Starlight Web (Moonshadow Bay #1) - Yasmine Galenorn Page 0,94

velvet pad, was a black opal ring and a matching necklace. I slid the necklace over my head and slipped the ring on.

Finally, Esmara whispered. We’ve been waiting for you to do this.

“I needed time to process being home. Doing this…claiming my mother’s ritual tools…makes the fact that she’s dead very real,” I said. “I’m taking her place and it feels very odd and…almost disrespectful.”

You’re not taking her place. She’s here with us, watching over you, but until both of you are more settled into your new lives, it’s best she doesn’t speak to you. Think of it as a training program for both of you. Now, take these things and create an altar.

I frowned, looking around. This seemed the logical place to put together an altar. Besides the built-in bookshelves and desks for both my father and mother, there was a loveseat in the library, and behind that loveseat, a console table that was the perfect size for an altar.

I cleared it off and moved it to the center of the room.

My mother’s trunk also held a black altar cloth, decorated with silver stars, a Waterford goblet, and several decks of tarot cards. There were other things in the chest, but they weren’t meant for display. I found her sage spray—my mother had been allergic to smoke, so she cleansed with charmed water instead. I sprayed around the table, then misted myself. The magical water immediately calmed me down.

Spreading the altar cloth on the table, I then positioned the dagger and the crystal ball on it, and stood back. It looked right, but I needed candles, and there were other tools I felt should go there.

“I suppose I’ll figure that out in time,” I said, waiting for Esmara to say something. But she kept quiet, and so I repacked everything else in the trunk and, carrying the cleanse-spray, headed into the kitchen to turn on the dishwasher. Tired and feeling a little at loose ends, I collected the kittens from the powder room, then headed upstairs. Xi and Klaus immediately claimed the bed as theirs. As they curled up by my feet, I drifted into a vaguely troubled sleep.

Chapter Twenty-One

Next morning I once again locked the kittens in the spare bedroom and headed off for work. Demolition on the asylum was set for ten a.m., so I fortified myself with a sausage cheese muffin and a quad mocha on the way to the office. When I arrived, Hank was poring over something on one of the monitors.

“Find a new case?” I asked, breezing by him.

“Maybe,” he muttered, shaking his head. “It’s odd, to say the least. I’ll have to look into this more before I see if it’s something worth pursuing.”

Caitlin waved at me. She was in the middle of taking apart one of the computers.

“When does Wren get back?” I asked. “I’d like to meet her finally.”

“Week after next,” Tad said, from his desk where he was staring at a printout of what looked like a planet.

“Don’t tell me we’re going after aliens next,” I said.

“Nope, but we could. We’ve got plenty of reports lately about UFO sightings. I’m just looking through some of the reports the Pentagon recently declassified and boy, you wouldn’t believe some of the crap these guys saw.” He paused, pushing up the glasses that had slid down his nose. “So, ready for today?”

“I wish we could have taken care of things for good. It feels like we didn’t finish anything with the asylum.”

“That’s the way some cases go, January. You’ll get used to it.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t have to like it,” I muttered. I hated unfinished tasks. I was one of those annoying people who thrived on checklists and planners and schedules.

I finished my breakfast while I typed up all the notes I could think of from the past week, then glanced at the clock. “If we’re going, we’d better leave now.” It was 9:40.

We decided to take the van and, once again, Tad drove. We arrived at the site about ten minutes later, to find the supervisor of the demolition had brought in a number of big machines—bulldozers and dump trucks. That made sense. After the building came down, they’d have to haul away all the debris. Val himself wasn’t there, given…well…vampire. But a man who introduced himself as Daniel Ashante was.

“I’m Mr. Slater’s administrative assistant.”

There was something about him…he wasn’t human, that much I could tell. I closed my eyes, trying to home in on his energy. Yep, there it was—he