Five Dead Herrings by E.J. Russell
“Swell,” I muttered. “Now what?”
Jordan dashed behind one of the massive rhododendrons that flanked the gate, and from the way the foliage rustled, I guessed he was shifting back to human form. “It’s in there.”
“Are you sure? I mean, it was here. Lachlan showed up carrying the thing earlier today.”
He poked his head out from between the dusty leaves and held out his hand so I could pass him his clothes. “No. It’s definitely here now. I could scent the residual trail from earlier, but this is fresher. Stronger. Besides, if it had been taken away, there’d be another trail leaving, and there isn’t. It’s definitely here.”
I set my bag next to my feet and leaned around the stone gate post to peer at the house. Two cars were drawn up in front of the door, a sports car—red, because of course it would be red—and a sleek black town car. What were the chances I could just buzz the intercom and ask for a few words with the Martinsons: “Pardon me, but did you ambush Lachlan Brodie and steal his pack?” Yeah, that would go over well. “It may be here,” I told Jordan, “but I have no idea how we can get in.”
Jordan grinned. “We could always dig under the fence. Digging’s the other thing I’m good at.”
“I don’t think digging under a stone fence is an option.”
“Then what? Just say abracadabra or open sesame?”
The gates began to swing outward, smoothly and without a creak.
I stared from the gates—now wide open—to Jordan. “That can’t be—” The front door of the mansion crashed open and Reid stormed out onto the porch, his black overcoat flaring behind him. He dove down the stairs, heading toward the sports car.
Pierce appeared in the doorway in a black overcoat identical to his son’s. “Reid! Have a care. A rash action now could ruin everything.”
Reid flung open the car door. “I know what I’m doing, Father. Believe it or not, I always have. And I’m done waiting to claim what’s mine.”
Jordan made a face. “That doesn’t sound good.”
“You know what else doesn’t sound good? Getting caught spying on them. Duck!”
Jordan disappeared under his bush as I snagged my bag and edged behind its twin on the other side of the gate. We needn’t have taken that much care—Reid bombed out of the driveway and onto the road without even pausing. I was about to ease out of hiding—a branch was poking me in the side—when the town car purred through the gates. It at least paused to check for traffic, but the tinted windows were too dark for me to see who was inside. I assumed it was Pierce, since he’d been dressed for going out when I spotted him in the doorway, but—
“Hssst! Hugh!”
I peered through the screen of rhododendron leaves to see Jordan gesturing madly at the open gates. As the town car slid smoothly onto the street, the gates began to close and Jordan darted through them.
“Jordan, what the— Crap,” I muttered. I glanced over my shoulder at the town car’s disappearing taillights. I doubted my probationary period would survive a trespassing charge, but I could hardly leave Jordan in there on his own. My bag caught on a branch as I lunged out to follow him. I cursed under my breath, but I couldn’t get it loose. With the gap narrowing by the second, however, I let go and nipped through just before the opening got too small. If somebody stole it from behind the bush, I could replace it. But if I let Jordan get caught by the Martinsons? Not exactly something I could put on an expense report.
Jordan at least had the sense not to walk straight up the drive. For all I knew, the Martinsons had security cameras covering every inch of the property. “At least they don’t have guard dogs,” I groused as I hurried to catch up to Jordan, where he was skulking along the fence.
“This is so awesome!” he whispered. “I’ve always wanted to do surveillance, just like you.”
“Jordan, this isn’t surveillance. This is trespassing.”
He blinked at me, his eyes huge in the dark. “But the gate was open.”
“No. The gate was closing. Probably to keep people like us out.”
“But, Hugh, Mr. Brodie’s pack is in there and it doesn’t belong to them. Isn’t it the right thing to do to get it back?”
I scrubbed my hands through my hair. “No, they shouldn’t have Lachlan’s pack, and the fact that they do is damning. But somebody called the SMTs to pick Lachlan up. Maybe it was them and they intend to return the pack once he’s released from the hospital.”
Jordan just stared at me. Yeah, I didn’t believe that either. With all the bad blood between Lachlan and Reid—personified by the man they apparently both wanted—it was entirely possible that Reid had taken the pack for leverage against Lachlan. I doubted he was the type to resist temptation if it hit him right between the eyes.
“Look, we should contact Mal. The supe council polices this type of—”
“Hugh!” He grabbed my arm and shook it. “Look! It’s a jar.”
I peered through the gloom. “What jar? What does a jar—”
“No. The door. It’s ajar.”
“Just because a door isn’t latched, we can’t just waltz—”
Too late. He darted across the manicured grass and skirted the geometrically precise hedge to cross the flagstone patio. Grinning, he pushed the French door open with one finger.
