“Ah, yes.”
Azriel stepped to one side as Ilianna returned to her cupboard. She came back a few minutes later carrying a purple satchel and a knife. “There’s six bottles in here. If you need any more than that, you get the hell out of there.”
“And the knife?”
“That,” she said grimly, “is for Jak. And no, I’m not going to stab him, as much as I might want to.”
I grinned, slung the satchel over my shoulder, and led the way back to the kitchen. Azriel made himself scarce again, although the heat that caressed my spine suggested he hadn’t gone far.
Ilianna handed Jak the sheathed knife and said, “This is for you, though you don’t deserve it.”
He took the knife tentatively. “I’m not much into weapons, you know—”
“If you’re tackling hellhounds, you’d better be,” she retorted. “And it’s not just a knife—it’s a blessed knife. It’ll work when other weapons don’t, so use it. I don’t want Risa hurt protecting your useless ass.”
“Thanks for the concern,” he muttered.
I restrained my smile and glanced at Ilianna. “Are you and Mirri still having dinner with your parents tonight?”
Mirri was Ilianna’s girlfriend, though like many mares she was bisexual rather than just a lesbian like Ilianna. She was also very open about her sexuality, whereas Ilianna kept hers a closely guarded secret—at least where her parents were concerned. She and Mirri had been in a steady relationship for a while now, but it was only very recently that Ilianna had acceded to Mirri’s requests to meet her parents—as friends, nothing more.
She grimaced. “Yes. And Carwyn will be there.”
Carwyn was the stallion her parents were trying to set her up with. According to Mirri, he was rather hot—in bed and out—but given Ilianna’s preferences, she was either going to have to be honest with her parents or get stuck in a situation that could only end badly.
“Oh,” I said, well aware that Jak was rather avidly listening in. Once a newshound, always a newshound. “Good luck.”
“Yeah, I’m going to need it.” She grimaced. “Just make sure you ring me if you find magic.”
I nodded, then picked up my sandwiches and headed out. Jak followed so close on my heels that his breath washed the back of my neck. Unfortunately, it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.
“You can drive,” I said, as the front door slammed behind us.
“Color me shocked,” he said. “Here I was thinking you didn’t trust me to keep my hands to myself when you were in the same vehicle as me.”
“I don’t. Which is why you’re driving.”
He snorted s S>Heke Iliannoftly, but opened the passenger door of his red Honda Accord, ushering me in before running around to the driver’s side.
It didn’t take us long to get to West Street. We cruised slowly past the warehouse, then turned into Reeves Street. Halfway down the block, we stopped and I climbed out of the car, then leaned against it, my gaze sweeping the building. It was one of those old two-story, redbrick places that had become so popular with inner- city renovators. The iron roof was rusted and covered in bird shit, and the regularly spaced windows were small and protected by bars as rusted as the roof. But considering its age, it still seemed surprisingly solid. Like many of the other buildings in the area, it had walls littered with graffiti and tags, and rubbish lay in drifting piles along its length. It looked and felt abandoned.
Only it wasn’t.
Though there was no sign of guards or movement, there was an odd, almost watchful stillness about the place. In fact, the whole area was unnervingly quiet. Even the sound of traffic traveling along nearby Smith Street seemed muted.
Azriel reappeared, but the heat of his presence did little to chase the growing chill from my body. “I can sense no human life inside.”
My gaze swept the building again. It was waiting. Ready. Trepidation shivered through me, and I rubbed my arms. “What about unlife? Or hellhound-type life?”
“There is nothing in there other than vermin.”
“So why does it feel like a predator is about to pounce?”
“I do not know.”
“Well,” Jak said, from the other side of the car, “we’re not going to find out what’s going on by standing here.”
“No.” I hesitated and glanced at Azriel. “You really can’t get in there?”
“The wards are set just within the building walls. Destroy them, and I can enter.”
“If I do that, whoever set them will likely feel it.”
“Yes.” He half raised a hand and, just for a moment, he leaned closer, as if to kiss me. Then he stepped back. “Be careful.”
“Coward,” I muttered, then spun and walked away.
“So.” Jak’s voice was conversational as he fell in step beside me. “There’s absolutely nothing going on with that reaper and you, is there?”
“Just drop it, Jak.”
“Thought so.”
“Then you thought wrong.”
He chuckled softly. I ignored him and kept walking. There were no doors on this side of the building, and all the bars—despite their rusted appearance—were solid. But there were two entrances on West Street—one of them heavily padlocked and apparently leading into an old office area, and the other a roller door over what once must have been a loading bay. The door itself was battered and coated with grime, and the bottom edge had been torn away from the guides. Obviously, this was where the homeless had been getting in.
S widge had I took a long, slow breath that didn’t ease the tension knotting my stomach, then squatted and squeezed through the gap.
The room beyond the roller door was still and quiet. I shifted to one side so Jak could enter, and studied the immediate area. A platform ran around three sides of the dock, and there were stairs down at the far end that led up to it. I could neither see nor smell anything or anyone out of the ordinary, and yet there was something here. Something that crawled along the edges of that other part of me—the bit that saw the reapers and was sensitive to the feel of magic.
Jak hunkered down beside me. “Anything?”
His voice was little more than a whisper. Maybe he felt the closeness of something, too. Azriel? Can you hear me? There was no response. Obviously, the magic was broader than he’d suspected. I shook my head and said, “You?”
“Just rats and rubbish.”
“Yeah.” I pulled the satchel around and gave him a couple of Ilianna’s little blue bottles. “Put these in your pocket. If there are hellhounds here, pop the cork and use the water. It’ll deter them.”
“So holy water really does work?”
I glanced at him. “You investigate paranormal events and happenings, and you don’t know this?”
“Reporters are natural skeptics. Until I see it, I don’t believe it.”
“You haven’t seen ley lines or the gates to heaven and hell, yet you believe in those.”
He raised his eyebrows in amusement. “No, I believe you believe. I’m still holding out for proof.”
I snorted softly. “You may regret that.”
“Yeah, I usually do. It never stops me, though.”
A truer sentence had never been uttered. I rose and padded forward, still drawing in the scents around us, trying to find some hint of the magic I sensed was here. It might not be related to the ley line, but something was definitely going on in this place.
We followed the loading bay to its end, then carefully went up the steps and headed to the left. Several doors lay ahead. I paused and glanced questioningly at Jak. He hesitated, then pointed to the one in the middle. It was as good as any, I supposed.
I reached for the handle and felt the shimmer of . . . not energy, something else. Something darker. I said, “Be ready. Whatever is going on, I think it’s happening on the other side of that door.”
