But fate, destiny, whatever, had entrusted Isobel with the testimony of the dead. She had followed me into a morgue to try to clear my name. She hadn’t run when she’d learned the truth.
If I could trust anyone, it was Isobel.
So I told her.
Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, Magic
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sounds cliché to say it, but it was a dark and stormy night. The kind of night where the wind blows the trees sideways and tosses the ocean against the beach like it’s got a vendetta against the sand. It was Hurricane Raquel, a should-have-been-impossible tempest ravaging California.
All the sane people were hiding indoors. But my sister had still been out there somewhere. Nobody had seen her for days. Her last text message had been to Domingo, asking him to pick her up at the CVS a few blocks from her house, but she hadn’t been there when he’d arrived.
It wasn’t all that weird. Ofelia was a hurricane all her own. She had a habit of flaking out and disappearing with friends for days only to return later in a whole new outfit with her head shaved, a new tattoo, and dark rings under her eyes. That was normal for Ofelia.
But this wasn’t normal. She’d been running with new friends. Instead of coming back from outings with tattoos, she was coming back with caked-on makeup that almost entirely concealed bruises. And now the hurricane had moved in and she hadn’t talked to anyone, not even Pops.#p#分页标题#e#
So I’d tracked her. Hacked into her Find My Phone account and zeroed in on the GPS. I wasn’t working for the OPA then—I was a private dick, paying my rent by catching vanishing parolees and taking photos of cheating spouses. I didn’t have access to any of the databases that I would later on. Searching for her phone was as fancy as I could get.
It was good enough. In a few minutes, I had an answer.
Ofelia’s phone had been dropped outside the gates to Helltown.
At the time, I didn’t know what it was. The neighborhood just looked like a piece of shit to me. One big gray blight on the face of Los Angeles. It didn’t occur to me that the cars and houses were just illusions.
I looked around for her phone and couldn’t find it on the street.
When I turned around, I saw people appear out of that empty road. They shimmered when they crossed the invisible barrier. It was a group of three slender men with long black hair, all wearing leather, all pale-skinned and perfect. And they’d come out of fucking nowhere.
I ducked into an alley, heart jackhammering, and watched.
The men melted halfway into the shadows while they talked. They didn’t look human because they weren’t. Abuelita had taught me to cast magic, but this? This was new. It was the first I’d seen of this world, a place filled with demons and haunts and things that bumped in the night.
One of them was holding something.
Ofelia’s phone.
I thought about attacking them right there. Oh man, did I want to attack. They had seen my sister. They knew where to find her. But I understood instinctively that they weren’t human and that throwing a few punches wouldn’t do shit to stop them.
Before I figured out what to do, they climbed into an Audi parked on the corner and drove off.
I wouldn’t figure out what I had seen for days, not until I was working for the OPA and Fritz Friederling debriefed me. But I can tell you now that they were incubi. They’d been coming out of Helltown.
At the time, all I knew was this: They had Ofelia’s phone.
So I got in my car and followed them.
They went to a beach house in this insane hurricane. It was built up on stilts. All the sand had been washed out from under it, but the house stood strong in the storm.
One of the incubi got out of the car. Went into the house. Then the car left.
I had to climb up and break a window to follow him inside. Looked like a normal vacation home. Any kind of place you would have found on a B B website, pretty much. Generic furniture, generic wallpaper. Non-smoking signs.
But there was a glass bowl in the kitchen. That bowl was filled with needles as long as my fingers and sharper than knives.
I hadn’t known it at the time, but that was the calling card of the Silver Needles—the incubus mafia.
The man I’d followed was in the bathroom washing up. He was shirtless, covered in tattoos from his waist to his neck. There was an eagle inked on his spine. Its wings wrapped around his throat, touched his chin. Ofelia’s phone was on the sink next to him.
I slipped past him. Headed up into the attic. Not sure how I knew I’d find her there, but I did.
Ofelia was hogtied in the corner. There was a ball gag in her mouth. There was so much blood on her face and neck that I barely even recognized her.