Primal Cravings (4 page)

Then again, there were times when technology was a pain in the ass.

“Tell me there is something useful on that phone before I throw it out the window,” he told the witch.

He expected resentment, but Dee chuckled instead. “There’s one interesting text from a friend in Ohio. I asked craft folk if anything odd was going on in their lives. She answered: MY UNCLE HASN’T COME HOME FOR SOLSTICE. CAN’T REACH HIM. CHECK ON HIM FOR ME? That’s from Mary Sacher. The Sachers are a very close family, and very old in the Craft. Uncle Leon Sacher lives here in Los Angeles.”

“And he is a Tower wizard.”

“Ugh. I hate that term. But, yes, he’s the Einstein of Tower theoreticians. Yes, theory, not practice,” she added before he could ask. “Tower work is best done in computer simulations instead of the real world. He’s a retired librarian in the real world,” she added. She typed with her thumbs while she talked, and kept glancing at the smartphone screen.

So, between the Reynard fem—lady and the witch’s friend, they had a lead. “Do we have an address?”

“You just said we.”

“I’m trying to make a habit of it. If I accept that you and I are working as a team, when we screw up we share the blame.”

“That’s fair.”

“Do we have an address for this retired librarian?”

“Just got it. He lives in Oxnard. “ She tapped coordinates into the GPS unit.

“The Wizard of Oxnard, huh?”

“Drive on, Prime,” she said, repressively. “I’ll keep calling his number.”

Jake pulled out of the parking lot and into the dense Los Angeles traffic. Dee McCoy settled back into her seat, looking ahead. Silence reigned again. At least it wasn’t quite as tense as before. Or, perhaps he only imagined her habitual anger with him had abated somewhat.
Not her arousal
, he noticed, and smiled to himself as her delicious scent continued to swirl around the inside of the car.

* * *

Dee didn’t know why a smile flashed briefly across Piper’s usually serious face, but it was an improvement over his usual deadpan expression. He was Prime, so of course he was handsome, but it was hard to appreciate how truly good-looking he was when he rarely showed any amiable emotion. Not that she could help but notice anyway. How could anyone be so annoying and dangerously attractive—oh, right, he was a vampire.

‘The Wizard of Oxnard’ was kind of amusing, she had to admit.

She left four messages on Leon Sacher’s voicemail before she decided to give it a rest. She glanced out the side window, staring through the rain-splattered glass. A light fog hugged the ground. Cars drove through the swirling grayness, seeming to float as the fog came as high as tires. Cold bumps prickled her skin. Eerie was too plain a word for the scene around them.

“Do you—?” she began. But the earthquake rattled her in her seat before she could finish. She automatically reached out for Piper’s arm.

“Do I what?” he asked before she could touch him.

She made her hand drop. The world wasn’t shaking any more. He kept driving, as if nothing had happened. The traffic around them kept moving. As if nothing had happened.

The fog was gone.

“Did you feel the earthquake?” she asked. “The one just now?”

“There wasn’t any earthquake.”

Dee crossed her arms over her stomach. She refused to start shaking. “I was afraid of that.” Piper glanced her way, not something safe to do in heavy traffic in the rain. “Watch the road!” she shouted at him.

Damn, she was scared.

* * *

A quick glance showed Jake that McCoy was deeply rattled. He knew she was a tough cookie, not easily frightened. Facing down monsters was standard operating procedure for the Dark Angels. He couldn’t scoff that what she’d felt wasn’t real—subjectively, at least. Psychically? Magically?

“Maybe you felt a tremor in the Force,” Jake suggested.

“A—force?—Don’t tell me you know
Star Wars
?”

At least he’d distracted her from her fear. “It’s impossible to communicate with you Dark Angels without a working knowledge of pop culture. I even have a
Come to the Dark side—we have cookies
tee-shirt.”

She let out a reluctant snort of laughter. “Did you feel a quake this morning? When we were in the dining room with Tobias?”

“Yes. That trembler really happened.”

McCoy sighed. “At least I’m not completely crazy.”

“Lady Reynard said, ‘You have to go deep. Deep beneath the oaks and red rocks. It’s burning under the rocks.’ Sounds to me like that might have something to do with earthquakes.”

