to finally be home.
Home.
A funny thought. Two weeks ago, I hadn’t known the LaSalles existed,
and now I was living with them. I hadn’t meant to linger, but my Aunt Laurel
had insisted. Also, I was broke, jobless, and apparently still very much the
target of a madman, so it made sense.
I dragged my tired ass up the stairs to my bedroom on the third floor, then
locked the door behind me and flicked on the lights.
My room was obviously inhabited by a madwoman.
First off, the decorations were bizarre—though to be fair, that was on
Aunt Laurel. The deep red Persian carpet didn’t mesh with the palm trees on
the heavy yellow curtains or the ship’s wheel mounted on the wall. What was
the theme? There had to be one.
On the other hand, the more clearly insane feature of the room was my
collection of sketches, which littered every available surface—a couple of my
friends and my godmother, several of the night fair and the fortune teller.
And a lot of Jaxson. He was everywhere.
But the images that drew my attention were those lurking in the shadowy
corner of the room, overflowing from the old writing desk onto the ancient
radiator and dresser.
The faceless man.
Ulan Kahanov. I knew his name now.
I’d drawn him over and over, trying to recreate everything I could recall
of my visions. I’d never seen the blood sorcerer in person, only while
scrying. I remembered the fall of his clothing, the broad set of his shoulders,
and the details of his surroundings. But his face was always a blur, a messy
smudge on the paper. I’d kept on sketching, hoping that somehow my
memory could get around the veil cast by his anti-scrying charm.
It had been a fruitless task.
I wasn’t spending another night with the monster scattered around the