Page 27 of Demon and the Raven

When I turned to glance at the others, I was surprised Malachi was right there, having joined me.

“Everything all right?” He sounded concerned, those deep-brown eyes of his filled with worry. Usually he was smiling, and it was a good one that emphasized his laugh lines and his dimples.

“Yeah, but I need to get home,” I lied because Lorne wouldn’t want me saying where I was going. “I’ll take a rain check on the food if that’s okay.”

“Absolutely.” He grimaced. “Though you’ll owe me.”

“Why’s that?”

“You know why,” he grumbled. “You’re abandoning me to Diana and Allard’s company. Imagine, if you will, all the horrors they’ll regale me with. They probably want to close down the youth center or kill Lorne’s dog-park initiative or something equally horrible.”

I grinned. “I’ll owe you one.”

“A big one.” He widened his eyes like he was in pain.

“Just ask Pace what he’s going to buy next,” I directed, walking backward. “He loves to talk about himself.”

“I’m aware,” he said snidely.

“I’ll see you later.”

I called a goodbye to Pace, ignored Diana, then bolted down the street to the bike rack in front of the library. Oddly, once I unlocked it and was ready to go, Argos was there, now a Russian Blue, and leaped nimbly into the basket on my bike.

“What is happening with you?” I asked him. And I wasn’t insane, so I didn’t expect an answer. He didn’t speak, as my life was not a Disney movie, but normally his actions made more sense. “I’m not going home,” I informed him, letting him make the decision to jump out or not.

Interestingly, he stayed where he was, turning once, then again, and finally curling up into a ball and chuffing at me.

“You’re so weird,” I muttered as I took off, waving at Malachi as I passed him. The sky rumbled then, letting me know that in a matter of hours there would be a wild summer squall, and my gaze dropped to Argos for a moment. “You’re gonna get wet if you stick with me.”

But he didn’t move or make any noise, which was terribly unlike him. I didn’t have time to devote to him, though. I was far more concerned with Lorne.

FOUR

I wasn’t surprised there was a crowd on the street across from the home of Kathy Hayes—a.k.a. Cordelia Wormwood when she was in her shop, at a festival, or hosting her YouTube channel. What did surprise me was that half the building must have been engulfed in flames at some point because one side was now soaked, blackened, and gutted. Firefighters were weeding through debris with their Halligan bars, looking for anything still smoldering. The ambulance was just leaving, and Pete Rooney, my friend and one of Lorne’s deputies, was standing behind the yellow tape cordoning off the crime scene. Normally I would have raised a hand in greeting, but I didn’t want to be noticed. Lorne wanted me there, but that didn’t mean I was supposed to be.

Before anyone saw me, I turned right into the alley between the white picket fence of a small A-line house and the two-story redbrick building that had been a soap factory fifty years ago and had been vacant since they went out of business. Recently Pace had purchased the old but still beautiful structure and had plans to convert it into either apartments or commercial office spaces. I hadn’t been paying attention at the last town hall meeting. I tended to doze during those, even though Lorne gently elbowed me in the ribs whenever my head bumped his shoulder.

Riding up the slight incline, I stopped halfway up, looking down the long row of houses that every backyard abutted, noting that the lights were on in every home, on both sides, and that now there were people clustered into the backyards of those closest to Cordelia’s place. The only good part was that with all the focus on the burned-down Craftsman, no one was paying any attention to me. Usually I wouldn’t have cared, but Lorne had asked me to go around the back, which meant he didn’t want anyone to see me.

I got off my bike and walked it between two homes, one a two-story Colonial Revival-style house, and the other a three-story Queen Anne. Using the kickstand, I left it behind a toolshed, and then Argos and I jogged from backyard to backyard until we got to Kathy’s, sticking to the shadows so no one would see us. Well, me. No one would care if a now Calico cat was wandering around. It was good he wasn’t black at the moment. With Kathy’s reputation as a witch, people might have talked if they saw him.

“Is that why you’re in disguise?” I asked him as I crouched down between a couple of arborvitaes and watched the firemen, happy that, even with the lights on above me, I was hidden in the darkness. “You don’t want people thinking you belonged to her?”

He didn’t meow or chirp or chuff, merely sat right beside me, tail swishing, looking around, clearly on guard.

“Are you scared of something?”

When he moved closer, rubbing his chin on my knee, I was almost sure I had my answer.

“What do you have to be frightened of?” It felt like I was questioning myself and not him. The shudder that ran through me was a surprise, as were the goose bumps that appeared on my skin. “And stop freaking me out. You’re not helping anything.”

I was seldom spooked, but I realized that my conversation with Thero earlier had left me on edge. It wasn’t easy to kill a nymph. Between their strength and their magic, they were considered quite lethal. That Nott had been bested and murdered was great cause for alarm. And now Kathy was dead. In a town where normally nothing happened to suddenly have two murders seemed wildly suspicious. Of course, I was the only one who knew there was more than one, and I needed to give Lorne that information as soon as possible.

Argos, a kitten now, leaped and perched on my shoulder, and that was the strangest part of all. He wasn’t afraid of anything, yet suddenly he wanted to be close, as if craving protection. That made no sense, so I crossed my arms in front of me, creating a cocoon against my chest to see if he wanted to be even closer. I wasn’t surprised when he crawled off my shoulder, retreating to the safest place on my body.

“You’re scaring me,” I informed him even as I saw Lorne striding from room to room, looking around, and saw the continual flash of the camera. Malcolm Schwartz, our fire chief, was there too, with six of his people. “Which isn’t helping even a little.”

When my phone buzzed—I had turned off the ringer when I left my bike—I nearly jumped out of my skin.