“But—where? If that quake was just in my head…? Warning? Imagination?” McCoy shrugged.

“What you need to do is accept that it happened for you, and we will both consider it a clue. Explain the details of what you saw and felt.”

She looked out the window. “No fog now. I must have imagined the rising mist—‘mist over the oaks in the morning’—Damn! Now I’m sounding like Domini.” She pressed fingers against her temples, rubbed a palm over her forehead.

“I suppose you have no idea what that means.”

“I’ve never had a vision before. And I hope not to have one again.”

“You’re a witch, not a medium, so you have said before. However, while we are hunting down other leads, try to figure out where the mist coming off the oaks is in the physical world.”

Chapter Seven

They arrived in front of Leon Sacher’s small house without another word being exchanged. Or any more earthquakes, Dee was happy to note. It had also stopped raining and the sun had come out. She was smiling when she got out of the SUV.

“Sunlight makes you cheerful,” Piper said as they walked toward the front door.

“It’s human nature to love the light,” she said. “You wouldn’t know about that.” She wished she hadn’t said the words as soon as they came out of her mouth. Tongue quicker than brain not always a good thing. “I really am sorry about ragging on you. I’ll try not to—”

“We Angels rag on each other all the time. Let’s take it as a sign of camaraderie.”

Great! She was being rude and he was being reasonable—probably just to make her feel bad. And succeeding very well.

Dee forced a smile. “Fine. Come along, comrade.” She went up to the door, with Piper one step behind her.

Lurking
, she thought.
Stalking. Oh, let it go, McCoy. He’s not doing anything—but being large and warm and gorgeous and a bit too close. Have a little faith. Tobias trusts him. But—

“Watch your back.”

Dee whirled to face the vampire. “What?”

“We’re approaching unknown territory,” he said. “We need to watch each other’s backs.”

“Right,” she said, and went up and knocked on the door.

“Couldn’t we have had a quick look around the outside first?” he asked.

“Did you feel like you passed through a barrier? Have a bit of tingling warmth on your skin when you stepped from the sidewalk to the property?”

“No.”

“That’s because the place isn’t warded, and it should be. But wards wear off, fade. I don’t think there’s been anyone home for a while.” She touched the door handle. “No wards here, either. You won’t want to touch it. It’s silver.”

Even with the modern drugs they took to fight their natural allergies, vampires still had reactions to sunlight, silver, hawthorn wood, and garlic. At least these days, the reactions didn’t result in horrible burns and instant death.

Dee tried turning the door handle. It wasn’t locked. She opened the door, even though Piper radiated disapproval at her lack of caution.

“You don’t know witches,” she said. “Trust me.”

No alarms, psychic or electronic, went off when she stepped into the living room. There was a beeping in the distance, however. She followed the sound. In the kitchen she found the microwave over the stove chirping like an angry bird.

“Can I please check for a bomb before you open that door?” Piper asked.

She stepped back and gestured him forward. He pulled the plug on the microwave to bring blessed silence to the room. After a few moments of peering through the glass in the center of the microwave door, Piper said, “I believe the Wizard of Oxnard was making a pot of tea when he was interrupted. He nodded toward the teapot and tin of tea leaves on the kitchen counter, but he didn’t open the microwave to check the Pyrex container sitting inside.

“My conclusion as well, Holmes,” Dee said.

She followed Piper on a stealthy tour of the small house. The bed was made and nothing appeared missing from the only bedroom. A plush-furred gray cat was curled in the middle of the bed. It looked up and meowed when it saw them. The cat followed them as they continued the tour. Whenever they paused, it rubbed up against Piper’s leg, though he ignored it.

Everything was in place in the bathroom. There were some gaps in rows of bookcases lining the hallway between kitchen and living room. A look around the living room gave the only indication other than the interrupted tea making that something was wrong.

The room did not contain a television, but the walls were lined with bookcases like the hallway. The cat jumped up on one of the bookcases and proceeded to look adoringly at Piper, who still ignored it.
No accounting for the feline’s taste
, Dee supposed.

The only furniture was a comfortable-looking blue leather recliner with a table on one side and a tiffany-style floor lamp on the other. A cellphone lay on the table. There was an empty lap desk on the chair seat.

