Murder of Crows (The Twenty-Sided Sorceress Book 2) (9 page)

“Come on, Primrose,” I said with what I hoped was a nice smile. “Let’s ride a lion.”

If Alek was a dire tiger, Carlos was definitely a dire lion. His ruddy mane reminded me of Narnia movies and I struggled not to make an Aslan joke. It didn’t hurt that my brain was so fried and in pain that I couldn’t come up with a good one anyway.

I put Primrose up onto lion Carlos’s back and then climbed on. He rose up and I gripped his mane with one hand and held onto the little girl with my other arm. Alek and Carlos moved through the woods in big, ground-eating strides.

It seemed to take no time at all to get back to camp. I felt the hum of the wards on the boundary stones and then we were through the ferns and out of the woods. The People were gathered around the big house, much as they had been when Alek and I arrived.

Sky Heart was there, standing over an indigo-wrapped body laid out on a stretcher. Wildflowers in little bunches were strewn around and the air was solemn, no one talking until we emerged into the big clearing. A woman cried out and ran toward me, reaching for Primrose, who squirmed and called out “Mommy.” I let her go, sliding to the ground as Carlos dropped low to let us off his back.

Staggering to keep my feet, I looked up and my eyes met Sky Heart’s own. They were red, puffy, and full of fear.

For a long moment we were swamped with people asking questions, relatives claiming the children. Carlos and Alek shifted back to human form, but none of us were able to answer much in the clamor and press of bodies. I swayed on my feet but forced myself to push gently through, heading toward Sky Heart. That man had things to answer for and I wasn’t going to be shoved aside like yesterday. Whatever was going on, I had a strong feeling it began with the leader of the Crow.

I got through the crowd and stopped, facing Sky Heart over the corpse.

“Who is Not Afraid?” I asked him. I knew his keen shifter hearing would be able to catch my words.

“I do not answer to you, exile,” he said, the fear in his face morphing into rage as he looked at me.

“Good thing I now have two Justices with me then, isn’t it?” I shot back. “You may pretend you are outside all laws, but I hear the Nine don’t take well to shifters killing shifters. If you caused this somehow…”

He cut me off with an angry cry like the hunting shriek of a hawk and shifted. His huge crow form lumbered into the air with angry wing-beats, scattering the bunches of flowers and blowing dust into my face. Sky Heart fled into the tall trees surrounding the big house and disappeared among the shadowed high branches.

I stood over the corpse, too tired and shocked to react. A hand touched my arm and I jerked sideways.

“Come,” Pearl said. Her dark eyes held only sorrow. “You may use our bath. Then we will talk.”

“Damn right we will,” I muttered.

She ignored my ungracious comment and led me through the crowd. I caught Alek’s eye and he gave one of his gallic shrugs that I took to mean I should just learn what I could and we’d talk later. I hoped that now they had brought the children home safely, the People would be more inclined to let the Justices help, more inclined to share what they knew. Maybe I’m still naïve, or maybe I’d been hit harder in the head than I thought.

I’d been hit pretty damn hard. The mirror in the single bathroom in my old home revealed a thick pink scar along the side of my face that was slowly fading out as my body did its quick healing thing. Bruising would take longer to heal, unfortunately, but at least my vision wasn’t impeded by swelling. The side of my head was caked with flaking dried blood, my hair was a nest of pine needles and dirt, and my clothes looked like someone had dragged me over a mud-covered cheese grater. I felt naked without my talisman and rubbed my chest where it usually rested.

Not Afraid had better start being afraid, I thought. I wasn’t going to forgive that theft, not that I would forgive the murders either. Or the being hit in the face with a two-by-four or bat or whatever the hell that had been. His list of transgressions was substantial.

I stripped and washed off the worst of the grime before running the hottest bath I could stand and sinking into it. My hair floated out around me like ink and I sighed. It would be a bitch to untangle and braid again, but relaxing completely in the hot water and letting the dirt and blood soak out of my skin was worth it.

Pearl knocked and then came in before I could respond. For a moment I wanted to order her out, but she was my mother still in some ways. She’d wiped my ass as a kid and breastfed me. I didn’t have anything she hadn’t seen before. Bonus was that it meant I could question her without having to move.

“Why do you stay here? Any of you?” I said. It wasn’t the question I’d meant to lead with, but Sky Heart’s fear and anger bordered on insane. It was worse than I remembered from when I was a kid. Maybe I just hadn’t noticed back then.

“It is our home,” Pearl said. “Without Shishishiel to protect us, who knows what might happen. The world is not a very nice place.”

I almost started to argue that there was a lot of good out there, freedom, people who didn’t throw people out who weren’t like them, but then I thought about how it might be for someone who had lived in a bubble for centuries. And I thought, fleetingly, about Samir. There was a lot of evil in the world.

Yet, hiding from it hadn’t helped me, and it didn’t seem to have helped the People. Evil had still found them.

“Are you sure Shishishiel still protects you?” I said.

“Yes.” Her tone allowed no further questions along those lines and I decided to take a hint and drop it. She set down the folded stack of clothing and pulled over a small wooden stool from the vanity.

“Who is Not Afraid?” I asked.

“Where did you hear that name?”

“Carlos, the other Justice. He talked to the guy who has been killing your people. That was the name he gave.” I watched her face carefully, but her expression was guarded; only a slight tension about the mouth and eyes giving away any emotion at all, and I wasn’t sure what that emotion was yet.

