Elemental Shadows (8 page)

Well that stopped me. Also deadened any sexual desire I was feeling at that moment. The thought of Arden…ew. "Weren't these guys like, in their sixties?"
 

"Two were older," Crwys made a pained face. "Those tests they can't rush, so we're still waiting on the DNA."
 

"Meaning it might not be Arden's and you lied. She's going to make bail."
 

"Probably. Her lawyer's already at the station. Who else do you know with long dark hair and motive to silence three old men?"
 

I put my hand against the wall as another shadow moved over the opposite wall. Again I looked out the window. No movement, other than Levi smoking a cigarette.
 

"Why do you keep looking at the wall?"
 

"Not sure," I said as I stepped away from him and walked around the shop. I held out my right hand and called up a small white sphere made of Spirit. It was by definition, an extension of my own. It lifted up and moved around the room like a sensor, looking into every corner and crevice of the shop.
 

When it came near the computer, the feedback from it felt like knives slicing down my back. I dismissed it immediately and the pain stopped. I'd put my hands to my head and pressed my palms over my eyes.
 

"Sam? Baby please…look at me."
 

Baby?
 

That was the gentlest tone I'd heard Crwys use with me since we broke off the relationship. I opened my eyes and looked up at him through my fingers. He had his hands on my shoulders and he was very, very close. Every magical thread in my body inched toward him. The blood that made me what I was demanded him.
 

My breathing hitched and I put my hands on his chest. He was breathing hard as well and we were in the middle of the shop now, almost arm in arm.
 

"You're….you're an Incubus, aren't you?"
 

He laughed. "No. I'm not. We met one of those, remember?"
 

I smiled at him. "Yeah, we did."
 

Someone knocked on the front door. Loud.
 

We both turned to see Levi visible through the window. He pointed to his watch.
 

"I gotta go." Crwys disengaged and my body instantly cooled.
 

Well, if he wasn't an Incubus, he sure as hell should be. I took in a few deep breaths but I was gonna have a headache.
 

"Sam, if you come up with anything in your case with Arden, let me know?"
 

I didn't say a word, nor did I nod or shake my head as I watched him leave. He and Levi got into Crwys's Mustang and pulled away, the black and white carrying Arden, long gone.
 

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. This was never a good sign. I pivoted slowly to look behind me just as I heard Grey growling low in her throat. I tiptoed through my own shop, looking around bookcases and tables to find my wolf and see what she was growling at.
 

I was unnerved when I saw her backside sticking out from behind the counter in the back. "Hey girl…you sense something creepy too?"
 

She didn't stop growling as I came around. She was low on her front paws, her lips pulled back and all kinds of teeth showing. Her gaze was fixed on the corner of the shop where the computer was.
 

Where Ivan usually sat.
 

I immediately summoned my
dex
. White pentagrams appeared in various shapes then switched colors as they took up the Elements to summon Spirit. They spun and rocked in the air between Grey and I and the computer area.
 

Nothing.
 

Not a damn thing came up.
 

My phone rang. I yelled out. The pentagrams vanished and Grey barked.
 

My heart was in my throat as I fumbled at my back pocket. Sweet Lady…that scared the crap out of me. I finally got the damn thing out, cursing the whole time how Ivan's presence made electronic devices possible, and looked at the phone's face.
 

I paused.
 

That wasn't a name I expected to see.
 

Pauline Hawthorne.
 

My stepmother.
 

I thought about sending it to voicemail. But I'd done that for the past three months; avoiding the guilt she was going to lay down on me. When the shop's name showed up in the local papers for vandalism she called every day for a week after that.
 

Mom disappeared when I was eight. No one really explained to me what happened. The cover answer had always been she was working undercover—she was a homicide detective—and the job took her away. The truth had been much darker.

She'd been an Elemental Witch like me, and she was her Coven's Tracker as well as the district's, as I learned later. She'd been after what I discovered was a Leviathan, a creature much like a Revenant (they were from the same family). Revenants were made when the possessing demon was invited in to share the body. Leviathans took bodies, used them, and often times rode the host souls like slaves. So when the body took damage, the soul felt it, not the Leviathan.
 

This particular Leviathan, whose demon's name was Dionysus, tracked my mother down and made a deal with the Obsidian Queen of the Faeries, Medbh, to kill my mother in exchange for the Leviathan's host soul. Medbh did take my mother, but Dionysus skipped hosts in her plan to cheat the Queen. He took refuge inside my mother's best friend, the Witch who tried to complete the Arcane spell that would exorcise Dionysus and send him back to the Well of Souls.
 

Without my mother, the spell failed. And Inamorata Devonshire became a Leviathan.
 

But the story didn't end there. No…Medbh found Dionysus and took the soul, fusing the Leviathan to the host body. Dionysus hid in plain sight after that for eighteen years.

