I offered everyone a big smile. There. All professional.
“Mrs. Lennart,” the dark-skinned knight said. “I’m Knight-abettor Norwood. I would like to visit you at a later date.”
I glanced at Nick. “Who are the Holy Trinity?”
“They’re from out of town,” he said.
I shrugged. “You’re welcome to come by. Nick knows where to find me.”
“You seem ordinary,” the female knight said.
“Good.”
“I could kill you right now,” she stated.
I rolled my eyes, turned, and walked out.
I DROVE BY Cutting Edge to check my messages. When I pulled into the parking lot, a courier was sitting on my doorstep. She was about twelve, short, Latina, and armed with a shotgun. She stuffed a big yellow envelope with a Biohazard stamp in the corner into my hands, had me sign the receipt, and took off on her bicycle without a word. The envelope contained several typed pages with the analysis and brief write-up of the scene at Serenbe and a twelve-page list of names, one per line. The dead.
I glanced through the report. They m-scanned the houses in Serenbe. Blue across the board.
I brought Conlan in, checked my messages, which were nonexistent, grabbed the case file Derek and I had put together yesterday, loaded Conlan back into the car seat, took my paperwork with me, and drove home. I could just as well work from the house, and at least at home I had toys and a familiar environment to back me up.
Two point five seconds after being put into the car seat, my son started screaming. We didn’t even make it out of the parking lot. I got out and checked the car seat for hidden dangers. The seat was fine. Conlan was also fine, despite all of the squirming and pulling on the car seat belt. I offered him a sippy cup with juice, and he threw it on the floor.
“Oh no, is it tantrum time?”
It was definitely tantrum time, complete with wailing and real tears. I kissed him on the forehead. “I love you. We have to go home. I can’t hold you right now, but you’re safe.”
Conlan shrieked. I got back into the driver’s seat and headed home. I couldn’t really complain. Conlan rarely cried, but once in a while he pitched a fit, usually because he was tired and didn’t want to fall asleep. He was a baby and babies threw tantrums, because life was hard and not fair and their wishes were rarely taken into account.
The real question was, how long would it take him to figure out how to unbuckle himself? That day was coming, and then we would be in real trouble.
I missed Curran. I wanted him to come home. This whole thing was deeply disturbing, and it felt like a part of me had gone missing. I wanted him back, and I wanted us to all be together.
About fifteen minutes into the drive, Conlan gave up singing the sad song of his people and fell asleep.
The Serenbe nightmare bothered me. Two hundred people, families, children . . . That wasn’t just murder; it was an atrocity. I would’ve liked to think only something inhuman was capable of it, but the entire history of humanity proved me otherwise. All of the magic scans pointed to human magic. Was it some sort of massive human sacrifice? If it was, what the hell were they summoning with it?
Whatever it was, I would find it and kill it. And then I would find the ones responsible and make them regret not dying with it.
It took me roughly thirty minutes to get to our subdivision. Our house sat in the middle of a short, curved street tucked into the crook of the forest, which my husband bought and named the Five Hundred Acre Wood. Originally it was the beginning of a new sprawling neighborhood, but the woods proved too aggressive. The development barely got off the ground before it was cut short. Then we moved in, which made all but two human families find quieter accommodations. Now our street was mostly people who had separated with us from the Pack. The other two streets were settled by shapeshifters who, for work reasons, decided to live in Atlanta. Even when Curran tried to distance himself, the Pack still found him one way or another.
I didn’t complain. The place was a fortress without walls, and if I sneezed the wrong way, about forty spree killers armed with fangs, claws, and nasty dispositions would come running. Even so, I’d sunk so much power into the perimeter wards that the entire College of Mages would have a tough time breaking through. I had this recurring nightmare of my father teleporting in and stealing my son.
The driveway before our house was empty. Curran was still gone. Come on, honey. Time to come home.
I tucked the file and the envelope under my arm and picked up Conlan. He was still sleepy and draped himself over my shoulder, all warm and limp. I unlocked the door, walked inside, and dropped the file off on the table.
“Here we are,” I murmured to Conlan, hugging him to me gently. “We’re home. We’re going to go upstairs and take a nice nap.”
Conlan jerked in my arms.
“What is it?”
My son yanked his head back, staring at the door, his eyes wide and terrified.
The doorbell rang.
Conlan made a low rough noise. Alarm shot down my spine. Babies didn’t make those noises.
“It’s oka—”
My son rammed his forehead into my mouth. I tasted blood. He threw his entire weight back, tore out of my arms, landed on his feet, and ran for the stairs.
What the bloody hell? I dashed after him in time to see his feet disappear into our bedroom on the third floor. He’d cleared the entire staircase in about a second. The lock clicked shut. Our bedroom door had a custom door handle that locked when closed. You had to push a switch on top of it to open it, something Conlan hadn’t yet figured out.
Okay. Door first, son later. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, pulled Sarrat out, and slid the small viewing window open.
Grass, a maple tree, and driveway. No fire-spitting monsters. No vicious killers. The tech was up.
I listened.
Quiet.
Yeah, there was probably a terrestrial man-eating octopus crouching on the wall just above the door waiting to pounce.
It’d been a long time since we’d had fried calamari. Technically, calamari was squid and not octopus, but as long as I fried it, who cared about the details?
I didn’t have time to mess around. I needed to get this sorted and figure out why my son was freaking out. I swung the door open. The front lawn was empty. A wooden box waited in front of the door. About two feet long, a foot wide, and maybe eight inches deep. Plain untreated wood, probably pine. Two metal hinges on the left side.
Someone had waited until I came home, then dropped it off on my doorstep. They were in our neighborhood, watching our house, and I didn’t notice when I came home, because I was a moron. I’d gotten comfortable in the past eighteen months. Sloppy, Voron’s voice said from my memories. Yeah, I know.
I stepped outside, carefully padded past the box, and jogged to the end of the driveway. The street was deserted in both directions. I didn’t feel anyone watching me. Whoever had delivered it had come and gone. Didn’t bother to stick around to see if I got it.
I turned back. The box looked perfectly harmless. Right, and as soon as I touched it, it would sprout whirring metal blades and carve me to pieces.
I crouched and poked the box with Sarrat. The box didn’t seem impressed.
Poke. Poke-poke. Shove.
Nothing.
Fine. I slid the tip of my blade between the lid and the box and flipped it open. A thick layer of ash filled the box. On it lay a knife and a red rose. And that wasn’t freaky. Not at all.
The knife was about twenty inches overall, with a fourteen-inch blade, sharpened all the way on the left and to a half point on the right side. Plain wooden handle, no guard. Simple, efficient, brutal. Reminded me of a skean, an Irish battle knife.