Taming the Beast

Not so much anymore.

They were just too different. The people in Norseton—the Afótama, they were called—had powerful magic and stronger telepathy. Fallonites were better empaths, and could discern lies before they could even leave a speaker’s lips, but they had no magic to speak of. Being empathic and able to hear people’s thoughts wasn’t doing Mary a hell of a lot of good at the moment, however.

“What I wouldn’t give right now for a little bit of Queen Tess’s finder magic,” she muttered. “Don’t know where else to look.”

She groaned.

Each of the five addresses she’d checked for Andreas had been associated with county utility accounts he’d held, but he didn’t reside at any of them anymore. Checking the old Smith Building was a last-ditch effort. Mr. Toft’s grandfather had been the last to operate a business out of the big, brick behemoth, but the Tofts hadn’t done anything with the place since Neil Armstrong had pranced on the moon. Deep down, she’d known he wouldn’t be there. The building was too cluttered, too unwelcoming, and too unsafe, but she’d had to look anyway before she crossed the prospect off her list.

“Back to the drawing board,” she said softly.

Mary slung her tote bag’s strap over her shoulder, and was about to step over a sidewalk grate when something dark and fast streaked past the window she’d been kneeling in front of.

She dropped the bag again, but she didn’t get on her knees. She hopped down into the window well, cringing at the impact of her heels against the concrete, and

put her face right to the glass.

“What the hell was that?”

Although her optometrist claimed she was becoming a smidge nearsighted in her thirtieth year, she was pretty sure her vision wasn’t playing tricks on her.

“Move again. Come on,” she pleaded.

She didn’t see anything inside. Nothing moved, beyond some dust motes that were probably being blown around by drafts. An old building like that was bound to have some.

“Oh, well. Worth a shot.” She notched her fingers into the sidewalk ledge above, saying a silent prayer to the Viking gods that no one was on street level who could see her graceless climb back to the surface. Then, with an oomph of effort, she heaved herself up.

A quick glance as she smoothed down her skirt assured her that no one had seen her. There weren’t even any security cameras in the part of town. She knew that because she was damn good at her job, and maintained a log of every single device. Most building owners were happy to tell her if they had them. The ones who didn’t want to tell her still managed to give her the information that she needed when they lied. She always got an unsettled feeling in her gut when people lied.

Clucking her tongue as she gathered her thoughts, she straightened the seams of her pantyhose, knocked some dust off her shirt, and snatched up her tote once more.

“There’s got to be something else,” she mused as she walked toward the back of the building. She’d parked two streets away and had squeezed onto the barricaded lot through a gap in the chain-link fence. She didn’t like to think of what she was doing as trespassing. If she got caught and push came to shove, she could tell the police she was doing a “wellness check” on a client. The fact that Mr. Toft wasn’t actually her client was irrelevant. The local cops rarely followed up.

Scrolling through the checklist she’d compiled in her phone’s note app, she pondered if there was anything she’d missed—any family of Mr. Toft’s that she hadn’t tried to contact, or even distant friends of his who might have had some idea of where he spent his time.

There was nothing. No stone left unturned.

“Damn,” she spat, rounding the corning of the building and walking with purpose toward the fence. “Somehow, this guy going off the grid is going to be my fault. Always blame the paralegal, right?”

Every day as she walked into the law offices of Delphi, Rott, and Simon, she wondered if she should have gone into private detective work like her father had. She could have been her own boss, but her father had insisted she should shoot for a career that came with a steady paycheck and benefits. He’d been happy that she’d gotten hired by a prestigious Las Vegas firm after college, and still proud when she’d moved back to Fallon to tend to him. All he’d wanted before cancer had taken him was for Mary to be settled and secure. She was. She was also just…miserable.

Since his death, she’d been considering making a big change. She toyed with the thought of sending a note to Queen Tess of the Afótama and asking if she would be welcome in Norseton. If Mary went, however, she could never return to Fallon. The crew in Fallon didn’t trust the Afótama—they thought they were pretentious and weak-minded.

Mary didn’t care what they thought, though. Things had to be better in Norseton—less hostile, less distrustful. She was sick of all the damned paranoia. Being in Vegas for so long had helped her reach the conclusion that the people in Fallon were their own worst enemies. They just weren’t self-aware enough to see the truth.

She paused at the small loading bay at the back of the building, and turned. She’d thought she’d sensed someone behind her. Had the person been like her—a little weird—their psychic pull would have been stronger. But the person didn’t hit her psychic radar the way other witches did.

“Plain-old human?” she whispered, but no. Just a pigeon.

Rolling her eyes at herself, she continued walking. “I think I need a vacation. Blood pressure is all out of whack, and for no good reason.”

She hadn’t had a real vacation since her father died. In fact, she’d just finished paying off the funeral. Of course, a man who’d lived life by the seat of his pants his entire life hadn’t had life insurance. The funeral bill had been a priority. If she had to keep seeing the statement in her mailbox every month, she’d never move on to the next stage of grief. She was finally emerging from the depression part and finally moving toward acceptance.

That didn’t mean she didn’t ask herself, Why him? Why Daddy? every evening when she ate dinner alone. It just meant that she understood that his time had been up, and that just sucked.

She glanced down at her phone again, pondering if she should try to make another call to the lawyer she knew in Norseton, just to let him know she was still interested in a position there. But before she could slide her thumb across the screen, her body was yanked backward by her shirt. Her arms flailed as she fell, and the fear of a fall ratcheted up her pulse, but it didn’t come.

She was instead yanked against a hard body, and a hand that reeked of oil and some sharper, medicinal odor pressed to her nose.