Crimson Veil (Otherworld/Sisters of the Moon #15)

Crimson Veil (Otherworld/Sisters of the Moon #15) Page 19

It hit me that, at times, Kitten was much more astute than I was. Both of my sisters were. I didn’t see the world in the nuances they did, and for me, life seemed like it should be more straightforward than it really was.

“Fuck. I hadn’t thought of that. I guess then we have to stress that he went home because he wanted to help in the war efforts. Leave her all the way out of this one. Tell her that… well… tell her the truth. He told me he felt like he needed a cause to work for—to believe in.” While that wasn’t quite the truth, it would do for now and it was close enough to what he’d said that I didn’t really feel like I was lying.

Delilah nodded. “Makes sense to me. I know he’s been basically just putting in time with Chase. I don’t know if he really liked the job or not.”

“Okay then, we tell Camille that Shamas felt like his talents could better be utilized back in Otherworld, so he went home to help.”

With that, Delilah turned up the sound again and I sat beside her in comfortable silence, snuggling a little, as we watched Vincent Price and the forces of the dark. As the movie droned on, Delilah fell asleep and I covered her with her afghan and turned off the television. It was still an hour or so till dawn, but I decided to go curl up next to Nerissa and rest my eyes. I wouldn’t be able to sleep until dawn, but as I crawled into bed and felt her gentle pulse next to me, and the warmth of her body, I was able to drift in the comfort of being next to the person I loved most in the world.

The next evening, I awoke to find that Nerissa had left me a little love note on the pillow when she’d headed out for work. I kissed it, then tucked it away in my memento box, and headed upstairs. As I entered the kitchen, the first thing that hit me was that tomorrow night was Samhain Eve—October thirty-first. The second thing that nearly hit me was Hanna.

She was bustling from the fridge to the counter, her arms full of vegetables. A thick pack of steaks sat on the other side of the stove, and I could see Trillian on the back porch. He had fired up the grill and by the Kiss the Cook apron he was wearing, it was my guess he’d been dubbed the grill master for the evening. As he watched over the crackling flames, Bruce was sitting on the counter next to him, and they were talking.

Then I remembered: Our cousin Daniel was coming over for dinner. I glanced at the clock. He was due here around six, and it was a little past five now, so we had an hour.

“Excuse me,” Vanzir darted in front of me, a basket on his arm. It was filled with fresh herbs from Iris’s greenhouse. Camille was chasing after him, waving a trowel.

“You give those back! I was going to bundle them up to hang dry!”

“Only when you say please! I helped you harvest the damned things and then you turned around and squirted me with the plant mister.” Vanzir held the basket over her head, just out of her reach.

At that moment, Smoky swooped in from behind him and plucked the basket away. He gave Vanzir a guarded look. “Don’t trifle with my wife.”

Vanzir snorted. “A little late—we trifled some time ago, but I don’t intend to do so again. Now teach your wife some manners and maybe I won’t go swiping her herbs.” But he was laughing, and—after a tense moment—Smoky let out a chuckle and handed the basket back to the demon.

“Very well. Camille, say thank you to the demon for his help.”

Camille glowered at him. “Big lizard. Okay, okay… thank you and I’m sorry I squirted you with the mister. It just seemed the thing to do at the moment.”

The phone rang, interrupting the chaos, and since I was the closest, I answered. A male voice I didn’t recognize came on the line, but I knew his name when he introduced himself.

“This is Tanne Baum. Am I talking to Delilah or Camille?”

It was Violet’s boyfriend. He was from the Black Forest Woodland Fae in Germany, and according to what Camille and Delilah told me, he had some sort of bond with Violet that allowed him to know she was still alive.

“Hi, and no. I’m Menolly, their sister. What can I do for you?”

A pause. Then, “I have some news on Violet—I performed the ritual I told your sisters I was going to do. I don’t know exactly where she is, but I did come up with some information that might help find her. Can you meet me tonight?”

I glanced at the clock. Dinner with Daniel would probably take a couple of hours, at least. “It will have to be later tonight. Ten P.M. okay for you?”

