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The long driveway leading up to the Aurora Spa & Resort is just as I remember it—peaceful and tranquil. Lined with tall eucalypts and smaller tree ferns, the curved entrance directs visitors toward a large, double-story manor-style building with tall pillars flanking the entrance.
I pull into a marked visitor’s car parking spot off to one side. It’s late morning now, and the sun beats down warmly as we alight.
Kyan releases a low whistle, squinting up at the grand building before us. “Fancy place your cousin has, here.”
I can’t disagree with him. The main reception area is situated in a handsome structure with plate glass windows along the front. As we make our way up the flagstone steps between the tall columns, I glance back. The portico is positioned atop a rise, and the view from here is always spectacular. Rolling green grass and manicured garden edging give way to a forest blanket beyond the perimeter of the property. In the distance the cityscape beckons, purple-tinged and hazy.
A tiny strip of sparkling ocean is also visible, right at the edge of the horizon line.
On a day like today, when the weather is clear and bright, this view is worth every cent of the mega-dollars people usually pay to visit the resort.
“She’s rightfully very proud of this place,” I say. “Actually, so am I. It’s...um...part mine as well. And Sapphire’s, though she rarely visits.”
“Yours? Hmm.”
I find myself enjoying the look of surprise on his face.
“Ammie does all the work,” I admit. “I’m just a silent partner, really. I much prefer my little shop in the city.”
“Well, I didn’t expect...” Kyan trails off and I follow his fixed gaze to find out what has caught his eye.
There’s a mark on the double-doored entrance. My heart does a strange and almost painful ker-thump. That’s blood.
It’s then that I realize something else.
Where the heck is everyone?
It’s not tourist season, yet, but this place is never totally empty, even in the off-season. Amethyst and her talented staff have many die-hard clients who come here regularly for the facials, massage, soaps, or simply the scrying spells that we offer on the side.
Except for my car, the car park is completely empty.
Why did I not notice that before?
I crouch down beside the door, my eyes tracking over the blood smeared across the wood.
It’s a partial handprint. Bloody finger-prints trail from the door handle, down one of the panels, and end in a couple of drips on one of the flagstones.
“Over here,” Kyan says, further along the porch. He points at another small patch of blood speckled over the dark, shiny leaves of one of the potted plants decorating the entry way.
“They got to her already,” I mutter, sickness roiling in my gut. “We’re too late.”
Kyan says nothing, but from the expression on his face, he seems to agree with my assessment.
This is my fault. I turn away from the pity in his expression.
C’mon, Topaz. Pull it together. Think.
I put up my hand, mirroring the handprint on the door, imagining Amethyst doing the same thing. I imagine her grasping the handle, struggling to pull it open.
Sliding her hand downward...
I close my eyes as my fingertips brush the marks left behind.
I’m not a natural at scrying, but maybe I don’t need to be. I work with blood in my magic-casting, far more than many other witches. And there’s something odd here... something I’m missing...
I smear a droplet of red between my forefinger and thumb, reaching out to sense whatever I can from it. Not Amethyst’s.
I don’t know how I know, other than instinct.
I turn and look to the pot plant once again. Then my gaze traverses to Kyan, who is crouched over yet another trace of blood on the ground further away.
Whatever happened here, this is not my cousin’s blood.
Just then, a memory surfaces, totally out of the blue and so clear it could almost be a vision.
Ammie is sitting on her bed, and I’m slouched on the bed opposite. She kicks her heels against the bedframe, frustrated. In the corner, Sapphire is asleep in her crib, so we have to keep our voices down.
“Ammie, that’s not how you play hide and seek!”
“But what about Hansel and Gretel? They did it that way!”
“That’s different—they wanted someone to come find them!” I point at the floor, where Amethyst has left a trail of pebbles leading to the open wardrobe. “If you do that, I’ll know exactly where to look for you. That’s no fun!”
“Whatever.” Amethyst folds her arms, a stubborn pout on her lips. “I like my way best.”
I blink, returning to the present. When Kyan raises his gaze to mine and catches my expression, his brow furrows.
“What is it?”
I hurry over to him. The dark patch of blood on the ground here is bigger than the others, but I ignore the hammering of my heart and try to believe in my own instincts. I rifle through my shoulder bag, pulling out a small vial filled with clear liquid left over from yesterday.
“I should really start making these as travel kits.” I shoot a grin at Ky, who simply looks befuddled. It’s kind of satisfying to have him on the back foot for once. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with, shall we?”
I remove the inbuilt swab from the vial and take a sample of the blood, before placing it back into the vial so it sits in the clear liquid. I hold it up to the light. The process will take a few minutes, but I’m impatient. I have to resist the urge to shake the tube—if I do that, I might wreck the sample and have to start all over again.
