Shaded Vision: An Otherworld Novel (29 page)

As we burst through the doors, everybody was already in a flurry. Vanzir had the household laptop out and open. Since I used mine a lot, we’d bought a general one for the house so everybody didn’t have to keep borrowing mine. He was typing while Morio—still in his coat—was watching over his shoulder.

As we trailed in, Hanna took our coats and bags and pressed mugs of hot soup into our hands. We settled wearily at the kitchen table, where a tray of sandwiches waited. I grabbed one and bit into it, too tired to even notice what it was until an explosion of beef and cheese hit my mouth, along with some spicy spread I couldn’t identify. But it woke my taste buds up, for sure.

“Okay, let’s hear it. What or who the fuck is Gulakah?” I had no energy to stand on niceties.”

Vanzir pushed back the computer. “Carter doesn’t have a lot of information on him, but he sounds bad. We’re not sure how or when he got over here, but there’s no question that
he’s in Shadow Wing’s pocket. This isn’t another case like Stacia, where the servant is trying to outwit the master.”

“Okay, so he’s for real and he’s not even going to ask us to play in his sandbox.” I tapped my finger on the table. Stacia had tried to bargain with us. She had been out to take over Shadow Wing’s position and had tried to win us over to helping her.
The enemy of my enemy
and all that crap. “You mention something about ghosts?”

Vanzir nodded and pointed toward the e-mail that Carter had sent after his call. “Gulakah is known as the Lord of Ghosts. He was originally a god in the Netherworld, where he abused his power over the innocent dead whose souls have not been laid to rest. His brother, Shekah, cast him out to the Subterranean Realms and took his place. He cursed Gulakah to preside over the angry ghosts who exist between the worlds—those who choose not to move on because they’re so furious. The curse is to last ten thousand years, and then Gulakah will face a jury of gods to see if he’s fit for reinstatement.”

“So we’ve got an angry demon, demoted from godlike status, prowling around Seattle. How long has he been over here?” I was thinking about the spate of ghostly activity that had been going on the past few months. Angry ghosts had almost killed Morio.

“Carter says he doesn’t know when Gulakah got here, but it can’t have been more than two weeks ago from what he can piece together. I’ve looked up everything I can find on this demon, but the mentions are sparse. A few websites from paranormal investigators who’ve turned up the name in séances or through mediums, but nothing concrete.” He circled a note on the steno pad. “I’ve got an idea, but you aren’t going to like it.”

“Tell us. Right now we have to entertain every possibility.” Things were getting worse and worse, and we couldn’t afford to lose any more innocent victims.

Vanzir straightened up. His eyes were sparkling. He tipped his head to the side. “We ask Trytian for help. We go
to him and tell him we have information he’ll want, but in exchange he has to first tell us where to find Van and Jaycee. Then we hand over the info on Gulakah to him.”

“Trytian—you want us to deal with pond scum?” Camille slammed her mug on the table so hard the soup spilled. Hanna moved to clean it up, but Camille motioned her away and grabbed a napkin to wipe up the steaming broth.

Trytian was the son of a powerful daemon who was building an army in the Subterranean Realms against Shadow Wing. The daemon had sent his son Earthside—none of us was sure how, and Trytian wasn’t spilling secrets—to rally the Demon Underground to help them. Trytian had threatened Camille, tried to blow us all up, and then turned around and offered to build a truce with us. He was about as trustworthy as snake oil.

“I know you don’t like him, but look at the facts. He came to us to warn you about Hyto. He reached out first. He’s fighting against Shadow Wing, too—”

“That may be so, but he also has no compunction about destroying innocent people who he thinks are in his way!” Camille was pacing the floor. She stopped and whirled to me. “What do you think?”

I looked at the information Carter had sent us. Gulakah sounded like a badass motherfucker, and we were on the end of our tether with regard to Van and Jaycee. The thought of dealing with Trytian was stomach-churning, but the thought of letting the pair of sorcerers go on to cause more havoc was far worse.

“I’m with Vanzir on this one. If Trytian knows about anything at all that will help us catch them, then we need to take advantage of it.”

“What about the computer at the shop? The phone book? Can’t we go through them first to see if we can find anything that would keep us from having to contact him? If we come up empty, fine then…we have Vanzir put in a call and we make a deal with the devil…or daemon, rather. But maybe, if we’re lucky, we won’t need to.” Camille clenched her fists.

