Circle of Death (Damask Circle 2)

“First we get our sunburned friend somewhere safe and out of the light, then I’ll continue searching for that symbol. You and Kirby can go on hunting for our final victim. If you have no luck, Russ can go out again tonight.”

“Did you get those photos I sent you?”

“Yes, but I haven’t had much of a chance to look at them yet.” She patted his arm. “Now, you’d better go find that girl of yours. She’s wandered off again.”

He frowned. “No, she hasn’t.”

Camille raised an eyebrow. “Are you doubting an old woman? She wasn’t at the door when I drove up.”

“Maybe not, but she’s close.”

“She has a pretty distinct smell if you can still catch it above the dust and decay in here,” Russell commented, eyeing him with amusement. “A little smitten with the girl, are we?”

“No.” He was well past being smitten. “I can read her thoughts, and I have no idea why.”

Russ raised his eyebrows. “She telepathic?”

“No, and neither am I—as you know.”

Russ snorted. “Yeah. It’s easier to draw blood from a stone than it is to reach through your thick skull.”

Doyle grinned. “At least it stops you from putting improper thoughts in my head. Like the time you tried to get me—”

“Enough,” Camille said, frowning. “What other talents has she got?”

“Energy,” he said. “It races across her fingers like lightning, and she can cast it like a net.”

Camille’s frown deepened. “Drawing down lightning is usually the provenance of a storm witch, and Kirby certainly isn’t one of those. She has a completely different energy output.”

“Could it be some form of elemental magic?” Russ asked.

“Maybe, but elementals are extremely rare. Besides, air elementals are merely the conduit for the energy. They rarely have enough control to weave something as intricate as a web.” Her expression was thoughtful. “Let’s get back to the office. Doyle, keep in regular contact.”

“I will.”

He followed them from the building. Camille opened the van’s back doors. The van had been fully lined with sun-blocking material. You could never be too careful when a vampire was part of your team.

Russell dove in and Camille slammed the door shut before he started to sizzle. “I think I know what that symbol being carved on the door is,” she said. “And if I’m right, we could be in real trouble. I’ll call and let you know in a few hours. In the meantime, keep that girl of yours safe.”

“I will, don’t worry.”

She climbed into the van and drove off. He shoved his hands into his pockets and headed across to the third building to find Kirby.

OFFICE FURNITURE LINED THE WALLS WHERE ONCE there had been two long rows of beds. Kirby stopped in the middle of the dorm, her gaze going to the fourth window from the remains of the back wall. That was where her bed had been. Helen, when she’d finally arrived at the center, had slept next to her. Damn it, why couldn’t she remember this place, when everything else was so clear?

She sniffed, and the smell hit her—age and mustiness, mixed with the pungent scent of ammonia. Memories stirred, as did her fear. She retreated a step, then stopped. Running wasn’t going to help anyone. If something had happened in this room, she needed to remember it. The answer to why Helen was murdered could lie anywhere, even in something as innocuous as memories long locked away.

The whistling was coming from the ruins of the back of the dorm, from what had once been the nurse’s quarters. She took a few more steps forward, then stopped. “Hello?”

The whistling cut off abruptly, and a soft whirring filled the gloom. Two seconds later, a man in an electric wheelchair appeared in the doorway, his berry-brown face fixed into a scowl. “And what would you be doing here, girlie?”

His voice was as flat and lifeless as his brown eyes, and it sent a chill up her spine. She knew that voice. In the past she had feared it.

She again resisted the impulse to run. “I’m …” She hesitated, uncertain whether she should really be talking to this man. Surely if she’d once feared him, it had been for good reason. “I stayed at this center for a while. I’m just trying to find a friend I met here.”

Why she lied, she wasn’t entirely sure. She certainly wasn’t going to get much information about her past by inquiring about someone else, and yet instinct suggested it was better than mentioning who she was. Though she had no idea why this would be dangerous, she trusted her instincts. They’d saved her too often in the past to ignore them now.

The old man’s gaze narrowed, and he rolled a little farther into the room. He was scrawny, with thick, steel-gray hair that looked silver in the morning light. He had a clipboard on his lap, and his hands were long and thin. The hands of a piano player, she thought.