Dread Nemesis of Mine

chapter 16

Elyssa

Bella opened Jean-Claude's apartment with a swish of her wand.

"Finally," Fausta said and pushed past the other woman. "Took you long enough."

"They had wards protecting this place." Bella followed her in. "If I'd opened it without disarming them, every Templar in the compound would have come running."

Elyssa touched Bella's arm. "Can you check the locks on the other apartments? Maybe disarm them in advance?"

The Arcane smiled. "What a wonderful idea, Elyssa. I'll be back soon."

As soon as the other woman vanished, Elyssa stormed over to Fausta and jerked her away from the kitchen drawer she was rifling. "What the hell's your problem with Bella?"

"Let me go before I—"

"Before you what? Start a fight in an officer's apartment, which you've just illegally broken into?"

Fausta freed her arm and resumed looking through the drawer. "Fine. I'll treat her nice." She flicked her eyes to Elyssa. "Happy?"

Elyssa rolled her eyes. "Whatever. I swear you're the grumpiest, most volatile Templar I've met."

"I'm not grumpy!"

"You'd never even know how pretty you are with that frown always on your face. It's like someone pees in your oatmeal every morning."

"I don't frown all the—wait, you think I'm pretty?" A look of astonishment crossed Fausta's face.

Elyssa felt acutely uncomfortable. "Uh, yeah—but don't let it go to your head."

"Well, well, what have we here?" said a male voice from the door.

The two women jumped.

Adam Nosti waved from his position where he casually leaned on the doorframe. He arched an eyebrow. "I knew you guys had that furtive look to you." He pushed off the jamb and glanced around the room. "Isn't this one of the officer's quarters?"

"Shhh," Elyssa said and snatched him by the arm, jerking him further inside. Half a dozen lies ran through her head before she decided to tell him the truth. Adam, after all, was quite the conspiracy theorist, so he might believe her. "We think there's a traitor in Christian's upper brass."

"A traitor?" said a horrified voice from the doorway. Meghan came inside, eyes wide.

"Madre de dios," Bella said, coming in behind Meghan. "Who let the dogs out?"

All eyes settled on her, and for a brief moment, there was absolute silence.

"Does that not mean what I think it does?" the Arcane said, her eyes uncertain. "I'm practicing my American idioms."

"If they know we're in here, who else is going to just stumble in?" Fausta demanded, arms akimbo. "We haven't even searched the first apartment yet."

"Looking for incriminating evidence?" Adam said, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "I have a practiced hand at that."

Meghan crossed her arms and glared at the others. "Nobody's doing a thing until you explain what in the world is going on in here."

Elyssa gave her the short version, leaving out the details about Underborn's involvement.

"I can't possibly believe a Templar would do such a thing," the healer replied. "And even if they did, what do you expect to find in their living quarters? A signed invitation from Maximus to betray Christian? Emails? A video of the suspect calling the vampires and telling them what to do?" She shook her head. "You need to question the suspects and find out what they know."

"Honey, you never know," Adam said in a placating voice. "Sometimes, if you look hard enough, you can find all sorts of telltale signs people leave behind."

"We don't have time to round them up and play twenty questions." Elyssa resisted the urge to stomp her foot like a child. "Justin's in trouble, his sister is in trouble, and if Maximus knows about our upcoming attack, the vampires will slaughter our people."

"For the sake of argument, you think this betrayal happened within the past few days?" Meghan asked.

"It must have. My father probably told Christian a day or two in advance that we were coming."

"Very well." The Arcane healer sighed and pulled out her wand. "I may have a spell for such a thing, provided any communications happened no more than three days ago, and they happened here."

Adam's eyebrows shot up. "Whoa, what spell are you talking about?"

She offered him a sly smile. "A girl's got to have some secrets."

Bella took a seat. "This should be fascinating."

"Get up!" Fausta said. "You might shed hair, and Jean-Claude will know someone was here."

The Arcane pulled a long strand of hair from the back of the couch. "I think someone already beat me to it."

"You know how you wondered what the walls would say if they could talk?" Meghan said, weaving her wand in an intricate pattern around the room.

"You can bring inanimate objects to life?" Bella asked.

Meghan smiled. "Not exactly." Her wand emitted blue particles of light, which dusted the room in a cold glow. "Everything absorbs energy, and the energy leaves behind a pattern. This spell pulls the sound patterns back out and plays them."

