Wicked Wings (Lizzie Grace #5) - Keri Arthur Page 0,3
cat does have a name.”
“And it’s one I refuse to utter until he stops attacking me.”
“Accord him the same sort of respect as Belle, and he just might.”
“Belle doesn’t claw the hell out of my hand the minute she sees me.” Although I daresay she’d been tempted to swat me over the head on more than a few occasions over the years.
Monty snorted. “Eamon says he did sense something in passing, but lost the trail in that clearing. Have you tried to track the owner of the watch yet?”
“No, because someone rang before I could. Hang on.”
I brought the watch into the light. “There’s an inscription on the back—Congrats on graduating, love Mom and Dad.”
“Which suggests the watch isn’t something the owner would have lost willingly. Is the catch broken?”
“Yes.”
He grunted. “So it’s minutely possible that—despite the strips of skin—he didn’t realize it had fallen off. Can you hustle and do that reading?”
“If you’d stop bloody talking, I might just be able to.”
He grunted again. It was not a happy sound.
I half smiled and wrapped my fingers around the watch face, trying to avoid the bits of dried skin, but nevertheless catching a couple. I shivered at the papery feel of them, but concentrated on the faint caress of energy and unleashed the psychic part of me.
For several seconds, nothing happened. All I could feel, all I could sense, was shadows and darkness. I frowned and tried to go deeper—tried to get some sense of not only who owned the watch, but also what might be happening to him.
Nothing.
Frustrated, I tightened my grip and pressed it harder into my palm. A dark force rose to resist me—one that didn’t belong to the watch’s owner, or even to whoever he might have been with.
That barrier was death—one that had occurred days ago.
Which was rather odd, given how deeply the watch had been buried—or was that merely the result of someone covering their crime? Was there, perhaps, a whole lot more than just a watch to be found here?
“Anything?” Monty said.
I eased the fierceness of my grip. “No. Whoever owned the watch died a few days ago.”
“No ghost?”
“Not that I can sense, but Belle’s the spirit talker, not me.”
“You can’t contact her? Get her out there?”
“No, I can’t, because she’s in Melbourne rather than here.”
“What’s she doing in Melbourne?”
“That’s none of your damn business, dear cousin.”
He chuckled softly. “So I guess this is basically a false alarm.”
“Not necessarily.” I carefully placed the watch on the top of the leaf pile, then scooped up a bigger stick and began shoveling more dirt aside. “It strikes me as odd that it was buried so deeply.”
“You think it was deliberate?”
“I do.” And we’d find out soon enough if I was correct or not—if whatever else might be buried here wasn’t too deep.
“It might be worth going to grab a shovel,” Monty commented. “It’d be quicker and easier than a damn stick.”
“Have you got a shovel at your place?”
“Well, no, but I’m sure Aiden or one of the other rangers can supply one.”
“And I’m sure they’ll be pleased about me calling them out over a broken watch unless it’s attached to someone’s arm.”
“Other than those strips of skin, there’s no sign of bones and, according to Eamon, no smell of decay or putrefaction to suggest a body,” he commented. “So why do you think it was attached to an arm? Wouldn’t you have seen some sign of said arm when you dug the watch out?”
I grimaced—something he’d see only if his link with his familiar was deep enough to be using the cat’s eyes. “Once you’ve spent some time in this reservation, you’ll discover ‘would have’ and ‘should have’ often don’t—”
I stopped as my makeshift shovel hit something solid. I swallowed trepidation and then carefully scraped away more dirt.
And found the arm.
Or, at least, what looked to be the bones of one.
I pushed away from the gruesome find and landed heavily on my butt. Several breaths did little to ease the churning in my stomach or the growing certainty that this was the beginning of a new reign of terror from yet another dark spirit.
“A fucking arm that’s been picked clean?” Monty’s voice held a mix of disbelief and excitement. “How awesome is that?”
“I can think of many words to describe the find, Monty, but awesome isn’t one of them.”
“Well, no, the death isn’t awesome, but the fact we’ll be hunting down a creature capable of doing such a thing is.”