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I knew I hadn’t written anything down wrong. “Yeah, I’m sure. I guess she lied to me. Are you sure, though? You don’t even have a lapsed policy under that name or license?”
Another moment and then, “No, I’m sorry. Nothing. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
I hung up. “Great, the insurance information? A fraud. Want to bet she’s using a fake name, too? That caps it. For some reason, she tried to run me down and when she didn’t manage to get the results she wanted, she vanished. Which means…”
“She was probably trying to kill you. You said yourself that, had she been a fraction more on-target, your car would have been history. That could change the whole face of the game.” Camille glared at the table. “So what about… could Lowestar be behind this attack, too? We know he’s got to be the one behind burning down the Wayfarer. So was he sending another message this time, or was he trying to kill you in the bar’s fire, as well? Catch you in the blaze?”
“Maybe they were trying to kill me and this was a reprisal attack given I survived the fire. But if that’s true, then Shikra is in danger. Because she got the exact same letter and phone calls I did. And she ignored the threats and refused to sell them her club. I told her to keep watch, to get security.”
“Are you going to call Roman and tell him about tonight?” Nerissa leaned forward. “As his consort, don’t you have to?”
“I suppose I should, but we’re getting dangerously close to spilling the beans to him about Lowestar. And if he finds out what’s really going on… a vampire as powerful as he is? Far worse than a testosterone-laden lover. He’d tear the Farantino Building down brick by brick and just make things worse.”
“That may not be a bad idea, really.” Camille glanced over at Hanna. “Chocolate chip?”
“Peanut butter chocolate chip.” Hanna gave her a friendly grin as she slid the first batch into the oven.
I snorted. “I’m beginning to think we need a secretary to take care of all this crap. So we’ll just add keeping an eye on the Utopia—at least on what’s going down there—to our to-do list. Because chances are, Lowestar isn’t going to take her refusal with good spirits.”>“I need to talk to the other driver next.” Kane finished taking my statement. As he tucked away his notebook, the tow truck rolled up.
After pointing out Eisha’s vehicle, we headed back to my car, but Eisha was nowhere in sight.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“She was right here a few minutes ago.” I glanced around. She wasn’t standing in the middle of the street, nor was she near her own car. In fact, there was no sign of her at all.
“Well, fuck. I don’t know. She didn’t seem hurt—where would she wander off to?” A thought struck me. “Maybe she went back to the house—she barreled out of that driveway there.”
I waited in my Jag, and Kane sent his partner up to see if she had returned to the dimly lit house at the top of the drive. A few minutes later, the officer was back. “Nobody there knows who you’re talking about. They said they never had company tonight, and they don’t know anyone by that name, nor anybody who owns an SUV like hers.”
Confused, and more than a little suspicious, we hunted around the area for a while. Fifteen minutes later, we realized that she was nowhere in sight—she’d just vanished. Maybe she’d gone into the woods on the side of the road, but there was no sign of her whatsoever.
Kane finally shook his head. “I’ll get a search party out here. Maybe she was hurt… but something tells me she’s just vanished. Can you still drive your car?”
I tried the ignition and the Jag started up. “Yeah. I lucked out. I think most of my damage is superficial. And I’m not far from home so I’ll just head there and have my sisters take it to the mechanic in the morning.”
“I’ll let you know if we find her. Meanwhile, call her insurance agent and file a claim, I suppose. From what you say, I’m writing it up that she was at fault. But be careful on the way home. We’re in a storm cycle, I think, and it’s supposed to rain like this for several days.”
He motioned for the tow truck to haul Eisha’s SUV off, as I fastened my seat belt. After a moment’s hesitation, I found a knife in my glove compartment. I paused—could they even stuff the airbag back in? Would it ever work again or did they need to replace it? If I sliced through the bag, they’d have to reinstall it full. I frowned, staring at the material that was in the way of my pedals.
Fuck it. I didn’t know enough about cars to make a good guess, so I finally just sawed off the material and dumped it into the backseat. As I pulled out onto the street, my car rattled and clunked, but I wasn’t far from home and I made it safely.
Pulling into the driveway, I turned off the ignition and hoisted my purse over my shoulder. The three-story Victorian we called home loomed against the storm clouds, but it was a welcoming sight. A not-so-much haunted house, even though we were nearing Halloween and Samhain.
So much had changed in the past week… in the past few years… but this was my home. Here, I lived with my wife, my sisters, and their loves, and several of our friends. Come to think of it, I barely thought about life back in Otherworld anymore. I’d come to accept Seattle as home base, and I had the feeling that—given the chance to return to OW—it wouldn’t be such an easy choice.
The past week had been anything but easy.
First, we’d been asked to help out on a case for a couple friends of mine. Tad and Albert, two vampires who worked at Microsoft on the night shift, were worried about Violet, their friend and coworker who had disappeared. We’d started the investigation thinking she’d just skipped town, but had all too quickly figured out that she’d been abducted by a sex slave operation run by Lowestar Radcliffe—a daemon. It was complicated, and involved a lot of hidden factors still, but the upshot was, Grandmother Coyote wanted the daemons stopped and we were in charge of doing so.
Before we could immerse ourselves in the case, my bar had burned down, and we’d been caught in the siege of Elqaneve. The former was heartrending, the latter—traumatic beyond any scope we’d yet experienced. Tens of thousands died as the sentient storm attacked the city, pretty much decimating it. And we’d been there for the throw down. I’d lucked out and been rescued before I could see what was going down in the city proper, but Delilah and Camille had been forced to make their way through the attacks, and the destruction they’d witnessed seemed to have scarred them both heavily.
The storm had wreaked havoc on the Elfin lands of Kelvashan, and now it was on the move to Svartalfheim. All we knew at this point was that the Svartan sorcerers and mages were readying themselves in an attempt to repel the annihilation headed their way.
While we had recovered Amber and Luke, and their spirit seals—along with a spare one—two of the spirit seals were still missing. Venus and Ben, two of the Keraastar Knights wielding them, had not been found. That’s why Smoky and Trillian—Camille’s other husbands—were in OW searching for them right now.
And our father’s body still had not been recovered. He was missing, his soul statue back home had been shattered, and that pretty much spelled out that he was dead. All in all, the past week had been one big clusterfuck.
Nerissa was waiting up for me. She took one look at my face and jumped up from the table where she’d been eating cold fried chicken. Camille and Morio were nowhere to be seen, but Delilah was helping my wife polish off the leftover KFC. I didn’t see the guys anywhere but that didn’t mean they weren’t around.
