Indigo(78)

Nora as Indigo had torn the cultists apart at the warehouse, but even she winced as she recognized the pulpy mess. A clump of bloodied flesh, plastered to the ceiling. She swallowed her revulsion and pushed on, taking one more step, almost to the end of the hallway. She noted spattered blood on walls and ceiling. She kept to the shadows and then peered around the corner—

A wheeze stopped her. Just one wheeze, but when she focused, she caught the sound of shallow breathing.

“Took you long enough,” Selene whispered at her ear.

Indigo paused. The signs of blood. That clump of flesh. The labored breathing. It all suggested they weren’t the first ones through that door. It also suggested a trap, perhaps a lure to get her racing to the aid of whoever had been hurt without stopping to think. Preying on the same compassion that had led her into her life as Indigo in the first place. She knew better—this was Rafe Bogdani’s home, and the sorcerer had already demonstrated his knack for deception and skillful traps. Even knowing someone could be around that corner, near death, while she and Selene stood here, listening to the breathing growing shallower by the second, she had to remain calm and in control.

“Do you want my advice?” Selene whispered.

Indigo didn’t answer. She did trust Selene—knowing the woman wouldn’t stand there calmly, letting Indigo take charge, if one wrong step could prove fatal to their goal. But Nora was the investigator—Selene was the sword of justice—and they needed answers as much as action. This was her domain.

Indigo slipped around the corner, into a small room—a home office, it looked like. There, across the floor cluttered with debris, Captain Fritz Mueller huddled in the corner at the end of a swath of blood. His mouth worked with a small, wet sound, eyes glazing, chest covered in blood.

His name had been on the list she had given to Sam. Mueller, the late and unlamented Detective Mayhew’s commander, child trafficker, cultist, using his position to protect the guilty and line his own pockets. She felt no compassion for him. He’d sent Mayhew after her at the hospital, would have sacrificed poor, trusting Symes. He was the last of the local cabal’s inner circle, the last of the people who’d attended the original ritual. So what was he doing bleeding out on Rafe Bogdani’s floor?

Indigo surveyed the room. No weapon seemed to be in sight, nothing that could cause this damage. Then she spotted something on the floor. It almost looked like a speck of light, and as she watched, it faded, leaving nothing. She was turning toward Selene when she caught sight of three other balls of light, larger, sparking on the floor beside Mueller.

“Magic,” Selene said. “He set off a trap. That’s the shrapnel.”

Indigo flowed as shadow toward the three pieces.

“Don’t—” Selene said, but stopped as Indigo lowered herself to one knee, examining. “Just don’t touch.”

“I wasn’t planning to. I’ve seen Rafe’s magic in action before.” Up close, she could see the spheres spinning almost too fast for the eye to detect. Like whirring saw blades of pure light. “Brightness seems like an odd trap to secure an office against ordinary trespassers.” But not against a shadowy one. Had this been for her?

Damastes snorted but said nothing.

Keep your feelings to yourself, demon, or I’ll slam the lid down on you so hard, you’ll think you’re Quasimodo in the bell tower.

Mueller wheezed again. Indigo moved toward—

Light flickered off to the side. She saw it and dropped to the floor as Selene shouted, “Down!”

Sparks flew from the air above Indigo’s head, but it was more like the sputter of a short than a live wire. Only a few specks of light shot out. One struck her hand, and the speck burrowed into her shadow-clad flesh like a white-hot BB pellet. Then it vanished, leaving her with a shallow hole in her hand, roughly the size of a pinhead.

“Shit! Ow!” She stared at the hole in her hand. Powerful magic, if one spark of it could rip into her insubstantial form like that.… The full blast must have been horrific—and yet it hadn’t killed Mueller. Yet.

You think that’s powerful? Damastes chuckled in her head. I could show you power that—Indigo stuffed him back down in her mind, into his box, with a furious thought. She glanced over at Selene and then up at the ball of sparks, sputtering out now.

“Untriggered remnants of the trap,” Selene said. “Even that could have taken your head off if you walked into it, so let’s be a little more careful before rushing in where angels fear, and so on.”

“I’m not rushing. This bastard is one of the Phonoi’s inner circle. I have to wonder what he’s doing here now and in this state. Yeah, that trap would have taken my head off—my head, but it didn’t take his. That trap was meant for me, but it still packed a hell of a punch against him. So … maybe we can get some answers out of this piece of shit, since he was clearly up to something here.”

Selene shook her head. “And how could you trust a word he said?”

“I don’t think he’s a willing martyr to the cause. Maybe they had a falling out, or maybe he’s had a change of heart—though I doubt that—and he’s also going to die unless I help him. That’s a powerful incentive to get chatty.”

“He’s already dead. His body just doesn’t know it yet. You want information? That’s why we’re here. To look for it.”