Chapter 15

Chapter15

I landed in an overgrown lawn choked with weeds, which was odd since this posh neighborhood did not tolerate second-class plant life.

A tingle of alarm tripped up my spine.

There were too many trees to see the house, so we crept forward, keeping sight of the driveway to our right as a guide.

The blue spruce, wild patches of fragrant heather, and Japanese maples ablaze in color were beautiful. Fall sun kissed our cheeks, an eagle soared high overhead, and still I checked over my shoulder every two seconds.

Sachie was equally jumpy, but we made our way through the woods without incident. We crouched in the long grass, surveying the stunning modern mansion.

“It looks totally normal from the outside,” Sachie said. “Then again, it wouldn’t fall into disrepair in a few months like the grounds have.”

“I don’t like any of this.” It didn’t help that Cherry vibrated with excited anticipation. “You think we’ll find Calista in there? She had to be taken somewhere secure, but this is some distance from where the transport van was parked.”

“Hard to say.”

We crept around the back, keeping under the windowsills and out of sight.

Sachie whistled softly at the mansion’s red cedar accents, large windows, and multiple balconies to enjoy the view up here on the cliff.

A light breeze off the water blew a lock of hair into my face. I tucked it behind my ear and turned my back to the wind, studying the property.

The pool had an infinity edge overlooking cruise ships in Burrard Inlet, but it also had leaves and pine needles floating in the water, and there was moss growing between the flagstones. The artificial turf on the small putting green was matted and damaged.

Baker spent a lot of time in Ottawa to lobby the government, but people like him kept up appearances.

I nudged Sachie, keeping my voice low. We were hidden from the neighbors by all the trees, but I didn’t know who or what might be inside listening. “He has the money to employ a gardener on a regular basis to take care of the property, so why hasn’t he? If he was mixed up in this abduction, wouldn’t he want things to seem as normal as possible?”

“Yeah.” She angled her face to one of the upper balconies, shielding her eyes from the direct sunlight with one hand. “The door up there is cracked open, so the alarm isn’t on.”

Cherry sat up sharply like she was rubbing her hands together in glee. Game time.

We crept up the deck stairs to the sliding glass door on this level, but the fabric blinds were closed, and we couldn’t see in. Sachie used her heat magic to twist the lock, then slid the glass door open. I stepped onto the cream carpet in the living room and threw my arm over my nose and mouth, the reek of garbage making me rock back on my heels.

It was made worse by the heat that was cranked up to slightly less than inside a volcano temperature. The ceiling dripped with condensation.

The room itself was ostentatious with white furniture, a baby grand piano, and an enormous gold marble fireplace as a focal point, but once my eyes stopped watering from the stench and I could get a better look, I noticed scuff marks on the paint and a layer of grime over everything.

Sachie leaned over the sofa, grimaced, and pointed. There were bloodstains on the fabric. She tapped her forearm, right above her wrist, and I did the same. It triggered a subcutaneous electric signal that could be paired to any partner. This was the best communication solution Maccabees had found for whenever we had to go into the Brink. It didn’t have cell reception and the chaotic magic reduced walkie-talkies to a staticky nightmare.

Sach was the last person I’d been in the Brink with, and we hadn’t reconfigured the signal to work with anyone else yet.

We split up, Sachie hugging left, while I went right. I kept my back to the wall in the hallway, but the only assault was to good taste thanks to the textured wood paneling that probably cost a fortune but looked like it had been torn off the sides of old station wagons.

I stepped into the kitchen and gasped in horror. Bad idea. The hot garbage juice stench was unbearable in here and I gagged, dry heaving. I tapped the signal to change it from a single steady pulse to a double pulse followed by a pause to let Sachie know I’d found trouble.

And it wasn’t the lack of waste disposal.

All the glass in the cabinet doors was smashed and the words “AM I ALIVE” were scrawled in dark paint across the white quartz countertop.

I cautiously scraped a nail through a couple of the letters, flaking them. As I examined the chips under my nail more closely, I swallowed. This wasn’t paint. It was dried blood.

My skin prickled like a full-body warning system and even Cherry muted her excitement in favor of a wary caution.

I crouched down to examine a series of crooked gouges in the bamboo floorboards.

A cast iron pan whistled overhead. It smashed against the fridge, denting the stainless steel and breaking the door off its top hinge.

I jumped up and spun around, my heart fluttering in my throat like a moth trying to escape a jar, but I was alone.

