Crimson Veil

Like me. I glanced over at Nerissa, who wore a cloak as gold as the sun, over a black dress. She matched me well, but I also needed Roman for when my predator wanted out to play. I would never expect just one person to meet my needs. And Delilah? Well, she was more like our mother, but still she had both Shade and the Autumn Lord.

Perhaps that had been the problem. Perhaps Father had turned against his nature, needed Mother too much, and in doing so, denied anyone else the chance to make him happy and whole.

Whatever the case, the past was long over, and now we stood on the side of Birchwater Pond. Instead of our mother, we were here to bid farewell to Sephreh. The formal rites would come later—but for now, we passed the chalice and intoned the prayer of the dead, and focused our energy on Camille as she cut the cords of energy connecting him to our lives. Grieving would take time, mourning would move as it would, but letting go? We had to let him go. We had to let him journey on to find his joy and his future.

We ate our communion cakes—ate the body of the Great Mother. And we sipped the blood of the Harvest God, found in sweet wine, although my chalice contained actual blood. We lit the fires and wandered the shore after wishing Father’s spirit—and Chrysandra and Queen Asteria and all those we’d lost over the past few years—well on their journeys.

After we were done, Nerissa and I strolled arm in arm to the water’s edge, and once again, I flashed back to childhood, watching the lake churn as the falling water thundered into it.

“What are you thinking about? You look so far away.” Nerissa slid her arm around me and kissed the top of my head.

“Memories. Just… the past. The first Samhain we bade farewell to our mother. And how Father was such an ass.” I told her about it.

“He was mourning your mother.”

“He had three daughters who needed him to man up, to be both father and mother to them. We needed him then, and I swear, he never fully returned after checking out. I just hope Mother was waiting for him. I don’t like to think of him wandering alone. For one thing, I don’t want him haunting our home.”

She laughed, but I was serious. The last thing we needed was the ghost of our father wandering around the house, bemoaning his fate.

“I think you’re safe. Wouldn’t your mother be there for him? Isn’t that how it works in your afterlife?” The way she said it made it sound almost like a disease, but I knew she didn’t mean anything by it.

“I hope so. I seriously hope so.” We paused by a little bower where Smoky and Morio had built a covered bench. Taking shelter from the rain, we held hands, snuggling together.

“I love the look, by the way. I love your hair down.” The way she said it sounded wistful. “You seem more vulnerable… less… less like nothing matters. Sometimes I think everything just bounces off you, and I worry that anything I say will do the same.”

Oh, no. We didn’t need angst tonight and this had become a common argument. There was enough pain with remembering our dead, remembering our friends and family who had passed. Especially those who died because of us.

“Don’t. Not tonight. You know I love you. You know I listen to you—even if I don’t say anything. I never ignore you.” Apparently I wasn’t tuned in enough, or so Nerissa thought. I wasn’t entirely sure where her complaints were coming from because I didn’t think I did that at all.

“Yes, you do.” She let out a long sigh. “But we’ll talk about that later. You’re right. Tonight is not for arguing. Tonight’s for remembering the dead, and letting the past move into the past.”

I hated seeing the clouded look on her face and leaned in to give her a kiss. “I promise—we’ll work on this. I may not understand why you’re upset, but I see that you are. And I don’t want you unhappy. I love you too much for that.”

She squeezed my hand. “I know. I love you, too.”

And with that, we headed back to the others. Trillian and Morio grilled the meat while Hanna and Vanzir spread out the rest of the food on the tables. Iris was playing with Maggie, who looked delighted to have her first nanny around again. Iris hadn’t been able to care for Maggie since mid-pregnancy, because Maggie accidentally tripped her up, and she could be a real handful. But now, she sat, contented, on Iris’s lap, leaning against her softly with that wide-eyed innocence beaming up at her.

Trillian picked up a guitar and started to play an Otherworld melody. He’d proved quite adept with the instrument, and Camille had bought him one last Yule. The song was one of loss, and acceptance, and I recognized it right off. I’d learned it when I was a teenager.

