“We’ve lost our familiars for the night,” Hunter said, staring at the ceiling.
“And our dark arts specialist,” Silver Hawk said calmly, with no judgment in his tone.
“Oh, hey,” Winters said, rousing slowly and yawning. “Everything cool?”
“You tell me,” Hunter said, growing edgy. “Where are my men?”
Winters sat forward chuckling and rubbing his eyes. “Oh, man. Those guys went out hours ago. As soon as the moon went up, they were out. But you can probably hear better than me,” he added, hunting for a cold slice of pizza, “and the reason I’m down here drowning out the sound… Fisher and Woods brought back live game. And Bradley and ’Rissa are ‘researching,’ if you get my drift.” He bit into a slice, and then made a gesture to offer Hunter and Silver Hawk a bite, which they declined. “Sometimes I wish… I just don’t know how those guys do it. The one Woods pulled is killer.”
“What direction did Bear Shadow and Crow Shadow go?” Hunter asked, his tone dangerous. “I gave them a direct order to protect this location!”
Silver Hawk landed a steady hand on Hunter’s shoulder. “They have not had the benefit of your clarity in the shadow lands. This is not how they generally conduct themselves as your lieutenants. Be mindful of that.”
“They rolled out with a blond and a brunette from across the street, left their jeep-probably going to the girls’ place… which is a good thing-could you imagine the racket that would have been going on in here with five couples knocking boots? Sheesh.” Winters yawned again and stretched. “It’s cool, though. When the pizza dude came, I was on the porch and saw Bear driving a really cute chick’s car with Crow and her friend in the backseat all snuggled up… so I think your guys are doing just fine. No worries, no attacks, everything is peace, as they say. But I doubt you’ll see ’em before tomorrow morning. Seems like all of New Orleans was over at Finnegan’s tonight.”
“Humans?” Silver Hawk said, incredulous.
Hunter briefly closed his eyes. This was bad. There were so many ways that volatile combination could go wrong that he couldn’t even think about that right now.
“I dunno,” Winters said with another lazy stretch. “I guess? Couldn’t see that far from the porch to tell if they were human girls or not. You guys forget that I don’t have all that sexy night vision and super hearing and whatever. I’m just the tech guy.”
Hunter nodded and rubbed his jaw. “All right. Where are Doc, Sasha, and Shogun? Did they take him to Tulane?”
“No, didn’t have to. Dude recovered, from what I heard,” Winters said with a nonchalant shrug, scratching his head. “Everybody is just wacko tonight. Sasha bursts in here arguing with Doc-after she put Shogun on the phone. He, I guess, spoke to his men from the ambulance, and then they were out. But after Sasha and Doc had this ‘I’m your father and you won’t speak to me like that’ blowup, Doc went across the street to eat and cool off; she headed for the shower and then came down five minutes later and grabbed one of the jeeps.”
Silver Hawk stepped in front of Hunter and grabbed him by his shoulders. “Remember what we saw on the spirit walk. Remember that things are not always what they appear.”
“Did Shogun’s men say where they were going?” Hunter said, a low growl underscoring his words.
“No, they were out real fast, but Doc was having a conniption about them probably heading toward some Werewolf strip club in the bayou.” Winters flopped back against the sofa. “All I wanna know is, how come I got stuck here holding down the fort? Like, I wouldn’t have been discriminating about a lap dance. Seriously.”
Hunter looked at Winters and then at his grandfather.
“That should make you feel better, son,” Silver Hawk murmured, releasing Hunter’s shoulders.
Armed to the teeth, Hunter jumped into a jeep-pump-action shotgun on the backseat in plain view. The decision to find Sasha or his brother wore on him, but the draw to hunt for Shogun won out. Right now, Shogun was the most vulnerable. He could pretty much guess what had sent his brother into the notorious brothel, as well as what had probably pissed Doc off. There was only one thing that would have broken down Shogun’s pride to the point where he’d pay for companionship at a known enemy’s house… where he’d allow his men to follow him on such a suicide mission. He just prayed that he’d make it in time.
Sasha scribbled down the symbols quickly, as best she could remember them, folded away the paper, and then shoved the paper and pen into her back jeans’ pocket. Speed was her friend as she dashed up the cellar steps and exited the building, her mission singular-go to the other Phoenix’s house and see if there was also a symbol beneath where Penelope’s charred remains had been. It was a job she wasn’t looking forward to, but somebody had to do it.
Based on what Rodney’s advisors had told her and what Bradley had disclosed to the team, a theory took root in her mind as she drove. From what little she did know about Fae magick, if all the symbols were gone, had simply vanished, then it definitely had nothing to do with the human intervention-it would have to be either that someone had doubled back to erase them, or maybe the symbols faded a certain amount of time after they had the desired treacherous effect… Or maybe the symbols could only be seen right after an incident in broad daylight, before they simply melted into the night as a dark spell. Night covered a lot of things.
She pulled up to the double-wide trailer that she’d been to with Ethan, Margaret, and Hunter, and easily jimmied the door. The outline of the body was still there where it had been lying on the floor, curled in a fetal position. Sasha bit her lip as she looked at where the poor young Phoenix who never came back from the ashes had lain.
Moving through the small home, Sasha found a dustpan and broom, and, as reverently as possible, shifted the thin layer of ash to a neat pile, expecting to see a symbol scorched into the floor. Ethan wanted to have a proper memorial, and there just hadn’t been time. Once all this was over, she’d be sure to help him do that.
Sasha stooped and scribbled down the strange absence. There were no symbols here combined in geometric figures that seemed to move on the floor as though alive as she’d seen at The Fair Lady. Why? Both girls had been killed the same way, but only one set of symbols showed up.
That stilled her. The question was, had the floor at Ethan’s been previously marked by an invisible symbol, like a land mine for the victim to trip over, or was the symbol what appeared after the fact to mark the spot where the victim fell? But whatever the case, why wasn’t there a large sigil here, a land mine for Penelope to trip over?
Bradley would know what to do with that key information, so would Sir Rodney. The issue was going to be explaining to Sir Rodney why it was necessary to inform her human squad… Damn, the Fae were so touchy.
The question about how the specific symbols she’d uncovered functioned was just one more to add to the dozens of others that twisted around one another in her brain. And how the heck did one use a freakin’ symbol to kill somebody? She’d heard of chaos magick used to make someone sick, to hold on to a lover, or to give someone a serious case of bad luck-otherwise known as doing roots… But to actually make them char? No. That was definitely a new one. She flipped open her telephone and left a message for Sir Rodney, detailing her find. All she got was instant voice mail. She closed her eyes. He was in the Sidhe; his advisors were in deep, and so was Ethan. Her and her team, as well as Hunter and his men, plus Shogun and his family, were on the other side of the Fae fortress. Just great.