Look again, Cherry said, calm but insistent. Most of the time, she was off the walls or excited for bloodlust, but now and again, she got like this, like a cat staring intently at something invisible. Don’t you see it?

I tsked. I was clearly alone. Maybe the pan had just fallen.

At an angle like that?she pressed. Really?

The smell of rot and decay made me unable to focus. I looked directly in front of me, but that hurt my head, and my gaze jumped elsewhere⁠—

An invisible body slammed me backward against the counter, ice-cold hands choking me.

I fought to break free from my unseen assailant, but the longer I scrabbled at the hands cutting off my air—or stared directly ahead—the more my vision blurred and my head throbbed.

Black dots danced in front of my eyes and my lungs burned. Two voices warred in my head. One was calm, assuring me there was nothing to see, and the other was Cherry screaming at me to fight.

I fumbled for the lighter in my pocket, flicked it on, and shoved the flame at the crushing weight on top of me.

The smell of burning flesh mingled with the garbage. For a split second I swore I saw an arm, but it was gone in an instant, along with the flame, which winked out.

“Am I alive?” The whisper was followed by a crazed cackle, but I was no longer pinned down.

My lighter was also gone, but I’d take that over being choked by an invisible assailant. I stood up on shaky legs, the mere act of inhaling scorching my bruised throat, and scanned the room. The calm voice no longer uttered reassurances, and I didn’t have any weird lurches in vision, but Cherry was growling.

Who attacked me? Was it the owner of this place? I searched for a name, but it eluded me, which was odd since I remembered everything else: Calista, visiting Rukhsana, coming here with Sachie.

Shit! I sprinted through the house, bellowing my partner’s name and the word “Invisible!” My brain wouldn’t function any more clearly than that.

Sachie was in the master bedroom, wrestling with nothing. I tried to see it out of the corner of my eye like I could sneak up on its true form, but all I saw was a blurred screen like a person on television who needed their identity protected.

She flung out a hand and a patch of skin flared for a second like a mirage shimmering out of the desert air.

If I hadn’t thrown myself sideways, the searing heat she’d pitched at her target would have burned out my eyeballs. Instead, it sizzled past my ear.

Sachie gestured with her hand like she was dabbing paint on a canvas. She was sucking the heat out of this room and throwing it around, but she didn’t hit anything because we didn’t see any more flashes of our attacker.

I slid into my blue flame synesthete magic, and pivoted in a slow circle.

The human form jumping around frenetically was awash in blue with darker pulsing dots all over its head and torso. It was nauseating to look at, even when seen only through my magic sight.

I pointed. “There!”

Sach scored a couple more hits on our assailant, but it wasn’t enough. When she looked directly where I pointed, she swayed woozily and had to look elsewhere, and the revealed slivers of our opponent remained visible for only a second.

I focused harder. Blood seeped out of my tear ducts and nostrils.

At least the temperature in here dropped, with Sachie using up the hot air for her projectiles.

“Am I alive? Am I alive?” The whisper resumed in an eerie chant, whipping around us.

Sachie gritted her teeth and slowly curled one hand into a fist.

The whisper cut off abruptly and the form in my synesthete vision stuttered.

“Again!” I cried, wiping blood from my eyes.

She’d switched tactics, pulling heat from our opponent instead of pushing it into them. Sachie made tugging motion and ice crackled over every surface.

I hugged my arms around myself, my teeth chattering, and my skin turning blue, but our attacker was barely able to move. This was a good start, but I couldn’t keep staring at them in my synesthete vision and they hadn’t become visible.

Heat had worked, albeit in brief flashes. What about sustained pain?

Yeeeeees, Cherry crowed.

I yanked the awl from my sleeve and stabbed it through our assailant’s foot.

The scream was definitely male, but I couldn’t tell if he was visible because a wave of bright blue light flooded over me like a tsunami. Blinded, I stumbled backward and crashed against the bed.

The man cried out again in agony.

I’d braced myself for the next wave of blue, but while Quentin Baker’s feet blazed in my magic sight, the blue across the rest of his body dialed way down, which was weird. I hastily wiped my eyes and nose on my sleeve, feeling like a fog had lifted from my brain.

“Quentin Baker!” Sach sounded as relieved as I felt to have remembered his name, though her jaw was bruised and she was moving slowly.

