“This place is open to the public. I don’t need your permission.” He placed his hand on the railing beside me.
My jaw tensed. “I’m leaving. You do need something to stop me.”
One finger tapped the wooden rail…once, twice, three times. “Depends. Maybe I think you’re acting”-his gaze drifted over me-“suspicious. I have reason to suspect you, you know?”
Sane Mel, the Mel who wanted so much to blend, would have stood there and argued, would have played the game, but that Mel had disappeared when she’d realized her daughter was on her way to meet a killer, and that Mel wasn’t coming back-not for a long time, maybe never.
I kicked him in the groin.
The look on his face, the way his eyes rounded, then squinched together as he doubled over, would have been comical, if I hadn’t actually liked him, already regretted to some small degree the need for the move. But any humor or pity was lost as he fell to his knees and reached for his gun. I started moving, fast.
“Stop.”
I looked back. He was hanging onto the railing with one hand. In the other was a black handgun, and it was pointed at me.
I shook my head. “I can’t.” Then I turned my back on him.
Behind me, he cursed. I could hear him rustling, forcing himself to stand, I guessed. I quickened my pace, made it to the front door, and jerked it open.
“Mel,” he yelled. He was closer-too close. I sped through the door, thinking I’d have to lock it behind me, play the same trick on him I’d played on Peter, but as the breath seeped from my lips, a grayish-brown body streaked around the corner of the building toward me.
Open window, tree. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how Peter had escaped.
“Mel,” Reynolds yelled again.
Peter stared up at me, his eyes still his, just in the face of a cat.
“Please” was all I said. I didn’t have time to fight Peter and Reynolds too. Didn’t have the mental wherewithal to stand there and argue either. I needed to get to my daughter.
Reynolds’ shoes squeaked on the floor. He was almost to the door. I glanced back, could see him lunging forward, his gun still drawn.
Peter saw it too, leapt past me and into the building.
Reynolds yelled a curse. A shot fired, hit the door as the breath I’d been holding shoved it closed behind Peter.
I broke into a run.
Chapter Twenty-six
It took less than three minutes to get to the address on Makis’s business card. It took twenty to find Makis’s class space.
I thought I knew the building where Harmony had been taking art classes-I’d driven by it thousands of times. But once I parked the truck and jogged toward it, things got fuzzy.
I found myself standing in front of the address, suddenly unable to remember where I was going, what had driven me here.
I turned, started to shuffle back to my truck and, just as quickly, my memory returned, my panic with it, but increased.
Three steps forward and the fog returned. I blinked. An older woman wandering past asked if I needed a drink. I refused, stumbled again to my truck.
I slammed into it, my palm smashing down on the hood. Harmony. How could I…? I stared back at the building, focused on the door that bore the same numbers as the card in my hand.
A ward. Makis had some kind of ward on the door, something akin to what Bubbe had cast over my front yard when the Amazons were gathered there trying to save Zery, I guessed.
I had no experience with the spell, no idea how to combat it. I forced my heart to slow and my gaze to wander over the building front. Through the glass door I could see ferns and vines hanging from seventies-era macramé hangers. The mass of plants blocked my view deeper into the shop. Murals, a scene of the Capitol, one of some cows, and a group of football fans wearing white and red, covered the front windows.
Makis had managed to provide his shop with complete privacy in a way no one would think to question. I glanced around, looking for inspiration-considered tossing a rock through the Badger fan’s red jersey, smashing the window, and maybe the ward. But there were too many people around. And a move like that would only alert Makis to my presence and state of mind.
The roof was flat. A one-story, probably with no attic, not even a crawl space. I glanced back at the plants, at their junglelike growth. Plants needed sun, and painted-over windows didn’t provide much.
I had an idea. I left my truck and jogged around the end of the block, into the alley that ran behind the shops.
A Dumpster was set a few feet away from the building’s back wall. It was an easy jump from there to the roof. I paused, checked my grip on reality. I still knew where I was and what I had to do. Makis hadn’t been guarding against someone trying to break into his shop, just been trying to stop the casual passerby from entering.
Letting out a relieved breath, I crept toward the front and the upraised white square I prayed was what I thought it would be.
I stopped next to the skylight, a grin breaking across my face. I allowed myself less than a second of self-congratulation before hunkering down next to it and peering inside.
It was darker than normal outside and lights were on in the shop, making the scene below well lit, if small. The window was only a couple of feet wide. Even leaning side to side, I could see only a small piece of the shop below, but it was enough. Directly below me, a paintbrush in her hand, stood Harmony.
My palms pressed on the window’s edges, I leaned forward, tried to see what was happening below-to decide what my next move should be. Makis had had access to Harmony for over a week. There was no reason to believe tonight was the night he would target her-not that I wanted to take the risk and leave her alone with him. But I also didn’t want to do something that would send him over the edge, cause him to attack if he hadn’t planned to.
For the first time I wished I’d given in to another of Harmony’s demands-for her, us, to get cell phones. I had just never seen the need. But now, staring down at her, so close, but so impossible for me to reach without crashing through the glass, I did.
When we got out of this, I was taking her to the mall. I’d be supermom for at least a day. The thought made me smile, and as I settled down next to the window where I could keep an eye on my girl, I relaxed.
Until I saw the wheelchair behind a bookcase, visible to me, but not my daughter. The chair was turned over, its occupant sprawled across the floor.
Makis’s face was pale, his arms and legs akimbo-unnatural. And three feet away, completely unaware, sat Harmony, painting.
Something was very wrong.
I lifted my fist, ready to rap on the glass, but as my knuckles lowered, a figure stepped into view-a boy, brown hair, slim build. The boy I’d seen Harmony flirting with at school. The boy she’d been mooning over with Dana, I assumed.
He angled his head as he talked to her. A diamond stud winked at me from his ear. He moved again, to stand behind Harmony. He wrapped his hand around hers, the hand that held the paintbrush. Together their hands moved up and down in broad strokes, slow, sensual, almost sexual.
As his arm moved up, his T-shirt shifted, revealing the edge of a tattoo. My already tense muscles squeezed tighter. My fingers dug into the edge of the skylight, until the tips became numb. Another upward, then downward stroke and the tattoo was revealed-a dog, a hound, black and tan. Just like the stray that had followed me around my shop, followed Zery into the shower, watched Pisto jerk off her shirt.
The boy pressed closer to my daughter, his face so close to hers his breath stirred her hair.
The skylight creaked, the casement coming loose under the pressure of my grip. The boy and Harmony looked up, revealing his face.