On the other side of the door she paused, shocked and delighted and more than a little bit frightened. She’d never done that before. Been pure darkness. Noncorporeal. It bore contemplation, but not here. Not now.
Indigo moved swiftly through the house, as quietly as she could manage, which was very quietly indeed. The children in Edwards’s wallet picture had grown up. Their rooms were the lairs of affluent teenagers. Marijuana was in the boy’s bedside drawer. The girl had a closet full of high fashion. But Indigo gave their rooms only the most cursory of examinations because she wanted to dig into all things Charlotte.
Charlotte and her husband, Graham, shared a beautifully appointed study, with his and hers mahogany rolltop desks. For a moment Indigo almost ignored the room, thinking Charlotte wouldn’t have hidden anything related to the Children of Phonos where her husband might easily discover it. But that was assuming Graham wasn’t also been a member. He hadn’t been at the warehouse, true enough, but was that conclusive proof that he did not belong to the cult along with his wife?
Something gave her pause. She hesitated, sensing something in the room.
At times in the past she had felt the presence of magic, of the occult. Until now she would have attributed that to the training she had received in Nepal. But that was all bullshit, wasn’t it?
She drifted toward Charlotte’s desk. There were built-in drawers and one had a lock. Indigo’s fingers turned to shadow, flowed through the tiny keyhole, unlatched the lock from inside.
Ahhhh, this is worth finding, this is what I need. She opened the drawer. Though I’m not sure what it is. It was pale gold, a symbol she’d only seen once before. She had a sliver of a memory—that knife raised above her. This symbol was on the blade of that knife. The blade meant to kill me.
I should have died.
7
Indigo stared at the golden object. It seemed as cloaked in shadow as she was herself, beckoning her closer to it, to touch it, take it. Deep inside, Nora squirmed, but the part of her that was Indigo was ascendant now and leaned closer. The emblem, on a chain, was of pair of stylized, down-sweeping wings with a circle resting above them, endless and somehow filled with shadow. Big for a pendant, but what else could it be? It had an odor—an aura almost—faint, grim, like burned flesh and running blood. She reached for it.
The psychic weight of the old brownstone had been so oppressive, but now its strong current seemed to flex and shift against her, as if something had immersed itself into that current with her, disturbing its flow. Indigo whipped around, flicking the drawer closed. She expected to find someone else in the room, but all she saw was a light on the security panel. Someone was home, but who? Not Killer Priestess Charlotte, that’s for sure.
The front door slammed hard enough to be heard upstairs, and then the ARMED indicator blinked off. Indigo left the emblem behind and slipped shadow to shadow until she came to the stair landing. She gathered the gloom around her and gazed down into the ground-floor entryway.
The man in the foyer growled and flung his keys onto the hall table. They rattled against an antique bowl as he shrugged out of his overcoat and threw that aside, too, with the same angry disdain.
“Son of a bitch,” he spat, and stalked out of view. From this angle, Indigo couldn’t make him out him well enough to compare him to the photo she’d seen, but he had to be Charlotte’s husband, Graham Edwards.
Where are the kids?
Indigo drifted down the staircase to an ebon patch beside a longcase clock that was probably older than the house. She drew closer to the swinging brass pendulum as it slowly ticked … ticked … Glassware chimed nearby and Indigo looked toward it. Graham had gone to a sideboard in the dining room and made himself a drink. He had to be over fifty, tall, and handsome in the sleek, groomed way of rich men, his body trim from the constant attention of expensive trainers and displayed by the art of even-more-expensive tailors. He swallowed about half of the contents of his glass in a gulp and started to refill it. Well, that’s not a handsome habit, though I’d drink, too, if I were married to that bitch.
The doorbell rang. Graham flinched, then slammed his heavy crystal tumbler down and stalked to the door. Indigo drew the cloak of darkness closer around her, easing into the gloomy corner created as Graham opened the carved front door. Inches away from him. Close enough to hear his breathing.
He was silent a moment, then: “What the fuck do you want?”
“Why, yes, it really is a lovely evening, isn’t it?”
Indigo couldn’t see the sarcastic man, but his voice seemed familiar.
“I said, ‘What do you want?’” Graham held on to the door, issuing no invitation.
“I need to speak to Charlotte. About the blessed event.”
“What, you and my wife don’t talk while you’re fucking?” Graham shouted.
The other man scoffed, “Oh, grow up, Edwards.” He moved into the house and pushed against Graham’s chest with one hand. “It’s circle business.”
Graham recoiled from the man’s touch, backing up until he could rest one unsteady hand on the hall table as the other man turned to close the door. This one was younger, slimmer, casual in a hipster sort of way that wasn’t totally obnoxious. If he noticed the unnatural darkness in that gloomy corner, he gave no sign. Indigo studied the scruffy beard first and then the brown eyes, and realized she knew him.
The connection jolted her. The stairs at Heath and Bailey. Maidali Ortiz’s death scene, the memorial. What was his name…? Rafe! Rafe Bogdani—no wonder the dead cultist’s name had rung a bell—he had to be related. Brother, maybe? Holy shit. This guy had been Maidali’s teacher! He’d stood there laying on the guilt with those doe eyes.…
Nora had thought his eyes warm and sad, but at the moment Rafe Bogdani’s expression was anything but.
“Charlotte’s not here,” Graham said through clenched teeth.
“I guessed that. I’ll settle for the list.”
“You’re missing the point. I haven’t seen her since Sunday.”
“From what she said, the two of you had quite a dustup.”
Graham barked a hollow laugh. “A ‘dustup’? Is that what she called it? A fucking ‘dustup’? She wanted to use our own children for—”
Rafe held up a hand. “I know, Graham. And I understand why you’re furious. I understand why you sent them away—”
“Damn right I sent them away!”
“—but the thing is, I asked her to wait for me to return. I was three thousand miles away on Sunday, and Charlotte chose to go ahead without me. I spoke to her after that fight you had and she told me you’d … shall we say, withdrawn from our circle. That you weren’t going to attend the rite.”