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Instead, I flared my nostrils and drew in the air that rolled out of the apartment even as I extended both my psychic and magical senses.
There was no blood, no smell of death, nothing to indicate anything physically untoward had happened.
My psi senses told a different story. As did my magical.
All hell had broken loose inside this apartment. Deni might not be here now, but a remnant of her magic was, and it had clashed against that of the man who’d broken into her apartment.
She’d been scared. Truly scared.
But anger lingered too, and its presence puzzled me more than anything else. That and the fact that the threads of magic still hanging in the air didn’t feel the same as the magic that had surrounded the first murder. It was strong and filled with rage, but it wasn’t dark.
We can’t risk it not being our sorcerer, Belle said. We need to find her.
Yes, we did. And that meant going inside to find something that would allow us to do that.
I flexed my fingers, a repelling spell rolling around my right hand and the wild magic around the left. The latter was dangerous in a building filled with witches, but it was an automatic response to danger and not one I could entirely control. Hopefully, its pulse would be low enough that no one would feel it.
I carefully pushed the door all the way open and stepped into the hallway. To my right there were several doors, to my left a kitchen and dining area. While the vast amount of emotion and magic I sensed emanated from whatever rooms lay beyond the kitchen, I went right and checked all the closed doors. The last thing I needed was someone—or something—nasty jumping out at me. I discovered and checked a laundry cupboard, two linen closets, a bathroom, and a bedroom. All were empty. All were relatively free of the boiling riot of emotion and fear.
My stomach churned as I headed down the hall to the kitchen and dining area. I was well aware I wasn’t about to find a body—the absence of blood and death scent told me that—but that didn’t mean there couldn’t be something else waiting. With all the broken magic still floating about the place, it was likely I wouldn’t see a complete spell until I stumbled on it.
And then it might be too late.
I cautiously studied the kitchen and dining area before I entered, but the lack of anything untoward didn’t ease my tension. I paused near the central island—which was as big as an eight-seater table—and studied the living area. It was generous in size and looked out over Lake Burley Griffin. There was a large, covered balcony to my left accessible through folding glass doors and another more regular doorway to my right—the main bedroom, perhaps?
I walked toward it, breathing through my mouth in an effort to avoid the increasing stink of fear and anger as I drew closer to the doorway. It told me one thing—Deni had known the person who’d broken in.
Shall I call the cops or Samuel? Belle said.
I hesitated briefly. Samuel. We can’t be sure that whoever snatched her hasn’t been employed by our sorcerer. It would explain how he was in both places at basically the same time.
Wraiths haven’t got the same movement restrictions as we flesh beings have. He could have almost instantly gotten here from Mawu’s hut.
This magic doesn’t feel like his, though.
Belle grunted. I’ll make the call. Keep watching for traps, just in case.
Tell him I’m going to try and trace her.
You know he’ll just tell you to wait.
And given how often people tell me that, you know exactly what my response will be.
Yes, but I’ll phrase it a little more politely.
Her voice was dry. I smiled and cautiously stepped into the bedroom. There were two more doors to my right, both open. One led into a large walk-in wardrobe, the other an ornate bathroom. The bed showed evidence of being slept in, suggesting Deni’s intruder had indeed woken her.
I raised a hand and, using my psychometry skill, carefully checked the nearby makeup station for anything with a strong enough connection to use as a tracker. I didn’t actually expect to find anything, and that’s exactly what I found. I moved on to the chests of drawers on either side of the king-sized bed. A couple of gold rings registered a soft pulse, but it wasn’t strong enough to use, especially given the head start her attacker had on us. I could form a deeper connection, of course, but I was loath to do that just in case something nasty happened when I was in Deni’s mind. I’d heard too many tales of psychics losing their lives when in a deep connection and had certainly come close to it myself. Thank God Belle had been there to pull me out.
I moved on to the walk-in wardrobe. Like everything else in this bedroom, it was large, with not only multiple hanger spaces and drawers, but a shoe rack larger than my entire wardrobe and a jewelry station that would have had any thief drooling. I walked over and almost immediately found a strong pulse on a diamond-studded gold Piaget watch. If she used this as an everyday watch, she was obviously well off. There had to be at least twenty diamonds surrounding the asymmetrical dial.
I hesitated, then warily picked it up. Images and emotions assaulted my senses; fear, anger, and pain, all wrapped in flashes of darkness and light, the sensation of fast movement, and rope binding her hands and feet to each other in such a manner that her back was uncomfortably arched.
She was in the backseat of speeding car.
I let the watch go, tugged my sleeve over my hand to mute some of the sensations rolling off the watch, then picked it up and headed out.
Leaving the building was far easier than getting in, and I was back in the Audi within minutes. Thunder rumbled overhead, and in the distance, lightning flashed. The storm I’d sensed earlier was definitely on the way.
