“If the Crows broadcast a message like that, the Sanguinati will not be the only form of terra indigene that goes looking,” Ilya warned.
I looked at the leader of Silence Lodge and Sproing’s chief of police, two strong males who believed that I had sand. I said, “I know.”
CHAPTER 24
Thaisday, Novembros 1
Her face revealed nothing, but in her very stillness, he could sense her sorrow—and her growing, cataclysmic rage.
He had learned some things about her. She was hunting a contamination. Something sly and insidious had touched Crowgard, had touched Sanguinati, turning them against their own kind in ways the leaders of those terra indigene forms couldn’t detect until it was far too late. She had found and eliminated minions, the ones who were contaminated beyond any undoing, but she hadn’t found the source. She would get close, and the source, a cunning predator in its own right, would slip away—and she would have to wait for the signs of contamination to surface again before she continued her hunt.
Opening the small pouch on her belt, she removed a spool of black thread, bit three lengths of thread off the spool, and used them to secure three feathers in her long black hair. As she returned the spool to her pouch, a light breeze made the feathers in her hair dance.
He looked around, ready to shake the gourd in warning.
No need to warn. No point in warning.
Four Elementals—Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—stood nearby, watching her. Watching them.
Maybe information was exchanged between the Elementals and her. Maybe the look in her eyes was all they needed. He didn’t know, couldn’t say.
As one, the Elementals tipped their heads to acknowledge her. Then they looked at him, at the gourd in his hand and the feathered cape around his shoulders—and they disappeared.
“Easy place . . . for police . . . to find,” he said, looking at the Crow.
She nodded, then headed off to look for other signs of the source of contamination.
For a moment, he wondered if he should give the Sanguinati here some warning. Except . . . They would send him away, and he had a purpose here. At least for a little while.
His brain . . . blinked . . . and he looked around, panic rising, not sure where he was or why he was there.
Then he saw her waiting for him—and he remembered. Again.
And he followed.
CHAPTER 25
Grimshaw
Thaisday, Novembros 1
Grimshaw gave everyone a five-minute breathing break. Before Vicki could untangle herself from the stressed-out Crows, who had feathers popping out everywhere, he strode to the library, where a long folding table had been set up for Julian’s auxiliary bookstore. He wanted to ask Julian about the duplicity-and-honey-trap message, but mainly he wanted to block the doorway before Vicki and the Crows could engage in book delirium as a way to quiet anxiety. If they reached the books, he’d never get them focused on the information he needed from them.
“If your store is called Lettuce Reed, what are you going to call this? Mini Munch?”
“Stop being helpful, Michael,” Julian said.
A bit of a bite to Julian’s reply, but also . . . an old understanding?
Grimshaw remembered the man’s face from last night’s party but hadn’t been introduced. Then again, he hadn’t done much socializing last night, between the prophecy sent via the Lakeside police; Tom Saulner—aka Hatchet Head—and the other teenage boys giving Vicki’s anxiety a kick; and the very dead body of Adam Fewks, the faux Crowgard bogeyman. “Need to talk to both of you.”
“Are you going to come in or just block the doorway?” Julian asked.
“Block the doorway.”
Julian gave him a sharp look. So did the other man.
Julian made the introductions when they joined him in the doorway. “Michael, this is Wayne Grimshaw, Sproing’s chief of police. Wayne, this is Michael Stern and Margaret Shaw, depending on which genre you’re reading. If the name is familiar, it’s probably because you’ve read one of his books and not because you’ve seen the name on a police report.”
“Good to know.” He studied Michael Stern. “Where are you from?”
Stern hesitated. “Ravendell. It’s a town on Senneca Lake.”
Grimshaw nodded. “You sent the message about duplicity and honey trap?”
Another hesitation.
“You can trust him,” Julian said, looking at Stern. “He understands about our kind.”
“Just sensing emotions that didn’t weigh up right,” Stern finally said quietly. “Everyone’s emotions were a bit skewed last night. Socializing with the terra indigene wasn’t quite what my cousin and I expected. It was . . . wow.” He lowered his voice even more. “Did Ms. DeVine really leap off the end of the dock and meet the lake’s Elders when she tried to swim to Silence Lodge to escape from a man with a gun? The young Sanguinati who told me and Ian the story said he wasn’t embellishing, but . . .”
“Met the Elders, knows the Lady of the Lake and Fire, and has a pony named Whirlpool show up in the kitchen once in a while looking for a carrot,” Julian said dryly. “And that’s not touching on the employees and other residents of The Jumble, or the fact that her attorney and her CPA have fangs.”
Stern blinked, then swallowed hard.
“Can we focus on my investigation?” Grimshaw asked.
“Sorry,” Julian said. “What do you need?”
“Duplicity. Honey trap.”
“The feeling of duplicity was here last night but not after the party broke up,” Stern said. “Or, to be exact, felt superficial after the party broke up. Honey trap?” He shrugged. “Could be cultural differences and we were reading more into it than was intended. Just . . . the Sanguinati girl is a bit of a flirt with a mean undercurrent, which surprised Ian and me since she comes across as shy and demure—at least when the Sanguinati adults are around. She’s a contradiction that makes us uneasy. But that could just be what Sanguinati girls are like at that age.”
Grimshaw caught Julian’s look. Yeah. He’d have to talk to Ilya about that later. Right now . . . “You didn’t get a feel for the almost newlyweds who weren’t married to each other?”
Julian swore softly.
“That’s what I meant by ‘superficial.’ A small deceit in comparison,” Stern replied. He looked at them. “That’s a problem?”
“For Vicki it is,” Julian said. “Does she know?”