"Holy mother," Adam said. "Do you know what I could do with a spell like that? How much it would help my investigations?"

Meghan's eyes hardened. "Save the discussion for another time, Adam." She opened her mouth to say something else when the faint sound of voices echoed in the room—voices that belonged to someone other than the intruders.

"Oh, Jean-Claude, you naughty man. What are you going to do to me on this couch?" said a female in a sultry voice.

"Let's just say we'll be cleaning up afterward," said a low, French voice.

Bella leapt off the couch, brushing at her clothes as if they were on fire.

Meghan's face burned bright red. "Those were the earlier conversations. Let me forward through to the more current patterns."

Elyssa went to the door to stand watch as Meghan worked her magic. Thankfully, the officers were still in preparations for the upcoming operation. They might not even return to their quarters for the evening. But if Elyssa couldn't find the traitor, she planned to stop the operation one way or the other. No Templar blood would be spilled if she could help it.

Adam appeared at her side. "I need to talk to you."

"Then talk."

He motioned her into the hallway. Elyssa reluctantly stepped outside the door, looking toward the building lobby to be sure they weren't visible to anyone who happened by outside.

"My sister is in Maximus's compound."

"I know."

"She hasn't always been perfect, but she's all the family I have left in the world." He took a deep breath. "Look, there's something you're not telling us. I've been at this investigation gig for too long not to be able to tell when someone is keeping secrets."

Elyssa crossed her arms, her mind searching for reasons not to tell Adam about Underborn. The Arcane geek had helped her and Justin a lot in the short time they'd known him. He'd even given them instructions for finding the assassin. While she definitely didn't want to tell Christian or her father, Adam deserved to know. "It's not really a secret, but I don't want other Templars to know."

"Know what?"

"Underborn has a plan to get Justin out, but he won't commit unless I find the Templar mole. He claims the spy would compromise his people inside Maximus's compound."

Adam swore and furrowed his brow. "Can he get my sister out?"

"We can ask."

"No, we have to insist. Even if we have to lie about the mole, we've got to make him get Felicia out of there."

"You want to lie to the Overworld's deadliest assassin?"

He looked straight into her eyes. "Without a doubt. If it saves her, then damned be the consequences."

A twinge of doubt plucked at Elyssa's nerves. "I don't think Meghan would like to hear you talking that way."

He smiled. "Then let's be sure we find the mole." His gaze darted toward the apartment. "I'll go help her."

Elyssa watched him go back inside. She hadn't thought about lying to Underborn, but since Adam mentioned it, she felt slightly more assured about their mission. If it meant saving Justin, she'd lie to Underborn in a heartbeat. She checked the time. Less than two hours until deadline. If she could do this right, she would, otherwise, she'd lie.

After what seemed hours, but was in reality only half an hour, Meghan worked through the sound patterns while Adam recorded them on his arcphone so he could search them for key phrases. Despite having a lot of crazy sex, nothing indicated Jean-Claude was the traitor.

They moved on to Gigi's quarters.

"I'm filtering out random noises," Meghan said, after several moments of spell casting failed to produce any talking. "So I guess Gigi doesn't talk much."

A ghostly female voice emanated from the bedroom. Meghan walked inside. Adam followed with his phone. Elyssa stayed by the door, anxiety growing as she waited for them to finish and hopefully find something, anything. The next person on the list would be Beck. He was a new officer, promoted only recently, so he didn't have his quarters here yet. Instead, he'd probably been staying in general quarters or, at best, one of the cottages normally reserved for grounds keeping. Could he really be the traitor?

Adam and Meghan emerged. Adam shook his head. "She talks in her sleep," he explained in answer to the querying looks of the others. "Mostly nonsense." He gave a nervous laugh, his eyes looking a bit unsettled.

"What's wrong?" Elyssa said.

He rubbed the back of his neck. "Nothing I can put my finger on. I guess I feel bad for the woman. Didn't you hear the screaming?"

Elyssa nodded. She'd heard a lot of weird noises coming from the bedroom while searching the rest of the apartment, but had discarded them as useless. A sigh escaped her lips. "There's only one person left. Beck."

"What about Ludovico?" Fausta said. "Maybe he was the traitor and they accidentally killed him." She shrugged. "Stranger things have happened."

"We should be thorough," Meghan agreed.

