“You got it, boss.”
The tree-lined road opened to reveal a towering stone mansion perched on the edge of a cliff. Once upon a time, Marshall might have found it impressive, but by the age of seven he had been regularly living out his wildest fantasies in the Dreamscape. The majesties of the Real paled in comparison to being able to ride a dragon through an exploding star.
Instead, he barely noticed the improbable topiaries blooming out of season and out of temperate zone. He pulled the truck to a stop at the circular drive and put on his guardian face—friendly with a heavy dose of impartial.
Marshall got out first, indicating to the nervous crowd gathered on the steps that he was the one in charge. Adelle and Jack exited at the same time and stayed a pace behind Marshall as the group closed around them. They were escorted inside the massive estate with pomp and circumstance mixed with equal parts hand-wringing. Marshall did his best to soothe the ruffled feathers of Emily, the woman sent to greet them.
“Of course you meant no offense, Emily. It’s perfectly natural to want to protect your sick family members. If I were you, I would have given the gatekeeper the same orders.” Marshall waved away the drink one of the trailing servants was trying to offer him.
Marshall could be friendly, but he wasn’t going to be too friendly. If he didn’t keep a certain distance from the people he investigated, they tended to try and extract promises of leniency from him, and that was something he refused to do. For all Marshall knew, her mistress was possessed by a demon, and he would need to kill her in front of the entire Blaike family.
Breaking promises was something Marshall was strictly against. Never again.
“I just wouldn’t want you to think the Guard wasn’t welcome here.” Emily simpered. “As soon as I told Ms. Stella about the mishap at the gate, she insisted I bring you to her at once.” Emily’s hands waved emphatically as she spoke, nearly knocking the drink tray out of a servant’s hands.
Marshall did his best to calm her down, but Emily peppered him with apologies the entire way to the infirmary. It could have been nothing more than an overeager servant trying to diffuse a social gaffe, or she could have been trying to distract the trio from something.
Marshall gave a pointed look at Jack.
“Excuse me, Emily, was it?” Jack put on his most charming smile. “Could you point me to the closest bathroom? It was a long car ride down here.”
“Of course, of course.” Emily waved one of the ubiquitous servants following behind them toward Jack and told her to show him the way.
Jack sauntered away, flirting wildly with the servants who trailed him. It would only be a matter of time before Jack had them all so turned around that none of them realized he no longer had an escort.
Marshall allowed himself a tiny smile at his friend’s antics before he set up a link between their three minds. It was important when separating to stay connected, so they could share their findings with one another and weigh in with observations. It was especially helpful now, considering how agitated Adelle was. It was always good to give her room to vent privately before she said something out loud they would all regret later.
Their procession continued through the lavishly decorated mansion, and Emily continued with a litany of excuses and apologies punctuated with increasingly erratic and alarming hand motions. By the time they made it to the infirmary, Marshall was ready to put Emily to sleep himself just to keep from losing an eye.
Once they arrived, Marshall took a look around. He had been expecting a small room, but the infirmary took up an entire hall of the vast estate.
Entering the room, the first thing he saw was the dazzling array of colors bathing the room. The wall-to-wall windows were lined with an endless number of shelves, each filled with crystalline cases of every color imaginable. The overall effect was breathtaking even to Marshall’s eyes, though he doubted aesthetics were the first or even third reason for their existence in the room.
In a witch’s infirmary, crystal cases were a necessity. Many counter-curses and magical remedies had a long casting-time, so having such things already on hand was imperative. But for witch magic, once a spell was attached to an item, unless dreamcrafted, it became a charm that began to deteriorate immediately. Witches compensated for this by placing pre-spelled items in crystal cases. The crystal refracted the magic and kept it fresh. Each spell-type resonated differently, so a different crystal was necessary for each kind of magic. If the wrong spell went into the wrong case, the effects could be catastrophic.
Emily led them to a bed occupied by the woman from the cemetery scene. Marshall had only met Stella Blaike once, but it had been memorable enough.
