SPELL TO UNBIND, A Page 20

  It was an interesting reaction for sure, and I didn’t quite understand why she was so affectionate with one twin but not the other.

  “Tell me what happened to you after Finn tossed you into that hellhole,” Kincaid said once I’d invited him to have a seat on a loveseat, opposite the couch.

  I took up the spot next to Ember. “Once I got free of the shackles, which was no small feat, mind you, I beat the spider to death with a leg bone.”

  His eyes widened. “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “Shit,” he said, casting an appreciating look my way. “Finn’s an asshole. How’d you get out of there after that?”

  “I’m a thief, Gideon—I can call you Gideon now, right? I mean, we’ve been kidnapped together so I think that puts us on a first name basis.”

  He smirked at me. “Gideon is fine,” he said. “After all, you’re my mentor now.”

  “Groovy,” I said. “Anyway to your point, by profession, I’m a thief and getting past locked doors is how I make my living.”

  He nodded. “Got it. Just don’t do any of that in front of me.”

  “Or what?” I said. “You’ll arrest me?”

  “Definitely,” he said, and there was no humor to his tone.

  I shook my head. “Man, you really are a Boy Scout, aren’t you?”

  His brow lowered and his head tilted, as if he’d heard someone call him that before. Maybe several times.

  I decided it was best to change topics. “We need a plan,” I said. “Your brother’s gonna figure out I’m not dead fairly soon, and I need to find Grigori’s egg before my boss kills me.”

  “Right,” he said. “We need a lead.”

  “I think we should start with the crime scene. I want to look around with fresh eyes.”

  Kincaid’s expression turned suspicious. “You want to look there for the egg again.”

  “No,” I insisted. “It’s not in that house. I would’ve found it on my first pass if it had been. It’s too powerful to escape notice.”

  “So, what is it that you hope to find?”

  I stood up. “I don’t know, which is why we need to look again.”

  Kincaid got up too. “Fine. Let’s take my car.”

  We arrived at Grigori’s not long afterward. It was an absolutely beautiful spring day, but I didn’t let it distract me. Once Kincaid had cut a knife through the crime scene tape and unlocked the door, the smell was the first thing to hit us, and it packed a hell of a punch.

  “Jesus,” I whispered, putting my arm across my nose. “They removed all the bodies, right?”

  Kincaid nodded and stepped across the threshold ahead of me. “The city removes the bodies, but the estate is in charge of cleaning up the crime scene. It was a messy one, so there’s going to be some residual body fluids left behind to stink up the place.”

  I gagged, recovered, and looked at him. “How do you do this for a living?”

  “You get used to it,” he said and motioned me inside.

  I kept my arm over my nose and moved into the front hallway, keeping my gaze on the floor simply to have a moment to prepare for the sight of anything grisly.

  Behind me, Kincaid shut the door, then came to stand next to me. I lifted my eyes to him, and he nodded toward the hallway in front of us. “The quicker we get to it, the quicker we can leave,” he said.

  I nodded, dropped my arm, and lifted my gaze. The hallway was darker than I remembered, and the house was still and quiet—almost too quiet. There was a sense of something emotionally heavy having taken place here, which of course it had, however, even if I hadn’t known anything about Grigori’s murder, I’m sure I would’ve sensed the taint of evil in the air. It permeated every crack and crevice, making the task at hand all the more unappealing.

  Still, Kincaid was right; there was no sense lingering in the hallway, so I traversed its length to move quickly past the dining area and into the kitchen.

  Oddly, when I entered the kitchen, the most pungent of those foul odors wafting through the house lessened by a noticeable degree.

  I paused at the kitchen island and looked around. Something felt out of place, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. The area itself was uncluttered and tidy, with everything exactly where it should be.

  I turned in a circle and looked about, but nothing jumped out at me. I then walked to the fridge and opened it to peer inside, finding it well-stocked mostly with meats and cheeses.

  Closing the fridge, I looked around again, wearing a frown.

  “What?” Kincaid asked me.

