No, she said. Office.
Meaning there just might be something in there worth finding. But to do that, I’d have to confront what might be some sort of vengeful ghost, and I really didn’t feel like doing that right now. Besides, though we’d seen Mike enter this place, he obviously wasn’t still here. And that meant there had to be a set of transport stones around somewhere. Better to find them before I tackled anything else.
I slid Amaya free from the wood and headed for the stairs. I walked up cautiously, my back to the wall, Amaya in one hand and my shoes in the other. Her soft hissing overrode the sound of the clock’s ticking, though I think her noise was more frustration that there’d been nothing so far for her to attack than any sense that danger was near.
We reached a landing, but the only thing on this level was a generously sized bathroom. I continued upward, senses alert for even the slightest caress of something out of place or unusual. There was nothing.
And yet there had to be something here. Mike hadn’t simply disappeared. Creating that sort of magic took time, so either there were transportation stones here somewhere, or he’d gone out the back door, leapt over the back fence, and run away. And I honestly couldn’t see him doing that.
I reached the final landing. Two doors led off this, and both were partially closed. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe . . .
I stepped forward, raised a foot, and lightly toed the nearest door open. No demons jumped out at us. No vengeful ghosts, and definitely no magic.
It was a bedroom and it ran the entire width of the building. A glass door led out onto the front balcony, but even from here I could see it was securely locked. He hadn’t gone out that way—though we would have seen him if he had. The all-encompassing white theme was in residence in this room as well, with the only splash of color coming from the dark wood of the old-fashioned four-poster bed and the large vase of cream and pink lilies and roses sitting on the dressing table.
I swung around and headed for the back bedroom. My skin began to crawl, and the awareness of . . . something . . . was growing. I slowed as I neared the door, listening intently, trying to figure out whether the thing I felt was real or imagined.
Not, Amaya said. Evil inside.
I do wish you’d get a bit more descriptive, I mentally muttered. I mean, are we talking live evil, dead evil, or something in between?
Live not, she said. Dead not. Just is.
Which still wasn’t very helpful—but I guess it was hardly fair to blame her.
Will eat if can, she added.
If it attacks, feel free. I took a deep breath, then once again pushed the door with my foot. Tension ran through me as it swung open, and every bit of me was ready to jump back, to react, if anything so much as squeaked the wrong way.
Nothing did.
What stood in the middle of the room was a set of cuneiform stones. They were about six feet tall and roughly four feet wide at their base, and both reached up to a needle-sharp point. Though most of the other stones we’d discovered had been primarily gray in color, these were white—as white as the walls within this house—and their surface was littered with small crystals that Amaya’s flames sparked to life, sending rainbow-colored flurries skating through the room. They reminded me of the second set of stones we’d found under the warehouse near Stane’s—the ones we’d initially believed had been the sorceress’s entry point onto the gray fields.
They even felt like those stones. All the others we’d come across had felt ancient and powerful. These stones—like the others—were undoubtedly both old and potent, but there was also a foulness emanating from them. It was as if they were something that should not exist in this time or place.
I took a step closer. Pinpricks of energy snapped at my skin, drawing blood. I shivered and stepped back. While I had no doubt that Mike had disappeared through this gateway, there was no way in hell I was about to follow him. I might have risked it had it been only my safety I had to worry about, but I was a mom-to-be now, and I wasn’t about to jeopardize the health of my son by exposing him to something that felt so . . . unclean.
I retreated to the wall and walked around the stones. I didn’t learn much. I didn’t understand cuneiform, and I wasn’t about to call the one person in my life who did back into the line of fire. I might have promised to call Uncle Quinn if I needed help, but I wasn’t about to risk Hunter finding out where they were hiding for something as minor as this.
Which meant that as far as Mike went, we were at a dead end until he showed up again.
I sheathed Amaya, then left the house, making sure that I left everything as I’d found it—everything except the rear-door locks, and there wasn’t much I could do about that except hope that no one noticed it.
“So this would appear to confirm that Mike is at least working with the dark sorceress,” Azriel said, as I climbed into the car.
“It confirms that both my mother and I are blind fucking fools.” I thumped the steering wheel. “Damn it, how could he keep something like that a secret for so long? Mom wasn’t an innocent when it came to the arcane—why did she never sense something was wrong until it was altogether too late?”
“The Aedh placed a spell you,” Azriel said. “What makes you think they didn’t also do the same to your mother?”
“I guess. It’s just—” I stopped and shrugged. “I guess I’m just sick of being three steps behind everyone else in this game.”
“It’s possible Mike is not aware that we suspect him. That will play in our favor.”
“Only for as long as it takes him to realize someone broke into his house. He’s going to suspect it was us.”
“Which may or may not matter to him. He needs you, remember, so if it prompts any sort of action, it’s going to be another attempt to ensnare you.”
I glanced down at my hand, remembering the somewhat slick feel of his initial handshake. “Do you think that’s what he was doing in the restaurant?”