Windstorm (sampler)

Chapter 7

Three wards later, we were in.

I waited in the corridor while Cian temporarily defused the minor barriers inside the house so I could roam around freely. When that was done, the Fae leaned against the doorframe separating the hallway from the dining room and kitchen area. He crossed his hands, his otherworldly purple gaze meeting mine.

"Any personal effects Riordan had would be in his office." He motioned to the door opposite him. "Whoever came back with his heart and searched the place had been in every room, but I haven't found any traces of them aside from the broken wards."

Which didn't mean that I couldn't.

Though briefly touching objects wasn't enough to leave an imprint under normal circumstances, intense emotion and tense situations had the tendency to seep into the items like a humid winter chill. All I needed was one glimpse, and I would have the killer, give his description to Cian, and walk away, hopefully with enough time to spare to enjoy the weekend. Sounded like a plan to me.

I narrowed my eyes at the closed office door and sighed. "Might as well make yourself comfortable. This may take a while."

Cian kept standing right where he was, so I shrugged and headed into the study.

The room was fairly small, not unusual for modernized rural houses that normally had no need for such a space; yet it wasn't crammed as I had half expected it would be. I stepped over the threshold.

The basic, sapwood furniture spread around the room made my antique-loving heart cringe, but I reminded myself that I wasn't here for that. And not just from a collector's point of view.

Somehow, any object heavier than what a human could carry comfortably in their hands didn't possess the same memory core as their lighter brethren. Regardless of how well loved or personal they were, they stored only emotions, not images, so the furniture wasn't of any use to me right now.

I padded straight to the desk sitting by the window and allowed the murmurs to wash over me. They were sparse, indicating that there were few things here that had actually mattered to Riordan, but at least I could hear them clearly. The perp—or perps, which seemed more likely, given the skills needed to pull off a job like this—hadn't taken the time to mess with the objects' memories.

I tried to convince myself that they had simply been careless, but the unpleasant sensation in my gut, the same one echoed by my magic, whispered of another reason.

Stealth.

It was more than plausible the objects had been left alone because they weren't silent witnesses.

I chewed on my lower lip.

Normally, I would be convinced there wasn't a chance in all the realms to sneak by all the observant items, but with what I'd seen so far, I couldn't discard even the most unlikely scenario.

Since I wouldn't know for sure until I tried, I willed my mind to drop the speculations and focus on the murmurs instead. Those coming from a pocket watch resting on the edge of the desk were the loudest of them all, so I reached for it first, already inviting the images to form in front of my eyes.

Male laughter washed over my senses, and I actually did a double take just to make sure the vision wasn't messing with me in some fucked-up way.

Because the laughter—the laughter belonged to Cian.

As stunned as I was, I could do nothing but drink in the visual. The Fae actually seemed...happy. The whites of his teeth, as well as the sharp incisors, were flashing, the corners of his eyes crinkled as he looked at his brother. He leaned closer, put one hand on Riordan's shoulder, then brought him into an embrace.