“Sounds good to me.” I looked at the others. “Everybody
willing to pull a late-nighter? If we divide up, we can check out everything that much quicker and get some sleep in the process.”

They all nodded, including Hanna. “I’ll keep the tea and coffee coming,” she said.

“Then, I guess we take a quick shower break to wash off the soot and smoke, and we knuckle down to combing through all of this crap.”

After making sure Marion and Douglas were comfortable in the parlor, Shade and I trudged up to the bedroom. I stripped and jumped in the shower first, lathering up and—for the first time in a while—I actually enjoyed the feeling of the soap and water on my skin. Climbing out of the shower, I toweled off and climbed into a clean nightshirt and pair of sweatpants.

Shade was sitting on the bed, waiting for his turn in the shower. He stopped me to gently press his lips against mine. I sank into his arms, enjoying the safety of his embrace, feeling weary and sleepy and wanting only to crawl into bed for a nice long nap. Before I realized what I was doing, I was in my Tabby form, staring at him from the floor.

He sat back down on the bed and held out his arms, whistling for me. I leaped up on the bed, crawling onto his knee. He scritched me behind the ears.

“A little stressed, aren’t you, girl?” As he rubbed the fur under my chin, I began to purr and stretched my head for him to reach the sides of my face. It was such a relief to be in my Tabby form. Even though I was still facing the same stressors, when I was in cat form everything seemed muted, like I was wearing earmuffs in the middle of a cacophony.

After a moment, I began to relax. I hopped off Shade’s lap and saw my favorite squeaky mouse. Batting it, I felt my blood race at the sound of squeak. I picked it up by the tail and raced out of the room, down the stairs to the second floor where Camille was just coming out of her room. I dropped the mouse at her feet and looked up, twitching my tail.

Camille laughed gently and reached down to scoop me up. “Feeling a little out of sorts, Kitten? Thank you, thank you for the toy. And thank you for making me smile.” She buried her face in my fur and kissed me soundly. “But, Delilah, we have a lot of ground to cover tonight. We need you, as a woman. Your reading skills aren’t all that developed when you’re in Tabby form.”

I let out a little mew and then, licking her quickly on the face, I jumped down and moved to the side. She was right. I didn’t have time to play with the mouse, or to curl up for a catnip. Resigned and a little sad, I transformed back.

As I shook my head, coming out of the shift, Camille helped me to my feet. I noticed she was wearing a floor-length terry-cloth robe over a loose babydoll. Smoky, Trillian, and Morio were already downstairs.

I took Camille’s hand in mine. “Thank you. Sometimes, I still need my big sister…though I think I’m finally growing up.”

Camille squeezed my fingers. “Kitten, we all need to grow up. But you’ll always be Kitten, and you’ll always have the playful kitty inside. We need that part of you—it keeps us all hopeful. Just like Maggie keeps us innocent. Menolly can never have that innocence again. I will never be able to trust anybody fully again. But you…we need your joy. Please, don’t ever lose it.”

I misted over. “I’m trying not to. I don’t think I’d like myself if I did.”

I took the store laptop while Camille started flipping through the day planner and the guys divided up the address book. Settling on the sofa, with a bowl of Cheetos to my right and a big glass of milk to my left, I opened the lid of the laptop. Before we left, I’d made sure that the battery had enough life left to make it home where I could plug it in. I’d been careful not to close the lid so it wouldn’t go to sleep. It was still running, so I didn’t need the password.

Before I started doing anything, I plugged in an external
hard drive and began to download everything on the laptop. That way, if something happened, we’d have a backup of all the files. I examined the programs. The computer had only a handful of programs on it. I guess Tregarts weren’t prone to playing games or writing long documents. I opened the mail and waited for it to download.

Five incoming e-mails. I opened the first and it asked for a return receipt when opened, but I closed the request without answering. No use letting Van and Jaycee know we had the computer. Yet.

It was a simple two-line message asking for the daily report, and giving a heads up that “MV” had not perished yet, with a stern warning that they’d better take care of the matter for once and all.

“You think this group torched Marion’s house?” I stuffed a handful of Cheetos in my mouth and swallowed a gulp of milk.