I’d stabbed his left bare foot and she’d shoved the dirk through the right one. He was stuck fast, pinned to the floor and bleeding. The brutality of what we’d done was shocking, and I was tempted to pull out the implements of this torture, but Quentin wasn’t screaming anymore.

He was swaying, staring at his corporeal feet, and smiling.

It was almost impossible to see any trace of the handsome, confident man from our photo in this ruin of a human being. His cheeks were hollow, and his ribs stuck out from his sunken chest like the masts of a ghostly vessel—and those were his best features. His bare chest was covered with a grotesque patchwork of nicks and burns.

I shook my head as if that would drop understanding on me.

Sachie gently grasped Quentin’s shoulders. “Who did this to you?”

Quentin widened his eyes. He looked down at where she held him, and his pain-glazed eyes lit up with a cautious hope. “Am I alive?” He spoke above a whisper for the first time, his voice rusty.

“Yes,” she said, “and you need medical attention.”

“Alive! I. AM. ALIIIIIVE!”

“Quentin,” I said firmly. “Did Calista do this to you? Where is she?”

He recoiled and dropped his gaze back down to his feet.

I thought his fear was confirmation that she was responsible for his condition, but when he didn’t speak, I shot Sachie a confused glance.

She shrugged, as lost as I was.

“Calista.” His voice was ugly with hate, and spittle flew from his lips. “LIAAAARRRRRR!”

Sachie leaned forward. “Did you stake her because she lied?”

“ALIVE! ALIVE! ALIVE!”

Quentin Baker was most definitely alive. He was also completely insane, and if he had Calista, we might never find her before her healing magic expelled the stake and she went on the rampage. I sat down hard on the mattress. Fuck.

Sachie pulled her phone out of her pocket. “We have to phone Michael. We’re not allowed to call a healer without her clearance.”

“Do it.” I crouched down by Quentin, trying not to shudder at his mangled, bleeding feet and the manic laughter bouncing around the room. “If we pull these out, will he disappear again?”

“We can’t leave them in,” Sachie said. She’d put her phone on speaker, and the shrill rings while we waited for Michael to pick up did not add to the ambience. “We’ve crucified the poor guy to the floor.”

Suddenly, Quentin bellowed in anguished rage.

My heart sank because the edges of his solid form were once more flickering and blurring. Once again, a mild throbbing danced through my temples when I tried to look at him.

We were losing him.

He rocked back and forth, repeating “Alive” in a plaintive cry.

“Quentin, hang on,” I said helplessly. “We’ll fix you.”

“Hello?” Michael’s crisp voice punctuated the despair blanketing the room.

“We have a suspect,” Sachie said. “But we need a healer to⁠—”

Quentin’s arms had blurred into invisibility.

“To what?” Michael prompted.

Quentin glanced between Sachie and me, his red-rimmed eyes utterly and heartbreakingly lucid. “I got her good, right? She’s gone.”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Calista was still alive, so I nodded. “Yeah. You did.”

He gave a satisfied smile, then with a lightning-fast motion, he ripped the awl from his foot and speared it through his jugular.

Blood sprayed over both of us in an arc.

Sachie’s phone clattered to the ground. She tried to staunch the bleeding while I held Quentin, who struggled to get away, forgetting he was still pinned to the ground with the dirk.

Everything is okay. I didn’t hear the words, I simply accepted the suggestion to relax and let things be, like a blanket cocooning my mind.

Sachie loosened her pressure on the wound, but a moment later, she blinked, frowned, and pressed down again.

The suggestion had dissipated as fast as it came on. Quentin had used his white flame magic on us, like he must have with Calista to keep her calm enough to stake her, but he was broken and dying, and it didn’t take.

“Operative Saito,” the director snapped. “What is going on?”

Quentin collapsed in a limp heap in my arms. He smiled and met my gaze, gripping my hand. “Thank you.” He shuddered once, and the light faded from his eyes.

“Quentin!” My voice was a plaintive plea.

“Aviva?” my mother said. “Are you both all right? One of you answer me.”

We were covered in blood, no closer to finding Calista, and I held a dead man whose body was so gaunt and battered as to be insubstantial. Yet I trembled under the weight of all he’d suffered.

His blood would wash off my hands, but it would never be gone. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out.

Sachie managed a shadow of a bitter laugh.

Suddenly, Darsh was there, picking the phone off the carpet. “Michael,” he said firmly, “we’ll call you back.”