of the magic residue from him like I did at the first location.”
Pulling out his wand, Gideon started for the front of the house. “Let’s finish our search. The owners are around here somewhere.”
I hope they’re dead. It sounded horrible in my head when I thought it, but I really didn’t think they’d want to know how their children died or why.
I got my wish, but there was a price for that. We found the parents on the second floor, but one look at them confirmed that our killer now had a partner. The bitch who had been stalking pregnant women had been here and worked her horrific skills on the parents.
The parents were found in a nursery. The husband was tied to the rails of the baby bed while the wife was across from him, leaned up against the dresser. She had been killed in the usual way; stabbed in the chest and slashed across the stomach. However, judging by the blood crusted to the man’s wrists and the broken rails, he had been forced to watch the death of his wife before our killer took him out with a long cut across the throat. His death had been slower.
Looking at how the two victims were arranged so that they could clearly see each other, I was sure that this murder had been personal for our female psychopath. In all the other deaths, they had been terrible but relatively quick and completed in secrecy, taking limited risks. She picked the location, not the white-haired weirdo.
“They found each other,” Gideon said emotionlessly from behind me.
What he meant to say was, We’re fucked.
“Tell the council,” I said past the lump in my throat. Something big and nasty was bearing down on Low Town and we needed help. “Just try to keep them from destroying the city.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Shaking my head, I stepped around Gideon and started back toward the first floor. “I’ve got to call Serah. She might be able to figure something out that we haven’t thought of.”
“You think?” Gideon asked skeptically, following me down the stairs.
“I’m telling your wife you said that. Humans are pretty damn resourceful and you know it.”
“True,” he conceded, sounding more tired with each passing minute. This investigation was wearing us both down.
“I really doubt that we’ll be able to track the magic user, but the woman chose this place. Serah might be able to pull some info out of the cops that would allow us to track down the other killer.”
“Agreed.”
Gideon went quickly around the house and into the backyard, wiping away any evidence that we had been there, while I stepped outside under a cloaking spell to call 911 to report screams and a strange man at this address. The second call was to Serah to tell her the whole story.
As I pulled up her number in my cell phone, I hesitated. She’d been warned away from this case. If she kept pushing, she would lose her job. And yet, I still completed the call, because she wasn’t the type to walk away. I’d met few people more determined or tenacious than she. Serah was not going to stop until the killer was caught and dragged in front of a judge.
With the scene reset to look as if we hadn’t been mucking about the place, Gideon disappeared. I could only assume that the warlock was heading to one of the Ivory Towers to report to the council. I dreaded the idea of more witches and warlocks getting involved in this hunt for a madman, but Gideon and I were a step behind and outgunned when it came to taking these assholes down. We needed help, but I was afraid that we were getting the wrong kind. I wanted someone to act with the precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel, not a five-year-old with a chainsaw and too much sugar.
I hesitated, trying to decide where to go. It was with some disgust that I found myself standing in what had been Simon’s rooms within the Dresden Tower. I at least had the excuse of wanting to pick up my coat, but as I stood there holding it in my fists, I knew that the truth was that I didn’t want to go back to Asylum. There was too much unsettled business between Trixie and me, but I didn’t have any new answers for her.
Throwing the jacket down, I slumped in a chair with my head in my hands. Zyrus danced around