As the son of a praetor, Marshall had been introduced to all the powerful family members of the Other and was familiar with the drama and politics such meetings incurred. When he’d met Stella several years ago, she had made him feel like an embarrassed teenager even though he was nearly a century her senior.
From the moment they had been introduced, Stella couldn’t seem to keep her hands to herself. Their society frowned on casual touching among all but the closest of companions, but Stella had kept touching Marshall’s hair, adjusting his clothing, or grabbing his hand and attempting to drag him somewhere to meet someone.
Marshall had been forced to shield as hard as he could just to keep from spilling into her mind. At the time he had thought it was because she was a massive flirt, since it wasn’t unusual for him to receive excessive attention from social climbers.
Marshall had been known to get multiple propositions during such an event, ranging anywhere from mostly innocent to wildly outlandish. When he was a teen it had turned his head, but his father and Adelle managed to keep him from becoming a preening idiot with well-aimed lessons in humility.
So instead of being a pompous asshole, Marshall was well-known for being reserved. If Stella knew of his reputation, it was possible she had been doing it to force him to shield so he wouldn’t notice something she wanted to keep hidden.
The woman in the bed before him looked more disheveled, but no less beautiful, than when he had last seen her. The fight had clearly taken a lot out of Stella—her blood-orange magic was little more than a spark inside her chest. Her head was covered by a spelled bandage, which Marshall could sense was healing and regrowing hair—a tricky combination. The healer for the Blaike family had to be a high-level charm-crafter, or the bandage would have simply disintegrated from holding such potent magic.
He could also see other bandages peeking out from the plush, red-velvet robe Stella had draped around her body. Damaged as she was, Stella still managed to look royal.
:There is no sign of demon taint on Stella,: Marshall informed Jack through the link. Adelle could hear him too, but she could see it clearly for herself.
It took no effort for a decent dreamwalker to see demon taint. Their wrongness was so clear you’d have to be incredibly distracted to miss even a trace amount of it. It had been overkill to send Jack after the officers Marshall had seen on the stairwell, but he liked to be thorough in such cases.
“Marshall, darling. So good to see you. I must apologize for not coming to greet you at the door. I must look dreadful.” Stella scrunched her immaculately made-up face into a pout.
Adelle snorted loudly behind him.
Ignoring his sister, he said, “That isn’t possible, Stella.” He threw a warning poke with his mind at Adelle. “I appreciate you meeting with us under the circumstances. With your cooperation, we can clear this up quickly, and you can get back to your rest.”
Stella’s soft brown eyes looked up at him, the picture of innocence. “Clear what up, Marshall?” She patted a spot on the bed beside him, her posture a clear invitation. “Sit down, dear, you’re making my neck hurt looking all the way up there. We don’t really need Big Sis here, do we?”
Not wanting to become her personal teddy bear again, Marshall lowered himself into the chair next to her bed instead. “We know what happened in the cemetery, Stella, and we came here to hear your side of the story.”
Behind him, Adelle huffed in irritation. :You could have strung it out a bit more than that, brother. She might have revealed something if we let her pretend long enough.:
:If I wait too long, she’ll begin planning our wedding.: Marshall explained, and then gently, but firmly, pushed his sister to the back of his mind.
“That was a family matter.” Stella’s eyes tightened slightly at the edges, but she kept her voice light. “Hardly something worth troubling the guardians over, especially Team Fire. I’m sure you all have something more important to do than to get involved in a domestic dispute.”
“When we have to clean up after your domestic dispute, it becomes our problem,” Adelle spat, and then began stalking back and forth in front of the bed like a tigress. “Did you even check to see how many people you killed this morning?”
Stella looked wounded. “Of course I did! My representative is with the victims and their families right now making sure their every need is attended to. We’ve spared no expense to see to their comfort, poor things. It was a terrible tragedy.”
“Yes, it was. So why did it happen? Why did your family attack that boy? Who is he?”
“I guess you’ve found us out, so there is no point in trying to hide it anymore.”
