door winks at me, its ruby eyes bright from the porch light. I grasp the metal ring clamped in its mouth and let it fall heavily. The sound echoes on the other side of the door a second before Tally yanks it open.
Without a word, she envelopes me in a cloud of sugar from the bakery and the light scent of clay that always clings to her.
Grateful for her friendship, I hug her back. I owe Tally and her witches more than I can ever repay.
She pulls back, her mahogany eyes bright with emotion, and gestures for everyone to come in. “We’re in the kitchen. There’s not a lot of time.”
We follow her through the foyer and down the hall past the stairs to the kitchen at the back, where Xander, Reese, and Jax stand at the center island, Xander’s laptop open in front of them.
Reese glances up as we enter, his fae-touched eyes focusing on me for a moment. He frowns, his lips parting, before he shakes his head and rubs his eyes.
I ignore the internal exchange. He grew up thinking he was hallucinating every time he saw a demon out on the street. He spent a lot of time heavily medicated to deal with his delusions before Kellen swooped in and scooped Xander and him up off the street and Reese realized what he saw was real. He still sees things sometimes, though, that aren’t actually there.
Tally hurries around the kitchen island and pulls sandwich makings from the fridge. Food helps when Reese starts to slip mentally. She makes quick work of transforming an entire loaf of bread into turkey sandwiches and passes them around as we all gather.
Thankful, I accept one and take a bite. While I don’t technically need food, my body will consume the energy I hold unless I give it alternatives, and I hadn’t had the stomach to eat before the hearing.
“What have you found?” I ask around a bite, eyeing a map spread out on the counter.
It looks a lot like the one we used to track down the places where the Dreamer broke through to the human plane.
Xander closes his laptop. “My friend was able to locate the car service Victor Hesse is using and track its GPS. He’s been spending a lot of time outside of your bakery, HelloHell Delivery, Fulcrum, and K&B Financial. But he also goes here” —he points to a place on the map— “and here.” He moves his finger farther south, to the next city over. “The BBBB have scouted both locations and reported back that there’s a high concentration of…”
When he hesitates, Tally supplies, “Icky-icky evil goo.”
“Right.” An embarrassed flush creeps up his neck. “Icky-icky evil goo. Which they say is a sure sign of Domnall’s remains. The concentration is bigger here.”
Leaning over as he points to the first location, my stomach tightens when I recognize the street names. I look back at my storm demon. “Kellen?”
“Yes, honey?” Kellen steps up to my side.
My wings razorblade against my spine with anxiety. “That’s the mortuary, isn’t it?”
He studies the map. “Yes. But we’d know if Domnall’s body was hidden on my property. We’ve gone over the place twice now.”
“Victor Hesse is Domnall’s second in command,” I inform him since he wasn’t there for that revelation. “And the mortuary is on the border of where your two territories meet.”
Anger twists his features as he jumps to the same conclusion I did.
White brows pinched together, Emil shakes his head. “So, you think he did hide Domnall’s body in the mortuary? Is there a basement that wasn’t checked?”
“No.” I want to kick myself for being so stupid. All the signs were there, but I was so focused on other things that I just missed them. I turn to Kellen. “When did you last see the people who live next to the mortuary?”
Kellen paces away from the map. “I don’t remember. I don’t go there often.” He rakes a hand through his fiery hair. “But they have dogs. Two golden retrievers, and the damn things never stop barking. I’ve actually filed noise complaints against them for it interfering with services.”
“There weren’t any dogs barking when we were there last,” Emil points out.
“No,” Kellen agrees, his expression grim.
“A mortifer demon murdering people, though…” Tobias trails off, his expression inscrutable.
“They’re usually scavengers,” Tally tells the witches. “They eat the remains of people already dead.”
Reese’s eyes gleam, and he pulls a notebook from under the counter, flipping it to a new page.
“He killed the