Indigo(33)

The driver’s license in the wallet had been issued to Marshall Winston, age forty-two. Indigo recognized the area where he lived—she was sure it was one of the co-op buildings overlooking Central Park. After a moment’s thought, she took his keys as well.

Bracing herself, she entered the warehouse. It smelled of death, and though everything looked exactly the same—the corpses hadn’t moved, of course—the bodies now seemed to have fallen so that they looked at her accusingly. Murderers, Indigo reminded herself. They deserved the hand I dealt them.

She frowned deeply. Something had bothered her on Sunday, when all of this had played out. So many things had bothered her, but now she realized that one of them had been the absence of assassins. These were the wealthy and not-so-wealthy members of the chapter, the ones who financed and benefited from the cult’s activities in the New York area. The dabblers in black magic—and maybe more than dabblers. But she knew from experience that they had trained killers in their employ, such as the assassins she’d killed in the Chesbros’ living room last year. Maybe like the psycho bitch who’d tried to murder her this morning.

Why hadn’t any of them been here?

There was so much she didn’t understand about the Phonoi. Maybe only the real practitioners of their occult bullshit were invited to rituals like this. But if those assassins were still out there, if she hadn’t destroyed the entire chapter the way she had thought, then why hadn’t anyone discovered these corpses?

You’re an investigative reporter, she reminded herself. Do your job.

She could not bring herself to look at the body of Luis, the only innocent person in this whole building. Her failure to rescue the boy still ravaged her. Only obliterating the Children of Phonos—the entire global cult, not only the chapter that had gathered here—could alleviate the guilt Indigo felt for not arriving in time to save the boy.

It would take a long, long time to rifle the pockets and handbags of all the dead. So Indigo, her fingertips wrapped in shadow to blur her prints, concentrated on the discarded handbag of the white-clad priestess, now identified as Charlotte Edwards. Indigo pocketed Edwards’s keys and identification. She also examined the wallets of an Ovidio Bogdani and the purse of a woman whose license read Bonnie Alessio. Bogdani and Alessio were both younger, and more cheaply clothed. Their addresses were not fancy. In fact, Bogdani’s was in Kingsbridge … and his name was ringing a bell in Indigo’s memory. She couldn’t remember where she’d heard it before.

Indigo spent a few moments deciding where to go first. The priestess’s wallet contained a picture of the woman with two children and a man, so Charlotte Edwards’s apartment would not be empty. Indigo found it disgusting that the woman had a family of her own when she had been involved in the deaths of other people’s children. She didn’t harbor a scrap of guilt or regret for sending Charlotte Edwards to hell.

Winston’s personal effects gave no hint that he had a family, so she’d try the co-op across from Central Park first.

Indigo stepped into the deepest patch of blackness in the warehouse, danced through inky nothing, and emerged among the trees in the park. With one glance across the street, she flickered back into the dark and slid out into the shadows beside Marshall Winston’s apartment building.

It made her a little uneasy when she thought about the increasing ease and speed with which she moved from shadow to shadow, as if she had somehow graduated to an entirely new level of intimacy with the darkness. The logic seemed reversed. Indigo had never been less confident, never been more confused, and yet she felt as if she had only begun to tap the potential of her power. The temptation to surrender completely to instinct, to shadow, was almost overpowering. If only she could make sense of it all.

Now’s not the time. Now’s the time to find out who these bastards really were and if there are more of them. In her previous skirmishes with them, she’d learned of at least seven chapters of the Children of Phonos in the United States, including those in New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Houston, and she assumed their high priests and priestesses all reported to one who was above them all—some national or global figure or secret council or something. But those larger mysteries were for later. Right now she wanted to find out if some members of the local chapter were left alive.

Charlotte Edwards, the dead priestess, had claimed to have some secret knowledge about Indigo—and she needed that knowledge. Yes, she wanted to unravel and expose the entire cult, and, yes, she knew that if they were trafficking in abducted children, they had to be stopped. But her fear and confusion drove her tonight. It was selfish, but she didn’t care. How could she help anyone, how could she expose them to the light, if she couldn’t even be sure who or what she was?

She hid in the darkness outside the luxury apartment building. Through the glass of the lobby, she could see the doorman standing behind a high desk. The lobby gleamed with glass and chrome, well lit. Indigo didn’t like well lit.

Fortunately, shadows were everywhere. Wherever there was light, she could find darkness.

In a heartbeat, Indigo was inside, swathed in the shadow of the high desk, rising up behind the doorman. She drew that bit of darkness around her, hiding inside it, practically invisible. A few seconds later, he opened a door to admit a resident. Indigo took the darkness with her as she went into the elevator with the elderly woman and her dog. A light in the rear corner of the elevator winked out. The Pomeranian knew Indigo was there. It sniffed the floor and backed away, staring into the corner, but Indigo’s shadow cloak concealed her. The Pomeranian pressed against the legs of its owner, but whether to protect her or to be protected, Indigo couldn’t tell.