Oracle's Moon
Page 34

He cocked his head as he considered her words. “Indeed.”
He kissed her fast and paused just long enough to watch pleasure bloom in her expression before he created clothing for himself, another pair of jeans and a black T-shirt this time, and he strode downstairs. It didn’t take him very long to find out where Therese lived. He checked Grace’s babysitting roster, memorized Therese’s phone number and used a reverse phone lookup to get her address.
He turned off Grace’s computer, then he dematerialized and streamed out of the house. Once outside, the sun was so bright and hot, he drifted for a while and basked as he soaked up the plentiful nourishment. When he felt quite energized again, he went in search of a certain nosy human.
A human who disrespected the bargain she had struck with his human. His lover, his Grace.
And if there was one thing Khalil hated, it was when someone disrespected or reneged on a bargain.
Therese lived in a modest-sized house with a fenced-in backyard, in a neighborhood with tree-lined streets. Khalil wasn’t very familiar with Louisville, but he did recognize in the distance one of the famous spires from the Churchill Downs racetrack. He surveyed the house and immediate area from above as he floated down. The driveway was empty. Therese appeared to be gone. Her house winked with flecks of Power.
It was as unwise to rush into a place filled with unknown magic as it was to rush into a place filled with unknown wards. Either Therese was a competent witch, or she knew someone who was, because all of the entrances to her house were spelled, front and back doors, her windows, even the chimney.
He studied the spells thoughtfully. They seemed like they might be sensitive enough to be triggered by his presence. He didn’t think they would hurt him so much as alert someone if he triggered them.
He was interested to know who they might alert. He was even more interested in the fact that the spells felt bright and shining, like newly minted coins. Why would Therese recently feel the need to spell her windows, doors and even her chimney?
Perhaps Khalil had not made a favorable impression on her when they met.
He lowered down and slowly circled the house from a few feet away at the ground level. The house was not so new. However, both it and the detached garage were nicely maintained, and the flowers and shrubbery in the yard were quite charming and well tended.
There. A small vent for a clothes dryer protruded from the exterior wall, a few feet above the ground. It was covered with a grill and an aluminum flap, but those barriers did not matter in the slightest to him. The vent was not covered with a spell. He thought perhaps someone should tell Therese about that.
He attenuated his presence and flowed into the vent, through the dryer, and materialized in a small laundry room. There were no living presences in the house, so he strolled out of the laundry room and found himself in a kitchen filled with a great many things.
The walls were covered with hangings and framed pictures. There was a rooster clock and a smiling creature made of cloth with denim clothes and straw for hair and button eyes. There were cartoon cows interspersed throughout. A red-and-white checked cloth covered the table where two small ceramic chickens sat, one with the letter S and the other with the letter P. A pink jar fashioned like a pig sat on the counter. The word COOKIES was printed on its round belly.
Really, he did not understand the pig thing.
The jar had a lid shaped like a puffy white hat. He lifted the lid and looked inside. It was, indeed, filled with cookies. How logical. He took one, sniffed it and tried a cautious bite. It was brown, sweet, and had a spicy kick.
He ate the cookie as he walked through the house. He paused in the hall by the front door to flip through Therese’s mail—bills, cards, clothing catalogs and a solicitation from a political group called the Humanist Party. Therese liked stinky colored leaves and dried flowers that she kept in a bowl on the hall table. She had a small computer station in one corner of the living room, and a large flat-screen TV in another corner. He turned on the laptop and left it to power up as he continued his search.
Therese also liked a lot of pillows, and she had a lot of dolls. She really had a lot of dolls. Dolls on shelves, dolls in glass cabinets. Dolls with curly blonde hair and frilly dresses, cloth dolls, plastic dolls, baby dolls, porcelain dolls, dolls both new and old. He lost interest in counting them after he reached a hundred. In her bedroom, she had twenty pillows on her bed of varying shapes, sizes, colors and patterns, and over thirty dolls were arranged in front of them. Some of the dolls sparked with magic.