I closed my eyes and fell into the rhythm, then started singing softly. I missed singing—I’d been considered talented before Dredge had gotten to me, and I still led the chants and songs during our holidays.

Camille glanced over at me, where she sat between Morio and Smoky, and smiled softly. Kitten stoked the fire, then handed out skewers with marshmallows. Vanzir scrounged up a drum and joined in, and Iris lent her voice to mine. As one song ended, we moved into the next, and then the next, heedless of the light misting drizzle that showered down. Warmed by the fire, we ignored what might be coming tomorrow, as we remembered our yesterdays.

Chapter 16

Late in the evening—around midnight—we returned to the house. The others were tired, and so I bade them good night and went down to my lair to get ready for my trip to Roman’s. I thought about braiding my hair again before I left but then said, “Fuck it,” and changed into jeans and a turtleneck, leaving my hair down. Nerissa was already asleep by the time I left. She had a busy day ahead of her at work tomorrow and I didn’t want to disturb her, so I left a note on the nightstand and headed out. I decided to take the Jag. It was still rattling, but if Jason said it would make it until next week, I believed him.

The streets were still fairly busy—not only was it Samhain Eve, but it was also Halloween for the general populace, and adult partygoers were reveling. I was headed down a side street when a Hummer lurched forward out of the alley. The next moment, I screamed as the beast’s nose drove itself directly into the side of my Jag on the passenger side. Before I knew what was happening, we went skidding across the intersection.

Gripping the wheel, I held on, the sound of metal screeching as I struggled to break my Jag free from the Hummer. But my bumper was tangled up in its bumper, like a chicken on a spit, and all I could do was ride out the attack.

Seconds later, the oncoming brick wall loomed large, and I panicked. I could probably survive this, if nothing pierced me through the heart, but the idea of being wedged between that monstrosity and the building didn’t strike me as comforting. I let go of the wheel and struggled with my seat belt.

But it was too late—my Jag hit the building, side first, as metal screeched along metal. The Hummer wasn’t braking—it continued its drive forward, like a compactor in a junkyard, shattering the passenger door and window, trundling me into the brick wall before I could get free of my seat belt.

I braced myself for impact as it crunched the front seats, expecting to be mangled at any moment. I knew I could survive the impact, and heal, but only if my heart was protected from anything that might be aimed at it and if my car didn’t explode into flames.

But then, as the sounds of a siren echoed nearby, the Hummer stopped abruptly, then pulled away, dragging the passenger door of my car with it. It barreled down the street. I held tight to the steering wheel, trying to get my bearings. Then, panic rising, I ripped off the seat belt and, unable to make it past the jumble of metal on either side, I smashed my fist through the already fractured windshield. Within seconds, I crawled over the hood as the cops came skidding up. I cleared the wreck and stood there, numb, staring at the remains of what had been my Jag. There was nothing left except twisted metal and broken glass.

“Menolly!” Yugi’s voice shook me out of my daze.

“Yugi?” I turned, staring at Chase’s second in command. “Yugi? What are you doing here?”

“I was on my way back to headquarters when I saw the whole thing.” He was Swedish, and an empath, and he was damned good at his job. Now a look of concern spread across his face. “Who the hell was trying to kill you, Menolly? Because from what I saw, that was deliberate.”

Twenty minutes later, I was in the headquarters of the FH-CSI, and Roman was there by my side. Yugi had called Nerissa, and she, Camille, and Delilah were on their way down to pick me up. I couldn’t have the hot coffee, but Yugi had found a spare bottle of blood and he warmed it up. I sipped slowly, the liquid loosening the knots in my back. While I hadn’t been hurt, I’d had one hell of a shock.

“We have to trace the Hummer.” Roman was furious. He leaned his hands on the table and stared at Yugi, who was sitting beside me. “You’re the policeman. Did you get the license plate?”

