Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega 4)

“We’re trying for a controlled release,” he said.

She laughed again, and he wondered how well she sang. Maybe she’d like to sing with Anna and him sometime. If her singing voice was like her laugh, it would blend very well with Anna’s. He was adding in Anna’s cello and a little piano … or maybe even guitar to the song in his head when Marsden pulled over in front of a mailbox that fronted a piece of property with a tagged and crumbling eight-foot cinder-block wall.

On the corner of the block stood a run-down apartment building with a full parking lot of cars that showed signs of spending a decade or two in the unforgiving Arizona sun. Next to it, across the street from where they had parked, was a small house with a fenced-in yard in which a puppy and two boys played a complicated game of fetch and tag.

“This is it,” said Marsden. “We have a search warrant fast-tracked because of the terrorist angle and endangered child. Leeds called the management company and they say as far as they know it has been empty since they were asked to remove the renter. The lady he talked to said she thought they were still managing it but had no record of any maintenance or interaction with the owners since last December. She did not know why they cleared out the previous renters—only that the owners requested it. Her boss is on vacation in Florida. She’s looking for the paperwork.”

The wooden gates were half-opened. The left-hand gate drooped sadly to the ground.

Marsden would have led, but Charles stepped in. “Let Anna and me lead. We don’t know what we’ll find, and the two of us are less likely to get hurt if it’s bad.”

Marsden retreated with his hands up. “All right.”

“And stay with us,” Charles added. “If this is the fae’s home, he is unlikely to run.” This was why he didn’t like working with humans: they died too easily. “Stay with us and we’ll do what we can to keep you alive if it attacks.”

Leslie pulled her weapon and held it down against her leg. “We’ll do the same for you,” she said dryly.

He smiled at her and then ducked through the person-sized gap between the tall gates, Anna at his side.

This was not the first dangerous situation Anna had strolled into at her husband’s side. She was, if she felt like being honest, pretty humiliated by her performance with the fae in Ms. Jamison’s garden. Big bad werewolf reduced to shivers by a wussy little garden fae. What was it Charles had called it? A wearden.

Humiliation was better than the shiver of horror that the thought of Justin called up. Funny, she didn’t remember being that terrified of him while he was alive. Terrified, yes, but reduced to shivering like a jellyfish, no. Maybe the wearden’s magic had done something to make her fear worse. But if so, why did her stomach still ache?

But she had a job to do, and she shoveled Justin to the dark dungeon in her mind where she kept him and he only bothered her in her nightmares.

Inside the walls, the yard was barren, not xeriscaped, but zero-scaped. Red soil with patches of dead vegetation provided no cover for anything to hide behind. She breathed in deeply but smelled nothing unusual: no magic, no fae, nothing but dust.

And yet … she put her nose down and half crept, half walked. Her ears drooped slightly in unease that was not, she didn’t think, spawned from her earlier fright.

Do you have anything? Charles asked her.

Her lips pulled up involuntarily, a threat display of teeth for— Nothing, she told him, and yet …

She shivered in the warmth of the high sun. It was not summer, but in Scottsdale that didn’t mean it wasn’t warm, nearly eighty degrees. She could smell the others’ sweat.

I let that fae spook me, she told him. I’m overreacting.

He shook his head. No birds, no insects, nothing living here at all. There are ghosts here; they burn my skin with their breath. Stay alert.

“In the front door?” asked Leslie.

“If he’s in there, he already knows we are here,” Charles told her. “Front door, back door, or down the chimney, we’re not going to have surprise on our side.” He added, “I don’t smell anyone. Anna?”

She jerked her head in a negative, but a growl rumbled in her chest. Do you feel it?

“Yes,” he said, putting his hand on her head. “The dead have a weight here. This place is haunted in the true Navajo sense. I can feel it try to cling.”

“Don’t try to give us courage, now,” said Marsden dryly. “I feel so much better after that speech.”

Her mate gave him a smile. He didn’t usually give people smiles until he had known them for a lot longer, at least not friendly smiles.

“I don’t think we’re going to find anyone alive here,” Charles said. “Does that help?”

“Not really,” said Leeds. “No.”

“No,” agreed Leslie.

The front door was locked. When no one answered Marsden’s vigorous knocking, Leeds took a roll of handy-dandy lockpick tools out of his pocket and went to work on the lock.

Anna conceived an instant desire to learn how. It didn’t look too complicated. Charles probably knew how. He could teach her.

“Get your nose back, ma’am, please,” said Leeds. “You aren’t in the way. But I have a hard time concentrating with a freaking werewolf breathing down my neck.”

“She won’t hurt you,” murmured Charles.

“I know that,” Leeds said calmly, still wiggling the delicate picks, one in each hand, his head tilted so one ear was nearer the lock than the other. “My brain does anyway. My gut says, ‘Run away, run away, you freaking moron. That’s a werewolf.’”

Anna backed up. She tried looking through the windows, but the blinds were down and turned so she couldn’t see anything. She could positively say that no living creature had been on this porch for a long time. She got a faint whiff of perfume, presumably belonging to whoever had rented the house, but nothing else. If the fae had been to this door, it hadn’t been for a long time.

The lock gave up and the door admitted them into an empty living room that smelled of dust and cleaners that made Anna sneeze. She trotted past Leslie and into the main house, which was as barren as the rest. She caught faint scents of humans who had once lived here: a girl in the pink room and someone who smoked cigarettes in the master bedroom. They’d had a dog, too. Helpfully, all of the doors were open, so she didn’t have to wait for someone with hands to let her into anywhere. The bedrooms and bathrooms were a bust, as far as her nose went, anyway. From the sounds in the living room, someone had found something.