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“So we have twelve fucking days to keep these assholes from killing another canid shifter?” I hissed.
Taavi, his mismatched eyes wide, his lower lip caught between his teeth, nodded.
“Fuck. I need to call Raj.”
* * *
Raj had immediately comeover to Beyond the Veil, Kurtz in tow.
Doc and Taavi showed him what we’d discovered, and Raj had turned a rather alarming shade of grey under the gold tone of his brown skin.
The next several hours had been devoted to trying to figure out how the ever-lovingfuckwe were going to be able to figure out who our killers were in the next twelve days. Somewhere in the middle of this, Ward came in, and then Beck, and the whole thing turned into a pizza party with a lot less party and a lot more panic.
One problem, of course, was that we didn’t have days of death on any of the dogs except this last one, so the idea that they were the endpoint to the ritual sacrifice cycle was almost entirely my speculation.
The other problem, of course, was that with the museum now a museum, the ritual wasn’t being held there, which made figuring out where and who a good deal more difficult. This was compounded by the annoying fact that the reason the museum had changed hands was because the prior owner—a wealthy widow by the name of Annabelle Benavente—was dead.
Enter Ward and Beck.
Annabelle Benavente was not terribly keen on giving us any information, not that her reluctance was going to stop Ward from finding out what she knew. It just took a little longer and meant that my boss was a good deal crankier at the end of the night than he had been at the beginning.
Especially since she hadnotliked Taavi.
To make things easier on all of us, Ward had given Benavente substance and sound—a trick that was, as far as I knew, pretty exclusive to Ward.
The dead woman, wearing a long skirt and a sweater, had defiantly crossed her arms over her chest.“I refuse to speak to you.”
Ward sighed. “Please don’t make me force you, Mrs. Benavente,” he said, his tone annoyed and tired.
She tossed her head.“You cannot force me.”
Another sigh. “I can, actually, I’d just rather not have to.”
She glared at him.
He sighed a third time, and then the ghost’s expression became alarmed.
“What—what—no! No, you—can’t!”
“As I said,” Ward replied, growing more impatient by the second. “I absolutely can. So tell us your relationship to the ritual murders that happened in your house.”
It’s never pleasant to be the target of glared hate, and Ward definitely was currently that.
“I—we—practice the ways of our ancestors.”
“Which are…?” I asked.
Ward’s eyes had flicked to me when I spoke, then back to Benavente. She glared at me, now, too. Yay. I made a friend.
“TheCulhua.”
I frowned, as did Ward, Doc, and everyone in the room except Taavi.
“The Aztec,” he said, softly.
That’s when Benavente noticed him for the first time, and she promptly bared her teeth at him in a hiss.
Taavi took an alarmed step backwards, away from her, and I reached out without thinking, putting a hand on the small of his back. He immediately turned into me, fitting his back against my side, not taking his eyes off the ghost.