He paused, then, with a resigned sigh, acceded. “Yes, if we have to wait till then, that will work. I suppose she’s been missing so long now that another couple of hours isn’t going to hurt anything. Where shall we meet?”

I frowned. “What about the Starbucks on Blackthorn Street? It’s on the corner, cross street Wales Avenue. They’re open half the night.” Also, the coffee shop was on the outskirt of Belles-Faire, which meant a shorter drive for us.

Tanne grunted and I heard the scribbling of pencil on paper. “I’ve got it noted down. I’ll see you at ten. And, Menolly, thank you. And your sisters.” And with that, he hung up.

“Who was that?” Camille had her basket of herbs and was sitting at the table, tying them up in bundles to hang from the ceiling out on the back porch.

“Tanne Baum. We’re meeting him at ten tonight, at the Blackthorn Starbucks. He thinks he has a lead on Violet—said something about a ritual he told you he was going to do?”

“Oh thank gods.” Delilah stopped in the middle of frosting cupcakes. She set the piping bag down and turned. “I hope he’s right. This whole mess with Lowestar Radcliffe and Violet has gotten shoved to the side by everything else that’s been happening, and I keep thinking, where is she? Is she all right? What must she be thinking now?”

“Well, we’ll meet him after we talk to Daniel and see what he has to say. Meanwhile, what can I do?” I jumped up, eager to be busy, but the phone rang again. This time it was my cell phone, and it was Nerissa.

“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry but I’m going to have to work late tonight. Chase is, too, but he’s already called Iris to tell her. So don’t wait dinner for either of us. We have a rather sticky situation here—nothing you guys need to know about, but it’s not very much fun. And Chase needs me here to smooth the path over between a disgruntled FBH family and their all-too-volatile OW houseguest. A few broken bones involved, and some very hurt feelings and threats of lawsuits and further assaults.”

“That’s going to take all evening? Sounds like an easy situation to me.” Of course, compared to the crap we’d been through, anything less sounded easy.

“Well, there are extenuating circumstances. Father of the household has a daughter who is seventeen and pregnant from the very handsome, very charming young man from Otherworld. The two obviously are down with each other, but Daddy is threatening to slap him with a statutory rape charge. That’s what started the argument.” Nerissa sounded put out and I did not blame her. That sort of crap was a ridiculous waste of the authorities’ time.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. That’s… yeah. I can see. Tread lightly and try not to break any skulls, though if you need some help, I’ll come down there and shake some sense into the pair of them. What about the girl?” I had a feeling she wasn’t playing any sort of victim in this case.

“She’s enjoying it. I think it tickles her to see Daddy and Lover Boy fighting it out. I have a feeling the little princess doesn’t get much attention otherwise.” Nerissa’s laugh was derogatory, and yet I also sensed a hint of sadness there. “So yeah, don’t count on us for dinner. We’ll grab something here. I’ll call before I’m headed home.”

I punched the End Talk button and slid the phone in the holster hanging off one of my belt loops. My jeans were too tight for me to put anything in the pockets. As I once again turned my attention to the bustle of the kitchen, I thought about mentioning Shamas’s departure but it wasn’t really the time for that. Camille would have to know by tomorrow, but I didn’t want to throw off the rest of the evening. I could tell her afterward—on the way to meet Tanne Baum.

I tried to find a way to help out with the rest of dinner, but there just wasn’t room. Too many cooks, and all that. So I meandered into the living room. The first thing I saw was Delilah’s laptop, sitting open. And then I noticed a file folder next to it, open. I could tell it had come from Carter’s because he used specially colored folders, and a special archival brand, and this was no ordinary cream-colored file.

As I sat down, nosy, and flipped through the articles in the folder, I realized they were about the Farantino Building. That’s right! Camille had said Carter gave them a folder on the building, but then with the disaster in Elqaneve, everything had slid by the wayside. Apparently somebody had decided to dig it out today.