  I sighed. Whatever I felt I was missing wasn’t materializing. “Nothing,” I said. “Come on, let’s check out the rest of the house.”

  Kincaid and I spent the next hour looking in every nook and cranny for anything that might be a clue. The only thing I found of interest was hidden between Grigori’s bed and his nightstand, as if it’d fallen there. It was an ancient book written in Old Gaelic that dated back to the end of the tenth century. There was a receipt stuck to the second to last page. The vendor was a rare book shop in D.C. I wasn’t familiar with it, which meant it wasn’t mystic-owned.

  The total at the bottom of the receipt showed that Grigori had paid a little over four thousand dollars for it.

  And he’d paid cash.

  My eyes widened at the total. Why would the mystic have spent four grand on a book he could’ve easily stolen?

  I frowned as I thumbed through the text. I didn’t speak Old Gaelic … I didn’t even speak Middle or Modern Gaelic, but I knew that Dex’s mother had been born and raised in Ireland, so maybe he’d be able to parcel out a few words just to decipher what the book was about.

  I glanced toward Kincaid, who was currently rummaging through Grigori’s closet. His back was to me, so I pulled out my monocle to have a look at the text through the crystal.

  The old relic gave off very little magical energy. Just a trace coming from the center of the book, which, honestly, could’ve been Grigori’s essence as a makeshift bookmark.

  So it wasn’t a trinket, and yet Grigori had paid over four thousand dollars for it. Why?

  Glancing one more time toward Kincaid to make sure his back was still turned, I slipped the book into the inner pocket of my leather jacket, then swirled my finger over the bulge and whispered, “Hidden from sight, hidden just right, let no one sense the text in flight.”

  Edging over to a full-length mirror, I looked at my reflection. I could feel the bulge of the book, nestled inside my pocket, but there was no visible sign of a book hidden there.

  Kincaid came out and spotted me looking toward the mirror. “Anything?” he asked.

  I turned and shook my head. “Nothing.”

  He nodded, and yet he didn’t seem to want to take my word for it because he then moved to the bed and pulled up the mattress to have a look under it. I thanked my lucky stars because he for sure would’ve found the book if he’d started with the bed rather than the closet.

  A bit later we made our way back downstairs to the hallway.

  “Satisfied?” Kincaid asked me. He looked more than ready to leave the house.

  I began to nod but then caught myself as something that’d been niggling at me finally bubbled up to the surface.

  “Hold on,” I said, grabbing his arm and turning toward the kitchen.

  “What is it?”

  “Follow me,” I instructed. It was better to show him than tell him.

  Kincaid followed me, and once we were in the kitchen, I looked again at all the clean counters, the empty kitchen sink, and the stove, which was free of pots and pans.

  “Where’s dinner?” I asked him, motioning to the counters and the stove.

  “Where’s dinner?” he asked, looking annoyed. “You thought I’d have dinner waiting for you?”

  I pointed again to the counters and the island. “Not for me, Detective, for Grigori and his guests. When they were murdered, they were seated at the table, right? And their wine gla
sses all had fresh pours, and yet there’s nothing here to indicate that they were about to eat.”

  Kincaid’s brow furrowed, and he glanced around the kitchen with renewed interest. He then went to the fridge and opened it, poking around at the contents while he was at it. “You’re right,” he said, closing the door. “There’s no dinner for the dinner party. And no appetizers or dessert either.”

  “So why would they all sit down in front of empty china with full glasses of wine, ready to eat unless they believed that dinner was on the way?”

  Kincaid shrugged. “They could’ve been waiting on a delivery.”

  I scowled. “For a dinner party?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe the caterer was late, and when they got here, maybe they knocked, and no one answered, so they left.”

  I shook my head and moved to the back door, which was just off the kitchen. Looking through the window, I said, “I don’t think the caterer was late. I think he or she was right on time and Grigori let them in, assuming they were in here preparing a meal. And when he and his guests sat down, the caterer came out and surprised them with a spell that froze them in place, then killed them, one by one.”

