Dead Heat (28 page)

“Do you—” Leslie glanced at the fae again. She cleared her throat. “I don’t mean to be giving orders, but they are better than questions under the circumstances. Given that he is tied to this place, tell me if you think he will know anything about our quarry. Please.”

Charles shrugged. “The chances are pretty good; fae gossip like everyone else.”

“Right.”

A woman ran out of the house. She was older, Charles thought, but in impressive shape for a human of her age. In one hand she held a camera with very big lens attached.

“Can I take photos?” she asked as she ran up to them, out of breath. She was looking at Anna, but she did not specify.

“Yes,” said the fae, his voice suddenly mocking. “You can take photos, Katie, but I fear you
may
not. You’ll have to ask the wolves.” He looked at Charles and smiled. “That is question one. Two more.”

The woman’s face paled as she took in the whole tableau. “I screwed things up.”

“Leslie, ask your questions,” Charles said when it looked as though they were going to get bogged down in extraneous conversation that might include more irrelevant questions.

“I’m so sorry,” said the stranger, but she subsided when Charles shook his head at her.

Leslie took a deep breath and then ran with it. She described in detail what they knew, told the fae about the missing girl, about the attempt to force Chelsea to kill her own children. She added a bit that she and Anna must have discovered, about an attempted kidnapping almost forty years ago. She didn’t talk about the other things, the ones they weren’t absolutely certain were related to their fae, the teacher who hanged herself or the car accident.

“My first question is, then, what exactly do you know about the fae who kidnapped Amethyst Miller and left a fetch, a changeling, in her place?”

The fae half shut his eyes, searching for a way out. It probably didn’t matter to him how much he told, except that fae didn’t like giving their secrets away.

“Once upon a time there was a High Court fae,” he said finally. “Now, the fae of the High Court, they are great ones for stealing human children and teaching them to fetch and carry, to work and to give life to the below lands. This one, this one maybe loved children too much, or maybe the twist happened sometime during the very long time it took Faery to fall in the Old World. His kind take children, but this one, this one, he loved children, stole them from the humans and turned them into his toys until they died and he had to replace them.”

The fae looked around slyly. “Humans are such fragile things. It was a hobby for him, but when the magic fell and rose and fell again, it took that part of him and twisted it into a geas such as we low fae must follow but usually the powered fae, like the High Court fae, do not.” There was glee in his voice, though his human facade was still bland and doll-like. “So now he must have a child for his collection. He keeps them for a year and a day and then consumes them entirely, at which time he has to collect another. He feeds on the change that time brings upon them, see?”

He looked at Anna and smiled. Charles felt a rush of magic and put a hand on his mate’s head. She raised her head and growled at the fae man, showing him her fangs.

He can’t pull that trick on me twice.
Anna’s clear voice rang in his head.
Justin is dead. If the fae wants to wear his face, that is just fine.

Rage, squelched earlier, rose like a phoenix. Brother Wolf would kill this one without a twinge of conscience. Not that wolves regretted much. Regret, like guilt, they mostly left to their human halves. He veiled his eyes because he knew that they had lightened to wolf amber from his own human dark brown.

Leslie started to ask another question, but Charles shook his head. “He’s not finished answering the first question,” he said. His voice was too rough again, but he couldn’t help it. He looked the wearden in the eyes, and the creature took a step back and his magic sputtered and died. “And don’t ask about High Court fae. I know of their kind and can answer any questions you have about them.”

The wearden sneered at him. Charles just watched him back coolly.

The fae’s expression gradually grew sulky again and finally he continued. “The humans in Scotland a century ago broke into one of his lairs. They called him the Doll Collector because the girls were dressed up like dolls. The one who was still alive would not talk. She died a few weeks later. But it became impossible for that fae to live in Scotland anymore. Like many of us, though later than some, he hopped aboard a steamer and came to the New World.”

They waited. When Leslie would have said something, Charles shook his head.

