Hunted (Riley Cray) (32 page)

Needless to say, I’d been taken aback when he foreswore the litter box I provided when he first entered my life, but that paled in comparison to the shock I’d experienced when he opted to use the toilet instead. I’d assumed that it was something his previous owners had trained him to do, just as they were the ones who had chosen the name Loki inscribed on the golden tag hanging from his collar. He’d ceased to wear the collar a long time ago, but maintained his refusal to use a litter box. In addition to his peculiar bathroom habits he’d made it quite clear that he wasn’t all that interested in eating kitty kibble, and was far more content to eat whatever I did. Having tried a handful of kibble out of pure curiosity, I couldn’t say that I blamed him. I wouldn’t want to eat that crap either.

Unperturbed by the noise of traffic whizzing by on Colfax, he sauntered to the bright purple door and waited for Holbrook and I to join him. In their SUV parked behind ours, Collins and Hill looked on with matching expressions of bewilderment.

“What does he think he’s doing?” Holbrook asked as he came around to my side of the SUV. From the expression on his face I figured he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or be irritated.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I replied, shrugging as I pushed away from the car to retrieve him. Despite his varied skills, as far as I knew, Loki hadn’t figured out how to work door handles. Yet. I had the feeling that if he ever did I’d be royally screwed.

Gathering him into my arms, I nuzzled the thick fur around his neck, breathing in the familiar scent of him. “Sorry, buddy. You need to wait in the car.”

I had no doubt that if cats could frown he would have been giving me the most irritated scowl possible when I cradled him against my chest and went back to the car. Usually a laid back kind of guy, I was surprised when he began to squirm like a greased pig in my arms and clawed his way up over my shoulder to jump down to the pavement. Lifting his tail high in the air he strode to the shop’s door, and once again waited for someone to obligingly open it for him.

“Looks like he’s dead set on going in,” I said to Holbrook, rubbing my shoulder where his claws had left a set of throbbing furrows in my flesh.

Sharing a baffled look, we shrugged at one another and approached the store. The door opened with a merry tinkle of bells, and I was immediately greeted by soft Celtic music. In contrast to the steel grey clouds scudding across the sky, pregnant with the promise of snow, the inside of The Sage Brush was warm and airy. The wide, roughhewn wooden planks, worn smooth to a brilliant luster by the passage of many feet over the years, reminded me of home. But rather than filling me with a pang of longing, the familiarity of the place brought a reminiscent smile to my lips. A multitude of crystals, wind chimes and mobiles hung from the ceiling, the lights overhead shining through them to cast fractured rainbows of light everywhere.

Just inside the door, several sticks of incense were slowly burning to ash, perfuming the air with the decadent scents of sandalwood and clove. Brightly colored silks, saris and tapestries adorned almost every available surface, lending the shop a lush and exotic atmosphere. Combined with the heady fragrance of the incense, I felt as though I had been transported to some faraway land where the sun was blistering hot and the air was forever perfumed with the scent of spices. All the shop needed to complete the appearance of a luxurious Bedouin tent was a mountain of silk pillows and rugs strewn across the floor.

This was a place that I could happily spend hours exploring, pouring over the ceiling high shelves crammed with books and searching through the tables littered with candles, crystals and tarot cards.

A long wooden counter reminiscent of an old grocer’s, complete with an ancient cast iron register, ran almost the full length of the far wall. Several glass topped display cases sat on the counter with a multitude of necklaces, pendants, rings, and bracelets nestled inside on a bed of black velvet. They looked innocuous enough, but even from across the room I felt the heavy pull of their energy. There were at least two dozen charms on display, some of them quite powerful if their almost hypnotic pull was anything to go by, yet the two figures at the counter didn’t exhibit any signs that they were aware of the effect. One of the figures was stretched out along the counter’s surface, and was possibly the largest cat I’d ever seen.

