“It was subtle at first, a soda can on the counter next to a crumb speckled plate. The TV on and playing some twenty-four-hour football highlight channel. And then I noticed the bones he always warded his windows and doorways with were missing from where they’d always been. I wasn’t sure what to think at first. Elon doesn’t drink soda, he always says it’s bad for your bones. He’s a health nut and cringes at the mere mention of white bread, but that was the loaf that was open on the counter. The only sport Elon thinks is worth watching is hockey or soccer. He couldn’t care less about football.”
I slow as we get closer to a gated community entrance. This one isn’t manned. It only requires a keycard to be swiped in order to have the gate swinging wide open to grant entry. Little does my aunt know that I have a client who lives in the same community. She used to come into my work twice a month, but when her MS started acting up, she asked if I could do house calls, and I’ve been scanning that keycard to get in twice a month ever since.
“When I went to walk past Elon’s living room to check upstairs, that’s when I saw the circle of crushed rowanberries and the pile of ash. It was still smoking. I called for him and checked everywhere, but he was just...gone.”
“Did you call the Order?”
A disdainful scoff bursts out of Rogan. “They wouldn’t help my family. The Order only cares about things that serve them. They’re all about politics and power plays, not truth and justice.”
I keep my thoughts to myself. I was under the impression that they were tasked with keeping the magical community in line, but what do I really know. Grammy Ruby never seemed too keen on interacting with them. She never said why, and I always figured it was a typicalcops make people nervouskind of thing. A person could be the epitome of innocent and law abiding, but if a cop pulls up behind them, the anxiety and panic hits. I thought the Order were the witch police, but from what Rogan is saying, I might not have a full grasp on how they work—or don’t, according to him.
“So what makes you think this is some big conspiracy instead of some messed up prank? Maybe your brother is shacked up with a girl he met, and the ashes are from the cleaner’s vacuum exploding?”
An uneasy feeling churns in my stomach, and it’s as though my instincts are setting off ayou’re wrongbuzzer like I’m a gameshow contestant who just guessed an incorrect answer. Rogan shoots me an unimpressed look that has me questioning my own intelligence for a second.
“Elon wouldn’t leave without telling me, and the entire situation was off. When I started looking into things, reaching out and speaking with trusted friends, that’s when I discovered that there were others. Three Osteomancers and a Soul Witch.”
“What could the kidnappers want with fertility magic?” I ask, the Soul Witch part throwing me for a loop.
“What do they want with any of them?” Rogan counters. “They’re all alive, I know that much at least, but depending on why they’ve been taken, that could be a good or a bad thing.”
The agony in Rogan’s statement makes my chest hurt. I focus on the asshole side of the family that I’m headed to deal with so that my mind doesn’t wander to dark places that play out scenarios of all the bad things that happen to people who are taken against their will.
“And how can you be sure that they’re all alive?”
Rogan looks at me again like I’m an idiot, and I’m starting to get really tired of seeing that particular look on his face.
“If they were dead, their magic would choose the next in line, just like Ruby’s did with you,” he points out evenly.
“Oh, right.”
Okay, maybe I earned that last scathing look fair and square.
“Magic hasn’t transferred to anyone else in any of the missing witch cases, so whatever it is that someone wants them for, they have to be alive. I’m terrifiedthatcould change at any moment though.”
I tear my attention away from the tic in his jaw and the sheen of pain that wells up in his clover-hued eyes. We both fall silent for a moment as the weight of his words settles all around us. “How much longer until we get to wherever it is that we’re going?” he asks impatiently, and I suddenly feel like there’s some hourglass of doom looming over us, each grain of sand counting down the milliseconds until everything shatters. I have no idea how I’m going to help him, but I know I have to, and I sure as hell know I need the grimoire if I hope to have any chance of doing it.
My SUV threatens to tip as I take a sharp left and force it to charge over a steep hill. “We’re almost there.”
I turn down a ridiculously long driveway that’s lined with tall majestic trees that are just on the cusp of shedding all their green for a myriad of oranges, plums and yellows. I hate my aunt, but the beauty of her property can’t be denied. What can be denied, however, is her claim to own all of it. These eighteen acres originally belonged to the family in its entirety, but somehow through sketchy wheeling and dealing, they ended up in just one sister’s name several generations ago, the Harridans. The property was then passed down to only her line instead of belonging to all the Osseous clan like it was originally intended to be.
The whole situation is fuel for feuds. Some of the family has given up on trying to change things, but it doesn’t keep the rest of us from giving them the stink eye and cursing their every move. While I was growing up, Grammy Ruby tried to pull the tattered branches of the family tree back together, but now that she’s gone—and with the stunt Magda and Gwen Harridan just pulled—there will no longer be any hope of that happening.
The dense line of trees thins as I speed down the lane. Up ahead, the driveway loops around a gaudy and ostentatious fountain spewing water from various statues’ orifices. There’s a mansion that was built on top of the skeletons of old colonial style homes that our ancestors built, and the monstrosity that now sits before me can’t make up its mind between being some kind of English-inspired castle or a Craftsman on steroids.
We screech to a halt in front of the large entrance, and I turn in my seat. “Hoot, I want you to go in there and pee on anything and everything you can find, do you hear me, buddy? Now’s your chance to sayfuck the patriarchy, I’ll go where I want to go!”
With that, I shove my door open, the hinges squealing in outrage, and jump out of the car. Rogan meets me as I come around the side and speed walk to the front doors. I’m not sure if they know that I’m here. I didn’t go through the front gate where a guard would have called them to ask if I was authorized, but they probably have cameras somewhere that alert them to what’s happening on the property.
I reach for the brass knob, and the door opens without the slightest hint of objection. “Of course the stupid elitist pricks didn’t lock the door,” I grumble as I let myself in.
Surprisingly, no one comes running to intercept me. I call outhelloa couple of times and give it a minute, but nothing happens. Well, that’s anticlimactic. Even if Magda and Gwen are somehow not here, they usually have a whole staff of maids and cooks running about. I look around, not sure what to do. As much as I’d love to tear through this entire house to find the grimoire, Rogan’s made it clear that we don’t have a ton of time. If only I were a Sanderson sister and could call the book with an enticing sing-song voice. Shit would be a hell of a lot easier if it would come floating out to me from wherever they’ve decided to hide it.
A round mahogany and glass table sits in the center of the foyer. I stroll over to it and grab the large vase of flowers from its middle. I double-check that Rogan still has Hoot in his arms, and then I chuck what is probably a Ming vase—that costs more than everything I own combined—at a gargantuan brocade mirror that’s hung on the wall of the entryway.
The sound of shattering glass slices through the quiet house like a knife. Shards of the vase and mirror crash to the marble tile below. Chunks of flowers and filler plop to the ground in a staccato of splats. And hurried footsteps pound in our direction.
“Well, that’s one way to get their attention,” Rogan observes behind me. He’s looking around at the house, but he doesn’t seem impressed or intimidated by the opulence; he just looks, surprise surprise, impatient.
