Page 3 of Shadow Dreaming

“Yeah,” I said. “But it took some serious control for me to keep my hands off his grimy little neck. Anyway, he’s sorry, he knows it better not happen again, and I found the most glorious pizza place in the process, so it wasn’t a complete bust.”

Penn laughed, her voice lilting through the room. She was half-Fae, and—like me—had never met her father. The moment Eileen, her mother, got pregnant, he vanished. The Fae Courts refused to help—they loathed half-breeds—and so Penn had grown up among humans and Supes, never learning much about her Fae heritage. Like her mother, she was a witch. She was also a priestess of Hecate’s. And like Dante, Penn had saved me from myself one time, taking over for me during a crisis. That one dark night had bonded us for life.

“I’m hungry,” she said. “I ate before class, but I didn’t have time for much.”

“I brought home an extra pizza,” I said. “It’s in the fridge and should taste fantastic, heated up.” I followed her into the kitchen.

“So, what’s on your agenda this week?” she asked.

“Well, we have a couple clients, so we should score at least one new case—” I paused as my phone rang. “Hold on,” I said, glancing at the Caller ID. It was Dante. “I wonder what he wants at this time of night?”

I answered. “Hey, dude, what’s up?”

“What’s up is that I’ve got a serious problem,” Dante said, sounding unusually grave. I could tell by his voice he wasn’t joking.

“What’s going on?”

“I came home tonight after a poker game at Carson’s, and I found my door ajar. I asked the doorman if he had any security footage—you know my place is jacked to the max with security. When we looked at the video, we saw a female figure entering my apartment. He didn’t remember seeing it, but he did admit that he had to run to the bathroom at about that time.”

Dante lived at the Tremont Arms Apartments, on the fourteenth floor. He was right in that the security measures taken by the management were extensive, and they didn’t come cheap. The place was gorgeous, and comfortable, and about as safe as you could get. They didn’t stint on what they paid their security guard.

“How did she get into your place? Could you have forgotten to close your door when you left?” Dante’s memory wasn’t always the best and he could be careless at times.

“No, I distinctly remember locking it when I left.”

“Was anything missing or destroyed?”

“What’s happening?” Penn asked.

“Hold on,” I told Dante. “Dante found his door unlocked tonight when he got home and it looks like some woman entered his apartment.”

“Hell, that’s not good,” Penn said. “Put him on speaker.”

“I’m putting you on speaker, dude. Penn wants to know what’s happening.”

“That’s fine,” he said.

I put him on speaker and set my phone down on the counter. “Go ahead.”

“Okay. Well, as far as if anything was stolen, I don’t fully know. If anything’s missing, it wasn’t expensive. My TV, computer, all of that is still here. But Kyann, I watched the security footage of everyone who came through the front door of the building during the time I was gone, and I saw someone I recognized.”

I caught my breath. “Who?”

“Remember Rowan Leaf?”

I groaned. “Oh no, not her!”

Rowan Leaf had latched onto Dante, and she had become a bonafide low-level stalker. We hadn’t been too worried about her, because for the past couple of weeks she seemed to have vanished off the radar. But apparently, she wasn’t done.

“What did the security guard say?”

“He saw her enter, but she gave him a smile and passed on by. He thought she was here to visit someone. Here’s the weird thing. He doesn’t remember her leaving.”

“Hmm,” I said, thinking. “Could she have found some way to turn invisible?”

“Well, a powerful witch can do it, but I don’t think Rowan’s that high level.” Dante sounded nervous, as well he should. Stalkers could so easily go from annoying but innocuous, to dangerous. It depended on the type of personality disorder the stalker had. Sometimes, they ramped up to a deadly degree.

“Not only that,” Penn said. “If she can turn invisible, why didn’t she do that when she first came in the building so there wouldn’t be any record of her visit?”

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