Finally the wearden spoke again. “He lived here—” The fae gave an address that Leslie jotted down. “For a long time. But when the Gray Lords decided that it was necessary for the fae to reveal themselves…”

He rubbed his hands down the front of his shirt and looked around nervously. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“I understand that bad things happen to fae who break their word,” said Charles silkily. “The powers that be don’t approve of lying.”

The fae gave him a nasty look. “The Gray Lords went to the less publicity-friendly fae and forced them to behave. They went to the Doll Collector and took away his power. They froze his need, and his ability, to take the children and left him to his own devices. I did not hear of him again until the Gray Lords released some of the monsters they hold, and that one came back here hungry.” He flashed Charles a look of intense dislike. “That is all I know about the Doll Collector, except for the information you have given me.”

“What can stop him?” asked Leslie.

The fae grinned at her. Only his mouth moved, which looked odd. Either he was trying to freak out the humans, or this fae really had little experience trying to look human. “Death stops everything.”

It dropped the appearance of humanity and stepped back among the trees in the corner of the garden and became a small, scraggly tree in the shade of the big fruit tree.

“Sorry,” Leslie told Charles. “I guess I was hoping for Kryptonite, you know?”

Charles shook his head. “Your first question was good. It told us everything it knew.” He glanced at Leeds, who had been writing as the fae spoke. “You have that address, right?”

“I have it. I’ve texted it to our research division. They’ll have the ownership records and whatever else they can find, like house plans, back to us as soon as they can.”

“Excuse me.” The woman he didn’t know, presumably the owner of the house, spoke to Leslie. “Do you think I might get a photograph of the werewolf? Photography is a hobby of mine and she is beautiful.”

Leslie raised her eyebrows and looked at Charles. “What do you think?”

He was inclined to refuse. “Anna?”

She hopped on the big granite boulder and posed, looking graceful. And cute. Which was pretty amazing, because werewolves could be beautiful, but they were predators. Cute was not, usually, in the picture. But then, his Anna was amazing.

We have some time because we need to wait until we have a little more information on the address, right?
Her voice inside him still felt new and wondrous. He was so grateful not to be alone.
We need to know if we’re breaking into a fae’s prison or the home of some poor slob who happened to buy the house in the last fifty years. And we owe Ms. Jamison. How much damage did you do to her house?

He smiled at her. “Yes,” he said to Anna, forgetting that everyone couldn’t hear her. “I’ll pay for the damage, of course, but a little PR repair might be in order.”

Charles left a business card, one with only an e-mail address and a PO box, for Ms. Jamison to send the estimates for repairs. She wanted him to sign a release for the photographs, but he shook his head.

“I’m not the one you photographed,” he said.

“Photos showing people’s faces need release forms or I can’t use them,” Ms. Jamison complained sharply.

“Werewolves are in a gray area,” he told her. “Use them. If someone gives you trouble about it, write to the address on the card and we’ll take care of it.”

Leeds’s phone rang, and whoever was on the other end had news. The house at the address the wearden had given them was owned by the estate of a woman who’d died twenty years ago. It was cared for by a property management company for the past fifty years until, in fact, a few months ago when the renters had been asked to leave.

“Keep looking for the owner,” Leeds told them. “We’re headed over to that address. Three federal agents with two werewolves for backup. We’ll be okay.” He put his phone away. “Let’s go check this out.”

“Good luck,” said Ms. Jamison. “I hope you find her.”

Charles rode with Leslie, who followed Marsden and Leeds since they were local and knew the area. Anna stretched out in the backseat of Leslie’s car. She grumbled because there just wasn’t room in the backseat for a two-hundred-pound werewolf to be both comfortable and secure.

“Not designed for wolves,” he told Anna sympathetically.

Riding with Leslie was less troublesome than riding with the Cantrip agents. He liked them well enough, but Brother Wolf approved of Leslie, and she drove better.

They followed Marsden’s dark sedan for a few more miles, away from upscale houses and into neighborhoods a few notches further down on the economic scale, before Leslie spoke again. “Her change was very slow compared to yours.”

