We stayed like that for about ten minutes, until Anyan started fidgeting with the laces of my ancient, battered, green Converse.
“Jane?”
“Hmm?” I asked drowsily.
“Can I ask you something? If it's too personal, just tell me to shut—”
Before Anyan could finish his sentence, I felt that weird tingle in the air that had signaled the brownie's First Magic. I tensed, but before I could sit up, there was a soft poofing sound and a heavy weight flattened my stomach.
“Ooof,” I grunted, as the brownie peered down at me with its six solid black eyes. It waved at me with its right hands. When it noticed I was turning green, it shifted its weight around until I was no longer at risk of spewing hippie food all over it.
“Uh, hello,” I said to the little creature, who chittered back at me in a friendly voice. Then all six of its beady eyes roamed over my body, with at least three parking their gaze on my boobs.
Then it turned to Anyan and said something that made the very tip of the barghest's nose twitch hard.
When he replied in that strange language, there was laughter at the edges of his gruff voice.
“What did it say?” I demanded, giving the brownie the stink eye. From its face full of thick brown fur, it flashed me a Hollywood smile of alarmingly large, glaringly white teeth.
Before Anyan could make an excuse for the fuzzy little pervert, the brownie had thrown open his many arms, calling to him another file folder. This one was thicker than the last.
Then it winked at me with all three of its left eyes, said something that made the barghest's nose twitch again, and poofed back to wherever it had come from.
“Okay, first of all, what is that thing's deal, and second, can we do that?”
Anyan laughed. “Nope, that's true First Magic, the ability to apparate. Gnomes can do it, but only inside their own territory. That's why they're so strong; their connection with their land gives them access to the First Magics. None of the rest of us can do it at all. As for Terk, he… he likes you, that's all. He thinks you're cute, for a hairless giant.”
“Eww, I can't believe you just called me a ‘hairless giant,’” I said, sitting up on my elbows. I started to pull my legs off Anyan's lap, and he responded by pinching the fat of my calf.
“I didn't call you that; Terk did. You're never a giant to me, and you're only hairless when I'm a dog, but that's all relative.”
I frowned at Anyan. “So, do you, like, think as a dog when you're a dog? Or are you always… you?”
He smiled at me and then reached out a hand to help me sit up.
“Always me, Jane. I'm always me.”
Sheepishly, I thought of all the times I'd rubbed his doggy belly, and the time or two I'd cried into his doggy neck. I met his steel-gray gaze and cocked my head querulously.
“Speaking of which, why do you spend so much time as a dog? You've been human this whole time, but I thought you always went around as a dog.”
Anyan frowned, and I wondered if I'd said something wrong. I was about to tell him to forget about it when he finally spoke.
“It's just simpler that way, Jane,” he replied cryptically. Before I could ask him what he meant, he stood up. “We should get going. We need to go see what's in this file, and the others are waiting. Ryu will be worried about you.”
I nodded, still mystified. But he was right.
Ryu would be waiting.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Where the hell have you been?” Ryu demanded as soon as Anyan and I were in the door.
“Training,” I said. “We're only a few minutes late—”
“Well, Julian just got a lead on a vacation home owned by Edie, under her maiden name, and when I tried to call, you didn't answer. I had to send Daoud and Caleb with Phaedra's lot. They just left, but why the hell did you turn off your phone?”
“Ryu, I never turned off my phone,” I said, fishing my cell out of my back pocket. To find out that it was, indeed, dead.
“What the hell?” I asked as Anyan pulled out his own phone and swore.
“Damn it, Terk,” he swore.
“Who the fuck is Terk?” Ryu asked as I turned my phone back on. Sure enough, there was a voice mail from right around the time the brownie had appeared on my stomach.
“Brownie,” Anyan grunted, brandishing the folder as he turned on his own phone. “He apparated this to us.”
“Why would he turn off your phones?”
Anyan looked uncomfortable. “Terk likes Jane. Thinks she's cute.”
For a hairless giant, I thought, still miffed.
“So why would he turn off both your phones?” Ryu's voice was increasingly impatient.
“He didn't want anyone to interrupt him while he was talking, probably,” Anyan replied, but he looked uncomfortable. Then it hit me.
He wanted to give Anyan and me some alone time, I realized, remembering the big man's reactions to the brownie's mystery words. Anyan looked horrified at the brownie's attempts at matchmaking, which made me unaccountably irritated.
“Uh-huh,” was Ryu's only response. He wasn't convinced.
“Guys,” I piped up. “Let's not forget about the folder.”
Anyan had already flipped through the contents of the file to make sure that there was nothing so dire it needed immediate action, but we still needed to share the contents with Ryu.
Both men nodded, and Anyan quickly went over everything with Ryu. Basically, Capitola wrote that they'd connected another, more recent death to our investigation. The body was that of a Chicago man, but he'd been killed in a hotel room in New York. He had been burned, but not as badly as the others. The victim had bodyguards who smelled smoke and had been able to put the fire out before the corpse was too charred.
When the NYPD had finished with their autopsy, they'd sent the body back to the Chicago PD. The police, however, had kept the corpse, as this was one death not dismissed as an accident. So Anyan's contacts in the Borderlands had sent their own healer to the morgue, where she did her own magical autopsy. All the probes the supernatural healers sent in to fix a body could apparently be used to examine as well. What the healer found was extreme trauma. The man in question had been brutally, efficiently tortured.
Interestingly, this man's attack had occurred just before Conleth had attacked me, in Rockabill. Probably when Con was still in Boston becoming obsessed with me through reading my e-mails. Granted, New York City was much closer to Boston than Chicago, but still…
“Okay, I've got an idea,” I said. “I think that Conleth discovered that note about the same time he was reading my e-mails. He stuck them all together because that's what people do—they use the envelope for their most recent electric bill as a bookmark, that sort of thing. Let's assume this man in New York was tortured for a reason, and not just for the hell of it. What's the most obvious thing he'd be tortured for?”
“More names,” said Anyan, nodding. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“Technically, we can't rule Conleth out for killing this guy,” Ryu reminded us, and he was right. With the way Conleth could travel, he might be able to get from New York to Boston to Rockabill no problem.
“Well, actually, we can rule Conleth out, maybe,” Anyan interrupted. “If Conleth was blasting off all over Boston, all the way to New York or Chicago, humans would have seen. They wouldn't have known what he was, but they would have reported something.”
“The infamous gas leak,” I said in agreement. “Or a comet. Shooting star… something.”
“That's good. We'll have Julian get to work looking through the news agencies for reports of unexplained… fiery shit.”
I laughed. “I can do it, too, when we get back. I'm not as good as Julian but I can work Google.”
“Cap also says that they have one more lead, so we'll wait and see what she says.” Anyan jerked his head toward the door. “In the meantime, should we catch up with the others?”
We'd just stepped through Ryu's front door when his cell phone rang.
“Yeah?” he asked as he locked up with both keys and his magic.
He listened, his face darkening.
“Good work. We'll meet you at the bunker in ten. Thank you.”
Ryu held up his hand, and before we could ask any questions, he was dialing another number. He waited, swore, then dialed another. When that one didn't answer, he swore again, his expression as irritated as I'd ever seen it. This time, whoever he was calling answered immediately.
“Julian, where are you? I need you to head back the other way, to the address I'm going to text you. It's in Vermont. If you see Phaedra's Escalade on the way, get their attention. Caleb and Daoud have their phones off. Which seems to be a trend today,” he said, giving me the gimlet eye. “Yes, we'll try to be right behind you. If you get to this address before we do, wait for us or for Phaedra. Do you hear me? I don't want you two getting yourselves killed. Wait for backup.”