“A little more than a hundred years ago, there was a murder like these ones. It only happened once then, because Sky Heart caught the man responsible and he was executed. That man was called William Not Afraid. He is dead. Whoever this man is, he cannot be Not Afraid.” She shook her head emphatically, as though it would help make her words true.

“Who did Not Afraid kill back then?” That was what I envisioned a cop on
Law and Order
asking. Trace the original crime, see what started that, then you could find out why there was a copycat. Of course, cops didn’t have to contend with near immortal beings, magic, or spirits. Lucky them.

“Opal,” Pearl said softly. “Sky Heart’s second wife.”

Figured he would be at the center of this. “Did he ever tell you why?” I didn’t clarify if I meant Sky Heart or Not Afraid, because I didn’t care how she took it. Either would do if she had an answer, so I left it deliberately ambiguous.

“No. It may have had something to do with Not Afraid’s twin sister. That is what I have always suspected, but Sky Heart won’t speak of it.” She looked down at her hands and picked at imaginary lint on her jeans.

“What happened to his twin?” I asked after a moment, when it seemed she wasn’t going to continue on her own.

“She wasn’t Crow. She was exiled.” Pearl kept her eyes down, not meeting mine.

“Not Afraid was Crow?” I asked, thinking of Carlos telling me that he was sure the man who had captured them was not a shifter.

“Yes, but Buttercup was not Crow. She wasn’t even shifter, but one of the rare normal human births. She was exiled, sent away to live with missionaries as we usually did then with those who were not People. But Sky Heart wouldn’t tell Not Afraid where he had sent his twin, and he wouldn’t let Not Afraid leave to find her. They were very angry with each other. Not Afraid seemed insane with rage. They fought and it shook the forest. Sky Heart and Shishishiel had no choice but to kill him.”

She looked up then, but her eyes stared past me, right into her memories. I realized I had no idea how old my mother was. Older than I’d thought. I wondered what I would remember in a century or three, what events would stick and what would fade into fog and be lost to me forever.

Buck up, kid
, I told myself.
I doubt Samir will let you live that long
.

I closed my eyes and sank lower in the tub. At least I had some information. Carlos had said it was a man and not a shifter. Maybe it was a descendant of the twin. If she had harbored a grudge for her whole life and had children, it was possible she could have passed that grudge on to them and one grandchild or great grandchild had come to collect.

Which didn’t explain the spirit, except that the grandchild or whatever was clearly possessed by it. Or working with it. Either way was scary enough, given what the spirit had been able to accomplish through the intermediary.

I must have drifted off. The bath water grew tepid and when I opened my eyes, my mother was gone. I had wanted to ask her more about my birth father, but the moment seemed to have slipped away.

I managed to pull on clothes, wrap a towel around my head, and get as far as the uncomfortable couch. This time it was Em who appeared, holding out a knit blanket.

“Mom said you would want to sleep, if the bath didn’t drown you.”

“I’m sure those were her exact words,” I said and was rewarded with a sheepish smile.

I sprawled onto the couch and crashed hard.

It was dark when I awoke to the smell of coffee and pancakes. Though it was after midnight, Jasper and Pearl invited me to stay and eat something since they had leftovers, but I wanted to go check on Carlos and Alek. Okay, I’ll admit, I wanted to get out of that house before any more memories stormed in and gave me unwanted feels. After the day I’d had, I wasn’t up to sitting down and having family dinner.

“I don’t suppose there is cell phone reception out here?” I asked them before I stepped out the door. I hadn’t emailed or texted Harper like I said I would and I knew she’d be annoyed and worried by now.

“No,” Jasper said. “Sorry. No cell, no internet. We live our own lives up here.”

I managed to swallow about fifty snide comments I could think of in response to that and stepped out the door.

It was a warm night with a light breeze. The big house was all dark and I figured Sky Heart was probably still sulking in the trees. Or standing in a dark room watching his little cult empire crumble from behind tinted glass.

The couch may have felt like it was covered in hide and stuffed with rocks, but sleep had done wonders for my body. I pulled up a thread of magic, just to test how it would feel. No headache, that was good. No talisman. That was bad. It was harder to focus without it and I knew I’d be limited in the kinds of spells I could do without my D20. Maybe it was a crutch, but I missed it. Still, the power was there when I reached for it, so maybe I didn’t need the crutch.

Which didn’t mean I wasn’t going to go get it back as soon as it was daylight.

A faint glow out in the trees to the west caught my eye as I walked across the gravel circle toward Alek’s trailer. It was pale and flickering blue, not a light like would come from one of the cabins or trailers in the camp. I remembered the boundary stone from the morning and thought that might be about where it was placed.

Mentally berating myself as the stupid horror movie victim who goes off unarmed into the words to investigate the weird thing instead of ignoring it and heading toward people and safety, I changed course and walked toward the flickering light. Horror movie victims aren’t generally nearly immortal with the ability to cast
Fireball
. So, you know, I had that going for me.

The boundary stone wasn’t the thing glowing. The light flickered just beyond it, hovering like a will-o-the-wisp among the dark sword ferns and spiky broken branches. I stopped at the stone and peered into the dark.

“Not Afraid?” I called out softly. “Talk to me.” Worth a shot and somewhat better than calling out the old cliché “who’s there!” right before I get eaten by something big and ugly.