Chaos Burning (6 page)

Her eyes widened. Funny how some women got that same face when they got jewelry or other baubles but hers lit up over interviewing someone. Odd woman.

“Yes, I’d really like that. He wasn’t all that bad once I broke his nose.”

He laughed. Odd, but endearing. “That’s like a mating dance in my culture.”

She grinned.

They moved back out to their table.

“I’d like a shot. What do you have, Simon?”

“Is that a challenge?”

“It wasn’t. But it totally is now.”

“You’re dandelion fluff. A sweet little pixie. I can drink you under the table simply because I’m a foot taller and a great deal heavier.”

She shrugged. “If you say so.”

One brow raised, he had a server bring over a bottle of tequila and some shot glasses.

“I’m hungry. Do you have food here?”

He also sent an order to the kitchen for a tray of appetizers to be sent over.

“Ready?” He poured two shots.

“I was born ready. Grr.” She saluted him and took the shot, licking her lips.

The tequila was top-shelf so it went down smooth and easy.

“Are you wearing socks on your hands? Why?” She was such a mishmash of styles and colors. It amused him.

She smiled and he liked the openness of her features when she did. “They’re not socks.” She wiggled her fingers, the nails painted tangerine. “See? They’re like leg warmers only for your arms. Wrist warmers, they’re called. My mother makes them for me.”

Another shot and then one more and the food arrived. She didn’t appear any worse for wear, but she was small. He didn’t want to take any chances with her getting sick. That and he hated it when women puked.

“Man I’m going to have to run a few extra miles tomorrow,”
Lark said as she loaded her plate. “I usually just run in my neighborhood back home but I don’t think I can here.”

“There’s a track on the fifteenth floor of the building our old place is in.” Meriel snagged an egg roll. “Use your key in the elevator and it’ll let you out there. Full gym too.”

“Oh, good to know, thanks. Someone told me Green Lake was a good place to run too. Is that so? The potential for shame if I punk out is better in public.” She winked.

“You can use my land if you like. Park in my driveway and if I’m not there, head east around the house and you’ll get to my gardens. Follow the main path a quarter of a mile or so and you’ll get to the trail. It’s still the forest, but if you stick to the path it’s been manicured well for running.”

“Really? Thanks. I love to run outside. Do you run, you know, as your other self? Here on this side?”

“Yes, when I can.”

“I’ve never seen a fully shifted Lycian. If you, well, you know, if you want to run with me, I’d be fine with that too.”

“All right. But not if you’re one of those people who are up at five.”

She poured them another round of shots. “I am serious about many things. One of them is sleep. I’m a night person. I’m far happier to be in bed at three and up at ten or eleven. The best stuff happens after dark.”

He looked her over carefully. She was tipsy, yes, but so was he. She wasn’t drunk though.

“Are you using magick to outdrink me? Not fair, little pixie. Not fair at all.”

Her eyes widened and she frowned. “I did not! I don’t need to use magick to outdrink anyone. It’s just something about me. I can drink most anyone under the table. I have a fast metabolism.”

Duly chastened, he leaned back and tried not to smirk.

“Little pixie? Hmm.” She took another shot.

“He’s nineteen feet tall, I guess everyone’s little compared to him.” Meriel sent him a wink. “I should have warned you about Lark’s hollow leg. She can eat and eat and eat and not gain a single pound. It’s annoying.”

“It’s a gift.” Lark shrugged.

They sat and drank for a while, eating and talking about all things unrelated to work.

“Simon, that woman at the bar is totally eye-fucking you. If you’ll admit defeat, you can get over there and take her up on her offer.”

“You’re incorrigible.” He mock frowned at her. He’d seen the woman Lark meant. Had seen her earlier when Gage had pointed her out as well. It wasn’t that he didn’t find that level of confidence in going after what one wanted attractive. But the woman at the bar wasn’t his type.

“I’m told this, yes. But I promise not to cockblock you or anything.”

Groaning, he shook his head. “Good to know. It’s a fine quality in a friend. I can, however, land my own ladies. And I
never
admit defeat.”

She rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t change reality. I want to dance.” Standing, she stretched before bending at the waist and gathering her hair, which she twisted into a messy knot. “Anyone want to join me?”

“You’re going out front?”

“Too gothy in here for me. I love to listen to industrial, but it’s not as easy to dance to as the stuff you’re playing out there.”

“I know the owners. I can suggest something else to the DJ, you know.” Simon didn’t want her out there. It was safer back where they were. He’d have been just as concerned about any of his male friends, of course. But she was small. It brought his protective instincts out.

“You’d do that for me?”

“I’m sure you’d eat some of those human boys alive anyway if you went out there.”

“Pshaw, Simon Leviathan! I don’t want to kill them. Though the eating part, well, that’s optional. Anyway, I don’t fool with humans. Too fragile. Too messy. I don’t like to hide my life from anyone I’m dating. Takes too much time and energy.”

He of course agreed about dating humans.

“Safer back here.” He slid from the booth and sought out the DJ. Soon enough something less dark and menacing came over the sound system. Must have done the trick because by the time he got back to his booth she’d made her way out
to the dance floor where a long, lanky wolf had already danced up close.

“Gonna be a lot quieter around here when she goes back to L.A.” Gage drained his drink and put it down. “I’m heading home for the night, folks. I told Nell I’d take a morning meeting for her. She’s more tired now that her second trimester is nearly over.”

Meriel smiled at him. “I told her to reschedule that meeting for later in the day, for heaven’s sake. There’s no need for her to do any of this. I keep saying she needs to start delegating anyway.”

Back home, females who were pregnant had the pack to count on for help. Like a huge extended family. Females would have their young and had plenty of time to recover as the babe would grow and mature. Here it was often different, though within Clan Owen, he could see it was much the same. And would continue to be now that Meriel had taken over leadership.

“It’s okay. I should get to sleep anyway. She gets agitated when stuff gets moved around at the last minute and I really can’t complain.”

“Oh! You’re sweet on Rose, aren’t you? That’s why you don’t care about moving the meeting. You want to see her.” Meriel leaned in, waiting for an answer.

“Who’s Rose?” Simon had wondered if Gage and Lark were going to hook up.

“She works in the IT department, which is what the meeting is about so she’ll be running it. Adorable.” Meriel grinned and Gage just groaned.

“The two of you will be the death of me. Rose is going to walk me through the new cataloging program. It’s the one that will connect us to the national database. It’s what you wanted anyway, Meriel. We’re one of three clans to have it and we’ll do a test run. If it works out, the other clans will begin implementing it and we’ll have a lot more information at our fingertips. We can share our data with everyone, and vice versa.”

He waved and headed over to Lark. She hugged him and kissed his cheek before Gage left.

“You think there’s something between him and this Rose person? I thought he had googly eyes for Lark.”

“There’s some chemistry there.” Dominic shrugged. “You can see it. But it’s not… ripe. It’s a
what if
sort of thing.”

“Anyway, he knows her well enough to know she’d be a handful as a girlfriend.” Meriel snuggled into Dominic’s side.

“Handful?”

“She’s her own person. She likes what she likes. You should see her with her sister, Helena. Two more competitive women I’ve never met.”

“What’s that story anyway? I just know she and her sister have some sort of tension about a dude.”

Meriel gave him a look. “Not in the way you think. Neither of them would ever do anything like that to the other. It’s a long story and she seems to not want to talk about it. They’re very close. Someone got in the middle of it and it set them both back for a loop.”

He respected that she didn’t want to share details if Lark would feel uncomfortable so he nodded. “I understand that.” He’d ask her himself when the time was right.

Chapter 5

IT’D
felt like she’d only been asleep twenty minutes when her phone started ringing. With an annoyed sigh, she rolled over and grabbed it. “Jaansen.”

It was Gage. “There’s been another kidnapping. We think anyway.”

She sat up, pushing her hair from her face, already alert. “Hang on, let me get something to write on.” Luckily her pad and pen weren’t far so she was able to get back to Gage quickly. “Okay, go.”

“Just got off the phone with Toronto. Two witches have gone missing. Both fairly high up in the clan. A bonded couple.”

