“But you still find her attractive? If you had an opportunity…”
“Better if I don’t. Not while we’re working with Layne.” But he’d thought about it. What Amelia was politely not saying was how he hadn’t slept with anyone since before prison. Not that he’d ever had anything resembling a relationship, not like Ben and Kitty had. But he’d had plenty of opportunities. And now … seeing Mollie reminded him that it had been a long time.
“You’ll see her again, perhaps,” Amelia said. She was trying to be comforting, Cormac realized. Trying to be understanding.
But right this minute, he just wanted to be alone.
When he looked up again, Amelia was gone. Didn’t even need to walk anywhere, just vanished. He had the nerve-wracking sense that he’d done something wrong.
Time to get some sleep, then.
* * *
THE NEXT morning, one of the e-mails in the book of shadows account stood out from all the nutjobs. It caught his eye because it was articulate and full of an uncomfortable amount of detail.
“This is Amy Scanlon’s book, isn’t it? I assume she’s dead, or you wouldn’t have it. Do you know what she was, who she associated with? Have you deciphered the code yet?” Even in text, the tone seemed demanding rather than questioning, as if the sender already knew the answers to the questions.
Cormac sat back and considered. On the one hand, this sounded like someone who knew something. On the other hand, they were sure being cagey about it. Kitty’s Web guru had shown him how to check for IP addresses and e-mail origins, but when he dug into the header on this one, it didn’t tell him anything. The sender was using the same methods to hide his identity that Cormac used. Whoever sent this, man or woman or something else entirely, Cormac didn’t trust them. Of course he didn’t. But it was a thread to follow.
He wrote a reply using his own anonymous e-mail, dangling a piece of information as bait, to see what bit. “Yes, the book belonged to Amy Scanlon. She was a magician. Worked with a vampire named Kumarbis.” He hit SEND and was prepared to wait for an answer, but the mail box pinged a reply after just a minute. The sender was online and ready to respond.
His blood warmed and his senses focused on the job in front of him. This was almost like hunting.
The reply read: “Where is Kumarbis?”
Dead, destroyed, but Cormac wasn’t ready to say that. He replied, “I don’t know.” True enough, from a certain point of view. He waited.
Another message popped up. “Who are you? You have her book—did you inherit it? Are you an apprentice of hers?”
Cormac wasn’t doing a good job of fishing for information if the other guy was asking all the questions. Amy had had a checkered history; this might have been a previous teacher of hers or some other magical associate. Cormac wanted to keep him, or her, talking. “I’m a student of magic,” he wrote back. “Just curious.”
The reply came a moment later: “So am I.”
“And who exactly are you?” Cormac sent back.
No immediate reply came, and none came after another stretch of waiting. The guy must have logged off. Or been scared off.
He shut off the laptop, sat back and considered. They’d put the book online because they wanted to see what it would dredge up. Well, here they were then. This could still be some crackpot. But the guy knew something. Maybe not how to break the code, but something. Cormac would just have to figure out how to draw him out.
* * *
LAYNE CALLED later that day, which was quicker than Cormac had expected him to.
“Cormac!” Layne said, as if they were old friends. “I pretty much figured you’d given me a fake number.”
Fake numbers were too much work. “I wouldn’t do that, I’m not some girl you’re trying to pick up in a bar,” Cormac answered.
Layne’s chuckle was uncertain. “You’re pretty funny.”
Yeah, right. “You said you’d have something for me, Layne.”
“You want to come down to my place? Talk about it in person?”
Not really, he thought. This is the only way to learn more about Kuzniak, Amelia reminded him. Even though this felt like walking into a bear’s den in springtime.
“Sure,” he said, and Layne gave him directions.
The roads to Layne’s parcel of land in the hills of Fremont County weren’t marked; most of them weren’t even professionally built, but rather tracks that had been worn into the ground over time. The point was obvious—if you didn’t get directions straight from Layne, or you didn’t already know where you were going, you weren’t supposed to be there. The last turn was a two-rut 4x4 trail cutting through a stand of scrub oak that opened out into a typical farmstead. An unkempt barbed wire fence, posts rotted and close to falling down, ringed the open pastureland. A post-and-wire gate could be pulled across the road, but lay off to the side for now. A square metal sign hung on the wire nearby: NO TRESPASSING it read, predictably. He drove on.