Blackbird Broken (The Witch King's Crown #2) - Keri Arthur Page 0,15

it was a damn miserable flight home.

Max’s Jag was still parked next to my red-and-white Mini when we finally reached Ainslyn, and there was a nondescript and unfamiliar gray Mazda next to Mo’s Nissan Leaf. Which meant that maybe the insurance assessor was still here.

We shifted shape behind the cars and then walked across the road. Healing Words—our store—was situated in a three-story, single-fronted building squeezed in between two larger terraces. Externally, at least, there wasn’t much evidence of Darkside’s attempt to collapse the building down on top of us. The red bricks might have a new layer of grime on them, but the heritage green-and-gold woodwork surrounding the front window and inset, half-glass door had been untouched. It wasn’t until you looked up and saw the heavy tarps covering a good proportion of the roof that it became evident there’d been a problem.

The small bell above the door made no sound as we stepped through; a quick glance up revealed the clapper was missing. Which was odd—why would someone steal something like that? Unless, of course, they didn’t want to be heard entering the building sometime in the future …

I ignored the trepidation that rose with the thought and looked around. Aside from the dust and grime that lay upon absolutely everything, nothing else seemed to be out of place or missing—not at first glance, at least. There was certainly no sign of the destruction that lay above us.

Mo peeled off her coat and slung it over the hook to the right of the door. “You might want to lose those clothes, as the rain seems to have intensified the demon scent. I’ll head upstairs and see what’s happening.”

I nodded and dripped my way through the various shelves containing books, Mo’s healing potions and pretty soaps, and all the other oddities we stocked for the tourist trade, heading for the sectioned-off rear of the store. There were a number of smaller rooms here—an office, a storeroom, and, in a separate, magically shielded rear room, an old boiler and laundry. It had once provided the hot water for the building, but these days we basically used it to get rid of the occasional spell paraphernalia that couldn’t be thrown out with regular rubbish.

I stripped off and chucked everything—including my shoes—into the boiler, then lit it. Once I’d cleansed my daggers, I grabbed a towel from the stack and wrapped it around me as I padded barefoot up the stairs to the first floor, running my hand under the banister as I did so. The bug Tris had placed was gone; hopefully that meant Ginny had cleared out the rest of them as well.

This level was divided into two areas—Mo’s bedroom was at the rear of the building, and an open kitchen-living area lay to the front. The kitchen was filled with a colorful array of art deco cabinetry, and the upright stove came straight out of the sixties. But where the sofas and the big-screen TV had once stood there was now a large pile of plaster, wood, and roof tiles, as well as the remnants of what had once been my bed. I glanced up. The tarps over the roof were visible, and doing a good job of keeping the water out. At least we weren’t getting water damage on top of everything else.

Aside from Mo, there were three others in the room—Max, a bald man I presumed was the assessor, and Luc.

Even though he wasn’t looking at me, I felt the impact of his presence. It was fiercer than a punch to the gut, an indefinable force that was far deeper than just awareness and desire. It was almost elemental in feel, and spoke of a connection that stepped far beyond the physical, far beyond the emotional. It whispered of destiny and age, and of a bond not just days in the making, but decades.

According to Mo, it was the result of something called anima nexum, which basically meant soul connection. Apparently there were three different types—while it could sometimes refer to the type of soul connection that was little more than a meeting of gazes and a recognition of fate, it generally meant either souls that were doomed to battle each other through time eternal, or souls who were destined to keep on meeting until whatever had gone wrong in their initial relationship was rectified. Luc and I were supposedly the latter. Which was the pits, as right now it seemed highly unlikely we’d fix that wrong