I’d always considered Loki to be a large cat—the last time I had wrestled him to the vet he’d clocked out at 22lbs—but he looked small and delicate as a kitten compared to the creature asleep on the counter. A long and bushy pale yellow and white stripped tail twitched as the cat slept, no doubt dreaming of chasing mice. Or, more likely elephants.

Holy crap. That’s not a cat, that’s a damn Shetland pony!

The man lounging behind the counter was equally unusual looking, appearing to have stepped straight off the set of
Gangster Squad
. Dressed in a light blue button-front shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and a dark grey vest he looked as though he belonged in late 1940s Los Angeles rather than a charms shop in downtown Denver. The only aspect of his appearance that went against the 1940s gangster motif was his dark brown hair that fell well past his shoulders.

There was something otherworldly about him, unrelated to his antiquated style of dress. Watching him lean against the counter, his stubble covered chin resting on one hand while he flipped through a comic book, I struggled to puzzle out what it was about him that tugged at something in the back of my brain. Maybe it was that he was easily at least six foot four, or maybe it was the fine tracery of faint, almost opalescent, scars that covered his hands and forearms.

At the sound of our footsteps, eyes the color of roiling thunderheads rose to regard us, the sheer weight of his presence crashing into me like a physical blow, making me stumble. He looked to be only a few years older than me, and yet there was something lurking in the depths of his eyes that held the weight of centuries. The scent of ozone, heat, and something akin to burnt feathers flowed off him, mingling with the incense filling the air to create a heady perfume that was utterly mesmerizing.

Whatever he was, he wasn’t human, and I was sure I’d never met one of his ilk before.

“Can I help you folks find something?” he asked as he brushed a long trail of hair away from his face. The weight of his eyes passed over me as he took us in, seemingly unconcerned by Loki’s presence.

“I’m looking for some information on a couple charms,” Holbrook said, striding forward.

“We carry the usual fare you’ll find most places, and a few more specialized items. Are you looking for something in particular? Some heat charms? A stay dry spell? They’ve been our biggest sellers lately.”

“No, I actually want to know about a couple specific charms you might have sold to someone else,” Holbrook said as he fished his badge out of his jacket and laid it down on the counter.

“FBI huh? Well, Agent, if they were bought here, I’ll be able to tell you.”

“And you are?”

“Killian Hunter,” he replied, though he didn’t offer to shake Holbrook’s hand.

“Do you own the place?”

“No, my landlady owns the joint, but I work most of the shifts now that she’s getting older,” he said, his tone sorrowful as if the thought of his boss aging was heartbreaking. “Which charms did you want to know about?”

“We’re looking for a pretty powerful glamour charm,” Holbrook said. “A woven band worn around the wrist.”

“He had to have been wearing something for pain too,” I piped up from my position just inside the door. “There was no way he was strutting around without any pain after the ass-whooping I gave him. And there was the weirdness with Santos, like he wasn’t seeing what was really there.”

Killian quirked an eyebrow at my words, but chose not to say anything. I just shrugged my shoulders in reply to the unspoken question as if to say “the bastard deserved it.” Moving to stand beside Holbrook I was glad to see that Loki was sticking close to me. I wasn’t in the mood to be scouring every inch of the place looking for him when it was time to leave.

“A persuasion charm, perhaps?” Killian offered as he reached beneath the counter and withdrew a large, leather-bound tome.

He extended a long, slender finger to prod the cat, who at some point had awoken, and was now watching us with gleaming yellow eyes, ushering him off the counter.

“Get down, Ash.”

Emitting a meow that spoke clearly of his displeasure at being roused, the large cat made a show of stretching and yawning, before stalking to the end of the counter where he sprawled out once more.

Rolling his eyes at the dramatics, Killian muttered “pain in the ass” and laid the book on the counter with a muffled thump. The massive book would have looked as at home in a museum as it did in his long-fingered hands, and I was overcome with the desire to touch its lustrous leather cover. The leather creaked as he opened it towards the middle and began flipping through the pages. Curiosity made me lean closer, eyeing the thick paper that held the almost metallic tang of ink. It was a ledger, one that looked like it had been maintained for decades, if not longer, each entry written in the same looping script. Reaching the most recent entries Killian ran a finger along the edge of the page, his eyes tracking down the columns.

