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Delphine, her brow furrowed and lips pursed, stood in front of Dax with her arms crossed. “What are we going to do, Dax? There’s enough unnatural death in this city; we don’t need a supernatural creature creating more.”
Dax nodded reluctantly. “You’re right. There are too many unhoused spirits in this city already.” He thought back to the morgue he’d visited and the horror of shrieking spirits who’d failed to be carried on to the next realm. Before he’d been exiled, he would have ensured the souls were carried across the veil to their final home.
“We may have to postpone the favor you were going to ask of me.”
His shoulders and face dropped. “I’m worried they may be linked. I had a bad feeling before you called. And when you did, I linked it to your news.” He sighed. “The daughter of the man who owns the convenience store across from the bar disappeared three nights ago.”
Delphine’s eyes opened wide as her jaw dropped. “Oh, no… Do you think the beast ate her?”
“Normally, I’d just say it’s a coincidence.”
“It’s hard to believe in coincidence around you, all things considered.”
He scowled, frustrated. “I’m not a harbinger of doom.”
“My apologies, cher. I didn’t mean you were, just that you’re linked into the threads of life and death more than others.” She shook her head, folding her arms under her breasts. “Your presence here in Red City has set things in motion. The life threads… They’re being plucked, and you are”—she chuckled—“the spider feeling the vibrations.”
He wasn’t sure he liked the analogy. He didn’t weave the life threads into a web to hunt, nor did he seek to manipulate them toward his own ends. His function had been to reap without prejudice or malice, seeing off the souls toward whatever their destinies were. It wasn’t his decision where they went, and he gained no power from it.
And for his neutrality, he’d been ganged up on, betrayed, and exiled to live as a human.
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I didn’t build the web, nor do I hunt it. But I understand what you mean. I’m just trying to live my life, such as it is.”
The manbo laughed her rich laugh. “Cher, you don’t get to choose what happens to you, only how you react to it. Be human, but you can’t hide from the fact that you’re so much more.”
“But I walk the line as it is. That part of me is no more. Or it might as well be because if I dip a toe too far over the line…” He shook his head, fearing he might have revealed too much to the powerful voodoo practitioner. He liked her, but he wasn’t ready for that level of trust.
Delphine looked at him pointedly. “So, what is your choice?”
He drew in a deep breath then let it hiss out. “I guess I’m here.”
She slapped him on the back. “There you go, cher. What do you want to do?”
He raised his voice to ensure Rory could hear it. “It’ll be hard to do anything with you if we can’t understand each other. Can you change the enchantments on your communication bracelet so it only translates English? Otherwise, it will pick up too much from my mind.”
“I do not know. It is attuned to my life force. I will see what I can do,” Rory replied.
“Good. If he can make that work, that’ll make our lives a bit easier. Don’t suppose you know someone in the magical community who has the kind of power to capture a magical fae beast while managing a pair of rangers.”
She shook her head. “Not where the fae are concerned.” She leaned in conspiratorially, an excited grin on her face. “I didn’t even know they were real until you short-circuited his disguise.”
“That’s going to make things difficult, then.”
“We can always call Boudreaux,” she replied.
He raised an eyebrow skeptically. “Boudreaux? Does he have more magical connections than you do? I thought he was a mundane human?”
“I don’t know, though I know he knows about the magical community. But there’s nothing mundane about him.” She raised a hand to forestall him. “Oh, he doesn’t have any powers that I know of, at least in the magical sense. But he’s got a lot of connections in weird places.”
“Boudreaux it is.”
Delphine pulled out her phone. “I’ll give him a call.”
Chapter Four
Boudreaux had to finish his EMT shift before he could meet with them, so Dax decided to have Tomi join him at Delphine’s shop after his shift. Dax, Tomi, and Rory could pile into the car and investigate the scene of the crime, as it were. Perhaps Dax could pick up on one of the threads and follow it to its source.
Since Rory couldn’t wear the disguise bracelet around Dax—he’d fixed the translation bracelet to work only on English—they resorted to the expedient option of having him wear a trench coat and a bucket hat to hide his ears. The green hair was no issue, not in a city with tons of people who dyed their hair a wide variety of colors. Rory finished the look with a pair of leather gloves he’d had folded over his belt.
