World Weaver (The Devany Miller Series Book 4) (6 page)

“I have a warrant to search your house, Ms. Miller, in regards to the disappearance of your daughter, Bethany Miller.”

Mouth dry, I took the paperwork he offered and scanned it, my brain not registering what I was reading, too focused was I on the neighbors’ doors popping open to gawk at the spectacle. “Of course. Go ahead.”

“Dev,” Travis started, my name a bitten off growl in his mouth.

“It’s all right.”

“No it’s not. Why the hell are you searching our house instead of looking for my niece?”

“I understand you were dating the woman who allegedly took Ms. Miller’s daughter, is that correct?”

Travis’ mouth thinned to a white line and I laid my hand on his arm, hoping to keep him from blowing up at the detective. “Yes.”

“Why don’t we step outside and let my officers do their jobs.”

Shaking, though trying to hide it, I stepped out onto the porch with my brother and the detective while the officers went inside my house to poke through all my things. It was awful, knowing strangers would be nosing around in my stuff without my permission. It wasn’t as if they would find anything either, I told myself. No, I hadn’t told the police the whole truth—they would never believe that a witch took my daughter to another world—but I hadn’t lied, either. Arsinua had kidnapped my daughter.

“Do you remember Officer Perrit, Ms. Miller?”

I nodded. She’d been the first officer on the scene of Tom’s murder and had comforted both the kids and me soon after. She’d also not believed me when I said I didn’t know who had killed him. Witches, again. These, criminals from Midia, bent on avenging the death of their leader Yarnell.

“She always suspected that you weren’t being completely honest with her. My gut says you’re lying about something.” I opened my mouth to protest and he held up a hand. “You are leaving out important information. I don’t know why. Maybe you’re scared. Maybe you’re involved in something that got out of hand, I don’t know. But I wish you’d tell me for your daughter’s sake.”

Travis, the detective and I were outside; the rest of the cops were in my house. Most of the neighbors, having seen me emerge from my house, had at least gone inside to peer at us through their blinds. Travis glowered at the detective, his hands balled into fists. The detective saw it—he had his hand on the gun at his waist and he broadened his stance in preparation.

I took a deep breath, told myself I was being an idiot, and made a hook under the detective’s feet. I dropped him through to the Slip.

***

“What the hell did you do, Dev?” Travis shouted.

“Shh. I have to show him. He thinks I’m involved and he knows I’m not telling him everything. I have to show him and maybe he’ll cut me some slack. You won’t even know we were gone.” I hooked away too and joined the detective as he vomited onto the ground. The Slip hadn’t looked wrong for a long time now. I’d almost forgotten how awful it was to human eyes.

“What did you do? Where am I?”

I smiled and leaned over. “I brought you to my world.” As we spoke, I mentally tugged on the ribbon connecting me to Kali. I could have called Tytan, but he looked human and that wouldn’t impress upon the detective how fucked he was. Kali would convince him that this was Hell and I’d dropped him in it.

She came in a swirl of black smoke, the showboater. “What is this? A soul to cull?”

“No. Just a human to scare.”

Knives appeared in her hands—all eight. The detective stumbled to his feet, gripping the butt of his gun, his face pale. Kali and I both put up bubbles as the gun cleared its holster. He shot at her three times before he realized nothing was getting through the energy around her body. And then she advanced on him and he stumbled back, catching a heel on a bump that appeared out of nowhere. His arms pinwheeled and then he dropped.

“This is what I was leaving out. This.” Still in my bubble because of his gun, I moved in on him. “How could I tell you that the people who killed my husband, the woman who gave the orders, came from another world? You would never have believed me.”

“I—I don’t. This can’t. I.”

I nodded to Kali and she conjured flames in each hand, the knives’ blades dancing with fire. “She is but one of a multitude of the monsters who live here. We are between worlds, Detective. My daughter was taken to another place, a place called Midia. I have been looking for her every waking minute. I cannot do that if you’re constantly harassing me on Earth. I brought you here to show you what I’ve been leaving out—leaving out for your own sanity!” The last words were a shout and brought onlookers, though these were of the Skriven variety, rather than the nosy neighbor kind.

Could a man’s mind snap from seeing so much crazy all at once? I didn’t care. I was tired, I was scared that I would never see my daughter again, and there was that dark place inside me that was very glad to see the detective roll around in his own fear. “Now, put away your gun and I’ll take you back to Earth.”

It took him a good long minute to get to his feet, his legs unsteady. Another few tries to get his gun in his holster, and then he nodded at me, his eyes on Kali. I dropped us both back to Earth next to Travis. Being in the Slip meant that no time passed while we were gone. Which meant no one would have even noticed our absence, I reminded myself, glancing across the street.

The detective was still wild-eyed. I hoped he’d get himself under control before his colleagues finished ransacking my house. “You won’t find anything.”

He took a breath. Let it out. Rubbed a hand over his balding head. “What the hell was that?”

Travis had a look of grim satisfaction on his face. Remembering his trip to the Slip, I supposed, though I had taken him and my cousin to Tytan’s manse, which was easier on the uninitiated. I said, “I am searching for my daughter. I promise you that I won’t rest until I find her. But I can’t do that with you breathing down my neck. I’m barely holding it together now.”

Warwick looked at me, really looked at me. “That thing …”

“Kali.”

He did a double take. “The goddess?”

“She’s a Skriven. A demon. As am I.” I put a little warning in my tone, a little menace. Just a mask I was putting on, but I wanted to scare him so he’d listen to me when I said, ‘back off.’

“Did you kill Harrison Perkins?”

“No.” Liar, liar, pants on fire.

“What about Marco Rivera?”

That had been Tytan, not me. “No.”