“Jordan, don’t be a—” He slipped inside. “Fabulous. Now it’s not just trespassing. It’s B & E.”
But I had no chance to convince him to leave if I stayed out here, and this was Jordan, the kid who hadn’t gone a day at Wonderful Mug without breaking something, including himself. I could hardly let him bang around in the house alone. He might end up burning the place down.
“I am gonna be so fired,” I muttered as I sprinted across the lawn and slipped inside. At least we hadn’t ended up in that creepy-ass study.
This room was dim, lit only by the embers of a dying fire in a huge fireplace. It wasn’t nearly as cluttered as the rest of the house. In fact, it was practically empty, with only a few tall, thin objects lurking in the shadowy corners, as if this was the place the Martinsons sent their old coat racks to die.
Across the room, a door opened, silhouetting Jordan against a brighter hallway light. I headed toward him, but as I crossed the bare wooden floor, I realized it wasn’t as bare as I thought: The light picked out a metal inlay.
There was a pentagram embedded in the floor. And those dead coat racks? Candelabra. Six foot tall wrought iron candelabra topped with black candles as thick as my wrist.
Holy crap. Pierce Martinson was an elemental mage, and this must be his work room.
I wasn’t as worried about getting fired now as I was about getting dead.
“Hugh, come on! It’s this way!” Jordan disappeared out the door. I hurried after him, although I can admit that my rush wasn’t entirely because I needed to keep him in check. I didn’t want to spend any more time in that work room than I had to.
Believe me, I don’t object to pentagrams and magic accouterments on principle. Heck, we had several slate-floored, slate-walled chambers at the Quest offices for magical ceremonies and rituals. The whole building used to belong to a witches’ collective, so it stood to reason. But as a human, I was never allowed inside when the spells were being cast.
You’ve got to know by now that at the hint of anything supernatural, I’m so there. But intruding into a magical working uninvited? Even I’m not that stupid. Not after Zeke told me AJ’s story.
AJ had been summoned and bound into service, passed from magician to magician, until he’d tricked his last master—a necromancer, and you never wanted to mess with jokers who wielded magic powered by death—and escaped. Apparently, if any magical chamber wasn’t carefully cleansed after each use—something Zeke was absolutely meticulous about at Quest—the spells could leave residue. And since a lot of those spells were aimed at human victims—or included human, er, components—everyone, including me, agreed it would be best for me to stay out.
I poked my head into the hallway, checking for movement and listening hard. Pierce and Reid might be gone, but there was still Eleri, the thorny maid, to consider, let alone any other servants. And Wyn, of course. He hadn’t been on the porch with Pierce and Reid, and hadn’t been in the sports car. He might have come out after Jordan and I hid, since the fence blocked our view of the house, and climbed into the town car with Pierce, his father-in-law-to-be.
But he could just as easily still be here.
However, the only movement I could detect was Jordan creeping up a narrow stairway at the end of the hall—the servants’ stairs?—and the only sound his footsteps on the bare wooden treads.
I crept after him as soundlessly as I could, hoping Eleri wasn’t waiting at the top, ready to wrap us both in brambles. But Jordan scooted out into a wide, empty corridor. He glanced over his shoulder at me, his face practically glowing with glee. He pointed toward the second door on the left, a room that would overlook the front of the house.
“It’s in there,” he mouthed.
I managed to grab his arm before he opened the door. “We need to leave. Now.”
“But, Hugh, we can’t go without the pack. That’s why we’re here. Packs are important.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “This is a backpack, Jordan. Not a bunch of affiliated werewolves.”
“I know that,” he said indignantly. “But we have to take it back to him. It’s the right thing to do.”
Spectral spiders staged a line dance up my spine, the urge to bolt nearly overpowering. But really, what choice did I have? I had no illusion that if Pierce Martinson wanted to find out who’d been traipsing through his house unannounced, he could do it with one puff of magical smoke or whatever. No matter how you sliced it, though, the Martinsons had no right to Lachlan’s property, and neither did Wyn. He’d renounced that right when he’d demanded the sundering.
“Can you tell if the room is empty?” I murmured.
Jordan sniffed experimentally, and his brow knotted. “Yeah. In fact, it’s really empty. Like there’s nothing in there but furniture and the pack, even though somebody was staying there pretty recently.”
“You can tell all that by smell? From out here?” He gave me a Get real, dude look. “Okay then. Let’s get it and get out before somebody asks us what the hell we’re doing here uninvited.” And I sincerely hoped that this counted as something that fell under the “better to ask forgiveness than permission” category.
Because at this rate, we were gonna need a boatload of forgiveness. Some of it from a magician who specialized in fire.