Haunt (Regenerate #5)

Chapter 2

Everyone's gathered around the conference room table, and for some reason, I find myself getting nervous. This is normally Anthony's job.

It's stupid to be nervous, though. These are my friends.

I hand Anthony a flash drive. "Is there somewhere you can plug this in? I made a powerpoint."

"You made a powerpoint?" Even with his mask on, I can tell he's smirking at me.

I straighten up. "Yes. I did. Do you have a problem with that."

"Not at all." He holds out a hand and I drop the flash drive into it. He runs a finger over it and the next thing I know, my powerpoint is being projected on our screen.

"How did you do that?" I ask. "You didn't even plug it in."

"I'm a technopath, you know."

"Yeah, but I've never seen you do anything like that before," I say. "Never mind. Can you just get to the first slide?"

He obliges.

"I've called you here today because I think it's time for our team to take on a new mission," I say. "I've been doing some research, and I think I've stumbled onto a local crime ring."

I point the the screen. "This is a calling card that has appeared at a total of ten murders over the past fifteen years."

"That's pretty spread out," Mantis says. "So they can't be that active."

I flip to the next screen, which has pictures of the murder victims. "I didn't think so either until I started looking into the deaths more closely. Police have been a little baffled by this one because the victims don't seem to have much in common. Hard to assign the killer's M.O. when you can't see how the cases are related."

"But you found a common thread," Lorna says.

"Sort of," I say. "Two of the victims were art collectors."

"Only two?" Mantis asks.

"It's not a particularly common vocation," I say. "So it struck me as strange that two of them would be art collectors. And as I did some research I found that LA actually has sort of a problem with artwork theft. Pieces disappear more often here than you would expect. And show up on the black market later."

"And you think the two are connected?" Mantis asks.

"I think it's a possibility worth exploring. Obviously, whoever is behind these attacks is good at covering their tracks. That's why they haven't been caught yet. And whoever is behind the art heists is also good at covering their tracks. The internet is full of rumors about a group called the House of Night. Nobody can find anything solid about them, but everyone who's heard of them says they are dangerous."

I flip back to the first slide, which has the calling card for the murders. It's a picture of a crow with stars in the background. "And don't you think this looks like it could belong to a group called the House of Night?"

"It looks like it could be a lot of things," Mantis says.

The room is quiet for a minute before he says, "Do you have anything else?"

"Um, no," I say. "That was it."

"You made a powerpoint with only two slides?" he says.

I don't know why everyone thinks the powerpoint is so funny. "I only needed two slides."

Mantis shakes his head. "It's a half baked conspiracy theory at best."

I sigh. "So we're not going to investigate?"

"I didn't say that." Mantis stands. "We may as well do a little investigating, since we're not doing anything else at the moment. And whether or not the murders and the art theft are linked, I'd like to see what all this talk about the House of Night is. We can look into it."

I try not to let my excitement show too much when I say, "There's a new sculpture display at Getty. It belongs to a collection that's already had several pieces disappear. I think we should start there."

Mantis has pulled up a hologram from a gadget on his wrist and he's scrolling through it.

"Too late," Mantis says. "It was stolen early this morning."