“The police have already searched the house. We didn’t find anything of note other than that he had left all of his possessions behind. Not like he had planned to go anywhere.”

  “Yeah. Boy, that guy keeps a neat house. Talk about repressed.”

  Jessup chuckled. “He is tidy; I’ll give you that.”

  “We took a look around the grounds. It’s pretty wild out there.”

  “Yes. We couldn’t find anything of note. Had dogs out there but, of course, his scent is on everything. They couldn’t lead us to him. No body, though, that’s a positive. I am beginning to get worried. The longer we go without finding any indication of what happened to him… our chances of ever discovering him go down and down.”

  “There was a path into the woods that we followed to a clearing, with a stone for an altar in the middle of it.”

  She could see Jessup in her mind’s eye, nodding at this information. “Yes. Saw that. No way to tell when the last time he used it was, though. Not very helpful.”

  “I tried to find him again from there, where his imprint was strong.”

  “Did you find out anything?” Jessup asked eagerly. “Any hint at all of what happened or where he is?”

  “I don’t think it is anything the police will be able to follow up on,” Reg warned again.

  “I can say that we got an anonymous tip. Or if it’s really weird, that I consulted a psychic. I might be the laughingstock of the department, but they would at least have something to look for. They’d follow it up even if it sounded ridiculous.”

  “He’s in a place… that’s dark and cold.”

  “Uh-huh…?” Reg could hear papers rattling as, presumably, Jessup turned to a new page in her notepad and prepared to take down all of the details Reg could provide.

  “That’s all I know about it. Except… I don’t think it’s part of this world. Not this plane. This visible world.”

  Jessup made an exasperated noise. “What does that mean?”

  “As I said, I don’t think it is anything the police can investigate. They can’t exactly find it; go there to get him. Wherever it is, this void, he can’t get out, and I don’t know how to get him out.”

  “Did you see this place? Can you tell me how to get there?”

  “I saw it… I was there. Close to where he is. I could feel him close. But there wasn’t anything else. No… doorway or exit that I could find. No ground to stand on. It’s just… nothingness.”

  “But if he wandered in there, or someone put him there, there has to be a way to get in and get him back out again.”

  “You think that he got there by himself?” Reg asked, rubbing her forehead where the muscles were bunched up, pulsing with pain.

  “I think it does happen. That people sometimes wander out of this world into another. Falling unintentionally between the cracks, the borders of the world. There have been enough strange disappearances over the years that I think something like that must be possible.”

  “I don’t think he got there himself.”

  “Maybe not. Maybe someone sent him there.” Jessup thought about it, humming a little. “If someone sent him there, do you think you could call him? Maybe you don’t need to find an entrance or exit. Maybe just do a call.”

  Reg hadn’t considered that. She was getting better at both calling others and transporting herself and others to other places. She hadn’t traveled that way a lot, but it certainly made it a faster trip across the ocean. And maybe to the place where Davyn was.

  “I guess I could try,” she agreed reluctantly. She already feared that it wouldn’t work. So far, nothing she had attempted on the case had succeeded.

  “Should I come over?” Jessup suggested. “Then I can talk to him if you’re able to call him. Or if he needs some kind of treatment, I can get some help…”

  “No. It probably won’t work. There’s no point in coming over.”

  “Not with that kind of attitude,” Jessup disapproved.

  “I just don’t think… the place where he is. I don’t think I can reach it with a call. I couldn’t do a seek. Not until I was actually at his altar.”

  “We could go over there so you could call from there. Maybe a midnight call? You could light some candles. Get prepared that way. It would be much stronger.”

  Reg still didn’t see herself as a witch, despite the gifts that she was able to call upon. She was a medium, yes, a psychic, but the stuff that Jessup was talking about definitely had a more witchy feel to it, and Reg wasn’t comfortable with it.

  “No?” Jessup asked after a minute, her voice more subdued. “If you don’t want to try that, then whatever you’re comfortable with. If you want to try a call from your house, that’s fine. It’s more than I can do. Much more.”

  “Was your family magical? You grew up as part of this community?”

  “Yes. I didn’t really mind that I didn’t have magical gifts… In all families, there are people who have gifts and those who don’t. All different degrees and different talents. I was more interested in the physical world. Sports. Cops. Tangible things. I didn’t have much of an affinity for the unseen. I guess if you can’t ever see it, you don’t miss it. I participated in rituals and celebrations with my family, but they were just… family traditions. I didn’t feel like they were a big deal.”

  Reg shook her head. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

  “A lot like any other family. Some people are athletic; some are musical. Some are brainiacs. Everybody has different strong and weak points. Sometimes we were brats to each other, but mostly we supported each other in whatever studies or careers we wanted to go into.”

  “Sounds like a good family.”

  Not like the families Reg had grown up in. They were not at all like Jessup described.

  “Do you want to just put me on speaker while you do the call? Or do you want to phone me back after and tell me how it went?”

  “It might take me a little while. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Let me know, okay? Either way. If it works or if it doesn’t.”

  It wouldn’t. Reg was sure of that. “Okay. I’ll let you know.”

