Well, that could have gone better. I looked around at the destruction that was Falin’s apartment. The couch was shredded, the TV was overturned and smashed, the iron supports in the walls were visible behind busted drywall, and glass shards littered the carpet. Oh, yeah, and then there was the fist-sized hole into the Aetheric. So much for Falin’s security deposit.

Sirens sounded in the distance, drawing nearer. Damn. I couldn’t stay here. Once the cops got to the scene, the FIB wouldn’t be far behind. There was no way a giant gryphon flying around downtown Nekros had gone unnoticed, but I needed to.

Chapter 25

I managed to hail a cab as soon as I reached street level, which I took as a good sign that I was supposed to get the hell away from the scene. I wished I could have left a message for Falin, to let him know I was all right, but I had no idea who else might find it first. He would know by the disk and the hole into the Aetheric—which I was leaving around like calling cards these days—that a construct had attacked and that I’d dispelled it. Hopefully I’d be able to let him know I was okay once I got, well, wherever I was going.

Unfortunately, you can’t just tell a cabbie to drive you somewhere safe. An actual address is a must.

I gave him an address for two streets away from my house and then spent the entire drive fretting over that decision. The FIB had been at the house earlier, so what was the chance they weren’t watching it and waiting for me to return home? Of course, only an idiot would go home, and if I worked on the assumption that they assumed I wasn’t an idiot and thus wouldn’t go home, it would actually be one of the safest places possible.

Yeah, okay, it was crappy logic, but the letter Caleb had mentioned was there. I knew the fae had taken Caleb, but I had no idea what had happened to Holly. Caleb’s cryptic message made it sound like the letter would give me a clue.

It took the rest of the money in my purse to pay the cabdriver, and that was with so little of a tip that he almost ran over my toes as he drove away. Night had fallen while I’d been in the car, and I was actually thankful that my vision was on the fritz—light didn’t matter so much when you weren’t looking at the world through physical eyes.

I walked through backyards, stepping around forgotten toys and over sprinklers. As I neared Caleb’s yard, I tried to stay out of view of the street. I didn’t know where hidden watchers might be lying in wait, but whenever I’d had to stake out a place—not often, but for one case involving a falsified will and some misappropriated items—I’d stayed in my car, watching for movement in the house.

“Hey, Alex,” a male voice said, and I was so tense I actually dropped flat to the ground before I realized the voice belong to Roy. “Man, I’ve been looking all over for you.”

I pushed myself out of the dirt. “That’s good, because your timing is perfect.”

“Oh, you have no idea. I saw Bell run off last night, so I went after him. Man, that glowy stuff messed with his head.”

I guessed that by “glowy stuff” Roy meant raw Aetheric energy. I nodded. “Okay, but, Roy—”

He didn’t even pause, but paced as he spoke faster, his hands doing half the talking with him. “Well, he and a few of his followers got away, and they were, like, high on magic. Casting all kinds of random shit. Until they crashed. Now they want more. Bell sent his men to find you. Said he was going to make you open a path for him.”

Great. “He’ll have to get in line.”

I waited to see if Roy would continue, but he’d apparently exhausted the story.

“So, uh, why are you hanging out here in the dark?” he asked as if he’d only just noticed the location.

“Because the FIB are after me. I need you to do me a favor. Can you see if anyone is in the house?”

“No. I just came from there. It’s empty.”

Perfect.

I stayed low as I crossed the backyard. Once I reached the back porch, the wrongness in the house hit me and I stopped. The wards had been busted open from the outside, and they had clearly put up a good fight before they went. I let my senses stretch beyond the now defunct wards, searching for any traps or alarm spells. There weren’t any. At least, not any of witch creation, and that was as good as I could ensure. I eased the back door open and slipped into the kitchen.

When I looked around, my sight showed everything in ruins, but the ruins were all where their unruined counterparts usually sat. Cracked plates were in the dish drainer, pots and pans with rusted-out bottoms hung above a stove that should have been condemned, and even the broken chairs were tucked neatly under the bowed table—all of which I took to mean that in reality, the house looked exactly like it always did. I think I’d expected the place to be trashed, left with obvious signs of a struggle from Caleb’s capture. But if the wards hadn’t been cracked open, I would never have been able to tell that anything at all was amiss in the house.