“Here we go,” he announced after a moment, and turning the book around to face us, pointed to a single line. “A glamour bracelet and a pain amulet were purchased two days ago by Elena Shoup.”

“Who the hell is that?” I asked while stomping down on the seed of doubt that had begun to bloom in the pit of my stomach.

I’d hoped we’d stumble on the evidence that damned Johnson right away, refusing to entertain the notion that he wasn’t operating alone. For the most part, his assault had seemed to be a spur of the moment event, but if he was working with someone else that might mean he’d been planning it for a while. That complicated things. Turning to face Holbrook I said, “We’re no closer to figuring this out than we were before.”

“What about the persuasion charm? Where would Shoup have gotten that?” Holbrook asked, ignoring my comment. At least one of us hadn’t given up hope at the first roadblock.

“Not here, that’s for sure. I don’t deal in illegal merchandise, and anything that starts to influence the minds of others is definitely hedging towards black magic. That doesn’t mean you can’t find ways to get your hands on it though, if you know where to look.”

“And where would you look?” I asked.

“Like I said, that’s black magic. I don’t mess with that crap,” Killian replied with a tight smile.

Perhaps sensing my growing frustration, Holbrook interrupted to ask, “And Shoup? Is she a regular?”

“Not really, but I’ve seen her around.” The way Killian said it made me think he didn’t like her much, but he didn’t expound on the matter.

“Was anyone with her?”

“No one came in with her, but there was a guy that stayed in the car out front.”

Pulling out his phone, Holbrook brought up a picture of Johnson in all his beady-eyed, asshat glory. “This the guy?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t get a clear look at him, sorry.”

“Do you have security cameras around here?” Holbrook asked, looking around the shop. I hadn’t noticed any cameras when we came in, but I hadn’t been looking either.

Who knows, maybe we’ll catch a break
, I thought.

“No, sorry. Most of our clientele prefer not to be tracked by big brother. Despite what the laws say, there’s still a lot of prejudice against non-humans.”

“I’m well aware of the prejudice out there,” Holbrook said, though I couldn’t understand why his words were tight and clipped. “Do you have any information on Shoup? A phone number? An address?”

“I do,” Killian replied slowly.

“Why didn’t you mention that before? Hand it over,” I demanded, receiving a scowl from Holbrook.

“I can’t do that. Not without a warrant.”

“Why the hell not?” I asked.

“We respect the privacy of our clients, and their desire to protect their personal information.”

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t give a fairy fart about his client’s privacy, but the vitriol laden words hanging on the tip of my tongue withered when his cat jumped down from the counter with a thud and rasping hiss. Trepidation coiled heavy in the pit of my stomach as I watched him adopt a wary crouch, the long fur of his belly brushing the wooden boards. Emitting a rumbling growl, almost too low to hear, he began to inch towards us.

Crap. This isn’t going to be good.

Aside from the occasional bird or rabbit that he caught outside, I’d never witnessed Loki interact with any other animals. I hadn’t realized how much my isolation affected my furry companion until that moment, and had to wonder if I was doing him a great disservice by leading such a solitary life. My unease became a living thing, writhing in my gut, when Loki responded in kind, filling the air with a harsh growl of his own. In an instant his tail had puffed up into a pale bottle brush, and a ridge of fur stood up along his spine.

Worried that it would soon come to blows I asked my two-legged companions, “Should we separate them?”

Taking my eyes off the pair, who had begun to circle each other in a slow dance, long enough to look at Holbrook and Killian, I felt a flicker of irritation when Holbrook raised his shoulders in a shrug. Meanwhile, Killian ignored my question and continued to watch the interaction with interest. Following the path of his gaze I was surprised to see that he was studying Loki rather than watching his own cat.