Magic Triumphs (Kate Daniels 10)

“It’s oka—”

My son rammed his forehead into my mouth. I tasted blood. He threw his entire weight back, tore out of my arms, landed on his feet, and ran for the stairs.

What the bloody hell? I dashed after him in time to see his feet disappear into our bedroom on the third floor. He’d cleared the entire staircase in about a second. The lock clicked shut. Our bedroom door had a custom door handle that locked when closed. You had to push a switch on top of it to open it, something Conlan hadn’t yet figured out.

Okay. Door first, son later. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, pulled Sarrat out, and slid the small viewing window open.

Grass, a maple tree, and driveway. No fire-spitting monsters. No vicious killers. The tech was up.

I listened.

Quiet.

Yeah, there was probably a terrestrial man-eating octopus crouching on the wall just above the door waiting to pounce.

It’d been a long time since we’d had fried calamari. Technically, calamari was squid and not octopus, but as long as I fried it, who cared about the details?

I didn’t have time to mess around. I needed to get this sorted and figure out why my son was freaking out. I swung the door open. The front lawn was empty. A wooden box waited in front of the door. About two feet long, a foot wide, and maybe eight inches deep. Plain untreated wood, probably pine. Two metal hinges on the left side.

Someone had waited until I came home, then dropped it off on my doorstep. They were in our neighborhood, watching our house, and I didn’t notice when I came home, because I was a moron. I’d gotten comfortable in the past eighteen months. Sloppy, Voron’s voice said from my memories. Yeah, I know.

I stepped outside, carefully padded past the box, and jogged to the end of the driveway. The street was deserted in both directions. I didn’t feel anyone watching me. Whoever had delivered it had come and gone. Didn’t bother to stick around to see if I got it.

I turned back. The box looked perfectly harmless. Right, and as soon as I touched it, it would sprout whirring metal blades and carve me to pieces.

I crouched and poked the box with Sarrat. The box didn’t seem impressed.

Poke. Poke-poke. Shove.

Nothing.

Fine. I slid the tip of my blade between the lid and the box and flipped it open. A thick layer of ash filled the box. On it lay a knife and a red rose. And that wasn’t freaky. Not at all.

The knife was about twenty inches overall, with a fourteen-inch blade, sharpened all the way on the left and to a half point on the right side. Plain wooden handle, no guard. Simple, efficient, brutal. Reminded me of a skean, an Irish battle knife.

The rose was burgundy red, the color of merlot. Or blood. Long thorns. I sheathed my saber and picked up the box. It smelled faintly of fire. Not sulfur or smoke, but that particular heated scent when the wood got very hot just before it was about to burst into flames. There was something else, too. The hint of a darker and sharper odor I couldn’t quite place.

I took the flower out, picked up the knife, and shifted the ash with the blade. Nothing hidden in the ashes.

Was this some sort of threat?

Whatever it was, it seemed inert enough for the time being. I’d have to deal with it after I found my son.

I went into the garage, got a plastic bin, put the knife and the rose back into the box, placed the box into the bin, and carried it to the shed in the back. The shed served as my depository of weird crap I didn’t want to have lying around the house. I set the plastic bin in a salt circle on the floor, locked the shed, ran back inside, washed my hands, and bounded up the stairs two steps at a time.

It was quiet. Way too quiet for comfort.

I unlocked the door, stepped inside, and locked it behind me. From my vantage point, I could see through the arched entrance to the small nursery area Curran had sectioned off from our room. Conlan’s crib was empty, his blanket hanging halfway over the wooden rail. The bathroom door on my left remained shut, secured by a small latch bar only an adult could reach. That was the only way to keep Conlan out of the bathroom. He kept trying to eat soap and then cried when he realized it didn’t taste delicious.

The only good hiding place was under the bed. Curran liked to sleep high, and our bed was a massive beast that rose a full eighteen inches off the floor, not counting the box spring and mattress. Plenty of space.

“Conlan?” I called. “Where is my boy?”

Silence.

I moved forward on my toes. Curran and I played hide-and-seek with him all the time. Usually one of us would grab him and hide while the other one counted. Conlan was ridiculously easy to find, because he cracked up when you got close. To stay quiet wasn’t in his nature.

A step toward the bed. “Where is Conlan?” I sank right into the rhythm of the game. “Is he in the corner? No, he isn’t.”

Another step.

“Is he in his crib? No, he isn’t.”

Another step. “Is he under the bed?”

A clawed paw shot out from under the bed and swiped at my leg. I jumped a foot in the air and three feet back.

It couldn’t be.

I dropped down on the floor. A pair of glowing gray eyes stared at me from under the bed. Gold light rolled over them, the telltale shapeshifter fire. I’d seen that gold glow just five days ago, when our idiot poodle tried to throw up by Curran’s chair.

“Conlan?”

A low growling noise answered me.

Oh crap. Crap, crap, crap.

He’d shifted. He’d turned into a baby lion.

Oh my God.

I stared at the eyes. Maybe I was imagining it.

“Conlan?”

“Rawwr rawwr rawwroo.”

Nope. Not imagining it. He’d shifted.

I reached out and Conlan scooted back deeper under the bed.

Crap.

“Conlan, come out.”

“Rawrwr rawr!”

The phone rang. Maybe it was Curran. I grabbed it.

“Kate Lennart.”

“Hello,” a saccharine male voice chirped. “I’m calling from Sunshine Realty. Are you interested in selling your home?”

“No.” I hung up and dropped down again.

“Rawrrawr!”

“Conlan Dilmun Lennart, do not growl at me again. Come out from under the bed.”

He backed farther into the darkness, squeezing himself against the far wall. The bed weighed a ton. I could probably heave an edge of it up for a few seconds, but that was it. A fat lot of good that would do me.

I could get a broom and poke him with it. It would be long enough. But then that might just panic him more. Maybe if I sat on the floor and waited?

The doorbell rang. If the delivery boy was back, Sarrat and I could give him a piece of my mind.

I jumped to my feet, walked over to the window, and carefully edged the curtain aside, just enough to see. A Pack Jeep sat in the driveway.

“Don’t go anywhere,” I told Conlan.

The doorbell rang again.

I left the bedroom, shut the door, ran downstairs, and jerked the door open.

Andrea grinned at me. “I finally got away. Lora called me ‘Andrea the Merciless’ to my face. Can you believe that bitch? Wait until I tell you what she did. I should’ve given her a month of rock hauling. We can have lun—”

I grabbed her and pulled her inside.

“Okaaay,” she said. “Hello to you too, sweet cheeks.”

“I need you to help me catch my kid.”

“A one-year-old gave you the slip. How the mighty have fallen.”

“He’s hiding under the bed. I need you to help me get him out.”

“Why did you let him crawl under the bed?”

“Shut up and come with me.” I dragged her up the stairs.

“Okay, okay.”

I unlocked the bedroom door and dropped by the bed. Andrea dropped flat next to me. “What am I looking at?”

Two shining gold eyes stared back at us. “Arraawrooo rawrrawr.”

She opened her mouth. It stayed open.

Conlan backed into the wall again.

Andrea sat up and pointed under the bed, her blue eyes opened as wide as they could go.

“Yes,” I told her.

“When?” she squeaked.

“Just now.”

“What does he look like?”

“I don’t know. You can see for yourself once we get him out from under the bed.”