“There, now,” I said brightly, because a positive attitude helped keep one’s toes out from under clompy hooves. “You’ve had your carrot, so I need to get started on feeding the humans.”
I wasn’t sure what I expected—I hadn’t known Fog was there until my elbow bumped his nose, which just showed that things like doors and walls weren’t much of an impediment for Elementals or their steeds—but I hadn’t expected the pony to make a tight turn, give Julian another tail flick when the man opened the kitchen door as a clear exit route, and then head for the front of the house.
“Did you do something to annoy him?” I asked.
“How could I? I didn’t know he was here,” Julian replied.
I hurried to the front of the house and walked into the dense fog that covered the large entrance hall and reception area. I found the reception desk by bumping into it, and it gave me a reference point for finding the front door. I’d heard of people walking in circles during a snowstorm and freezing just a couple of feet from shelter. Would Julian eventually find me sitting on the floor, lost and disoriented, just inches from the door?
I found the door. I unlocked and opened the door.
The fog stayed put.
I sighed. “I can’t play now. I really have to feed my guests.”
The fog thinned enough for me to find my way back to the kitchen. When Eddie showed up for work—if Eddie showed up for work—I’d ask him to close the front door. That had nothing to do with safety and everything to do with keeping heat in the building.
“Ilya found Jozi at the dock,” Julian said when I returned to the kitchen.
“But you found—”
He shook his head. “She’s alive but has been through an ordeal and is very frightened. Ilya suggested a little orange juice might help.”
“That’s what Doc Wallace said to give Kira and Aggie.” I pulled the bottle out of the fridge. Then I turned and stared at Julian. “If Jozi is alive, who did you see last night?”
“I need to talk to Ilya about that. Grimshaw will be here after he answers a call at the Mill Creek Cabins.”
If he had to deal with one body before coming to see us, Grimshaw was going to be cranky by the time he got here to talk to me about another dead body at The Jumble. Maybe it would be better that the body was a crow? At least Cougar thought it was a crow and not Crowgard when he gave the body a sniff. But a body was a body was a body, and unless Grimshaw was here for pizza and a game of pool, it seemed he was here staring at me and looking all large and official because, hey, we found a body! And while I knew that he didn’t mean to do it, Official Grimshaw often put Anxiety in the starting gate for the Meltdown Derby.
Why could I never channel the bit of Grimshaw I got through the blood transfusion when I had to deal with Grimshaw?
While my brain was distracted by that conundrum, Julian slipped out of the kitchen.
CHAPTER 62
Ilya
Earthday, Novembros 4
Ilya stared at the remains of a crow. Had Jozi been taken to make everyone think she’d been killed? Or had there been a change of plans because Victoria’s unexpected invitation to Julian Farrow had complicated someone’s intentions and Crowbones’s warning rattle made killing Jozi too risky? Or had this crow been killed before the intruder invaded Victoria’s apartment?
“That’s not good,” Julian said when he reached the area where the fog was rapidly dissipating.
“Better than it being one of the Crows who work for Victoria, but, no, it’s not good.”
“I heard the warning rattle. Did Crowbones do this?”
Ilya crouched and gently examined the carcass. “The kill? I don’t think so. What could an ordinary crow do to earn such a savage killing?” He pointed to the wing that was missing three feathers. “Feathers of the fallen. From what we’ve learned about Crowbones, that is an indication that the crow was an innocent killed by someone other than the Crowgard bogeyman.”
“And the lower legs and feet?” Julian asked. “Did the killer or Crowbones take those?”
Ilya rose. “We’ll know that if or when they show up at a crime scene.”
CHAPTER 63
Grimshaw
Earthday, Novembros 4
No Elementals blocked the road leading to the Mill Creek Cabins. No Elementals—or Others of any kind that Grimshaw could see—were waiting to be helpful. He had a bad feeling their absence was telling.
He drove down the lane and pulled onto the patch of gravel that served as the driveway for his cabin. By the time he got out of the cruiser, Roash and Cardosa, looking haunted and hollow-eyed, had come out of their cabin to meet him, more or less. He noticed they didn’t leave the dubious safety of their cabin’s enclosed front yard.
“Edward Janse said he had an odd feeling and went out to check on something last night,” Richard Cardosa said when Grimshaw reached the gate in that cabin’s low stone wall. “He didn’t come back. That’s why I called.”
“Peter Lynchfield went out for food yesterday and didn’t come back,” Rodney Roash grumbled. “We all pitched in for supplies, and he never came back.”
Gods above and below, was it only last night that the Five had gone to The Jumble for books, which had led to all the rest?
“He could have run into some trouble and stayed in the village,” Richard Cardosa said, his voice sounding weary and strained, as if he’d been saying the same thing for hours.
Grimshaw studied each man in turn. “Lynchfield is dead. And that, Professor Roash, is something you and I need to talk about, since you’re the one who sent him to his death.”
Blustering and denials from Roash, which he expected.
“Peter is dead?” Cardosa looked sick. “I should have gone with him. I offered to go with him, but . . .”
“There’s nothing you could have done.” Grimshaw wasn’t sure about that. It was possible Cardosa could have convinced the other man to stay away from The Jumble, but he doubted it.
“Chief?” Cardosa raised his voice to be heard over Roash’s continued protests of innocence. “I’m sorry Lynchfield is dead, but Edward Janse might not be. Shouldn’t we look for him?”
Grimshaw spotted a hawk flying just above the cabins’ rooflines, heading toward the woods. Could be a regular hawk, but he doubted it, so it looked like he had a helper after all.
“I’ll look,” he said. “You stay here.”
He headed in the same direction as the Hawk. By all the gods, what had Edward Janse been thinking to go out after dark? The man was an Intuit. He should have sensed something that told him he was in danger—unless his particular Intuit sensitivity was tuned to something like weather.