“Topaz.” His gentle hand on my arm pulls me out of my train of thought. “I’m sorry about your cousin. I know it looks like a lot of blood loss, especially for a human, but—”
He falters at the look on my face. “What is it?”
I sit back on my heels, glancing up at the building. We’re still alone, with nothing but a warm breeze and a deceptive sense of tranquility to guide us.
“I don’t think this is what it looks like.”
“Really?” Kyan’s tone is skeptical. “Because—and don’t take this the wrong way—it looks like an open and shut case to me. Someone was attacked here, and if you can’t get hold of your cousin, then chances are, it was her.”
He points toward the forest that edges the manicured garden. “Her attackers likely dragged off somewhere... I know it’s a lot to take in, but I can scent them. Shifters were here...a particular kind... I know shifters, Topaz, and—”
“Oh yeah?” I raise an eyebrow. “Well, I know my cousin.”
Kyan gives me a look. “All right. What are you thinking happened, then?”
I grin at him. “Breadcrumbs.”
His eyebrows crinkle together before he shakes his head. “I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
I point at each of the blood patches in turn. “When Ammie and I were little...”
My mouth quirks up at the memory of Amethyst and me in our little matching dresses, running riot in whatever foster facility we happened to be staying in that month. Poor Sapphire was always running after us, trying to catch up. Unlike these days, when my young cousin has turned out to be possibly the most powerful one of us all.
“We used to play hide and seek,” I continue. “Amethyst was obsessed with the story of Hansel and Gretel. She used to leave little clues—like a trail of breadcrumbs, only whatever she could find, such as pebbles from the garden. She always wanted me to find her. Said it was more fun that way.”
“So,” Kyan says slowly, frowning down at the blood. “You think she’s left us a trail to follow?”
“I do. This is not her blood.” I hold up the vial, watching the colors swirl inside, the spell building as it works to identify what type of blood this is. “I’m willing to bet on it.”
As if the spell is listening to my words, it shifts rapidly from pale blue, to green, then into orange, before finally settling. I stare at the bottle, my mouth dropping open a little, unable to believe what I’m looking at.
It’s the same dark shade of crimson that I got from Kyan.
“What are you doing with the blood?” Kyan peers over. “Let me see.”
I start, ducking away from him. “It’s nothing,” I mumble. “The spell didn’t work.”
I slide the vial carefully into a side pocket in my bag, zipping it in so it won’t break. Maybe, once we find Amethyst, she can help me identify whatever shifter species this blood belongs to.
I can barely meet his gaze. Shifters were here, he said. A particular kind...
Whatever was here, is the same type of shifter as Kyan and his pack.
Am I trusting the wrong person?
Have I brought danger in the form of an unidentified and possibly rogue shifter pack literally to Amethyst’s front door?
Is Kyan—my only ally at the present moment—connected to all of this? What if the pack are somehow responsible for Ammie’s disappearance? What if the pack are here to hunt the three of us down?
I thought I was running from a demon.
It’s all too much to bear. I’m out here in the middle of nowhere, with no one else around, hanging out with a guy who makes my head spin with desire—a guy who also may or may not be a danger to my cousins and me.
On top of that, I’m being hunted by an entity that won’t rest until I’m...
I close my eyes, shutting down the rest of that thought.
I don’t know what to do.
***
Kyan
“Topaz?”
Something’s wrong. She was obviously already upset over her cousin’s whereabouts, but when she shoved that blood vial back in her bag, all the color leached out of her face.
She grits her teeth and turns to me with the fakest smile I’ve ever seen. “Sorry, I was miles away.”
“You were.” I step forward and place a hand on her forearm.
She flinches beneath my touch and I quickly remove my hand.
What the hell?
“Are you okay?”
She takes a tiny step back. Away from me. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just, you know, a little worried. Given the circumstances.”
“I don’t buy that.” I keep my voice soft. “See, I can smell your fear. That’s a lot stronger than ‘a little bit of worry’. Are you afraid of what’s happened to your cousin, Topaz? Or, are you afraid of me?”
“No, I—” She swallows the rest of the lie and doesn’t finish.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me.” I step close again, and this time she doesn’t move away. “I’m here for you, Topaz, whatever happens. I have been charged with protecting you, and that’s what I intend to do.”
“But what if the enemy turns out to be...” She trails off.
I take a slow, deep breath and let it out in a considered fashion, trying hard to keep my shifter contained.
Does she know? Has she figured it out? Was she about to say, ‘one of your own’?
I lower my gaze so she can’t see the red flare that I know has just taken over my vision.
Stay focused. Do not let the shifter out.
Not trusting myself to speak, I stare at the ground, fighting for control, only daring to look back up when I finally sense her fear dissipate a touch.
