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As we all followed her inside, including Feddrah-Dahns, I took one last look at the boundary lines of our land. The woods beyond led to Grandmother Coyote's forest, where her portal awaited. Thoughts of Trillian raced through my mind. Why had he been called back to OW? Would he be safe? My heart skipped a beat. He'd better be. And speaking of men, where the hell was Morio? He hadn't called yet.
As I turned back to the house, a raven flew overhead, cawing loudly. Startled, I glanced over my shoulder as it landed in the oak. The bird gazed at me, eyes glittering, and I had the distinct feeling it was a message from Morgaine.
Too much, I thought as I turned my back on it and entered the house. It was all too much to deal with. At least until we'd eaten breakfast.
Chapter Nine
While Menolly kept watch on the clock—she still had a good thirty minutes before she had to be in her nest—Iris fixed breakfast.
The phone rang. Thinking it might be Morio, I grabbed the receiver, but it was Chase's voice on the other end.
"Hey, Camille. Listen, can you put me on speaker?"
"Sure," I said, hoping he wasn't in trouble. After the troll debacle, with Devins so much dead meat, who knew what was going to happen?
"It's Chase," I mouthed as I punched the button and motioned for Delilah, Menolly, and Iris to move closer. Feddrah-Dahns was in the living room, drinking fresh spring water and munching on a bundle of sweetgrass that Iris had somehow managed to get hold of.
"I have news for you—it's good, but it also means I'm not going to be of much use for awhile."
"They didn't fire your ass because the trolls killed your boss, did they?" Menolly asked.
Delilah swatted at her, and Menolly waved her away, grinning.
He snorted. "Leave it to you to think of that first. No, I wasn't fired, though I thought I might be. After all, the FH-CSI is my baby, and we're supposed to take care of things like this before somebody gets hurt. But a lot of people around here didn't like Devins, and I don't think anybody cried over the loss. He forged a lot of enemies in his time."
"Sounds like you took care of the problem, all right," Iris muttered, heading back to her skillet and pancake batter.
Delilah sniffed at her. "Oh hush. Tell us what happened, love?"
"Well, the fact is that I've been promoted to Devin's position. And I'm still in charge of the FH-CSI. There's so much to sort out here that I'm going to be swamped for weeks." He let out a long sigh. "Which means I won't be much good to you girls, because I'll be working eighteen-hour days just to make sense of the mess in which Devins left his records."
"Congratulations!" Delilah clapped her hands, then frowned. "That means you won't be able to help us track down the demon—"
"Yeah, I know." Chase cleared his throat. We heard the sound of shuffling papers. "I'll do what I can, but for the most part, I'm only good on the information side of things this go-round. I can't afford to mess this up, or it will hurt all of us. I have to make this promotion work in order to keep the FH-CSI in action, not to mention, keep my career on track. There's the chance that if I do a good enough job, I might be able to wrangle us more funds."
"What are people saying about the trolls? That little incident can't have gone unnoticed." Delilah glanced over at me.
"With our luck, it made headline news," I said. My guess wasn't far off.
He gave a soft laugh. "Which do you want first? The ridiculous, the sublime, or the frightening?"
Uh-oh. The latter sounded bad. Real bad. "Start us in easy," I said.
"Okay, ridiculous it is. Unfortunately, Camille, you're the recipient of this lovely little piece of news."
"Uh-oh. Why am I always the butt of the joke?" If he was starting with ridiculous, and it involved me, whatever it was couldn't be good for my ego.
Chase laughed and took a deep breath. "Okay, ready?"
"As I'll ever be."
"It seems that one of the local tabloids managed to capture pictures of the fight on film. I guess they had a police scanner and heard about the ruckus. I saw the early A.M. edition. The shots are pretty clear. Camille, one of them is of you. You were casting a spell. They not only got a good shot of your boobs, but they also captured a swirl of light surrounding you. Looked like something right out of Harry Potter."
That wasn't so bad. "Well, that doesn't sound so horrible. If they had to capture me on film, at least it sounds like they caught a good shot."
"Wait till you hear what the headlines had to say."
Uh-oh. "Spill it."