  After Reg hung up, she wondered why she had bothered. It might take a while? She knew that it only took a moment or two of concentration. If it was going to work, it worked right away. Almost instantaneously. One minute, she would be thinking of Davyn and saying his name and the next minute he would be there.

  The truth was, she wanted a little time to fortify herself. Have a drink. See if Starlight would help her. Work up her courage to try the spell she was sure would fail.

  When she was little, she had always thought that being magic when she grew up would be great. She could be like Harrison, having whatever she wanted—coming and going as she liked, never going hungry or having to deal with abuse. Now that she had discovered her powers, it seemed unfair that she couldn’t do whatever she wanted. Her attempts frequently failed. She was good at talking with the dead or doing some minor magic she had retained even though the adults had tried to break her. But the big things that she’d never had a chance to develop… like any skill, were hit-and-miss. She never knew if they were going to work or if she were even doing them the right way.

  It was Calliopia’s sister, Karol, who had first prompted her to do a call, and Reg had done just that, called Calliopia to her while she was visualizing her in the crystal. Calliopia had been transported to her, nearly on top of her, and Ruan with her, because they were holding hands.

  But what if that had just been beginner’s luck? It seemed sometimes like the skills that she needed the most failed her when it was most important.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Eventually, there wasn’t any way for Reg to stall any longer without admitting to herself that she was only looking for ways to delay the potential failure of a call. She sat with Starlight on her lap, staring at the crystal ball, as focused as she could be after a long day and one visit to the void already.

  “Okay.” She closed her eyes and prompted herself. Sometimes it was easier to concentrate over the other voices if she spoke aloud. “It will only take a minute, and then I’ll know.”

  She pictured Davyn as clearly as she could. Not the black, cold place where she knew that he was, but Davyn as he was when he mentored her, working alongside her as she developed control over her fire, helping her find an outlet for the desire to burn without putting anyone in danger. Smiling, his eyes bright and alert, his black cloak flowing around him in the breeze.

  “Davyn Smithy. Come.”

  She felt the tug immediately. She was prepared to see the void again; she knew that when she did a call, her perspective changed to that of the person she had called, a confusion of light and color and sound as they tumbled through space. She would see what Davyn saw as he traveled to her. She saw and felt the darkness again. She could feel the tug as she tried to pull him to her. But it felt like someone else was on the other end, holding Davyn back, keeping him in that black hole. The formless entity resisted, keeping a tight grip on Davyn. Reg focused, digging her fingers into Starlight’s fur and using as much of his strength as she dared, hoping that their combined powers would be enough to shift the balance to her side.

  Davyn cried out in pain. Reg relaxed her grip on the cord that bound them together. She didn’t want to tear him in half.

  The thing that held him there was too strong for her.

  She breathed out, releasing the call. Leaving Davyn in his prison.

  “I’m sorry.” She took several deep breaths, reorienting herself to her cottage. Sitting on her couch, with Starlight on her lap. “I’ll try to figure it out. I’ll find a way. I just need time.”

  Starlight dug his claws into her leg for a second, then jumped to the floor and padded over to his bowls, where he noisily lapped water for several minutes. Reg supposed she should rehydrate too, but the kitchen seemed a long way away, and she needed to rest for a while before she could manage.

  After a few minutes of just breathing and trying to ready herself for the rest of the night’s activities, Reg pulled out her phone to call Jessup back. There was a long list of missed calls on her screen, and the time was eleven o’clock. Reg looked behind her at the dark window. Eleven o’clock? That couldn’t be right. But it was dark outside and, when she looked at the time on the satellite receiver under the TV, it verified the lateness of the hour. How long had she been fighting to get Davyn out of the void? As in the glade, it seemed like only a few minutes had passed, but it had been hours. She had missed all of her evening readings. She must have been sitting there in a trance while they each knocked on her door and called her on the phone, trying to get ahold of her. Reg was surprised that Sarah hadn’t shown up to find out where she was and why she was not there to take her appointments. She must be out with friends.

  Luckily, Reg did not have a midnight seance to prepare for. That would be too much. She needed to rest and regenerate, not to have to reach out to the spirits, carrying messages back and forth.

  Jessup had called a number of times, every twenty to thirty minutes during the time that Reg had been in a trance. Reg tapped the last missed call.

  Jessup answered before it had even rung on Reg’s end. “Reg! I’ve been trying to get you! What’s going on? Is everything okay? You said you would call me back.”

  “Yeah, sorry. It… took longer than I expected. I missed all kinds of calls.”

  “You’ve been trying to do it since we talked?” Jessup’s voice held a note of disbelief. Did she think that Reg was lying? That she had gone out partying and just not bothered to call her back and ignored all of her calls? Reg might have a complicated relationship with the truth, but she wouldn’t have made up something like that. Well, that probably wasn’t true. But the fact was, she wasn’t lying, and she expected Jessup to believe her when she told the truth. However, history had shown that Jessup had often been skeptical of Reg’s answers.

