“You think they’ve done it before.”
“I know they’ve done it before, and more than once. If they’ve done it more than once, it’s likely they need a continuous supply of humans for something, so they’ll do it again. I need to be there to stop them. This city is not going to be their hunting ground if I can help it. So, you and I are going to call the Pack, the People, the Order, and every other person in charge we know and notify them that this happened.” Biohazard would be sending its own notifications, but I wanted to put the net out as wide as I could.
Derek moved to his desk. “Dibs on the Pack.”
“Knock yourself out.”
“KATE?” DEREK’S FACE blocked my view.
I rubbed my forehead. “Yes?”
“Food?” he asked.
Food? I hadn’t eaten at all today. “Food would be amazing.”
He nodded and went out the door.
In the past two hours, I’d talked to the three county sheriff’s offices where people knew me: Douglas, Gwinnett, and Milton. Beau Clayton, the Milton County sheriff, and I went way back. He didn’t like hearing about the disappeared people.
I called the Order and asked to speak to Nick Feldman and was told by Maxine, the Order’s telepathic secretary, that he was in the city but out at the moment, so I had to leave a message with her. I kept it short.
If the Order knew anything, they wouldn’t share it with me, and they didn’t trust my information. In the eight months I’d been back at work, we’d had to cooperate on a few cases, and every time working with Nick Feldman, the current knight-protector, was like pulling teeth. My mother breaking up his parents’ marriage was bad enough, but Nick also spent some time undercover in Hugh d’Ambray’s inner circle, and he got to see firsthand how my father operated. He hated our whole family with the passion of a thousand suns and had made it his life’s mission to make sure we didn’t exist.
Derek had taken the city’s law enforcement, the Pack, and some of the street contacts he’d been building. Between us, we’d pretty much covered it. Only the People were left.
I dialed the number.
“You’ve reached the Casino Help Desk,” a young man said into the phone. “This is Noah. How can we make your day wonderful?”
That would take a miracle. “Put me through to Ghastek or Rowena, please.”
“May I ask who is calling?”
“Kate.”
“Are they expecting your call?”
Great. I’d gotten a new apprentice or journeyman. “No.”
“I’m going to need a last name, ma’am.”
“Lennart.”
“One moment, please.”
There was a beep and Noah spoke to somebody. “Hey, there’s a Kate Lennart calling for the Fearless Leader. She’s not on the list.”
Apparently, Noah hadn’t mastered putting people on hold.
“Kate who?” another male voice asked.
“Kate Lennart?”
“You idiot, that’s the In-Shinar!”
“What?” Noah squeaked.
“You put the In-Shinar on hold, you dumbass! Ghastek’s going to hang you by your balls.”
Ugh.
“What do I do?” Panic spiked in Noah’s voice.
You could connect me to Ghastek. If I said something now, it would only freak them out more.
There was some random beeping. I had a vision of Noah frantically pawing at the phone, smacking keys at random like a toddler. A disconnect signal beeped in my ear.
The last time I attended the induction of candidates to the ranks of journeymen, Ghastek introduced me as “Behold, the Immortal One, the In-Shinar, the Blood Blade of Atlanta.” I spent the whole ceremony trying to kill him with my brain. When I chewed him out afterward, he asked who I would rather risk my life for, the Blood Blade of Atlanta or Kate Lennart, small business owner. I should’ve told him to stuff it. I had only myself to blame.
I put down the phone and counted to five in my head. That should give them enough time to get their crap together.
I redialed.
“Help Desk,” Noah croaked.
“It’s me again. Calling for Ghastek.”
“Yes, lady ma’am, um, In-Shinar, um, Your Majesty.”
I waited. Nothing happened.
“Noah?”
“Yes?” he said in a desperate near-whisper. He sounded close to death.
“Transfer the call, please.”
He made a small strangled noise, the line clicked, and Rowena’s smooth voice answered. “Hello, Kate. How is Conlan?”
Telling her that one of her journeymen just called me “lady ma’am” would be counterproductive. “He’s fine.”
“When will you bring him by?”
Rowena came from the same village as my mother. They shared a similar magical talent, although my mother’s had been much stronger. The talent came with a price. Women who possessed it had a hard time getting pregnant and an even harder time carrying a child to term. I was an exception; perhaps it had to do with Roland’s genes, but Curran and I had had no trouble conceiving. Rowena never had children of her own, but she desperately wanted some. She once told me that while my father was alive, the world wasn’t safe enough for her children. Instead she lavished all of her maternal affection on my son.
“As soon as I can. I have some bad news.”
“Is it your father?” A hint of alarm undercut her words.
“No. At least, I don’t think so.”
I explained Serenbe.
“That’s horrible,” Rowena finally said.
Not much shocked a Master of the Dead. Not much shocked me either. By now I’d told this story about seven or eight times. You’d think repetition would file the sharp edge off it, but no, every time was as disturbing as the last.
“We’ll call down to Biohazard and try to get some samples for analysis,” Rowena said.
“That would be amazing.”
I said good-bye and hung up before she had a chance to ask me if Conlan had developed any magical powers. Everybody wanted my son to be something more. He was perfect the way he was.
Someone rapped their knuckles on my door.
“Come in,” I called.
The door swung open and Raphael walked in, carrying a dark-green bottle. He wore a dark-gray suit.
“Beware the boudas,” I said. “Especially when they bear gifts.”
He smiled. “Can I come in?”
“Please.” I pointed to my client chair. “Sit down.”
He did. His black hair fell on his shoulders in a soft wave. Usually when people used words like “smoldering” to describe a man, I just laughed. However, for Raphael that word felt entirely appropriate. There was something about him, something in his dark-blue eyes, in the way he carried himself with a hint of feral shapeshifter cutting through the polish, that made women think of sex. Luckily, I was immune.
“What’s in the bottle?”
He pushed it across the desk to me. The handwritten label with a cute orange-yellow apple read, B’S BEST CIDER.
I whistled. “Now I know it’s bad.”
When Curran and I got married, Clan Bear provided several barrels of honey ale for the wedding. The ale was a roaring success. Raphael realized that the bouda clan house sat in the middle of an apple orchard and sensed a business opportunity. B’s Cider hit the market a year ago, and like all things Raphael touched, it turned to gold.
He leaned back in the chair, one long leg over another. Life with Andrea was good to Raphael. He looked clean-cut. His suit fit him so well, it had to be tailored.
“Let me guess, your tailor is holding your latest outfit hostage and you want me to liberate it.”
“If I asked you to do that, everything would be covered in blood and my suit would be ruined. No, I’d ask my wife. She’d shoot him between the eyes from a hundred yards away.”
That she would.