“Shit.”

“Yes. Toronto was one of Gloria Ochoa’s feeding grounds back when she was alive. Some of the earliest disappearances of witches who turned up drained and dead were around there.” He paused. “They need some help. Are you up for it? It shouldn’t be a long trip, but they don’t know much about the mage situation and they could use the expertise. I can go if you can’t.”

Now that she’d left home, she wasn’t so lonely for it. It’d been a busy two weeks since she’d arrived in Seattle. The whole point was to be useful so why not? “Nah, it’s why I came up here to begin with. I can be on a plane in a few hours.”

He gave her all the pertinent details and contact info and she was out of bed and in motion.

IT
took her pretty much all day long to get there, but when she did, she was greeted by Dray Carter, the hunter for Clan Septiem and his second in command, Portia.

“Appreciate the help. Nell has been singing your praises.” He looked her up and down. “You’re not going to last long with that coat. We’ll stop by the house and get you something better.”

They hadn’t been kidding. Though she’d acclimated to Seattle’s far chillier weather, this, well, Toronto’s November was a whole different universe of cold. They hustled her through any open-air situations as quickly as possible and as promised, provided her with a far warmer coat when they dropped her bags off.

“What do you need?” Dray asked as they headed back out.

She needed to put it all together. Like a puzzle. So she’d start gathering the pieces. “I need some hot coffee. They were a bonded couple right?”

Dray nodded. “Together for nine years.”

“I read the file on the plane.” And she’d been convinced it was indeed the work of these turned witches. They’d been at this long enough to have patterns. And the pattern here wasn’t one that boded well for the witches who’d been taken. “I’d like to see where they work and where they live.”

Brandy and Ernie Pollard had disappeared three days before. At first no one really noticed. The two had gone out to dinner with friends on Tuesday evening. The last time anyone had seen them. Wednesday came and neither showed up for work. Which was so unusual people suspected a problem right off and sent someone over to the house to check on them. That’s when they found signs of a struggle. Portia and Dray had gone out looking right away and had come up empty
but for the smudge of magic that’d been used. Enough to know to call Owen.

“We’ll take you to the house first.”

Brandy and Ernie’s house wasn’t too far from Dray’s, but Lark used the time to get herself and her magick centered. She couldn’t afford to miss a single detail. In the last several disappearances, the only times they were successful at getting their people back alive had been in three days or less. They were right on that deadline and she had no plans to let these mages kill any more of her people.

Getting out of the car, Portia plopped a big hat on Lark’s head and handed her gloves, which she took quickly and stepped away from them to open up her othersight. They left her alone as she reached down deep inside and threw the locks on her magick. The filters she used fell away and she saw the world on an entirely different level. Colors popped to life, the energies and magickal signatures of those Others in the area settled into place.

The cool, focused blue of witches. Some green. “Weres around here by any chance?”

Portia nodded. “Yes, across the street. This is an Other neighborhood. At least five other families on the three blocks around us. Werewolves, a vampire and some witches.”

Lark walked, her magick surging through her body. She let it lead. Let her magick do what it did best. It knew more than her brain did just what to look for. The cold gave the air a sharpness, a clean scent that helped her cut past anything but signatures she cared about. Around the back of the house she saw it. The muddy smudge of a turned witch. “Here.” She pointed and kept walking.

The wards were amateurish. With all the danger around for them, it seemed criminal for two full-council witches with all that power not to have warded better, or at the very least to have had witches who were good at warding come out and do it for them.

“Wards are weak.” The words were sort of offhand as she moved. Her magick sang through her consciousness, filling her with that sharpness of wit and attention she needed to do her job.

She saw the world she moved through. The furniture, other people, all that. But with her othersight open, she saw the energies all around. Energies most people never noticed. But magick created a subtle change in the air, left an imprint. That’s what her othersight helped her focus on.

Inside the back door and she saw more. “Two distinct signatures here. A turned witch and…” She came to a halt, breathing deep. “Well now, this is interesting.” Crouching, she caught a wisp of something different. “What do we have here?” Yellow with some orange. Jagged like a prickle burr.