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“Vile!” the voice shouted, almost in my ear.
“Yes, I got that the first time,” I snapped, although I knew that losing my temper wasn’t the best way to deal with the situation. So much could be lost in translation when spirits were trying to reach through the veil and communicate. This wasn’t the same as having a cozy chat with my grandmother’s ghost through the medium of a crystal ball. No, this was facing the raw power of an angry, vengeful spirit, one that couldn’t quite form the necessary words to give me the answers I needed.
Still, I had to try.
Then Lucien said, “Huge,” and I only frowned again.
“What’s huge?” I asked. “Was there some kind of conspiracy going on? Was more than one person involved in your death?”
“HUGE!” the spirit bellowed again, and I clapped my hands over my ears. That last blast had been so loud, I felt as though I was back in high school and standing too close to the speakers at one of my school dances.
Not helping,I thought grimly. However, the additional decibels seemed to tell me that I might be on the right track. There had been an additional level of intensity in that last reply, as though I’d struck a nerve.
My phone chose that inopportune time to start ringing. At once, the wild wind whistling across the little beach died away. Although he’d never manifested physically, and therefore I couldn’t see for sure that Lucien was gone, I somehow knew he’d disappeared.
“Damn it,” I muttered under my breath. I pushed my hair out of my face and pulled the phone out of my pocket so I could look at the screen.
Calvin.
Under other circumstances, I would have been happy to have him calling me out of the blue. Right then, however, I was more irritated than anything else.
“What?” I said as I swiped across the screen to accept the call.
“Did I interrupt something?”
I hesitated. Most likely, Calvin wouldn’t be too thrilled to learn I’d come back to the murder scene on my own…especially after what had happened to Athene the night before. “Not really,” I lied. “What’s up?”
“I got your knives back from the lab, so I thought I’d bring them over.”
Talk about timing. While I wanted my knives returned safely to their altar, I couldn’t quite help cursing the universe for causing such an interruption when I’d been so close to a breakthrough.
Okay, maybe notthatclose. But I’d gotten Lucien talking, which was something.
“Um…I’m running an errand right now. But I can meet you at my apartment in about twenty minutes.”
Maybe a brief hesitation, as if he was attempting to figure out whether I was being entirely truthful. But then he said, “Sure, that’ll work. I’ll see you then.”
He hung up, and I slipped my phone back into my pocket. No choice now except to head home and accept the return of my knives with as good grace as possible.
Before I left, though, I closed my eyes and tried to reach out with that extra sense of mine, the one that had come to my aid so many times before.
Nothing. Or at least, nothing beyond the vibrant life in the trees and the river, the slow strength of the earth beneath my feet. Lucien might have been here a few minutes earlier, but he was certainly gone now.
I let out a sigh and began to trudge back to my car.
15
Spells and Stories
I barely hadtime to take off my hiking boots and slide into a pair of flats — because one look at those boots, and Calvin would know I’d been up to no good — before the buzzer at the back entrance to the building sounded. A quick pass of a brush through my hair, and then I hurried downstairs to open the door.
“Hi,” I said, trying not to sound too breathless. “Come on in.”
Apparently, I wasn’t terribly convincing, because he cocked an eyebrow at me. To my relief, though, he only said, “Sure,” and followed me upstairs to the apartment.
He carried a baggie with the two knives inside, and set it down on the dining room table once we were in my apartment. “Here you go,” he said. “Forensics didn’t find anything.”
“I told you they wouldn’t.”