  Kincaid again looked around the kitchen, which had a door leading to the dining room. He moved to it and looked out at the empty chairs, stained with blood, and the elegant tablecloth, also stained, while the remnants of the china that wasn’t collected by the CSI team still sat on the table.

  “So your theory is that the caterer did it?”

  “No,” I said. “My theory is that someone posing as the caterer did it.”

  Kincaid stared at me for a long couple of seconds. “Huh,” he said.

  “Huh, what?”

  “Huh, you just got us our first clue, Esmé Bellerose.”

  I smirked. “You should give me a badge.”

  “Don’t push it.”

  Kincaid then moved to the sink and pulled open the cabinet door. Reaching under it, he extracted a trash can, pulled out a pair of black latex gloves from his pocket and began to poke through the contents. “There’s nothing here but a fresh bag, and my team wouldn’t have put in a new lining if there’d been trash in the waste can, and we’d needed to bag it for evidence.”

  “Right. Your team’s not the cleaning crew.”

  “Damned straight,” he said, setting the trashcan back under the sink. He then stood back and surveyed the kitchen, his lips pursed in a frown. “We’ve already canvased the neighborhood. On the night in question, nobody saw anything unusual besides a silver Mercedes in the driveway, and we’ve already traced that to the Murphys.”

  “Grigori’s guests?”

  “Yeah.”

  I motioned to the back door. “There’s an alley that runs right behind the house. The caterer-slash-killer could’ve parked there, and no one would’ve been the wiser.”

  Kincaid moved to the back door and peered out. The alley was maybe twenty-five feet to the left of the door.

  “Damn,” he said, stepping back from the window. “I missed all of this on my initial search of the house.” He looked at me appraisingly. “Good job.”

  “We’re not home free yet,” I reminded him. “We still have to confirm that there was a caterer scheduled to show up here that night.”

  “I’ve already got a warrant for Grigori’s phone records. I should have those results sometime today. I’ll be able to trace any number he called.”

  “Good. That’s good,” I said, lifting my elbow to sniff at my jacket. “In the meantime, I gotta get home for a shower. The stink in this house is starting to leave its mark.”

  Kincaid and I headed to the front door, which he opened and allowed me through first. I waited while he resealed the door and locked it, and we both turned to startle at the sight of Elric Ostergaard standing at the base of the steps.

  “Oh, shit,” I whispered.

  “Hello, Esmé,” Elric said ever so pleasantly. “How’s the quest coming?”

  My eyes darted around the front yard and past the gate to the street. No one else was about. Elric, it appeared, had come alone, and the distinction between his wife sending a posse of big, thuggish mystics after Kincaid and me compared with Elric, who’d simply shown up on his own, wasn’t lost on me. It emphasized how frighteningly powerful he was.

  As if I needed the reminder.

  “Elric,” I said in a far more casual tone than I felt. “What brings you by?”

  The mystic took one step forward and looked pointedly at Kincaid. “I believe I asked my question first. And when you answer, you also might want to tell me what you’re doing in the company of my wife’s lieutenant?”

  “He’s not Petra’s lieutenant,” I said quickly. “This is Gideon Kincaid. Finn’s twin.”

  Next to me Kincaid stepped forward, his expression triumphant as he whipped out both his badge and his gun. “Elric Ostergaard, I’ve been trying to track you down for a long, long time. You’re under arrest for—”

  My hand clamped down hard on Kincaid’s arm, and I jerked him backward. “Do. Not. Speak!” I hissed. Turning back to Elric, I added, “Gideon is assisting me with the quest.”

  Elric cocked an eyebrow. His disappointment in me was evident. “My employees do not fraternize with the police. You know this, Esmé.”

  “You’re trespassing,” Kincaid barked. “And you’re under arrest.”

  I slapped him on the arm. Hard. To Elric I said, “I know this isn’t an ideal partnership, Elric, however, without Gideon’s contacts, locating your trinket will be significantly more difficult.”

  Elric blinked lazily. “You’re a thief, looking to join my organization, and you can’t even locate the trinket you promised me?”

