Page 71 of Awry
“Sleep would be better,” Doc says, all firm about it as she stands and tucks her device away.
Cayley stomps up onto the patio behind Rath, then steps through the doorway with a growl.“Harls is on her way.”
Before any of us can respond, if any of us were inclined to respond, she sees the mage’s sprawled body and all but shouts, “Shit!Oh, shit, shit.That’s Ingrid.”
“Yes,” Rath says.He’s still barely touching me, but he hasn’t taken his hand off my hip.He gestures promptingly and firmly to Doc even as he answers Cayley.Doc huffs and starts digging through her med kit.
“Ingrid is a Wisdom,” Cayley says.“The fucking head of the West Coast Coterie.She occupies a seat on the mages’ Coalition.”
“Not anymore,” I murmur.
“I mean, how the fuck has she just been … how has no one checked on any of this?The Coterie is going to miss their head Wisdom.”
I sigh, but it’s Rath who answers.“No one can access any part of the property without an invitation.And after Disa died …” He glances at me, but I don’t fill the space, so he continues, “It was probably inaccessible to anyone but Zaya, yes?”
Again not answering, mostly because the fact that I needed to claim the property and intersection point makes everything he’s saying completely logical, I step slightly away from him.Rath’s hand falls back to his side.
Cayley, still staring down at Ingrid’s body, purses her lips tightly.“Fuck.Harls is … not going to take it well.”
Rath frowns at her.“Do you care?”
“Yes, I fucking care, you big doofus,” she snarls.“You don’t just stop loving someone when they hurt you.You … I …”
“Did you just call me a doofus?”
Cayley pauses, mouth open and everything.She blinks and says, “Of course not.”
Beyond the still-open door, Grinder stomps up the exterior stairs, giving Cayley a moment to duck out of Rath’s line of sight and save face.
“We’ve got a problem …” The older biker’s gaze falls on Ingrid’s body, and he clears his throat.“Well, a second problem, apparently.”
“Mack?”Rath asks.
“Dead.In the graveyard.”
“Like … buried?”
“Nope.Appears to have dropped dead while digging up something.”
“Fuck.”
Doc hands the mage brew she’s pulled out of her bag to me.
“Third,” I murmur, accepting the swirling pink energy elixir.“Third problem.”
I down the elixir as all eyes turn to me.
“Where is your aunt, Zaya?”Rath asks almost gently.
“Dead.”
He gestures impatiently toward the corpse of the witch.“I got that much.Where is Aunt Disa’s body?Did you … were you with her when she died?Were you coming back here to … bury her or check on the others?Are all these deaths connected?Do we have some sort of serial killer in Outcast territory?Or a dire-wrought epidemic?”
Doc’s elixir slides down my throat and radiates through my chest with a hint of warmth, a touch of energy.Despite my increasingly numb brain, I don’t miss Rath calling my aunt ‘Aunt Disa.’With a sense of familiarity.Ignoring that because I don’t have the headspace for it, I turn to Grinder.“Which graveyard?”
His eyebrows rise.“There’s more than one?”
I sigh.“Yes.There is more than one.”