Khalil was inclined to think this was strange. He was almost bored, and he really wanted to go back to Grace and watch the kids splash in a small pool, but he was also curious. Down the short hall, he found a bathroom (there were dolls in the bathroom too, which he found totally incomprehensible), and a half-closed door that led to a darkened room that held most of the Power in the house. Carefully he eased the door open further and looked inside.
There were so very many dolls. By this point he was beyond surprise. There was a workbench with a tall stool and a lamp, and parts of dolls on the bench, along with clay, jars of powders and liquids, bowls and measuring implements, a pestle and mortar, dried herbs, and candles and a smudge bowl with something half burned in it.
Ah. No wonder Therese had a thing for dolls. She worked sympathetic magic, and she made poppets. Khalil stepped closer to the workbench, studying everything without touching it. While he was no expert on human magics, it appeared Therese was accomplished at her craft. Someone could do a great deal of damage with poppet magic, and also a great deal of good. Several human cultures had magic systems that used poppets, from early Egypt, to West African fetishes and New Orleans voodoo.
Had Therese collected anything of Grace’s or the children’s to use in poppets, when she had snooped through their things? Just the possibility made Khalil want to raze her house to the ground so completely that not a single cornerstone was left standing.
Tires crunched on gravel outside. He blew to the window nearest the driveway in time to see Therese climb out of her car. She collected her purse and a few grocery bags from the trunk. As she headed for the front of the house, he flowed into the kitchen, materialized to lean against the counter and waited for her. He helped himself to another cookie as she unlocked the front door. He chewed and listened to her heels click on the floor.
Then she rounded the corner, caught sight of him, dropped everything and screamed.
He took a last bite of cookie and said, “Hello, Therese.”
She whirled to run. He stood in her way. She screamed again and spun to lunge for the back door, only suddenly he stood there too, blocking it. He watched her coldly, his arms crossed. A nice man probably would have felt bad at causing her panic. But Khalil remembered her digging through Grace’s things, and he wasn’t a nice man at all.
Therese flushed a deep red then turned pasty white. Her hands shook, and her eyes darted around. “H-how did you get in? All the entrances were spelled!”
Someone ought to tell her about the dryer vent, but it wouldn’t be Khalil. He said, “I should have followed up with you before this, but I’ve been busy. You might not know it to look at me, but I do have a day job.”
“You’re going to be sorry you broke in,” Therese spat.
“Am I?” He regarded her, almost with interest. “Probably not before you’re sorry you dug through Grace’s things. What were you looking for?”
“Nothing!”
“The thing about panic,” said Khalil, “is that it lessens one’s ability to lie, especially to someone who has an exceedingly well developed truthsense.”
“My gods, I was just looking for a pen and a piece of paper!”
In the next moment, he held her pinned by the throat against the wall. He hissed, “You would not be lying unless the answer mattered.”
“I was only looking for information!” she sobbed. “That’s all, I swear it!”
“What information?” Max and Chloe—his babies—had been playing innocently the whole time.
“I was looking to see if Isalynn LeFevre had contacted Grace!”
He was so angry, and it would be so easy to close his hand tighter and crush her windpipe. He barely held himself in check. “Why?”
“I don’t know why.” Something must have shown on his face or maybe his fingers started to tighten, because she screamed, “I don’t know why! Gods damn you freaksome bastard, someone asked me to check!”
“Who?”
“Brandon Miller!”
Brandon, from Grace’s work day yesterday. There was the connection to follow, and it wasn’t even difficult. His hand relaxed. “How convenient,” Khalil said. “He was next on my list.”
She regarded him with equal amounts of loathing and fear. But he was not at all interested in that, and now he had what he wanted from her.
“I like your cookies,” he told her as he tied her to a kitchen chair. He didn’t bother with a complicated binding since he didn’t plan on leaving her alone for long. He dissipated and flowed out the dryer vent, and as soon as he had rematerialized, he tugged on the connection that led to Ismat.