  “Yeah. It didn’t feel that long, but I guess it was. The same thing happened when I tried to find him from the grove. Julian said I’d been a trance for an hour, but it seemed like it had only been a minute or two.”

  “Oh. Hmm. Well, I guess you’d better be careful if you try it again. I don’t want you to get lost there too.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you want me to come over there? Are you okay? You sound tired.”

  “I am. I’ll probably hit the sack soon. So, no, I don’t need anyone here.”

  “Reg Rawlins going to bed before midnight? That’s something I never thought I would hear.”

  Reg laughed weakly. Not that it was really funny.

  “Before you go,” Jessup said, her voice getting a little louder, “I did phone you for more than just to find out if you were able to make any progress with the call.”

  “Oh. What is it?”

  “I found out that you were not the last to see Davyn. We were able to narrow the window for his disappearance down further.”

  “That’s good! What did you find out? Who saw him?”

  “He went to coven at midnight Monday night. A dozen people can vouch for the fact that he was fine after you saw him. That narrows his disappearance down to between one o’clock or whatever time he left the coven to eight o’clock when he should have shown up at work.”

  “What happened to him?” Reg cleared her throat. She felt a little sick to her stomach. She knew without a doubt that Davyn had not just wandered into that netherworld by accident. Something was keeping him there. Something did not want him to leave. And whatever it was, it was strong.

  “I don’t know. We’ll do some more investigating. But it’s good to be able to narrow the time down more. It helps to eliminate suspects.”

  “What about Corvin?”

  She didn’t like to think that Corvin might have done something to Davyn. But he was the one who had a motive to get Davyn out of the way, opening up Corvin’s path to leadership of the coven. And the last place that Davyn had been was the coven.

  “The latest information actually clears Corvin. He had a clear alibi. He was still with the coven when Davyn left. The others can vouch for him. Whatever happened to Davyn happened after that.”

  “He could have followed Davyn home…” Reg frowned, replaying what Jessup had said. “When Davyn left? Why did Davyn leave before the others?”

  “He got a phone call.”

  Reg waited for more information, but Jessup was being stubborn about it. She needed to either give Reg all of the information about the investigation or leave her out of it. Reg couldn’t work with only half the story. How was she supposed to figure anything out from what Jessup was giving her?

  “And? A phone call from who? Why did he go home? He left early, before anyone else?”

  “Yes. He said it was an emergency and he had to get back to his house.”

  Jessup again stopped, but Reg was determined to wait her out this time. She pressed her mouth closed and didn’t ask for anything else. Jessup could give her the details, or she could hang up and go about her police business and not concern herself with psychics and the knowledge that Davyn was stuck in some magical prison beyond her reach.

  “He said it was a call from the police and that his house had been broken into.”

  “What?” Reg’s head spun as she tried to make sense of this. “His house was broken into? I didn’t see any signs that the door had been forced or a window broken. How did anyone get into his house?”

  Of course, Reg hadn’t needed to break a window or the door to get in. They must have picked the lock, either magically like Reg or with standard lock picking tools.

  “No one broke into the house. We didn’t find any sign that anyone had been there other than Davyn. It’s possible that he leaves his door unlocked. Some people do, but he had wards guarding against intruders. And… it wasn’t the police who called him.”

  “I thought you said…”

  “He told them it was the police. We have to assume that the caller told him they were the police. But it wasn’t. There was no incident report of a burglary at Davyn’s address or anywhere in the neighborhood. There is no record of a call being placed to him for any reason.”

  Someone had deliberately called him away from the coven—someone who had wanted to get him on his own. At night, when there were no witnesses.

  “And Corvin was at the coven when Davyn got the call?” she checked.

  “Yes. We have confirmation that he was definitely there when Davyn got the call. He isn’t the one who placed it.”

  So someone other than Corvin had gotten Davyn out of the way. All along, Reg’s suspicion of Corvin had been growing in the back of her mind. He was the one person who seemed to have a reason to make Davyn disappear, at least for a while. If it wasn’t him, then who could it have been? Another warlock? Someone he had crossed without even realizing it? A random attack? Jealous lover? She knew so little of Davyn’s personal life that it was hard to think of who else it could be. And the man seemed so tidy and squared away that she couldn’t imagine a messy, emotional situation in his life.

  Reg rubbed her forehead. “I’m really wiped out. I’m going to go to bed… sleep on this… maybe it will make more sense in the morning.”

  “You’re more likely to be able to see things clearly if you’re well-rested,” Jessup decided. “Go ahead and get some sleep, and if you have any new ideas or impressions in the morning… give me a call, okay?”

  Reg nodded. “Sure. Of course.”

  In the morning, maybe something would occur to her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Unfortunately, the night didn’t bring Reg much rest, and she hadn’t achieved enlightenment when she awoke the next day. Or when she finally decided it was time to get out of bed. She had lain in bed for a long time after going to bed, too tired and restless to actually sleep. She couldn’t find a comfortable position, couldn’t lie still, and couldn’t calm the chattering of her brain. And all of the other voices in her head. It was like trying to sleep in the middle of a noisy board meeting.

 

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