“That thing that you do, that magic trick. You could go anywhere, do anything.”

“Yeah, I could.” I let that sink in. “And I have demon friends who like blood. I could make a whole lot of trouble and I don’t. All I want is my daughter, and to be left alone long enough to find her. Please.”

He didn’t answer me, just took a few dozen steps away, and took up his alert stance.

Had I made a mistake in showing him the Slip? Perhaps he’d put two and two together and realize that he would never keep me in a jail cell. And he’d never be able to tell anyone about me, either, or they’d think he was insane.

I’d put him between a rock and a hard spot and didn’t know if it would do any good. Sure, he was now aware there was shit happening beyond normal human ken, but everyone else would be operating under the impression that reality was as they saw it. There would still be other officers looking at this case wondering what I was hiding. I couldn’t take them all to the Slip.

“I didn’t show you to scare you, not completely. I showed you because I needed someone else to understand even a tenth of what I’m dealing with, have been dealing with, since I inadvertently wandered into this mess months ago. I know you can’t drop this investigation. I know that. But I was telling you the truth about Arsinua. She did take my daughter. Right now she’s hiding on that other world I told you about, but she might come back here. If she does, I want you to still be looking so that she can be put in jail for what she’s done.”

“If she can pop out—”

So he had put two and two together. “She doesn’t have the same sort of powers I do. If you put her in jail, she’d stay there.”

It was an hour before the officers came out, some carrying garbage bags with my things inside them. I didn’t know what they’d taken and decided it didn’t matter. They wouldn’t find anything to implicate me in either Bethy’s disappearance or the murders.

The detective didn’t say anything else to me except, “We’ll be in touch,” before he slid into a patrol car and drove off with the rest.

Travis and I went back inside to clean up the mess they left behind.

***

I was refolding my clothes and putting them back into my drawers when Tytan popped in. He was still shirtless, of course, and had a look in his eyes that made me put up a hand. “What?”

“Why did you bring that detective to the Slip without letting me play with him?”

I raised my eyebrows. “How did you know I did that?”

“I smelled you.”

First the Anforsa, now Ty. That wasn’t creepy at all. “I had to get him off my back. So I took him there and hopefully scared the shit out of him.” I backed away from him, putting the bed between us.

Shit. That was pretty much the metaphor for our relationship.

His grim smile told me he’d listened into my thoughts again. Damn it. Whatever connection we had was stronger now that he’d regained his true soul. He asked, “Why do you do it?”

“What?”

“Play around at being Skriven.”

Deciding I wouldn’t be intimidated by him, I left the false safety of the far side of the mattress and crossed the room to my dresser and the clothes I’d piled on top. I shook out a shirt and folded it. “I am using the tools I have at my disposal to get my daughter back. That’s all.”

He had me up against the wall in the next second. “I am not a tool.”

I stared hard at him and then flicked my gaze to the hands pinning my shoulders. “Oh, really?”

“It hurts.” He let me go, but didn’t move away. When I breathed, my chest brushed his.

“What does?”

“Not having you.”

I rolled my eyes and he pressed close.

“It’s not a joke,” he snarled. “Whatever that bitch did to us, she bound us together. You think I like it? Like being tied to you?”

“Why did you save me, then?” I countered. He flinched back and I followed. “Why did you let her torture you instead of me? Why? If you hate being tied to me so much, why didn’t you let Ravana kill me?” The tug of magic in my belly warned me and I grabbed his arm before he hooked away. “No. You don’t get to run away from me this time. Answer the question.”

Tendons stood out stark on his neck. His jaw worked, the muscles jumping. Finally he said, “I couldn’t let her hurt you the way she hurt me.”

“You didn’t have your soul. It shouldn’t have mattered to you one way or the other.”

He walked away from me. I tensed, expecting him to vanish, but he stayed. “Even without your soul you didn’t kill indiscriminately. You played games. You were strategic.”

“So you were being strategic when you let yourself get flayed by Ravana?” I went back to the dresser and picked up a purple shirt with shaky hands. “That’s nuts.”

“Yeah, I was being strategic.”

I glanced over my shoulder and got caught up in his gaze. Desire blazed there. Pain. Some other emotion I didn’t want to acknowledge. “What game are you playing?”

The slow smile unnerved me. “It wouldn’t be much of a game if I revealed all my secrets, now would it?”

I flicked the shirt and folded it with sharp, quick movements. “Whatever. And if you must know, I asked Kali because she looks scary. Unless the detective is a homophobe, I doubt he’d find you terrifying.” He lifted the hair off my neck—across the room one second, behind me the next—and kissed me. I ducked away from him, the shirt clutched to my chest. “You have to stop that.”

“She made us to be together.”

“Do I look like Frankenstein’s bride to you?”

“Frankenstein was the scientist, not the monster.”

I threw my shirt in his face. “Stuff the monster and the scientist up your ass, Ty.”

He didn’t answer, just held the shirt to his face and sniffed. I rolled my eyes and turned back to my clothes, muttering under my breath. After awhile, I heard the bed squeak. I counseled myself not to turn around.

“You kept me sane,” he said behind me.

I paused mid fold.

“She said she would make another like me, only the next time she wouldn’t be cheated out of the whole child. I was broken, you see, useless, just another Skriven for her to destroy over and over again.” His voice was low, calm, and held more pain than I could fathom. “At first, I wanted someone else for her to focus her rage on. I would gladly watch another take my place if it meant I didn’t suffer. One after another, the children she meddled with died, most in the womb. She was getting worse, more violent. A creative torturer, she was.

“Ravana had lost most of her coherence by the time your mother got pregnant. She would forget to spy on her for weeks, months at a time. I think that’s why you survived.” He hadn’t moved, but the weight of his words pressed up heavy against me.