“You could have killed me many times over last night. But you didn’t,” she says finally. “You saved my life, Kyan, and I thank you. I do trust you—as much as I trust anyone at the moment, which admittedly isn’t much at all.”
There it is, her trademark self-deprecating laugh. My shifter settles and the tension holding me tight relaxes a notch.
There’s an intangible difference in the air when we resume the search. Something has changed; when she looks at me now, I still sense uncertainty, but overlaying that, is an element of trust.
When she offers me her hand, I take it. Her fingers close over mine, and a sense of rightness fills me. “Okay. Let’s follow this damn trail and find your cousin then, shall we?”
I assist her across the grassy slope and around to the rear of the property, toward an area that surrounds a lake. Not that she needs my help, but I’m loathe to let her go.
The pattern of the blood trail leads me to think that Topaz might be right. We likely are following Amethyst’s trail of ‘breadcrumbs’, though why she couldn’t have just left a message on Topaz’s phone like a normal person is beyond my understanding.
Her cousin sounds kind of weird. But then, I guess I don’t have that much experience of witches, so maybe they all do things in an unconventional way.
I use my tracking instincts to assist. As we go, I show Topaz how to read the landscape; how to look for clues that people inadvertently leave in their wake. Eventually, we stop to catch our breaths—not that I need a break, but I think Topaz does. I had forgotten for a while that she actually still has an injured ankle. She leans against the trunk of a nearby tree, her knee bent to take the weight off her ankle as she rests. The sun-drenched bark is against her back, and she stares up at the canopy of leaves above us.
“You’re good at this,” she says, transferring her attention to me as I turn over a broken twig in the palm of my hand.
“At what?”
“This.” She gestures to our forest surroundings. “Tracking.”
“Ah. I help out with the younger ones, sometimes. Teach them how to track scents, how to follow someone’s trail without getting distracted by other things. When you’re a kid, the avalanche on your senses can be...” I break off, frowning down at the twig. “Overwhelming.”
She grunts. “Huh. I haven’t thought about it before, but that makes sense to me. I remember the fear I felt as a child—the worry that I’d never be able to control my magical abilities. That I was simply a vessel for the raw, untapped power that surged through me at random moments. Power that only grew, when I hit puberty and then into adulthood.”
Maybe she does get it?
“Different abilities, I guess, between supe and witch magic, but that fear of losing control...” I shudder. It still sits with me, that fear, even as a shifter with many adult years under my belt.
“Yes!” She straightens, her gaze intense as she stares at me. “I always thought of my magic as being a potential danger to those around me. Like I might end up hurting someone.”
There are so many complex layers to this woman, and they just keep unravelling. The knowledge throws me off-guard. “Guess we have more in common than I thought.”
She holds my gaze for only a moment longer, but it feels like an eternity. “I guess we do.”
We both stand in silence. It feels like we are on the edge of a precipice, and I still don’t know whether or not I want to jump.
I open my mouth to say something, though I’m not sure what, when a patch of darkness at the edge of the treeline catches my eye. “Over there.”
We hurry across, crunching over a bed of pine needles toward the base of a tree.
The blood in this spot is darker, like it has been placed with more deliberation than the others. A cursory scan of the area indicates that the trail ends here.
Topaz crouches and peers around the base of the tree trunk, where a mass of roots connects it to the earth.
“Hang on, there’s a gap. If I can just...” She gropes around, shoving her hand into a small hole. “Bingo.”
I kneel beside her, peering over my shoulder as she pulls out a small silver box.
“Seems you do know your cousin rather well.”
“Yes. She can be very annoying.”
She runs her fingers around the box lid and murmurs something—an incantation, perhaps? The box springs open to reveal a small scroll inside, neatly tied with a sprig of lavender.
I shake my head as Topaz picks up the scroll and unwraps it.
Witches!
Topaz places the piece of lavender behind her ear in an absent-minded manner. I want to pluck it and then comb my fingers through her tumbling chestnut hair, pulling her in for a kiss.
A low growl begins in my chest, and I swallow it back with difficulty.
Not the time or place.
She reads the note out loud.
“Tee, I’m safe. You’ll find me down under the river. You know where. Come as soon as you can. A.”
I raise a querying brow. “Under the river?”
Topaz exhales shakily. “She’s okay. I know where she is.”
I grab the scroll from her and read the message for myself. What in hell does it mean?
“Really? I’m not getting anything from this.”
“Amethyst is smart. She knew the message might be intercepted.” Topaz takes back the piece of parchment and folds it in quarters before slipping it into her jacket pocket. She puts the box into her handbag.
“I gave her the box on her eighteenth birthday. All this...” She waves a hand. “Ammie just wanted to make sure that the only person who would understand, and the only one who could get to her, would be me.”
Impatience narrows my lips. I prefer straight-shooting rather than all this stupid game-playing. “Right, well, let’s go find her then.”