“We’re all different,” he said after a moment’s thought. “But I’m more different than most. And yes, there is a more detailed explanation for it that I’m not at liberty to tell you.”

She laughed unexpectedly. “My security clearance isn’t high enough?”

“You aren’t a werewolf,” he said, half apologetically.

“Yes, Mr.
Smith
,” she said. “Just remember, as many politicians can attest personally, secrets tend to come out at the worst possible time and blow up in your face.”

“We’re trying for a controlled release,” he said.

She laughed again, and he wondered how well she sang. Maybe she’d like to sing with Anna and him sometime. If her singing voice was like her laugh, it would blend very well with Anna’s. He was adding in Anna’s cello and a little piano … or maybe even guitar to the song in his head when Marsden pulled over in front of a mailbox that fronted a piece of property with a tagged and crumbling eight-foot cinder-block wall.

On the corner of the block stood a run-down apartment building with a full parking lot of cars that showed signs of spending a decade or two in the unforgiving Arizona sun. Next to it, across the street from where they had parked, was a small house with a fenced-in yard in which a puppy and two boys played a complicated game of fetch and tag.

“This is it,” said Marsden. “We have a search warrant fast-tracked because of the terrorist angle and endangered child. Leeds called the management company and they say as far as they know it has been empty since they were asked to remove the renter. The lady he talked to said she thought they were still managing it but had no record of any maintenance or interaction with the owners since last December. She did not know why they cleared out the previous renters—only that the owners requested it. Her boss is on vacation in Florida. She’s looking for the paperwork.”

The wooden gates were half-opened. The left-hand gate drooped sadly to the ground.

Marsden would have led, but Charles stepped in. “Let Anna and me lead. We don’t know what we’ll find, and the two of us are less likely to get hurt if it’s bad.”

Marsden retreated with his hands up. “All right.”

“And stay with us,” Charles added. “If this is the fae’s home, he is unlikely to run.” This was why he didn’t like working with humans: they died too easily. “Stay with us and we’ll do what we can to keep you alive if it attacks.”

Leslie pulled her weapon and held it down against her leg. “We’ll do the same for you,” she said dryly.

He smiled at her and then ducked through the person-sized gap between the tall gates, Anna at his side.

This was not the first dangerous situation Anna had strolled into at her husband’s side. She was, if she felt like being honest, pretty humiliated by her performance with the fae in Ms. Jamison’s garden. Big bad werewolf reduced to shivers by a wussy little garden fae. What was it Charles had called it? A wearden.

Humiliation was better than the shiver of horror that the thought of Justin called up. Funny, she didn’t remember being that terrified of him while he was alive. Terrified, yes, but reduced to shivering like a jellyfish, no. Maybe the wearden’s magic had done something to make her fear worse. But if so, why did her stomach still ache?

But she had a job to do, and she shoveled Justin to the dark dungeon in her mind where she kept him and he only bothered her in her nightmares.

Inside the walls, the yard was barren, not xeriscaped, but zero-scaped. Red soil with patches of dead vegetation provided no cover for anything to hide behind. She breathed in deeply but smelled nothing unusual: no magic, no fae, nothing but dust.

And yet … she put her nose down and half crept, half walked. Her ears drooped slightly in unease that was not, she didn’t think, spawned from her earlier fright.

Do you have anything?
Charles asked her.

Her lips pulled up involuntarily, a threat display of teeth for—
Nothing,
she told him,
and yet …

She shivered in the warmth of the high sun. It was not summer, but in Scottsdale that didn’t mean it wasn’t warm, nearly eighty degrees. She could smell the others’ sweat.

I let that fae spook me,
she told him.
I’m overreacting.

He shook his head.
No birds, no insects, nothing living here at all. There are ghosts here; they burn my skin with their breath. Stay alert.

“In the front door?” asked Leslie.

“If he’s in there, he already knows we are here,” Charles told her. “Front door, back door, or down the chimney, we’re not going to have surprise on our side.” He added, “I don’t smell anyone. Anna?”

She jerked her head in a negative, but a growl rumbled in her chest.
Do you feel it?