With my day off to a grand start, I cranked the heat and drove to Tatiana’s place, situated in a rural area of Langley, about an hour away from Vancouver. I made one brief stop, a much-needed Starbucks drive-through jaunt for a mocha latte with extra whipped cream and a chicken wrap, both of which I consumed long before I arrived at my destination.
Parking on the side of the road next to a neighbor’s driveway, I engaged in some gold-medal skulking around Tatiana’s good-sized acreage. There were no buildings other than the ranch house with its sweeping maple tree in the front yard. An SUV with a cold engine was parked on the square of dead grass to the side of the dirt lane that served as a driveway. Her property wasn’t within walking distance of anything interesting, and as only Brits and masochists appreciated a ramble about the woods in the soaking rain, unless she had another car, she was at home.
The house was far enough removed from the country road that the only sound was the wind in the trees, so the squeak of the back door easily carried to my position. Keeping lower than window height, I snuck around the side in time to see a car with muddy plates peeling away—not the SUV—the tires kicking up tiny whirlwinds of dust. The driver wore a baseball cap, obscuring them from identification.
I made my way up the stairs of the back porch, my Sherlock senses on high alert and a sharp red dagger made from my blood magic gripped tightly in one hand. Ready with a cover story about my car needing a jumpstart, I knocked on the kitchen door, but no one answered. There were no signs of a struggle visible through the glass, but her brother was dead and her visitor had been in an awful hurry to leave.
A few minutes later, I once more approached the kitchen door, slipping on the thin gloves and toque that I’d retrieved from my car. I carefully tucked my dark wavy hair inside the knit cap and pressed my fingertip to the doorframe. No magic. I frowned. Wards weren’t as common on private residences as they were on major public buildings, but Tatiana was a high-level Weaver and at the very least, her brother, who had been crashing here before he died, was involved with some dangerous people. There should have been a ward to sense hostile intent and then hold potential attackers. It would freeze them in place and neutralize their magic, if they had any.
Since wards didn’t deactivate when the Weaver who’d cast them died, an active ward would have effectively gift-wrapped the visitor for the cops to apprehend.
Cautiously, I tested the knob, which was unlocked. No siren blared when I opened the door. There was no keypad inside, so a silent alarm seemed unlikely. All of this made sense if Tatiana had been relying on a ward to guard her, but she wasn’t. I’d met a lot of recklessly trusting people and they didn’t tend to be the ones with mad magic. Maybe Tatiana thought that living in such a rural area meant that her only visitors would be well-intentioned neighbors.
Somehow I doubted it.
If the person in the car had been an innocent visitor, then why had they raced off?
“Hello?” I called out loudly. When there was no answer, I slid off my motorcycle boots, leaving them on the outside mat so as not to leave tracks, and tiptoed inside, eyes darting around for anything obviously out of place.
I crept into the hallway and gasped.
Tatiana Petrov lay face down, limbs splayed crookedly in a puddle of still-congealing blood from the hole blown through the back of her skull. Probably instantaneous death, so that was a mercy. Had she known what was going to happen to her or had it caught her by surprise? The naked violence of the scene didn’t yield answers, but my mind kept circling back to gunshot angles, and the image of a woman smiling to meet a guest and then faltering for a second as she realized what was about to happen.
I gulped down air, bent over double with one hand splayed on my tight ribcage. Suddenly, that Starbucks run’s added trip time made me incredibly grateful. I was a professional, sure, but the reality of how close I’d come to having a front row seat to a murder prickled along the back of my neck. Had the person I’d seen race off been Chariot, or connected to them?
Was this a preview of my own fate?
Trembling, I stuffed my haywire emotions into a very deep box until I was able to regard this situation with a cool head. The smart thing to do would be to call the crime in anonymously to the Nefesh cops. On the other hand, if Chariot was behind this, a golden opportunity had just dropped into my lap. As a Jezebel, I’d take any edge on my enemies that I could get.
I called Miles Berenbaum, Head of Security for House Pacifica.
“What?” he growled. Wow. Grumpy really needed to perfect his phone manner with me, especially since we were going to be working together for a good long time.
“I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I’m 99 percent certain how the German hitman got past House wards to kill Yitzak.” I gnawed on my thumbnail. How many more times would the price for answers be death?
Standard procedure dictated that I couldn’t touch the body, but something in me needed to see Tatiana’s face. Why? I’d seen death before. But this was different. Like Yitzak’s empty stare, it would remind me exactly what was waiting if I didn’t keep my wits about me.
“What’s the bad news?” Miles said.
“You’re gonna need a new Weaver if you want to set up any more wards.”
I appreciated a good