There wasn’t much in the file—a few clips out of the Seattle Post’s business section. A couple from the Seattle Tattler’s social section—the damned rag was going strong fifty years back, long before the Fae and Supes were out of the closet. Then, there were Carter’s notes. Indications of unusual spiritual activity, in his spidery, very clear, handwriting. The dates went back to around 1914… a few years after the building was erected. All in all, there had been some hints of daemonic activity since near the beginning, but it was strung out enough to where, unless someone was specifically keeping an eye on the building, it wouldn’t have been all that noticeable.

So… let’s see.

Fact number one. Lowestar was attempting to wake a sleeping demigod. Which meant that Suvika—the demigod in question—had to be sleeping somewhere.

Hmm… it occurred to me that we hadn’t looked into him much yet. We hadn’t had the time. I frowned. Maybe there was some information online, though I rather doubted it. He was obscure, and all we knew about him was that he was one of the triple lords of debauchery and vice. What pantheon or mythos he hailed from, I wasn’t sure. At first, with his name, I’d thought maybe Hindu or Asian, but that felt off to some degree.

I pulled up a new browser and typed “Suvika” into Howl, a new search engine that was aimed at Supes and dealt first and foremost with magical information. A few seconds later, a handful of links came up. I scanned through them. Most looked like reference material.

Clicking on the first one took me to a brief, four-line entry in the MythicaPedia. Nothing there we didn’t already know. I clicked back to the listings and tried the second. Again, a brief mention, only this time whoever had Tumblr’d the information had included a painting that was supposedly of the three lords of vice. The drawing looked almost Japanese in origin, but I had the feeling it wasn’t. A third link led to nowhere, and a fourth. But on the fifth, I realized I’d stumbled onto something.

It was a personal entry in a magical blog that an FBH pagan had written. I glanced at the profile of the blogger, but it was only a magical name—and no information on where the writer was actually from or who he really was. But TheoLogos, the blogger, had apparently discovered mention of the demigod somewhere.

I cast a Circle of Summoning and used the root powder my grandmother taught me how to make. I was determined to bring Suvika here, to my life, even though the old texts say he is sleeping in his tomb. The conjuration worked, all right, but it wasn’t the demigod who showed up. Instead a handsome man, tanned with a glow that seemed to emanate through his clothing, appeared. He was in modern wear—and I would have mistaken him for a human if I passed him on the street.

When I asked him who he was, he would not say. He only laughed and told me I was foolish and lucky— foolish because I had no idea what I had asked for, and lucky, because my demands were not granted. And then, he told me that should Suvika wake for the wrong person, he would rain down mayhem and anguish on the summoner, and his freedom would be complete.

If not controlled by the proper channel, Suvika would be all too willing to rampage through the city and take whatever—and whoever—he wanted. And then, with a pale flash of light, the demon—I believe it was a demon, though he might as well be a guardian angel—vanished. I decided to abandon my quest to waken Suvika and concentrate on invoking someone more compliant.

Here, the entry ended, and I quickly scanned the entries before and after, but there were no further mentions of Suvika. Only haphazard ramblings of a wannabe magician who had gotten cocky, dove in over his head, and then had gotten very, very lucky. But who had he summoned? Obviously a creature from the Subterranean Realms.

I jotted down a few notes and bookmarked the site, then checked out the remaining links. The first three added nothing we didn’t already know, but the fourth was from a university site. Frowning—usually universities kept their online records to academic papers and the like—I scanned the page, trying to figure out what I was reading. The page looked like an image rather than text, and then it hit me. I was reading what appeared to be an old—perhaps ancient—book or scroll that had been scanned into the university’s databanks. And there, in a few concise sentences below a line of runes, was the entry I was looking for.

Suvika will waken from his tomb deep in the ethers. Born of a goddess and a daemon, when he rises, gold and silver will fly to his beck and call. Suvika will lay claim to all women he finds suitable for his use, and their screams will echo against the chamber walls. His carnal lust is equal in nature only to his lust for coin. And then, when his thirst for both is sated, he will waken his brothers, Viatu and Levvial, and they will use the greed of men to control the world. As was in the days of Atlantea, and then again in Rome, so shall be the new regime until once again, their enemies rock them back to sleep until the next turn of the cycle.