  “I can,” I insisted, careful to make my voice ring with confidence. “Given enough time, I certainly can. But you’ve given me only four days to bring you a trinket your organization has actively been looking to find for the past century. I’m close, Elric. Allow me to use the resources available to me or lose the egg forever.”

  In that moment, my head snapped back from an unseen blow that spun me around and dropped me to my knees.

  From the ground, my cheek burning from the blow, I watched Elric take two steps closer. “Are you really stupid enough to threaten me, Esmé?”

  “Okay, that’s it!” Kincaid snapped, and he began to move in Elric’s direction, his gun raised. “Put your hands above your head, Ostergaard!”

  I opened my mouth to yell at him, but it was too late. Kincaid was suddenly hurtled into the air and thrown back against the house with such force that it stunned me—to say nothing of what it did to him.

  For his part, Elric stood stock still, but then he raised one finger, pointing it toward Kincaid, and a series of high-pitched clicks emanated out from Elric in a wave pointed directly at Kincaid.

  He stood there, pinned against the wall of the house, his mouth agape, his expression pained, and the gun dropped out of his hand to clatter on the wooden porch.

  The clicks became louder, and even though Elric’s finger wasn’t pointing at me, I could feel a vibration emanating from the sound reverberating through my solar plexus.

  And then Elric spoke. “Esmé,” he said casually, “did you know that the sperm whale can emit sounds that reach two-hundred and thirty decibels?”

  “Elric …” I said, desperately trying to think of the words that might save Kincaid’s life, and maybe even my own.

  But Elric wasn’t interested in anything I had to say. “The sound waves are so powerful that they can be heard by other sperm whales on the other side of the planet. They can also, literally, vibrate a man to death.”

  The clicking grew louder still.

  Kincaid’s whole face registered the pain. His eyes widened, sweat broke out across his brow, his limbs shook in spasms, and his complexion was so pale that he looked already dead.

  I stood up and bowed at the waist to Elric. “I need him.”

  When I dared to look up, I saw that Elric�
�s gaze had shifted to me. “He’s an unmentored, lowly mystic working for the APD. I hardly think you’ll miss him.”

  “But that’s exactly why you shouldn’t kill him. It’ll only draw APD’s attention to you and your organization.”

  Elric smiled cruelly. “There won’t be enough left of him to draw attention.”

  Kincaid’s body began to vibrate violently against the side of the house. Elric would shatter Kincaid into a million pieces if I didn’t stop him soon.

  “But the Flayer would find out,” I said, still trying to reason with him. “And that would start a war. Do you really want that?”

  Elric shrugged, his attention still on Kincaid. The clicking intensified. “Petra’s errand boy is no match for me.”

  “Of course he isn’t,” I said. “But he’s a match for any of your employees, and trust me, Finn the Flayer wouldn’t come after you. He’d just cripple your organization, slow business, and cause some vulnerabilities. And with Hideyo in town, is this really the time for skirmishes?”

  Elric took his gaze off Kincaid and eyed me critically. “Who told you Hideyo is here?”

  “Petra’s cha—” I caught myself. I was entering very dangerous waters mentioning Clepsydra to Elric. He’d want to know how I came to be in the company of Clepsydra and I’d have to confess to him about being with Tic when he was abducted and Tic was the reason Elric and Petra were at odds. Still, I didn’t see how it could be avoided. Clearing my throat, I tried again, using Marco’s well-known nickname. “Tic was kidnapped. He might even be dead. My sources tell me that Clepsydra and Petra sense Rubi’s handiwork in the air.”

  Elric rolled his eyes. “A rumor, no doubt, begun by the two of them.”

  I shook my head vigorously. I was running out of time to convince Elric, and I didn’t know how much longer Kincaid could hang in there. “It’s not a rumor. I was there when he was abducted. I was in the apartment when it blew. I felt the force of the energy that caused it. Only someone as powerful as one of the Seven or one of their advisers could’ve pulled it off.”

  Elric eyed me critically again. “What were you doing with Petra’s mutt?”

  “He’s a source. At least he was. But I swear to you, on my life, Elric, he was taken from his girlfriend’s apartment by a hostile force of immense power.”