time.
“What’s happening?” she muttered aloud.
And she couldn’t keep her mind off the really worrisome thing: that teleporting left an Elven very weak.
What if he’d been ambushed?
They were dealing with a killer of three people, possibly four.
Barrie grew increasingly agitated as she thought about it. Rhiannon would never forgive her if anything happened to Brodie. No, that wasn’t true, but Rhiannon would never recover if anything happened to Brodie, which was even worse.
The phone trilled on the seat, and she snatched it up, answering without regard to the California Safe Driving Act.
“Brodie!” she said breathlessly.
There was a slight silence, and then Mick’s voice. “Not exactly.”
“Oh,” she said, conflicted. “I’m sorry, I really do need some time—”
“Barrie, listen. I’m at DJ’s estate, but there’s something wrong. The house is empty, the gate and the front door are standing wide open and—”
“What are you doing there?” she demanded, feeling another spike of adrenaline. Things were moving too fast, and she didn’t understand what it all meant.
“I came to talk to DJ. After what you said...I realized that he—that the two of us may be the only ones besides the killer who really know anything about what happened to Johnny. And that it’s time for us to talk it through, all of it—and figure out exactly what did happen, before someone else gets killed. Only now I’m afraid I might be too late.”
She felt a wave of fear for him. “You have to get out of there.”
“I can’t do that. Something’s obviously going down. DJ might be in trouble....”
“Mick, no....” she said desperately.
“Barrie, I have to. What else can I do?”
“No! Wait—”
But he’d already disconnected.
“Damn it.” She threw the phone back on the seat beside her and pressed her foot to the gas. She was going to kill him. Unless someone else did it first.
* * *
Mick was right. As Barrie drove up the winding road toward DJ’s estate, the huge metal gates were standing open, an eerie sight in the moonlight, and the guardhouse was empty.
Even more alarming, the house was completely dark as she drove up the circular drive. Mick’s Bentley was in front of the stairs. There was no sign of Brodie.
And at the top of the sweep of steps the front door was standing wide open, a black hole into the house.
“This is so not good,” she murmured as she stared up at it through the windshield. She stopped the car and just looked. The mansion was imposing enough during the day. At night, under the moon, it was Vlad’s castle for sure.
A man...no, two men she loved might be inside, possibly in great danger. Brodie... She’d admired him, and respected him, but in the past twenty minutes she’d realized that she loved him. He was going to be family, and that was how she thought of him. He would come to her rescue in any circumstance, and she was fully ready to come to his.
And Mick...Mick was more complicated. As intimate as they’d been, she still didn’t know him at all. She had a sense she could be more intimate with him than with anyone she’d ever known, the kind of intimate she’d barely dared to dream about.
And if he turned out to be a killer, she was in real trouble, because she loved him. She loved him. And that meant she had to go in.
She looked up at the Gothic, towering front of the house, biting her nails.
She knew it would be lethal to try entering without camouflage, and she wavered between invisibility and some other form. Either way she would be vulnerable to detection by an Other but safer than if she did nothing.
She decided on invisibility because it was easier for her to hold for longer. She killed the overhead light in the car and opened the door, then sat in the dark and breathed, focusing her awareness on her astral body, the energetic field that surrounded every living creature, and brought it into focus so that spirit force field concealed her physical body. She breathed in and out for prolonged minutes and then looked down at herself and saw nothing.
It’s showtime, she thought grimly.
Chapter 21
Walking into the house was like walking into a jungle. She could hear the night cries of the birds in the African Room, and the rush of the artificial river. As she walked silently, carefully past the archway, her pulse spiked as she caught the gleam of eyes in the darkness. Steve, she thought to herself, remembering the massive stuffed tiger.