“No, nothing happened. I just wanted to see the female I love.”
“You can talk to me,” she murmured. “You know that, right. You can tell me what’s going on.”
“Like I said, it’s nothing.”
Well, nothing except for the fact that skeptics, generally speaking, didn’t like to see coffins. They were a reminder that life ended, and he could not bear the thought of losing his shellan.
He literally did not know what he would do without—
Rehv jerked back as the image of that female at the parking garage—and her grid—shot into his mind.
“Oh, my God,” he blurted. “She wants to bring someone back from the dead.”
Ehlena shook her head. “I’m sorry, what—”
“A nice, normal civilian going after something evil? The only reason they’d do it is if someone they love is dead and they can’t live with the pain. Her brother. It has to be her brother—it’s the only person left in her family. I’ll bet you something happened to him.”
Sahvage rematerialized off to the side of the garage Mae had just parked her car in. As the panels started to drop back down, he glanced over his shoulder. Looked to the front of the one-story house. Checked what he could see in the back. He did not want her to get out of that fucking vehicle until things were safe—
And she didn’t. She waited until everything was closed up.
“Good girl,” he said softly. Even though she wouldn’t have approved of being called a girl.
Sticking to the shadows, he got out of his pack what he had stolen from the cottage when she’d been taking Tallah to bed: Morton’s un-iodized salt. Although he’d have taken it with the iodine. Didn’t matter.
With a steady hand, he popped the top, and he was lucky on two parts: The container was almost full, and the seventies-era ranch wasn’t big. Still, he was careful to ration the stuff. He only poured it on the ground in front of the doors and the windows. He’d have preferred to do the sealing all the way around, but he couldn’t risk running out with any of the job left undone.
After he’d covered the ground floor, he materialized up onto the roof. No chimney, but there were two pipe vents, probably for the bathrooms, and he poured the salt on the shingles around them on a just-in-case.
Then he sat his ass on the mid-beam of the house and kicked his legs out in front of himself on the easy slope. He wondered what the female was doing beneath him, maybe grabbing something to eat, going through her mail. She would head back to the cottage for the day, though. She wasn’t going to want that old female left alone.
Cursing himself, cursing Mae, he scanned the yard and the neighborhood with not just his eyes, but every sense and instinct he had.
He wasn’t sure he believed in the salt. But it was something Rahvyn had always sworn by, and that was as good a recommendation as he was going to get in this nightmare.
God, he wished his cousin were here. She would know what to do.
Hell, maybe she could have talked Mae out of this madness—
The first thing he noticed was the stars disappearing overhead. But not because of clouds. It was as if a black shroud had been pulled across the sky directly above the ranch.
“Fuck.”
Getting to his feet, he outed both of his guns, and eyed the neighborhood, which was suburban-tight and suburban-peopled: Both houses on either side, as well as the ones across the street, had humans in them, men and women winding down in bed, watching TV, having midnight snacks. The last thing he needed was a bunch of forefingers dialing 911 when he was trying to save that female’s life.
“Fuck.”
With grim purpose, he walked down the roof incline to the gutter and jumped to the ground, landing with a boom. Turning to the front door, he was going to bang on it—except he stopped himself.
The garage. He hadn’t sealed the garage door.
Shoving one of the guns into its holster, he ripped the Morton’s back out, and ran for the tiny seam between those retractable panels and the concrete lip of the garage slab. The salt needed to be down on the ground before whatever had shown up at the cottage turned up again—
“You don’t actually think that’s going to work, do you.”
The voice was female, and seemed to be coming from every direction. But as much of a shocker as it was, he refused to be diverted. He kept pouring, the lightness of the container freaking him out as he closed in on the far side of the broad entrance. Faster. Faster. Fasterfasterfaster—
Sahvage all but threw the goddamn container at the corner formed by the house’s edge and the concrete—on the theory that the salt was still in place, even if there was a cylindrical cardboard container wrapping around it.