Under the Moon (15 page)

“She wasn’t at home. They’re still looking,” Alana admitted.

That was not a good answer. Quinn had the dreadful sense that it was too late. “What about the leech?”

“Nothing I can report.” Alana’s tone had grown progressively colder.

“How are Tanda and Chloe?”

“How do you think they are?” she snapped. “I have work to do.” She hung up.

Quinn sighed. The guys stopped talking.

“Nothing.” Except ever-worsening relations with the Society. She kept her head bent as she tried Tanda’s number. It still went to voice mail without ringing. This time, she left a lame message asking how she was and tried Chloe, whose phone rang half a dozen times and disconnected. Not even voice mail.

She’d never been in a situation like this. She’d been a part of things in some capacity—from committee member to board member—going all the way back to high school, before she got her power. More than shut out, she felt discarded. It was almost worse than being left by her birth parents, because this time she’d belonged before they rejected her.

She shoved the phone back into her pocket and tuned in to Sam asking Nick how else they could investigate the rogue accusation.

“We’re at a dead end,” Nick insisted. “Until we can get something from Jennifer, there’s nada.”

“All right. Moving back to you.” Sam turned to Quinn. “Family ties.”

She shifted to her right as Nick joined them at the table. He sat on her left, his right leg bouncing so fast it shook the floorboards. She touched his knee, and he stopped.

“It has to be my birth family.” She straightened her spine and her heart. Enough avoidance and hand-wringing. Those people weren’t hers, both by their choice and her own. If one of them was stupid or evil or deluded or whatever she’d have to be to create a leech, so what? It just meant Quinn—with Sam’s brain and Nick’s badass-ness—had more reason than anyone to track them down and put an end to this, before they got to any other goddess.

“I don’t know anything about them, besides the little they left for me when I was eight.”

“So Alana could have been referring to your mother,” Sam said.

“Or aunts, cousins, siblings. I have no idea.”

“Okay then.” He flexed his fingers, his expression intent. “Let’s find out who’s out there.”

He looked at Quinn expectantly, but she had nothing to offer. No names, not even physical descriptions because her memories were too vague. She didn’t know what her mother had done with her original adoption paperwork. She hadn’t found anything naming her birth parents when she went through her mother’s things after the funeral. The realization set her adrift, and the loneliness that permeated her twelve years ago threatened to swamp her again.

Nick’s hand rested on her knee, tethering her, reminding her that she wasn’t alone and never had been. She rested her hand on his for a second before he withdrew it.

“Nick can get you started,” she told Sam. “He apparently researched me before we even met.”

Nick shifted and grimaced. “I told you, it was a training assignment.”

“But you did it, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And did you compare all your other training assignments to your family tree?”

His cheekbones went dusky red. “Uh, no.”

“I rest my case.”

“What case is that, exactly?” His eyes sparkled at her, as much gold as green now. Quinn smiled at him.

Sam snickered. “Give me what you’ve got.” He tossed a pad and pen across the table. Nick scribbled a few things down and tossed it back, along with a look of warning that Sam ignored.

“It was a long time ago,” Nick said. “Most of what I know is outdated.”

“It’s a start.” Sam squinted at the paper. “Is this a Z?”

“Is your vision fuzzy again?” Quinn asked, worried.

But Sam scowled at Nick. “No. His handwriting sucks.”

“You’ve gone soft,” Nick shot back at him. “Too much word processing. Have you reached Tanda or Chloe?” he asked Quinn, who shook her head. “I think we should go see Tanda. Talk to her in person, find out what happened, what she knows.”

“I’d like to check on her,” Quinn agreed. “We can get a flight out of Kalamazoo—”

“You’re leaving again?” Sam asked.

“It’s just for a couple of days,” Quinn said.

“More than that.” Nick stood. “That’s a couple thousand miles.”

“We’re not going to
drive
.” She laughed.

“Oh, yes, we are. It’s not negotiable. Driving, we’re off the grid and have room to maneuver.” He grabbed his coat off the wall peg and shrugged it on. “We’re past last quarter—”

“Which makes me as safe from the leech as I’m going to be.” Quinn stood.

“—and
someone
wants you neutralized. We don’t know who. I’m not taking chances.” He straightened his collar and looked at Sam. “You can come with us.”

“Oh, gee, can I?”

“You have a wireless card, right? You can do all that mumbo jumbo”—Nick waved a finger at the computer—“on the road.”

Quinn gave in. Add Nick’s valid points to Sam’s ability to do nonstop research, and she didn’t stand a chance.

Sam printed maps of their route as backup to Nick’s road knowledge and the unreliability of GPS—enduring with stoic silence Nick’s harassment for packing a printer. Quinn and Nick gathered their things and loaded the car. When they were ready to go, Sam handed the folder of printouts to Quinn and his duffel to Nick to put in the trunk, before lowering his computer satchel through the window into the backseat.

“I plotted a route that detours south. It’ll take us longer, but we need cash, and ATMs have transaction limits. There’s a branch of the bar’s bank right off the highway, and we can go to the teller. We’ll come back north to I-80.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Nick slid into the car. Quinn held the seat forward for Sam, who crawled into the back. She settled into the front and looked back at the cabin as they rolled down the needle-strewn driveway to the street.

