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“I hate him.” Camille opened the door and crawled back in. “I hate him and I wish he’d fall off the face of the Earth.”
“You left quite the imprint on his face.” I glanced at her. “What happened?”
“His hand decided it needed to squeeze my boob. I should just tell Smoky and then we’d be done with it.” She cleared her throat. “So you find anything?”
“I didn’t have much time to look around, to be honest. We have to get over to Chase’s office. But look—I picked this up near the door.” I handed her what I’d found. It was a pendant, with strange markings on both sides, made of gold, or a gold alloy, and it gave me the creeps.
She took it. “This clenches matters. It has the stench of Demonkin on it. But more than that—this writing—it’s Runetongue.”
“Runetongue? What the hell is that?” That alone sounded suspect, but even more worrisome was the fact that it smelled of Demonkin.
“Sorcerer’s tongue.” She stared at it for a moment, then let out a little gasp. “I know what this is! A trigger talisman. It’s a magical detonator. This is proof that sorcerers are behind this—or someone trafficking with sorcerers.”
Flipping it over, she paused. “So, we have the stench of Demonkin, Runetongue…and…” She held it to her nose and inhaled deeply, grimacing as she did so. “I can smell the canya on here. I know Chase doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, but we’re right. This was crafted in Otherworld. The alarms are ringing a mile wide.”
I stared at the pendant in her hand. “Do you think we really could be facing Telazhar?” The thought of facing a necromancer as powerful as he had become over the eons down in the Sub-Realms left me shaky. Facing demons was bad enough, but their powers were usually incidental. A necromancer that ancient and that strong would be like magic incarnate. “The idea of going up against him…He trained Stacia Bonecrusher.”
“I know. There’s no chance Morio and I can take out someone that powerful, even with our death magic. Even the magic Telazhar taught Stacia was stronger than what we know. But we lucked out with her. When she was in her natural form, she couldn’t use it.” Camille wrapped her hand around the circle of metal and stuffed it in her purse.
“We’d better go meet Chase. I certainly hope this day gets better.”
She smiled then, wide and beaming to make me feel like a ray of sunshine had broken through. “It has to. Tonight’s Iris’s wedding, remember?”
“Right.” I let out a long sigh. Iris’s wedding, and then she and Bruce would be off to Ireland on a their honeymoon via the barrow mounds. Hanna would take over for her until they returned. And as much as I liked Hanna, she just wasn’t Iris.
When we entered headquarters, Yugi motioned for us to wait. “The Chief asked me to let him know when you got here. He’ll be right out.” The detective looked worried as he punched the intercom.
“Something wrong, Yugi?” I dreaded getting yet more bad news.
He frowned, then handed us a newspaper. The Seattle Tattler. We hadn’t had a chance to see it this morning, and as Camille and I opened it up, the front page had a huge spread on the bombing. The slant of the article was congratulatory to whoever had instigated it.
“We’ve had three calls already this morning since this piece of trash hit the streets. A Were got beat up over in the alley back of Pike Street by a couple of thugs. They kicked him around pretty bad. And an Otherworld visitor—Fae—was accosted downtown. She’s okay because she knew how to fight back, but the guy was out to rape her. I just sent out two of the men to talk to another Were. His house was tagged with graffiti last night. Pervs wrote Back to the doghouse, you filthy Werefuck on it.”
I bit my lip, thinking how much hatred there was in the world—in both our worlds. People sucked, and I was all too quickly finding out just how much. A glance at Camille told me she was thinking the same thing.
Just then, Chase came hurrying up, shrugging into a trench coat over his jacket. “Glad you’re here on time. Let’s head out.”
We climbed into the patrol car with him as Camille ran down what she’d figured out from the pendant we found.
“Crap.” He paused to buckle his seat belt and motioned for us to do the same. “I guess it was foolish for me to hope this might be a simple hate crime—if there is such a thing as that. So what we’re really looking for here is info that will lead you guys to the sorcerers behind this? Because while I can give you backup, you’re the ones who know the ins and outs of these creeps.”
“Creep is a good word for them…but not nearly powerful enough. Speaking of…I guess you heard about Andy Gambit?” I stared at my hands. We’d already had a number of run-ins with him, and Chase had tried to get us to ignore him, but when the little freak got in our faces, none of us were capable of holding our tempers.
“Yeah, he’s already out on bail and no doubt writing up a lawsuit protesting police brutality. Camille, did you want to press harassment charges against him?”
She leaned forward from the backseat, snickering. “What do you think? Should I? Especially since Smoky will find out what happened? Because frankly, I’m tempted to just tell my husbands and then Gambit would never bother us again.”
“Don’t say things like that in front of me! I’m supposed to keep people from getting murdered, not encourage it!” Chase gulped. “No. Definitely not. Although it might solve the problem in the short run, in the long run somebody worse would take his place. No, give Gambit enough rope and he’s going to hang himself. You wait and see. His kind always do.”
As we eased out of the parking lot, he motioned for me to flip open his notebook. “Where are we headed first? Your call.”
I glanced over the names. “Let’s go talk to Claudia. She mentioned Exo recently turned down the conference with somebody he felt was ‘off’…plus, her guilt is eating her up. I think she could use a visit.”
Privately, I was worried about the werewolf. When Weres lost their mates, it was like any other couple except the animal side came out too easily under the stress of the grief. And then the loss became dangerous to others. If Claudia lost control of herself, she could end up roaming the city in wolf form, attacking from the frenzy of her grief.
Claudia and Exo’s house was in the Queen Anne neighborhood. Quiet, classy, understated. We parked in the driveway next to the chain-link fence that prevented her children from running out in the road. The kids were out in the yard, home from school, and their older brother was watching over them. I did a double take. He could have been a carbon copy of Exo, only years younger.
As we swung out of the cruiser and headed up the walk, I jammed my hands into my pockets and shook my head. At least the hardest part was over—notifying her of the loss. But now we were intruding into her sorrow and pain. I hated what we were about to do.