As my aunt. She moved in with my dad and took care of me. Taught me magic and I had no idea that the reason I didn't have my mother was tucking me into my bed at night. Dionysus was biding her time until the opportunity came to reverse the Faerie Queen's deal and take another soul. It was just magic justice that I ended up in possession of that same Faerie's head nearly two decades later.
 

But when I turned twelve my dad met Pauline Willbanks. They fell in love and I thought she was good for him. She didn't get along with Ina and gave my dad an ultimatum. Choose one or the other.
 

Dad chose Pauline. And Ina convinced me that I was better off living with her so that she could continue teaching me magic and my dad would have the chance of a normal life.
 

Then a few weeks ago, I learned that truth. I killed an innocent. And Dionysus got that poor girl's soul.
 

And now, thinking back on it, I wondered if dad knew the truth all along about why mom disappeared. I thought about visiting him and asking him about that time. That night. I wanted to pick through his memories.
 

But that just wasn't possible anymore.
 

Because George Hawthorne had been diagnosed with dementia a year ago and it was a rare day when he knew who I was.
 

"H
ello Pauline," I said as I leaned against the register counter. I wasn't completely over my little ghost scare and Grey looked like she was still watching Ivan's computer. Crwys's ghost spell request wasn't helping my mood either. "How's it going?"
 

"Well I'll be," came the surprised response. Pauline was a kind woman, a retired nurse and a Godsend when it came to handling dad these days. "You actually exist."
 

I ignored the barb. "Yes. I've been busy."
 

"I'll say. You fix things after that vandalism? Those cops in New Orleans find those wretched people?" Pauline had a very southern accent, something that wasn't exactly Mississippi or Louisiana, but more mid-Georgia.
 

"Yes ma'am. They caught them. Everything's fine." I kept looking at the computer and at the corner as I put my free hand on Grey's neck. "What's up, Polly. Why did you call?"
 

"Oh Sam, it's your father."
 

"What…he didn't run away again did he?" To say dad
ran away
was a little funny to me. The truth was he tended to start out on an afternoon walk and just kept going. "Did he mess with the hospice nurse again?"
 

"No, Adelaide doesn't work with us anymore. She complained about him and vice versa. New nurse is named Robbie. She's a doll. I like her a lot," Polly paused and I stopped petting Grey. "This is something else."
 

"It's his condition, isn't it? It's gotten worse?"

"I can't tell. He's started talking to the wall in the den."
 

I blinked a few times, trying to digest that as the door opened and a customer came in. She was tall and well endowed and waved at me like she knew me. I smiled and made sure she saw I was on the phone. Yeah, I know, it was rude for a store owner to be on the phone while a customer was around, but…eh…screw it. "What exactly does that mean?"
 

"It means he's in his chair facing away—the one by the fire—and he's talking away to the corner where the computer sits. Just having a conversation. I mentioned it to the doctor, but he seemed to think it was normal. I don't. He's never done that before."
 

"Polly, it is dementia."
 

"I'm a retired nurse, Samantha, I know what dementia is. But I also know every patient is different and it effects people different. I might be a bit more forgiving of the doc's assessment, except…"
 

I kept an eye on the customer as I moved behind the counter, in case she wanted to buy something. "Polly…except what?"
 

"Yesterday, George was talking to the wall and it was like an argument. He started yelling and shouting. I was in the kitchen making us lunch. I heard something crash so I ran in and found him hurtling things at that same corner. He busted three of those antique vases on the shelf."
 

Now I had a better idea in my head what part of the den he was talking to. Polly's computer was in the farthest corner, in the nook where mom and dad once had matching chairs. It was where they liked to unwind and talk at the end of the day.
 

But even though I knew in what direction he was hurling things, the panic my dad might be becoming manic in some way and could hurt Polly kicked in. "Is he okay? Are you okay? He didn't try to hit you, did he?"
 

"No. He didn't. But he…when I took the last vase from him and told him to calm down, he grabbed my arm and said…" Polly breathed into the phone. "Sam, he said I had to call you."
 

"Call…me?"
 

"His exact words were, call Sam. She's got to come and exorcise her mother."
 

The woman browsing the small, engraved stones in the far corner made a strange movement with her hand. I reached out with a few of what I called my
feels
, extensions of me that could sense and sort of 'see' things. Like what she just put in her pocket.
 

It was a small stone, engraved with the word Laugh on it. It was all of three bucks, and this chick was going to shoplift? I pulled on the strings of those feels, willed a bit of Earth down the connection—specific to rock—and launched that rock right out of her pocket so it landed a few feet from the door.
 

The woman looked startled when the rock made a noise on the hardwood floor and looked at me with a confused look on her face. I smiled and waved goodbye as she left the shop.
 

Probably going to think the place is haunted now
. And with that thought, Medbh came to mind. Though she'd been a pain in the ass since I brought her home, she
had
given the place a sort of atmosphere with her sporadic giggling and singing. And yeah, everyone heard her.