Yugi shook his head. “My first priority was making sure Menolly was okay. By the time I saw her, the car had vanished. But we have the make and model, and we have the color. It’s hard to hide a Hummer. They don’t just blend in with the crowd.”

“It’s not hard if you have a garage or a warehouse.” Roman was pissed. I’d seldom seen him this angry.

“Don’t bother. We’re pretty sure we know who’s responsible. Or at least, who has a hand in it.” I reached up, placed my hand on his arm.

“I may have some information that can shed some light on the attack.” Rane—one of the Fae officers who worked the night shift—entered the room at that moment. She was holding my purse. “This is yours, right?”

I nodded. “Right.”

“There was a tracer bug in it. I caught the little bugger when we were clearing out your car before the tow truck showed up. It was trying to crawl out of the bag as I picked it up. I managed to catch the critter.” She held up a jar. Inside, a tracer bug was fluttering around.

A lot like beetles, tracer bugs were from Otherworld, and they did a remarkable job of acting like a tracker—a biological GPS, so to speak. While not intelligent, they could easily be used by anybody who was good with a seeing-eye spell, or any sort of spy spells. Usually, sorcerers used them to track their rivals.

I stared at the thing. They were good at camouflage. I seldom pawed through my purse other than looking for my wallet or my keys. It could have easily hidden there for any length of time.

“When’s the last time you fully cleaned out your purse?” Yugi stared at the bug, then motioned for Rane to place the jar on the table.

Thinking back, I tried to remember when I’d last looked through the handbag. After a moment, I knew. “Two weeks ago. I emptied it out to find Nerissa’s chocolates she’d tossed in there.”

“Can you think of any time in the past two weeks that you haven’t been around your purse, other than at home? I doubt anybody there would have bugged your handbag.” Yugi jotted something down in his notebook.

“Damn it… there have been several occasions.” I propped my chin up with my hands. “I can’t believe this—my Jag’s destroyed. The first accident was bad enough but this one? I can’t believe I’ve been in two wrecks in less than a week. They can’t be coincidence.”

Roman rubbed his chin and looked at Yugi. “You know who’s doing this but you aren’t telling us. Don’t you think it’s time?”

Yugi stared at him for a moment. “Menolly, was your purse unattended during the first accident?”

I frowned, thinking back. “Yeah, actually. It was… I left it on the seat when I let… whatever her name was—I can’t remember it right now—sit in my car to warm up while we waited for the tow truck.”

“And she vanished, right?”

“Right. And her insurance information turned out to be fraudulent.”

Yugi flipped through the file folder, and I realized it was the same one that they had created for the first accident. “We have here that you told us her name was Eisha te Kana. Here’s the information she gave you for her phone and address, but it says that her info checked out as fake.”

“Right. She disappeared, and nobody ever contacted me to tell me if they’d found her.”

“We didn’t. She just vanished into nowhere.” Yugi looked up as Nerissa and my sisters entered the room.

They flocked around me like a group of mother hens, crowding Roman out. I was too rattled to hear what they were all saying, so I held up my hands.

“One at a time. Please.” Suddenly feeling as if all the wind had left my sails, I drooped. “I’m tired. I know vamps aren’t supposed to get tired, but I am. I’m weary and stressed and shaky.”

Camille motioned to the chairs. “Everybody, sit down and shut up. Let Menolly take the lead. She’s all right, we can see that much, so back off and give her some space.”

Grateful, I waited till they had sorted themselves out. Nerissa vanished for a moment and brought back a box of doughnuts. Camille and Delilah each accepted raspberry-filled pastries, while Nerissa bit into a chocolate-covered cake doughnut. As they listened, I told them what had happened. Recounting it didn’t take any of the horror away, nor did spelling out the connection we thought there might be with Eisha te Kana.

“So is your car totally trashed?” Delilah winced as she asked. She knew how much I loved my Jag.

In answer, I pulled out my phone and showed her the pictures I’d taken before driving back to headquarters. The crumpled metal, crushed in on itself, was shocking. That I’d been right in the middle of it was worse.