I didn’t turn on lights as I passed from room to room—the darkness made no difference in my vision at the moment, so turning on the lights would only alert anyone watching the house to my presence. As I didn’t know where the letter was, I didn’t know how long it would take me to find it, so it would be best to keep evidence of my search as quiet as possible.

Caleb had mentioned Holly’s bed when we’d been on the phone, and I wasn’t sure if that was where he found the letter or where he put it, but it was as good a place as any to start looking. I crept to her room, pushing the rotted door open soundlessly. A large, weathered envelope sat in the center of a tattered comforter. I snatched it and dropped it in my purse. I needed to read it, but here definitely wasn’t the best place, as I had no idea when the FIB would be back.

“Now to figure out where to go next,” I mumbled, more to myself than Roy. I turned, and a low scream crashed through the room. I ducked, my eyes flying wide. Then I realized the sound wasn’t a scream; it was singing—and coming from my purse. Phone. I hadn’t even thought about turning the damn thing off before sneaking about. I sent the call to voice mail. The phone went silent and then, before I could even turn the ringer off, began singing again. Who?

I could just make out LUSA on the cracked screen. The last time I’d seen her I’d given her a diagram of the runes used in the construct disks. It was possible she’d learned something, which might help me find Holly. Or she could have heard there was a warrant out for my arrest.

I didn’t have time to be indecisive; I had to make the thing stop ringing. I slid my finger across the display to answer.

“What is it?”

“Alex Craft? Why are you whispering?” Lusa’s amiable voice asked on the other side of the line.

“That’s complicated. Did you contact Corrie? Were you able to learn anything about the runes?”

“You better believe I did. I took the runes to Dr. Corrie, like you suggested. We had to search back, way back, in his old tomes to find mentions of these runes and we still haven’t identified most. Even his library gets a little spotty once you go back a few centuries, but it looks like none of these were in use as late as four centuries ago, and if you’re looking for when they would have been common, you have to search back at least six centuries. Though remember, that wasn’t exactly an age of sharing for witches, so the variation among practitioners and covens was pretty vast.”

So either someone had dug up a really old grimoire or we were dealing with a witch who had been around a long time. I thought about the glamour-coated constructs. I knew a place where a witch could live long enough for magic to revolutionize around her more than once. Faerie.

I asked about what spells the runes might have been used for, but Lusa and Corrie were still in the identification stage of research, so I wrapped up the call in several hurried whispers. Lusa wasn’t happy, but I couldn’t afford to keep playing twenty questions with a reporter when it might get me caught crouching in the dining room by the FIB.

Now to get out of here. As I turned toward the door, a dog started barking upstairs. PC.

I stopped, stuck in indecision. I was on the run. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know if I’d even be okay in the end. But Caleb was in Faerie by now, and Holly was missing, so there was no one here to take care of PC if I didn’t make it back soon.

I couldn’t leave my dog. I took the stairs as quietly as possible. When I reached the top, I cracked the inner door and PC barreled out.

“Hey, buddy,” I said, dropping my purse on the top step so I could pick him up. “I’m going to put you in my purse, and then we are going to be really, really quiet and sneak out of here, okay?”

He yipped, just happy to see me, and I sighed. It was times like this when I wished someone had invented a charm that made dogs understand English. Well, here goes nothing.

I slipped the dog inside my purse. He was a small dog, but it wasn’t that big of a purse, and his front legs and head popped out the top. I placed the strap of the purse across my chest, and PC didn’t squirm, so he seemed to feel secure. Still, I kept a tight arm on the purse as I crept down the steps and out the back door.

“Two steps sideways to one step forward. When the world decays, you must do what is against your nature to do or the knights will fall.”

I startled at the voice in my head, and whirled around. “Fred?”

The large stone gargoyle crouched down on the side of the porch, its wings curled tight around its body. If I hadn’t been able to see the slight blue tint of the soul, I would have thought the gargoyle nothing more than a small stone boulder.

“What does that mean?” I whispered, but the gargoyle didn’t answer. I waited several moments, but I couldn’t stand there waiting for an explanation of the cryptic . . . premonition? Riddle? I had to get away from the house and out of sight.

It wasn’t until I reached the street where the cabbie had dropped me off that I really considered where I was going. Or really, realized that I had nowhere to go. If I called a friend, I might put him in danger either from the constructs hunting me or the fae trying to drag me to Faerie. Not to mention the fact that the FIB probably had fabricated some sort of warrant for my arrest by now, and most of my friends were in some branch of law enforcement.