Chapter 11

ELEVEN

"Should you be here?" Paris asked as he dotted sea foam onto the sandy shore he'd spent all morning painting. It had been two days since his outing to the coast, and as much as he loved the earthy forest and colorful wildflowers he'd plucked from the meadow, he missed the water more. He'd needed to see it today, even if only on the cabin walls.

Mac's furious pen strokes at the table behind him stopped. "What?"

"I get the sense you're kind of a big deal." He lowered his brush and glanced over his shoulder. "Should you be here babysitting me and working this case when there's clearly bigger things going on?"

"You're kind of a big deal too," Mac said with a wry grin.

Paris couldn't decide whether to paint him with that crooked smile, the one that reminded him of the raven, or with the soft smile that Paris had woken up to in Encinal, the same one that would flit across Mac's face in the split second before he fell asleep.

Paris turned back to his mural. "Yeah, for being a sitting duck." And because he felt on the edge of hilarity and insanity, restless to the point of ridiculous, he swiped his brush through the yellow paint and added a rubber ducky on top of the breakers. "I'm just out here in the woods, painting pretty pictures and making you listen to music you probably don't even like." The quiet had been a peaceful respite the first few days here, but he was used to constant comings and goings, the sounds of the city, and the crashing waves below his condo. He'd cracked yesterday and asked Mac if one of his devices had enough juice to stream his favorite jazz channel. It had also been the music playing right before he'd been taken by the giant. He thought maybe it would jog his subconscious. Would help him put some of the channeling techniques he'd been working on with the witches to good use. No such luck. "I haven't even had another dream."

"One, I like the music. Two, finding Icarus was a cold case you helped solve."

"Not on purpose," Paris said as he gave the ducky two beady, black eyes and an orange beak.

"You still did. Three, we're following up on your list of potential informants in your father's organization. And four, as to the case we've been working, we've identified ten missing persons who may be connected to the giant who took you."

He tossed aside his brush and wiped his hands on the sweats he'd sacrificed to the paint gods days ago. "But we still don't know who or where he is." He slid into the chair beside Mac and gestured at the spread folders. "Or where all these poor people are buried."

"If they're buried at all. The vampire in your dream was eviscerated. The altar you were on was incinerated. You would have been ash if we hadn't rescued you."

"So there was nothing else in the area? No clues, no souls, no other evidence of the mystic or mundane?"

"Nothing. Just you and your dreams."

Propping his elbows on the table, Paris scrubbed his hands over his face and groaned. "Make it make sense, Mac."

"Okay, let's start from the top," he said, and Paris was glad his hands were still over his face. They muffled his chuckle at the very detective-like opener. "He was a giant," Mac continued. "Going by your dreams and my case files, he hunted from Portola all the way up to Talahalusi. He and the three other giants we know of in that range are allied with Chaos, and history indicates they are most active in the run-up to Samhain, when they make a coordinated offering in an attempt to open the veil and bring Chaos all the way through."

Paris shivered. "It was there that night. The darkness had already started to push through over the altar."

"Meaning the veil is particularly weak there."

"In the Canyon Lands? No shit, Mac, I could've told you that, and I'm just a human."

Mac's answering laugh was cut short by some realization, his brows snapping together as he yanked the files closer. "We know he needs a human to channel the souls through for his offering." He tossed aside three folders, reducing the number to seven. "These are the missing humans." After a flurry of keystrokes on his laptop, a map appeared, seven dots stretching from Talahalusi to Yerba Buena to Portola. "And where each lived when they were taken."

"Can you add dates?" Paris asked. "Each time they were taken. And add mine." The earlier deduction about the giant hunting and toying with his victims had significantly narrowed their pool. "Color them by year. I need the painting to come together."

And it did, Paris recognizing the pattern. "He hunts a few years in one place, then moves," he said. He pointed at the cluster in the south. "Lola and two others in Portola three to five years ago." Then to the group up north. "Two potential victims in Talahalusi seven to ten years ago." Then to his home. "Three in YB the last two years."

"But we don't know for certain that's the only place he's hunting," Mac said. "We rarely have more than one per year in my files, and we know the giants make sacrifices all through the month."

"But if the pattern holds," Paris argued, "he's in YB this October. He took me from YB."

"But he didn't hunt you. What if . . ."

Paris gestured with a rolling hand for him to spit it out.

"What if you were a substitute? What if someone got away..."

"They're still out there, then. And he's still hunting them."

"In YB, if you're right." Mac's fingers flew across the keyboard. "We need to see who else has gone missing recently. Whoever it is, they haven't hit my pile or my list yet."

An arching flame in the hearth brought another question to mind. "If he catches them," Paris said, "where would he take them? You said the altar I was on is gone. Are there other ones?"

"Rumored," Mac said, as he opened another map on screen. "In other places where the veil is thin."

Paris pointed at the one closest to the coast, not far from where they were now. "That one's close by."

Mac nodded. "Along the fault ridge between Portola and the ocean."

"We need to go there. See if there's any activity."

Mac's "Paris" reminded him of Kai's reply to some of his and Jason's more adventurous schemes. But in those cases, he and his friend were two humans getting into trouble way above their heads. This time, Paris had a well-connected raven at his side.

"Would I be in danger down there?" he said, pointing at that spot along the ridge. "Like I would be in YB?"

The dark-eyed glare cast his way was epic. "You're asking to go to a giant's altar."

"Okay, dumb question," Paris conceded. "Better one, how fast can you get someone from the team down here to go with us?"

The wry grin reappeared, and Paris decided that was the one he wanted to paint. "Liam, of course, and there's a shifter on our team from around these parts. And if I know her girlfriend, she'll come too." He raised a hand, quelling Paris's rising hope. " If Adam can spare them."

Fair enough. Bigger things and all that. "Deal."