I wasn’t terribly surprised to see two Crown Vics and a Beaulac PD Crime Scene van parked in front of my aunt’s house. I made the appropriate greetings and expressions of thanks—which earned responses that were variations of, “Don’t be stupid. You need help. Of course we’d come.”
With that out of the way, our posse trudged up the steps of the house. I gave a desultory knock, waited for the answering yell, then pushed in, with the others following behind.
Tessa was in the front room in practically the same position she’d been in when I last saw her, though today she was dressed in a bright red caftan and the book in her hand was Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. She took in the sight of us, eyes finally resting on the carrier in Eilahn’s hand. “You’re bringing me a cat?”
Shaking my head, I flopped into a chair and pulled the cuff off. “It’s my cat. Well, technically it’s Eilahn’s since the cat hates me.” The others took seats as Tessa moved to crouch by the carrier. It was small consolation to my mood that the cat snarled and tried to claw her.
“Lovely creature,” she said with an arched eyebrow as she resumed her seat.
I stood up from the chair and shifted to sit on the floor on the other side of the room. “She seems to hate people who have arcane ability,” I told her. “I thought that the mayor might be my big bad summoner since he seems to have such a hard-on for me, but the cat loves him.” I glared at the cat.
“Kara,” Ryan said, frowning, “why did you just get up and move?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it. “I’m not sure,” I replied, abruptly unsettled. There were seats available on the other side of the room. Jill and Zack had taken up the loveseat on that side, while Ryan, Tessa, and Eilahn occupied the available seats on the side that faced away from the lake. But there were two armchairs facing the other way that stood empty.
My throat felt oddly dry. “It feels more right to face this way,” I said.
“And you sat in the chair you don’t like at your house,” he pointed out.
“Moreover, you changed seats after you removed the cuff,” Eilahn added.
Tessa set her book down and tilted her head. “Perhaps this summoner wants you to find something for him,” she said.
I got to my feet. “I need a map!”
“I have one in the kitchen,” Tessa said, and scurried off.
Closing my eyes, I pivoted very slowly, trying to feel which direction felt the most right. “There,” I said, opening my eyes. “It’s super faint, but now that I’m looking for it, there’s definitely a…pull, so to speak.”
Jill stood and handed me her smartphone. “Compass app,” she said. “Point where you think you need to go. You can’t actually go look for whatever it is, but we can triangulate. Right?”
“Jill, you’re a fucking genius.” I took the phone from her and allowed her to note down the bearing. “My house, the PD, and here are all places where I either tried to rearrange the furniture or I changed my seating preference. And, in some welcome good news, they’re all warded.”
Zack frowned. “Can you get into the PD?”
“Sure,” I said with a breezy assurance I wasn’t sure I felt. “I’m on leave, not fired.”
Jill carefully marked the points on the map where the three bodies were found, and then took a pencil and drew a line from my aunt’s house with the bearing she’d just taken. “All right, saddle up, folks. Time to do some triangulatin’.”
Zack, Jill, and Fuzzykins stayed behind at my aunt’s house while Ryan, Eilahn, and I sped back to my house to take a bearing. It felt weird to close my eyes and let myself feel which way was “best” but when I opened my eyes I was once again facing my back door. Ryan took note of the bearing and texted it to Zack.