“Doesn’t have to be all of them. There were plenty there to play at arson while the others waited at the store.” Morio was thumbing through his part of the phone book. He and Vanzir were using the household laptop as well as mine to do a reverse lookup on the phone numbers. We didn’t want to call them at this point. Hang-ups would give us away.

“Any luck on finding out who those numbers belong to?”

“Some are listed—dealers, companies, services…everything you’d expect for a sex toy business. But there are three I’ve been unable to trace so far, and two that I came up with names for. One connects to a fortune-teller’s shop in the Industrial District.
Future Glimpses.
I looked them up on the Net and they sell spell components, they advertise spells, and they read the cards. But it says they’re closed for business until the first of the month.”

“Bingo. Sounds like Van and Jaycee’s last shop.” Camille looked up from across the room, where she was meticulously going through the day planner, jotting down notes. “Who does the other number belong to?”

Morio leaned back. “It leads us right back to the Energy Exchange club.”

I stopped. “Right. I knew they were involved and this proves it. Which means they’re probably into both the Wolf Briar business as well as magical weaponry.”

During our last interaction with the Koyanni, we’d encountered a weapon that we’d been pretty sure was fashioned at the Energy Exchange. It was like a magical stun gun. While Camille and Morio were able to charge it up, to some degree, the exact spell for empowering it with charges still eluded them.

“We have to raid that place. I’ll bet you anything Van and Jaycee are holing up there. Come on.” I set the laptop aside and jumped up, but a wave of dizziness swept over me and I sank back down to the sofa. “Or maybe not tonight. I’m exhausted.”

Camille nodded. “Me, too. We aren’t strong enough tonight. I don’t care how much caffeine and sugar we pour into ourselves. Vanzir—take one of the laptops and start hunting around for any information you can find on the club. Meanwhile, let’s finish going over all this crap. We don’t want to miss something that might be hiding right in plain sight.”

“I need a nap, though, even just an hour or two.” I yawned, stretching.

Camille rubbed her head. “Yeah, we’ve been burning the midnight oil a lot lately. Okay, you guys keep on with what you’re doing. Take over the notes. Morio, are you still good to go for a bit?”

He nodded. “Yeah, and Trillian can take over the planner. You and Delilah get a couple hours of rest. In fact, Smoky, Shade, you go chill, too. We’ll keep looking and wake you up in a few hours if we need to. When Menolly gets back from the bar, she can help us.”

Exhausted, I dragged myself to my feet and, together with Camille and our two dragons, climbed the stairs. I barely said a word before I climbed into bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

“Delilah, honey? Wake up.” Shade’s voice echoed through the room.

I blinked, fuzzy. It wasn’t light yet, but Shade was insisting I wake up and I didn’t want to. I growled, pushing his hand away. “Go ’way. I’m sleepy.”

“Honey? They need you downstairs.” Shade pulled the blanket off me, and the chill in the room descended to shock me awake.

I groaned and forced myself out of bed. I glanced at the clock. It was barely three and a half hours after we’d gone to bed. “Gah, I really want a full night’s sleep. I haven’t had one for a week.” As I stumbled into the bathroom, I heard Shade curse. “What’s wrong?” I peed, then washed my hands and brushed my teeth.

“I found one of your hairballs. The hard way.” He sounded grouchy.

I grimaced as I swished a mouthful of breath rinse and then spit. As I trudged back into the bedroom, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, wiping off one of his feet.

“I’m sorry.” I tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t help myself. I let out a snicker.

“What are you laughing about? Delilah, honey, can you please clean up after yourself? This is the fourth hairball you’ve left on the floor after you transformed back. I’ll help clean your litter box, but damn it, take some responsibility.” He wasn’t laughing. In fact, he looked downright out of sorts.

“It’s just a bunch of fur and spit.” I slipped off my panties and put on a clean pair, then wiggled into my jeans. As I hooked my bra and pulled on a turtleneck, Shade finished wiping his foot.

“That’s not the point. The point is that you need to develop better habits. I love you. I can live with the clothes on the floor, and I can handle the empty water bottles everywhere, but you have to start cleaning up your own messes. The hairballs and the dirty litter box and the overflowing garbage can are too much. How hard is it to spend ten minutes a day picking up around here? I thought cats were clean.”