Circle of Enemies

Francois was gone. So were Swizzle Stick, the two guards, and the Bugatti. Had Arne taken Francois and the car, or had one of the others? I wouldn’t have a chance to drive it after all.

Beside the blank space where the Bugatti should have been parked was an H2 Hummer in a grotesque blue- green color. It was a big, stupid vehicle, but it was perfect for what I needed. A set of keys hung from a hook by the door.

There were also gardening gloves in the garage, but nothing I could use to move those bodies. Damn. I needed to find something, because there was no way I could leave those drapes and their victims here in the house.

Even if the fire department never came, somebody would. Maybe the guard would come back, or Swizzle, or even a process server for Francois’s soon-to-be-ex-wife. Eventually, someone was going to want to know what happened to Francois—in fact, they could be placing a call to the cops right now.

These drapes couldn’t be left here; I had to take them with me. I would either have to find Annalise and hope that one of her spells—the green fire?—could kill the predators without opening a passage to let more in, or I was going to have to figure out where they’d been summoned.

I didn’t have what you’d call encyclopedic knowledge of predators or magic, but I had seen a couple of summonings. They took place inside circles—usually—sometimes painted, sometimes made of a particular material. They were like the circle around Wally King’s cabin, only not usually so huge, and they could imprison the predator in our world.

I needed to know where Wally had summoned the drapes for Arne and his crew. Maybe, if I was lucky, the circle would still be intact. If a guard died inside it, the next group of predators—more than five of them, I guessed—would be contained.

I needed to catch up with Arne or one of the others. I needed a way to get that information out of them, and I needed to get them inside the circle, too.

The first thing I did was search the invisible bodies. One of them had taken the cellphone Annalise had given me, and I couldn’t contact her without it. The drapes, strangely, seemed to be both under and over the guard’s clothes. I could touch and move the fabric freely, but it was completely hidden by the predator’s invisibility.

I searched all five bodies and couldn’t find the phone. Damn. It was probably forgotten in the pocket of that meathead speeding toward Mexico.

That meant I would have to find Annalise or the circle—not an easy thing to do with ten million people in L.A. County, but I had a couple of leads.

There was a little shed out by the pool, but when I opened it I found nothing but towels and water toys. Apparently, Francois was too rich to own a wheelbarrow.

I took an office chair from a back bedroom, laid the bodyguards into it one by one, and wheeled each of them into the garage. The cargo area of the H2 was huge, but so were the guards. I had to slide out the last row of seats to make room for them.

Damn, they were heavy. At least they hadn’t gone limp—each man was still fighting the effect of the predator, and all their muscles were clenched. I wished the blond guard hadn’t run off. I could have used help getting the bodies up into the SUV.

I stopped myself. They weren’t bodies. Not yet. They were still living men, and I wanted to treat them that way, not least of all because if one of them died in the back of this SUV, I was going to have drapes all over me.

I tried to lay them side by side; if one of them was pinned at the bottom, the weight of the others might suffocate him. The last two went into the backseat, tipped at an angle to fit.

By the time I was finished, I had slime all over my arms and on my neck. The burning and itching was intense. I skipped the sink and the shower and went straight out to the pool. After dropping my wallet and ghost knife on the grass, I toppled into the water.

I climbed out dripping wet, feeling like a guest who’d overstayed his welcome. I made a last stop at the fridge to steal six finger sandwiches, then it was time to go. I opened the back of the H2 to tap around the interior with a broom handle, just to reassure myself that everyone was still there. Then I climbed dripping wet into the driver’s seat.

A button above the rearview mirror opened both the garage door and the driveway gate. I pulled out into the street, threw the switch to close them both again, and drove away.

There were more predators out there for me to find.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

There was only one place to start my search: Ty had been much too excited to hear about Lino Vela’s house. I didn’t like the idea of Ty—or anyone in Arne’s crew—finding a spell book. I didn’t even want them to hear the words “Book of Oceans.”

I drove toward Hancock Park, trying to be careful on the highway. The Hummer felt as wide as a traffic lane, and I didn’t want to get into a fender bender in a stolen car. Luckily, other drivers assumed I was a jackass and gave me a lot of space.

I pulled up outside Lino Vela’s address. Everything seemed quiet, but of course the greenery hid most of the property. I found a parking spot a block away and around the corner and pulled in.

Annalise’s Dodge Sprinter sat parked across the street from Vela’s gate. I tapped on the window. Annalise was in the passenger seat. She opened the driver’s door and I climbed behind the wheel.

I didn’t fit. The seat had been moved forward as far as it would go. Annalise had driven herself. “Talbot didn’t come with you?”

“No,” she said. “Have you accomplished anything?”

“I have five predators in the back of an SUV.” She seemed surprised. “They have victims. Want to destroy them?”

She looked uncomfortable. She wanted to, always, but she didn’t want to leave her post. I told her the drapes take a long time to feed, and what happens when the victim finally dies.

She asked how long we had until they actually killed their victims. I thought about the garbage stink in Melly’s house, and the big pile of mail, and I said it seemed to take time, maybe a day or two.