There was nothing wrong with their plan, and she was not the type to hole up while events surged on without her. But something in her wished she could go back inside and curl up under her quilt for a few more days.

It’s just the new moon
, she told herself, but she called bullshit right away. Yeah, she was as close to normal as she could get during the new moon, and powerless longer than most other goddesses who had control over access to their source, but she’d dealt with that for seventeen years, for cripes sake. But if the moon were full, they could draw the leech to them, instead of chasing a phantom. She grinned, picturing Nick’s reaction if she suggested such a thing.

Nick slipped a CD into the console and hit the main road, settling on his spine for the long drive. Quinn glanced back to find Sam already plugged in to the broadband and engrossed in his research. She sighed and slid down in her seat, closing her eyes. This was going to be a long trip.

…

They reached Portland midafternoon on Tuesday and drove to the address listed for Tanda in the Society directory. Nick parked at a meter across the street and examined the entrance to the high-rise apartment building.

“Doorman, security desk inside, elevators recessed—no way to get to them without being seen by security.” He squinted. “Or cameras.”

“We planning to sneak in?” Sam asked from the front seat. He’d been testy for the last four hundred miles, a combination of confinement and his inability to reliably access the Internet.

“No,” Nick replied, “but someone did. Unless she knew him. Or is unusually trusting.”

“Maybe it didn’t happened here,” Quinn countered. “She has an office. Rainy Day Investigations.” Tanda’s source was rain, so she only worked on rainy days, and her strongest ability was reading human energies. She could follow the trail of a person’s energy if they were missing or help them find a lost object. Or more frivolous things, like matching a type of car or home or jewelry to a person’s needs. She could often tell if someone was lying or hiding something. Or…that was what she
used
to be able to do. To have it taken from her—she must feel like Quinn did during the new moon, only with no hope of becoming whole again. How much despair must she be feeling? Quinn wished it hadn’t taken her so long to get here.

“Let’s go find out.” Nick and Sam opened their doors. Quinn climbed out, then tried to push Sam back inside.

“You can’t come in with me.”

“What? Why not?”

“Tanda might still be freaked. She won’t want a crowd invading her home. She might not even want me.” She had never responded to Quinn’s calls or voice mails. “But you’re big and looming and that could be too scary for her.”

Sam scowled but got back into the car. Nick slammed his door.

“You either, Nick.”

He braced his forearms on top of the car and dropped his head between them, then lifted it again. “We gonna do this every time, Quinn? Not to leave my sight, remember?”

“I know.” She didn’t want to go in alone, but she was trying to put herself in Tanda’s shoes. She’d been betrayed, and a place she felt safe had been invaded. She might not want a whole bunch of people overrunning her. “But why would he be here? He’s already taken everything he can.”

“What about the goddess who’s already attacked us at least once?”

“How would she know we’re here?”

Nick shook his head. “She could have someone waiting for you in case you did come here. But it doesn’t matter. It’s my job. She’ll be okay—she’s met me before.”

Quinn was skeptical but didn’t argue anymore.

The doorman nodded and opened the door for them as they approached, but the security officer at the desk was less accommodating. He addressed them as soon as they walked in, giving them no choice but to approach the station. He nudged the sign-in book and lifted a telephone handset.

“Resident?”

“Tanda Wilcox,” Quinn told him and picked up the pen.

“Don’t—” Nick blew out a breath when she put her name in the book. She gave him a pointed look and handed over the pen. He glared and shook his head but scribbled something under her name.

The officer relayed their names to whomever answered his call and then told them, “You may go up. Ms. Wilcox is present.” He settled the phone onto its cradle.

Quinn’s shoulders relaxed, and she realized how worried she’d been that Tanda would turn them away. “Which apartment, please?”

“Twenty-two thirteen.”

“Thank you.”

He watched them all the way to the elevator and continued while they waited for it to arrive. Once they were inside Quinn breathed a sigh of relief.

“You didn’t put your own name, did you?” she said. She hadn’t clearly heard the officer’s mumbled conversation with Tanda.

“Of course not. I put Edward Halen.”

“I don’t know how you get away with that stuff.” She tilted her head to check the numbers flashing at the top of the car.

“It’s less obvious without the Van. You shouldn’t have signed your real name.”

“I had to. One, it’s forgery.”

Nick snorted.

“Two, how would Tanda let us up if she didn’t know it was us?
One
of us had to give our real name. It’s not going into a database,” she tried to reassure him. “Someone might find out later that I was here, but they’re not getting a signal now.”

“Unless the guard’s dirty and was watching for you.”

He had an answer for everything, and each one felt more like a shackle. “I suppose that’s possible.”

“Of course it’s possible!” Nick drove his hand through his hair, spiking it even more than usual. “You make it damned hard to protect you.”

Quinn’s eyelids prickled. She watched the numbers changing on the display at the top of the panel. “I’m sorry. That’s not my intent.” It wasn’t like she wasn’t afraid. Losing her power would be as bad as losing Sam or Nick. “It just feels more and more like imprisonment.”