Circle of Death (Damask Circle 2)

Constable Dicks climbed into the driver’s side and started the car. It took only five minutes to reach the motel. Dicks pulled up near the front office, and Constable Ryan climbed out and returned with the key.

The motel was L-shaped and single-story. Her room was number thirteen. Some thought it unlucky, she knew, though up until now she had never considered it so. Dicks parked the car in the room’s allotted space and Ryan got out, quickly opening the door and inspecting the room. He came back moments later and opened the squad car’s back door. Kirby grabbed her pack and climbed out.

The room was basically a small suite—there were two sofas and a couple of armchairs in the main room, along with a kitchenette, a table, and a TV. A bedroom lay to her right, with the bathroom next to it.

She headed for the bathroom. She needed a shower, needed to wash the smell of death from her skin. She wished she could do the same with her memories.

“Need anything to eat, Miss Brown?” Constable Ryan asked, picking up the phone. “I’m going to order some pizza.”

The thought made her stomach turn. She shook her head, then closed the bathroom door. Leaning her forehead against the wood for a moment, she took a deep, long breath. She wanted—needed—to be alone.

But she wasn’t, so she couldn’t let go just yet. Couldn’t allow herself to feel the pain. She had a bad habit of doing that—of repressing emotion, and not just hurt, Helen had once told her.

She dumped her backpack against the bathtub and reached into the shower, turning on the tap. The water was icy, so she let it run while she hunted around for the little packets of soap and shampoo. She found several of both in the cupboard under the sink and shoved a couple in the shower. Out of habit, she put the rest into her pack. Never waste anything had been her and Helen’s motto for as long as she could remember.

From the living room came an odd sound—a gurgling sort of cry that was quickly cut short. Goose bumps chased their way up her arm. There had been fear in that cry, and the recognition of death.

Swallowing heavily, she opened the bathroom door and peered out. Constable Ryan sat in one of the two armchairs, but he didn’t react in any way to her reappearance, and there was something decidedly odd about his posture. Something that sent a chill through her soul—a sensation that only increased when her gaze met Dicks’s.

“Something wrong, Miss Brown?”

The coldness she’d noticed earlier in his eyes was deeper, almost inhuman. She clenched a fist, resisting the impulse to slam the door shut. “Did you call out? I thought I heard someone call my name.”

The lie tasted lame on her tongue, and amusement gleamed briefly in Dicks’s blue eyes.

“Maybe you heard the TV.”

And maybe it was all in her imagination. Maybe she was finally going mad, as one of her many foster parents had insisted she would. But that parent had been a devout Catholic and had believed magic to be the devil’s work. And while she couldn’t actually raise magic—not in the same manner Helen had been able to—she could bend the energy of the air and the earth to her will. Which sounded more dangerous than it was, because in reality she could to do little more than create a net that had the power to bind one thing to another. Still, it was quite amazing that she’d lasted in that particular home for three months.

But as she stared at Dicks, she knew it wasn’t imagination or madness. Something odd was happening in the room. The feel of magic was in the air.

“I’ll just go have my shower, then,” she said, closing the door.

There was no lock on the door. She bit her bottom lip and looked quickly around. There was a towel rack on the wall next to the door. Better than nothing, she supposed. She grabbed a sweater out of her pack and roped it between the handle and the towel rack, knotting the arms as tightly as she could. It wouldn’t hold for more than the time it took to scream, but for some reason, she felt a little safer.

She stripped off her jacket and thrust a hand through her wet hair. What she needed was a drink. If nothing else, it would calm her nerves and perhaps help her forget, if only for a few hours—another bad habit of hers, according to Helen.

But to get a drink, she’d have to leave the bathroom, and instinct warned her that might not be a good move right now. Over the years, she’d learned to trust that inner voice—and in doing so, she had saved both her own and Helen’s lives more than once.

She wished it had spoken up earlier tonight and saved Helen for her.

Tears stung her eyes. She wiped them away with the heel of her hand and noticed the steam was beginning to fog the room. She frowned and flicked the fan switch up and down a couple of times. It didn’t seem to help.

In the other room, the doorbell rang. Constable Ryan’s pizzas had obviously arrived. Her stomach turned, and she wondered how he could eat after what he’d seen at her house. Maybe a lead-lined gut was a prerequisite for a cop. She walked across to open the window.

Kirby, get out. Leave, while you still can.

The voice sounded so close, the warmth of the speaker’s breath seemed to brush past her ear. Her heart leapt to the vicinity of her throat, and she spun, fists clenched against the sudden rush of electricity across her fingertips. But there was no one in the room with her.

Now she was hearing things, on top of imagining them. Great. Just great. She took a deep breath, then reached up and opened the window.

As she did, the screaming began.

THE DOOR OPENED WITH A CRASH THAT RATTLED THE empty soda cans and coffee mugs lining the bookcase to his right. Doyle Fitzgerald glanced up to watch his best friend and sometimes partner drip in.

“You’re wet,” he said, leaning back in his chair with a grin. Russell was more than just wet. He looked like the proverbial drowned rat—brown hair plastered to his face and accentuating his sharp features, nose and cheeks mottled red, clothes sodden and shoes squelching.

“No kidding.” Russ stripped off his coat and threw it roughly into the corner. “It is supposed to be summer here, isn’t it?”