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The room spun, and I was glad I’d already been sitting because Deedee’s words probably would have brought me down flat on my ass.
“Say that again.” I was barely able to form the sentence, but I had to know if I’d heard her right.
“The temple is going ballistic. We’re lucky to get one cleric every other year. Infatuates are getting almost as rare as Luckless Ones these days. This girl was important, and we didn’t even know she was coming until she was already dead.”
I bit my tongue, a whole flurry of emotions going through me. I wondered if I should tell her about the Rain Chaser I’d seen that morning. The mention of Luckless Ones, the clerics of the bad-luck goddess Ardra, brought a whole different sensation to me.
Now was not the ideal time to be thinking about Cade Melpomene.
“And you’re sure it wasn’t a natural death?” I asked.
“What even is a natural death these days, Lulu?” She heaved a sigh. “To answer your question, no, I don’t think her young nine-year-old heart up and quit on her suddenly. Something happened to her, I just don’t know what.”
If anyone could kill someone without leaving a single trace, it would be death’s whipping boy.
Except none of this was making any sense whatsoever.
I activated the phone’s speaker option and set it on the coffee table, then retrieved my laptop from where it had gotten wedged between the couch cushions the previous night.
“When did you say you found her?” I pulled up a police database.
“Just last night.”
I could see Manea using Prescott to get her revenge on me by killing the young Rain Chaser, as morbid and hideous as that thought was. But why would he kill an Infatuate? As far as I knew there was no ill will between Manea and Aphrodite. Not to mention these deaths had happened on totally opposite ends of the West Coast in the span of a day. That didn’t make it impossible, but it did make it unlikely.
“And she’s how old?”
“Nine or ten.” Her voice had calmed a little, I was guessing because she had found someone else to carry the worry for her. “Am I on speaker?”
“Yes.”
“Are you alone?”
“Constantly.”
She made a sniffing sound. “That’s not what I’ve heard.”
I stopped typing and stared at the phone with a look that might have made a gorgon proud. Of course Deedee couldn’t see my glowering, but it sure made me feel better. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just heard something that suggested you might have gotten lucky.” She laughed lightly at her own phrasing. “Or I guess unlucky.”
My pulse hammered. Nothing had happened between Cade and me when we were together in Louisiana. Well, maybe that depended on your definition of nothing. But we certainly hadn’t done anything like what she was implying.
“You’re going to be the one to get on my case about whether or not I’m temple pure? Really?”
“Hey. My body is a vessel for the goddess’s love.”
I scoff
ed. The report I’d been waiting for finally completed, and I scanned the information listed on the screen. As I took in the words, my skin felt colder and colder. In addition to the Jane Doe in Seattle and the one who I assumed was Deedee’s in Los Angeles, there were seven other unidentified bodies discovered in the last month, all kids under the age of fourteen.
“I have to go, Dee.”
“What? What did you find?”
“I don’t know, but it’s not good.” I hung up the phone before she could reply, and stared at the read-out on my computer. Nine kids.
As I opened each report, I looked for the medical examiner’s assessments to see anything about distinguishing marks. Sure enough the Los Angeles victim had a heart mark, the sign of Aphrodite. I already knew the girl on the beach had Seth’s mark on her. Each report told me what I already knew. These kids were all initiates. They were destined to become clerics, and now they were all dead. The gods they were meant to serve had no connection that I could tell. Seth, Aphrodite, Chronos, Brighid, Sif, Nemesis, Macha, Apophis and Ma’at.