Piper looked at the floor beside the chair. “There’s a surge protector strip with nothing plugged into it. I think we have a missing laptop to go with our missing wizard.” He looked at Dee. “What do you think? Kidnapping?”

Dee turned around slowly. “Can you
feel
anything? Psychically?”

“I have not tasted the man’s blood. So, no, I cannot pick up anything. And I wouldn’t taste his blood, because I like girls,” he added.

“No offense meant that time, Piper.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “We have a missing magical theoretician. What do you think that means? And what do we do about it?”

“I don’t think it can be good, for poor Leon Sacher, and possibly the world.” She took out her phone and wrote a text message. “Or the cat.”

“What are you doing?” Piper asked.

“Letting his family know.”

“He might be the bad guy, McCoy. His family could be part of a conspiracy.”

“Which is why his niece asked me to look for him? I don’t think so. The Sachers are of the Craft. The Craft takes care of their own.” She pressed send and looked back at Piper. “Done. If they find out anything they’ll let us know.”

“Reciprocity?” Piper shook his head. “You are a very trusting mortal, aren’t you?”

Except where Jake Piper is concerned,
they both thought but neither said.

“Wish we knew what he knows that got him taken. And his computer. And by who,” Dee said.

Piper stepped up to the chair. “Maybe….” he said as he looked around.

Dee saw the deep pocket on the leather chair arm the same time Piper stuck his hand into it.

“Ah ha,” he said. He came up holding something small and shining. He looked at her. “Thumb drive.”

A bit of the worried tension that had been knotting inside her relaxed. “Let’s hope he saves his data frequently,” she said. “Let’s get back to base and find out what’s on The Wizard of Oxnard’s wand,” she said.

Piper nodded. “Agreed.”

Then he turned around and went into the kitchen. The cat trailed him, and so did Dee, after a frustrated moment of staring after him. Piper was looking in cabinets.

“What are you doing?” Dee asked.

He didn’t reply, and the cat wove around his legs, purring. It soon became obvious what Piper was up to. He brought out a box of dry pet food, and filled the bowl sitting on the floor mat next to refrigerator. He put water in a second bowl, and left it in the sink, the faucet slightly dripping into it. Dee had to hide a smile at the vampire’s looking after his fellow creature of the night. And fight off a warm fuzzy feeling at Piper’s kindness. Had to be an act, right? She was pleased that the cat would be okay until Sacher’s people arrived.

“Back to base?” she asked when he was finished.

Piper shook his head. “I want to make one more stop first.”

The gray cat yowled forlornly as they left.

Chapter Eight

Piper drove south, without bothering with the GPS.

There was an occasional glimpse of ocean, water going red and pewter as the sun began to set. So close to Solstice, the day was very short. The clouds had closed in again, contributing to the early darkness.

“From around here, are you?” Dee asked after they’d driven for quite a while.

“No.”

Where was he from? She’d never wondered that before. Everyone had to be from somewhere, have a history. He’d had to have walked away from his affiliation to a Tribe to be adopted by a vampire Family. Rumor had it that the Families didn’t make it easy for a Tribe Prime who walked in and said, “Hi, can I be a good guy, now?”

She didn’t know if the whispers of adoptee candidates having to do hard time in solitary confinement were true—but when you considered some of the evil Tribe Boys were known to indulge in, their being punished for it made perfect sense. Keeping an eye on them for the rest of their long lives made sense too, at least to her mortal way of thinking.

“Do the crime, do the time,” Piper murmured beside her.

Dee jumped so hard she strained against the seatbelt. “Stop reading my mind!”

“Stop thinking so loud.” After a while, he said, “You could ask me.”

“Ask you what? You never talk to me.” Dee groaned and slapped a hand against her forehead. “Oh, goddess, that sounded whiny!”

“My greatest crime is making you feel foolish, perhaps?”

“I’m very good at falling into looking foolish all by myself. But, I could blame you if I was going to take it personally, which I’m not, because we’re a team.” They descended into their habitual silence, until Dee remembered something else Domini Reynard had said. “She called you Leviathan. Why did she think you’re a big whale? You have a gambling problems in Vegas?”