Blood Games (Chicagoland Vampires 10)

“He’s Ethan. My boyfriend. Skylar-Katherine,” I said, snapping my fingers until she looked at me again. “Why would Curt hurt Mitzy? Or Brett?”

“Mitzy? Oh, because he loved her. And she didn’t love him back.”

I frowned, very confused. That didn’t match what the CPD had learned. “Wait. I thought Mitzy was dating Brett.”

“She went on a date with Brett. She’d been dating Curt, but they broke up. It was nasty, too. He really had a thing for her. She quit the store a couple of weeks after that.”

“Do you know where Curt was going?”

“I don’t—I don’t know. This is so confusing.”

“Stay with her,” I told Ethan. “And call Catcher, let him know.”

I rose and ran to the back corner of the store, looked at the tarot card case. I’d expected the spot for the Fletcher deck to still be empty, but there was a new deck where the old one had been.

I pulled up the glass lid, but it didn’t budge. There wasn’t time for keys, so I grabbed the closest thing I could find—a candleholder made of antler—and stabbed it into the top of the case. Glass shattered and dropped into the case.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I glanced back, saw Skylar-Katherine behind me, limping forward with Ethan’s support.

“Catcher will be here in a couple of minutes,” he said. “CPD’s nearly at Curt’s house.”

“I asked what you were doing to our case!”

“I’m finding out where your crazy coworker took my best friend.” I brushed glass aside with the edge of my sleeve and plucked out the box of Fletcher tarot cards.

I ripped away cellophane and paper, destroying the box to get to the cards, flipping through them until I found the card I was looking for.

“Four of Wands,” I said, pulling it out and holding it up so they could see the Lady Godiva-esque feature, her horse, her castle.

I turned the card so they could look at it, too. “He’s been literal so far with the symbolism. If he keeps that here, he needs a castle.”

“The Water Tower?” Ethan suggested. “It looks medieval.”

It was the type of place he’d like—a public space with lots of attention. But he had an eye for detail. The Water Tower was much too small to look like the enormous battlement on the card.

“Too small,” I said. “What about that castle in River North?”

“It’s a club now,” Skylar-Katherine said. “Good scene.”

“But surrounded by concrete,” Ethan said, tapping the card. “And he won’t want that much attention, not at first. He’s too particular, and he’ll want time to arrange things. He can’t do that privately downtown.”

“Oh, I know something!” Skylar-Katherine walked to the back of the store, grabbing shelves for balance as she moved. The shuffling of paper and moving drawers echoed through the store.

“This,” Skylar-Katherine said, emerging from the back room only seconds later, one hand on the doorjamb as she made the turn into the store again, feet practically skidding on the carpet as she moved. A newspaper, folded open, was in her hand.

“This,” she said again, thrusting it at us. “The Bellwether Castle—it used to be a private school, but they rent it out now for weddings or whatever. They’re having a spring open house.”

Ethan took the paper, and we looked at the black-and-white photograph of a building that, yeah, looked very much like a castle. Large, square, and tall, with a turret on each corner. The stones were roughly hewed, and the giant front door consisted of large planks of wood butted together with golden bolts. The building was set back on the lot, with plenty of green space behind it.

Ethan held the picture beside the card, whistled. “That’s pretty damn close.”

“We don’t have time for ‘pretty damn close,’” I said.

“There’s a stable behind the building,” Skylar-Katherine said. “I don’t know if they still have horses, but there’s a stable.”

“That’s pretty damn close,” I said, and took a picture of the newspaper to send to Jeff just as tires squealed outside the front of the building.

“Where the f**k is she?” demanded the voice that rushed inside over the clang of the bells on the door.

Catcher had arrived. His magic—sharp and dangerous—was telling enough. He emerged around the row in a T-shirt that read, fittingly enough, YOU’RE MY PROBLEM.

He and Mallory might have had their problems, and their relationship might have been endangered during her Nebraska period, but there was no doubting the ferocity in his eyes or the cloud of magic behind him. His woman had been threatened, and he’d damn well take care of it.

Jeff and my grandfather rounded the corner behind him. Not just Catcher taking care of it, but Mallory’s entire magical family.

“We think she’s here,” Ethan said, extending the paper to Catcher. He grabbed it, took a look, lifted his gaze again before handing it off to Jeff.

“Why?” my grandfather asked.

“There’s a castle on the Four of Wands.” Ethan handed him the card.

Catcher reviewed, nodded. “Jeff?”

“On it,” he said, handing the paper down the line to my grandfather as he pulled out a thin tablet that looked like little more than a thin sheet of glass. He swiped fingers across it.

“Bellwether Castle,” he read. “Formerly Bellwether Beaux Arts Academy, built 1891.” He looked up. “It’s in Logan Square. Near the park.”

“That’s only a couple of miles from here,” I said.

Catcher turned and started for the door, but my grandfather adjusted to block him.

“Chuck,” Catcher warned, his eyes wild with fear and fury. “He’s probably drugged her, and he’ll kill her if we don’t get there.”

But my grandfather stayed calm. “If we don’t go in there with a plan, we risk her getting hurt in the process. And we don’t want that. We’ll get to her first,” my grandfather said, keeping his gaze on Catcher.

“Curt is careful,” my grandfather continued. “The arrangement, the positioning. Think of the trouble he goes to. We do this right, and she’ll be fine. But we have to do this right.”

Catcher nodded, stepped aside.

“There are a couple of other places,” I said. “Water Tower, the castle. Low chance he’s there, because they don’t quite match, but . . .”