were dusty like everything else. Whoever had been using them hadn’t been doing so lately.

Lizzie joined me, scanning the shelves quickly. “Huh.”

“That’s a lot of candles and salt,” I said. And herbs and other powders and liquids in clear glass jars.

“Sure is,” Lizzie said. Her fingers tapped out a slow rhythm against her thigh as she studied the collection.

Callum peered over my shoulder. “Human magic.”

Fae magic didn’t require any assistance. They grabbed the energy they wanted and made it do as it was told. Of course, it helped that the realm was swimming in magical energy.

“No one’s used any of it in a while,” I said, swallowing, still scanning the shelves. Candles and salt. Which suggested protective spells or…a summoning. And so far everything I’d learned about witchcraft told me nothing good ever came from a summoning.

“Right,” Lizzie said. “Let’s speed this up. I want to clear the upstairs, then we’ll call Cassandra.” She waved her hand at the pantry. “I can’t see anything obviously illegal, but we’ll need to work out what’s inside all those jars. But upstairs first.”

My pulse rang in my ears as we climbed the stairs. My hand kept straying to my gun. I had to force it back. With Lizzie in front of me, pulling a gun was a dumb idea.

“ Breathe. ” Callum said gently. “ Focus on that. Clear your mind. ”

Great, he could tell how nervous I was. I obeyed orders and slowed my breathing, trying to clear my head. A pantry full of magical supplies was strange, but not an immediate threat.

The stairs led to a small open area. There was another monitor on the wall and a leather recliner positioned in front of it. Stacked on a small table against the wall was a viddeck and two headsets.

I stopped at the sight of them. I knew the model of the deck. It was a few years old now, but had been expensive when it first came on the market, one of the earliest home models with a chip connection. My former best friend, Nat, had had it on her wish list.

“Are you sure there’s no vidlink?” I asked Lizzie.

“I’m sure. Why?” She looked puzzled.

“This is a couple of thousand dollars’ worth of gear.” I put my hands behind my back, not wanting to touch it. “It’s one thing to leave appliances behind, but this deck is a lot of money for someone to give up. If we had a link, we could find the ID on the system.”

“Later,” Lizzie said. “Let’s finish the rooms first.”

The first door we tried led to a bedroom. At first glance, it was the same as the other rooms—dusty and unused. The closet was empty except for a pair of black sneakers and a black raincoat shoved on the shelf above the hanging space.

The queen-size bed was made up with a dark gray jersey comforter. It gave me a ‘male who wants something cheap and easy’ vibe. I made my way around to the nightstand on the side closest to the windows and pulled open the top drawer. A bottle of ibuprofen lay on its side next to a box of Kleenex.

I pulled the box forward gingerly, hoping whoever had stashed it there had allergies rather than having another reason for wanting Kleenex at close hand in their bedroom. Behind the box was a familiar looking badge, lying face down.

A rectangle with angled corners. Matte black with white around the edge. I froze, trying to tell myself I was wrong, but I knew I was right.

If I turned it over, it would have a name. Or an initial and a surname. Next to a Riley Arts logo. On campus, most of the Riley Arts security team wore their uniform, but those who were on an assignment that required them to wear civilian clothes—like, say, escorting Damon to a function during the day—wore name badges. A visible symbol so if something happened and the security team member gave orders, they were followed, no arguments.

In a company as huge as Righteous, no one knew everyone’s faces. And yes, the staff wore ident tags, but in an emergency the badge was quicker.

I reached for the badge, but I already half expected what I’d see when I turned it over.

And I was right.

I straightened, turning to hold the badge out toward Lizzie with trembling fingers.

“Maggie?” she said. “What is that?”

“It’s a Riley Arts security team badge,” I said. “And it belonged to Ajax Fields.”