He leant sideways and flicked one of the small boxes over to another screen. Lauren Macintyre jumped into view, impeccably dressed in what had to be a designer dress and shoes. She stood in the middle of the bedroom, and barked out orders to the half-dozen men moving a steady stream of boxes piled high with her designer dresses and shoes out of the wardrobe, taking them god knows where.
“When was this recorded?” I narrowed my eyes and leaned closer to the screen. There was something not quite right with those men…
“Four days ago now,” Stane replied.
So she’d packed up and left before Lucian had died.
Suggesting, Azriel commented, that she somehow discovered your intrusion into her house. Perhaps that is why the storage place was also destroyed.
Yes. The bitch had been covering her tracks and finding a new hole to hide in – although undoubtedly it was a luxurious hole. She didn’t seem the three-star type, that was for sure.
“Have you tried to identify any of the men?” I asked Stane.
“I’ve done a run through VicRoads’s databases,” he said, “but couldn’t come up with a license match for any of them. I’m currently hacking into police files to see if I can find a match there somewhere.”
One of the men on the screen turned to face the camera and shock coursed through me. It was one of the half-human, half-animal beings that had attacked us at the Military Fair when the second key had been stolen from under our noses.
And if Lauren was using them, then she was more tied up with the dark sorcerer than we’d figured.
“Fuck it all to hell,” I muttered.
“To put it politely.” Azriel’s voice was grim. “Perhaps she is the reason the beings of those men are so twisted and unnatural. It would take a great deal of dark magic to so alter flesh and soul. More, perhaps, than one person – however strong a sorcerer – has.”
I shot him a glance. “Could not the same be said for the ley-line gate? Perhaps it took all three of them to create it.” I hesitated. “If that is the case, would Lucian’s death have altered their ability to use it?”
“I am no expert on magic,” Azriel said. “But I suspect it would not. The ley-line gate might have been created by a coalition, but I have no doubt they would have ensured it drew its power from the ley intersection itself. No human could create – even through black magic – enough magic to keep a portal onto the fields active for long.”
“Damn.” So much for the hope that Lucian’s death might have some benefit other than just permanently getting the bastard out of my life.
I glanced at Stane, who had a somewhat bemused expression on his face. But then, while he was familiar with our key search, he had no idea what we were talking about when it came to the magic-twisted half shifters. And I didn’t bother enlightening him. “Do you still have access to the security cam records of that storage place in Clifton Hill?”
“Yes, but didn’t that place blow up?”
I nodded. “I want to have a look at the hours between you first contacting me about Genevieve Sands entering the building and the building blowing up.”
“Sure thing.” He grinned. “But you can make me a coffee and something to eat while I hunt them down again.”
“Deal.” I pushed to my feet and made us both a toasted Vegemite and cheese sandwich – he didn’t have much else in his fridge – and by the time I’d deposited both that and a mug of coffee in front of Stane, he’d found the records and had relayed them to another screen.
I pulled up a chair and watched as I munched on my meal.
“What are we looking for?” Stane said, as he scooted his chair next to mine.
“Me.”
He blinked and looked confused. “Why are we looking for you? Don’t you remember going there?”
I grinned. “Yes. But something the receptionist said to me before she died —”
“You were in there when the place exploded?” Stane interrupted, his voice incredulous. “Are you insane?”
“That is a much debated point,” Azriel commented dryly.
The peanut gallery can keep those sort of remarks to themselves, I said, amused.
I will restrain the urge to say that comment makes no sense.
Grin growing, I said to Stane, “I was. Someone had to check whether the explosion had destroyed that locker we were interested in.”
“Which it did.” He took a sip of coffee. “So what did the receptionist say that tweaked your radar?”
“Not much, just ‘You changed again.’”
“As you said, not much.”
“No. But when she saw me the first time, I’d face-changed. So why would she say something like that when it was actually the first time she’d seen the real me?”
“It could have been shock,” Stane mused. “Or maybe the person who blew up the place was a vampire. They’ve been known to play hard and fast with other people’s memories when it suits their purposes.”
“True, but what interest would a vampire have in blowing up that place? And why make the receptionist think it was me going in there?”
“It could have been someone from the council,” Azriel said. “Perhaps Hunter wanted to know firsthand what we were doing in there.”
“She has the Cazadors following me around twenty-four seven. Any one of them could have checked astrally rather than physically, and no one would have been the wiser.”
“But Hunter also has enemies on the council,” Azriel noted. “Perhaps Stanford has a desire to discover what lay in that storage unit for himself.”
“Why would he have someone use my image, though?”
“That I cannot tell you.”
“Whoever this person impersonating you is,” Stane commented, “they don’t necessarily have to be a face shifter. Actors have been changing the shape of their faces and bodies for years with makeup, padding, and stuff.”
“True, but in this case, unlikely.”
“But two sorcerers and two face shifters?” Stane said. “That’s pushing the coincidences, don’t you think?”
Probably. I took a sip of coffee as I watched the images scroll across the screen. Hoddle Street was awash with cars, but there wasn’t a lot of foot traffic. Which was good, I guess – it would make spotting the fake me easier. If there was a fake me, and I wasn’t just grabbing at straws.
“If it is a coincidence, then yes,” Azriel commented. “But Lucian’s plans were centuries in the making. It is entirely possible he brought both sorcerers into this quest not only because they were powerful, but because their abilities would make it difficult for anyone to track them down.”
“There is one other possibility,” Stane said, as he bent to put his now empty plate on the floor under his desk.
I raised an eyebrow. “And that is?”
“That you’re dealing with shifters capable of full-body shifts,” he said. “Hell, there might only be one shifter, not two, and he or she is able to take on both male and female form.”
I wrinkled my nose. “We did think of that, but full-body shifters are extremely rare. And I’ve never heard of any shifter being able to change their sex.”
“Hermaphrodites are rare, but they can and do exist. What if we were dealing with one of those?”
If we were dealing with a hermaphrodite capable of full shifting, then heaven help us, because they’d be next to impossible to find.
“It could explain why Nadler listed Harry Bulter, Jim O’Reilly, and Genevieve Sands in his will,” Stane continued. “He was hedging his bets and relying on the fact that most people think shifters are human-to-animal capable, not human-to-human.”