the ambulance crew. “Well, well. You again,” she said, eyeing me with a very cold gaze.
“Hello, Detective,” I replied.
She looked around the foyer of Drayton House. “Aren’t you supposed to be running your shop?”
“Mrs. Morrissey is a friend of mine, and I often consult with her on the history of pieces that come into the store. I brought her a latte, and she wanted to show me the new Angel Oak exhibit. She tripped and hit her head. I called for help.”
“You show up in strange places too often. It’s a bad habit.”
“I didn’t think they sent detectives out to follow up on ambulance calls,” I replied, thankful that at least this time, my fight with the Nephilim had not left the exhibit hall in ruins. That would have been difficult to explain.
“Normally, I don’t,” Monroe said. “I happened to hear the call on the scanner, caught your name attached to it, and thought it might be worth dropping by.”
I tried to keep a handle on my annoyance, and hoped I didn’t look as pale and shaky as I felt. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing in a fight, but once the fighting is over I usually want to throw up. “You don’t look so good,” Monroe observed.
“It was the blood,” I lied. “Blood makes me sick.” Actually, since I’d taken up with the Alliance, I’d seen my share of blood, ichor and lots of other really nasty fluids that don’t have names and I’d been just fine. I figured it was an answer the detective would accept, and she rolled her eyes as if I had lived up to some unspoken stereotype.
“Go back to your shop. Stay out of trouble. You might just be unlucky,” she said, giving me a skeptical glare. “But if you keep showing up in the wrong places, I will find out why.”
I walked two blocks before I sank down on a park bench and let myself have a good round of the shakes. I wanted to call the hospital to find out how Mrs. Morrissey was, but I knew it would be a couple hours before she was through the emergency room, and no one would release information to me, anyhow.
My head was full of what I had seen, trying to figure out where Josiah Winfield and his pistols fit into the picture. It seemed like too much of a coincidence for his prized guns to show up right when we had monsters and ghost-eating spirits loose in Charleston. I walked back to the store, but we were busy enough with customers that it was over an hour before I had the chance to catch Teag up on what I had seen.
“I’ve got some news as well,” Teag replied when I finally filled him in. “In between customers, I did a little digging on the Darke Web. I looked up good old Josiah Winfield, and also tried to find out more about your mysterious Mr. Thompson.”
“And?” I poured the last cup of coffee and rinsed out the pot and filter, then drew up a chair at the break room table.
Teag brought in his half-finished cup of tea and joined me. “Let’s start with Josiah. Sorren described him right: Josiah was a combination private investigator/hit man/demon hunter.” He grimaced. “He was kind of a splashy guy.”
“As in style or blood?”
“Both. Josiah liked to make an impression. He rode a huge, black stallion, and wore all-black clothing and favored a long duster that resembled a priest’s cassock.”
“That squares with what I saw in the vision, and the drawing Mrs. Morrissey showed me at the Archive.”
“He had the pistols, but he also carried a crossbow and a nasty modified shotgun. Oh, and he had a penchant for making things freeze over with magic,” he replied, raising an eyebrow.
“Yikes. As in making hell freeze over?’
Teag nodded. “Yep, and that’s how he seemed to look at it, too. Not much of a sense of humor. When he rode into town, people got out of his way, especially demons and dark magic types.”
“I can imagine that he made an impression.”
“He passed himself off as a traveling preacher who did exorcisms. A lot of the magical community doesn’t remember him favorably. Apparently, he was known for double-crossing more than one ‘colleague’ whom he considered to be a little too close to the dark side for his taste.”
“Wow. A real fun guy.”
“That’s just it. Some people questioned whether Josiah was really playing for one side or the other, or both ends against the