The group walked down the hallway to the next apartment. The building wasn't large—just enough to accommodate up to five apartments, and didn't offer many places to hide should someone enter the main lobby. Elyssa had already scouted the other hallways and found two emergency exits they could use. The problem would be escaping notice in the wide-open corridors.

"So freaky," Adam was saying to Bella. "Like the poor woman has nightmares every time she sleeps."

"She wrote about them in her diary," Fausta said, rolling her eyes. "In great detail. I think she's obsessed with her dreams."

"You went through her diary?" Bella said.

Fausta sighed. "Where else would I look for clues?"

"Wait, she wrote about her nightmares?" Adam gave her a curious look. "What the heck was she dreaming about that scared her so much?"

The Templar dismissed his question with a backhanded wave. "Oh, stupid things like a statue that came to life and a house where it was always raining and foggy in the backyard and sunny out front." She shrugged. "What's so scary about that?"

Adam frowned. "A statue?"

"Yes. Go read her stupid diary if you're so interested."

Elyssa's feet jerked to a halt. She almost didn't realize she was no longer moving until she looked down. Something in Fausta's statement had jolted her memory. Something about a house with—oh, crap. "Where's the diary?"

"It was stupid," Fausta said, reiterating her words slowly as if Elyssa wouldn't understand otherwise. "And there wasn't anything else interesting in there, not like Jean-Claude's quarters."

Bella's face turned red at the mention of those noises, and she brushed at her clothes.

"Where is it?" Elyssa asked.

"The top drawer of her nightstand has a fake bottom."

Elyssa ran back, thankful Bella hadn't rearmed the wards yet and found the nightstand in question. She dumped the miscellaneous items from the drawer, and knocked the bottom until a panel fell out along with a black, leather-bound diary. The first several pages chronicled Gigi's early days at the Templar Academy until she apparently grew tired of writing every day and stopped. The next section was short, but chilling.

The same nightmare again. I'm afraid to tell anyone or they might think I'm going crazy. Who is the woman in the statue? Why can't I see her face? And what's in the fog outside the back window? I know I saw someone out there. But I can't open the sliding glass door.

Elyssa looked at the date of the entry. It was more than ten years ago. She thumbed through a few more pages, each one detailing other iterations of the same dream, scattered randomly over the past decade. But once she reached more recent dates, it seemed the woman had suffered the same nightmare at least once a week. In the past month, Gigi noted the same dream almost every night.

I'm crazy. I have to be. I'm unfit for duty. But how can I tell Christian? Other than these dreams, I feel fine and in control. I asked Healer Delgado about recurring dreams, and she said most of the time they come from childhood trauma. I wish I could remember more of the dream. I wish I could remember what happens when I walk out the front door and into the sunshine.

A horrible realization crept over Elyssa as a similar scene replayed in her mind. After she'd taken the White and had the memories of the previous two months erased, she'd had the dream of being inside a house with a fog-shrouded backyard and a sunny front. She'd seen her own face in the fog outside the back and assumed in retrospect the entire thing had something to do with her memories trying to resurface.

Maybe her reasoning was partially correct. Or maybe it had something to do with the Templar Divinity, the self-proclaimed angel, Daelissa, who was, apparently, behind most of the trouble lately. Daelissa had spoken to Elyssa of gifts her people had given humanity. Among those supernatural gifts were the ones Templars received as part of the Blessed and Novice rituals. The rogue angel herself was the one who gave them. But what if they came with a Trojan Horse buried inside? What if nobody was a traitor, but Daelissa could spy on everyone through their dreams because she was the one who blessed them? The one who touched their minds to wipe all memory of the rituals?

She bolted to her feet. They had to find Gigi immediately and question her. Put her under hypnosis, if necessary, and question every aspect of her dreams. But if Daelissa really could come to any Templar in their dreams, what good would planning do? The woman could find out anything she wanted.

Elyssa found the others still inside Ludovico's apartment. "We've got big trouble."

Bella's eyes widened. "The officers are returning?"

"God, I wish it was that simple." Elyssa waved at the others and told Meghan and Adam to stop what they were doing.

"This had better be good," Fausta said, crossing her arms and tapping her foot. "Because we're running out of time."

"You'd better make time." Elyssa held up the diary. "Because if Daelissa can do what I think she can, the Templars won't be able to keep anything from her, and Maximus can roll over us any time he wants."