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“You were out of control. Please don’t be mad at me!” I dropped to my knees to be on the same level as him.
The parking lot was uncomfortable. I could see shards of glass at the edge of my vision, but I paid it no mind while I begged Maddox to understand why I’d used my arcana on him again. It was a violation of his autonomy. I shouldn’t have done it…
“No. Get it together.” I straightened my spine and held my ground, even if I trembled. “You’re always going to be a liability if you can’t control yourself.”
I knew that the same went for me. I’d been trying, lately. My arcana didn’t rebel anymore. I did my best to use it more often so that it wasn’t always searching for things to do, like a bored cat. I refused to be a weak link.
“I expected better from you,” I told Maddox.
He broke free of my hold and bolted. The white wolf vanished into the city. There was no way that I could catch up, and I wasn’t about to betray him and use my arcana again. This time, I let him slip out of my grasp and vanish.
As if they had the gift of foresight, Vi and Cerri appeared behind me. Vi ran up and threw her arms around me. Cerri caught up a moment later. Her chest heaved from their rush.
“Don’t do that ever again,” Vi ground out as she rubbed her cheek against mine.
I reached up and held onto Vi’s arm.
“I think it’s research montage time,” Cerri said. “There’s some bullshit afoot, and I’m not going to put up with it.”
* * *
Back at my place,a white van pulled up outside. The sun had long set and Maddox still hadn’t returned. While vampires unloaded books on loan from Luca, I looked up and down the street like Maddox would appear at any moment. I was a fool for expecting him to come back to me.
The vampires carried special tables inside after they shoved my own furniture out of the way. This was better than sitting out in the middle of Luca’s ruined estate in the middle of the night. He gave the inside of my house a wary look up and down. It seemed like he didn’t appreciate my old lady décor.
“Say anything about my lace drapes or my needlepoint pillows, and we’ll see if I have power over vampires, too.” I wasn’t in the mood to listen to another ancient being talk down to me.
The corner of Luca’s mouth quirked, but not in a smile. It was a warning. Vi put her hand on his chest and gave him a warning of her own. There wasn’t enough room in my house for a supernatural fight anyway.
As if she could sense the tension, the undead cat came stomping down the stairs and twined between Luca’s legs. She let out a purr loud enough to interrupt any possible conversation. The cat was a master manipulator, and I admired her for that.
Luca crouched and ran a hand long the tortoiseshell cat’s back. She lifted her tail in appreciation and yowled at him to let him know that she owned this house. He laughed.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to pet a cat. Animals don’t much like apex predators. Cats usually try to fight me the same way that a cat might fight a bear or a crocodile.” Luca scratched the top of the cat’s head.
“Potato is already dead. She has no reason to fear other undead. What’s the worst that could happen? You kill her? I could just raise her again.”
At least, I hoped so. With the portals acting funny, I wasn’t sure if I could welcome souls back into their bodies. I didn’t know what I would do without Potato.
Cerri paused and lifted her gaze up to meet mine. “Potato?”
I smiled despite myself. “She belongs in the ground, but I love her too much to leave her there.”
Truth be told, I didn’t know the cat’s name. She’d belonged to another Reaper, one that Bastien had killed. The cat had helped me so many times over the day I’d found her. I couldn’t bear to part from her at this point.
After Potato helped alleviate the tension in the room, we settled into our research. Vi had been commanded to stand outside. She grumbled out on the front porch until Potato went out to sit with her.
I struggled to digest anything. My eyes roved over the pages, but none of the words sank in. Each time I read a page, I had to go back to the top and start over again because my mind kept going back to Maddox.
He had a grip on my attention that I couldn’t shake.
Which had me thinking. What if we were all looking in the wrong direction? We were hitting the books, looking for lore or records that would give us information on what was going on. These pages weren’t going to tell us anything.
I closed my book and set it down onto my lap. I needed to start thinking like Maddox. If he couldn’t do the detective work, then I would have to do it for him. What other information did we have at our disposal?
I bit the tip of my thumb as I considered everything we’d run into over the past few days. There were mystery emergency calls. Each of them had been cut short. I guessed that had to do with whatever had killed those people. It didn’t make sense that there hadn’t been any screams. The phone call should have caught some sort of sound.
I’d listened to them myself. Each one had cut off suddenly.