The other Djinn streaked toward him and formed in front of him. This time the Djinn chose the form of a dark-skinned, stocky male, with hawkish features and a twinkle in his starred eyes. “If you keep up this impetuous spending spree,” said Ismat, “you will convince all the younger Djinn that the sky is falling. Everyone will rush to call in all their favors, and our venerable society will collapse.”
Khalil didn’t smile. He said, “I’m asking you to agree to an open-ended favor that will cancel out the rest of what you owe me. I trust you, and you’re one of the few people I would call friend. I need you to help me, and I’m not yet sure what that means. Are you willing and able to pay your debt this way?”
The other Djinn’s merry expression faded. “Of course. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But it involves Grace and the children.” He explained rapidly. “I need to find out where Brandon lives, and somebody needs to do something with Therese. I don’t know what, question her to see if she knows anything else or take her to the witches’ sheriff’s office, except I’m not sure yet if she’s actually broken any laws. I almost killed her, but Grace asked me not to start an inter-demesne incident.”
Ismat turned toward the house. “I’ll take care of her.”
Khalil started to dematerialize then paused. “I almost forgot—you’ll want to enter the house through the clothes dryer vent. She has all the doors and windows spelled. I’m not sure who would be alerted if the spells are tripped, but I prefer not to broadcast our intentions.”
“Got it,” Ismat said. “Good hunting.”
It took Khalil longer to find Brandon Miller’s house than it had for him to find Therese’s. He called his Djinn associate with the facility for information gathering on the Internet, and he did something he rarely did any more—he bargained away a favor for information.
His contact got back to him quickly. Brandon didn’t live in the city. He owned a twenty-five-acre property about a half hour’s car drive south of the Louisville International Airport. As soon as Khalil had the details, he took off.
It took some effort to locate the property. While he searched, Khalil’s sense of unease deepened. Grace had said that Olivia thought the other witches from Saturday had known each other very well. If Olivia was correct, what did that mean? Why would they all wish to work on Grace’s property together?
Why would they wish for other witches to stay away while they did so?
Why did Brandon want to know if Isalynn LeFevre had contacted Grace?
Even though Brandon’s property wasn’t marked with so much as a mailbox, Khalil finally located it. A long gravel drive led back through a tangle of old-growth forest. The day had turned into a bright afternoon, and a fierce humid heat lay heavily across the land like a dense fog. He traveled through the forest carefully, all his senses wide open for sparks of Power that could be traps.
He found plenty of them. The land was layered with traps overlaid on traps. There were so many magical and physical traps, he stopped trying to gain information by slipping through the forest. Instead he soared over the land until he spotted a small cluster of buildings well away from the road. A large vegetable garden bordered the buildings, along with a chicken coop.
He drifted down as gently as a snowflake, spreading his presence so thin, almost nobody would have been able to sense him. Nobody except for his extraordinary Grace.
There were three older, rusted vehicles near the buildings, but none of them looked like they were in drivable condition. The main building was the house. He slipped close and listened, but he didn’t hear anyone stirring. It appeared Brandon was not at home. As he circled the house, he glanced in the windows at a cluttered interior. One room had several brightly colored signs stacked against the wall and piles of posters and buttons on a table, all with the American flag rippling in the background. Some signs had the slogan: THE HUMANIST PARTY. Others read: JAYDON GUTHRIE FOR HEAD OF THE WITCHES.
A couple of large dogs napped on a covered porch. He took care not to disturb them, in case someone was actually in the house where he could not see them. Some dogs and certain other animals were very sensitive to a Djinn’s presence.
He slipped away and scouted out the other buildings. One was an unused barn with a roof that was falling in. Another was a toolshed filled with a variety of implements and machines, and an aluminum ladder lying on the ground against one outside wall. Even that building had wards glowing on it. Brandon cared for his possessions. The only building that didn’t have wards or other sparks of Power was the rotting barn.