Page 20 of Paris and the Reaper

Paris pushed off the counter, arms spread wide. “But I’m the idiot son. Everyone knows I’m worthless. My own father tried to sacrifice me. Why don’t they just take it? They can’t seriously think I’m a threat.”

“A second ago you implied you weren’t worthless,” Mac said as he peered at him with shrewd investigator’s eyes. “That you have some sway over the people in your father’s organization. Someone out there”—he pointed at the window, at the worldoutside their bubble—“will also want to play that angle. And not for Nature’s cause.”

“You are the heir,” Liam said. “You are target number one for those people trying to climb to the top.”

“I can give you a list,” Paris said, approaching the table. “Set up a meet.” Mac opened his mouth to no doubt object, and Paris held up a hand, pleading his case. “They’re not all bad people. Vet them first if you need to. You’ll find out my father had a knee to their necks too.”

“I can take the idea back to her and Adam,” Liam said. “See if it’s something they’ll entertain.”

Paris didn’t know whoherwas, but she wasn’t the one he needed to convince right now. He circled the table and kneeled beside Mac. “Whatever we’re in the middle of didn’t end with my father’s death. We’ve got the Rift anniversary, Samhain too, and possibly solstice.” He laid a hand on Mac’s knee and waited for him to lay his own over it. “You asked me to help you. Let me.”

ELEVEN

“Should you be here?”Paris asked as he dotted sea foam onto the sandy shore he’d spent all morning painting. It had been two days since his outing to the coast, and as much as he loved the earthy forest and colorful wildflowers he’d plucked from the meadow, he missed the water more. He’d needed to see it today, even if only on the cabin walls.

Mac’s furious pen strokes at the table behind him stopped. “What?”

“I get the sense you’re kind of a big deal.” He lowered his brush and glanced over his shoulder. “Should you be here babysitting me and working this case when there’s clearly bigger things going on?”

“You’re kind of a big deal too,” Mac said with a wry grin.

Paris couldn’t decide whether to paint him with that crooked smile, the one that reminded him of the raven, or with the soft smile that Paris had woken up to in Encinal, the same one that would flit across Mac’s face in the split second before he fell asleep.

Paris turned back to his mural. “Yeah, for being a sitting duck.” And because he felt on the edge of hilarity and insanity,restless to the point of ridiculous, he swiped his brush through the yellow paint and added a rubber ducky on top of the breakers. “I’m just out here in the woods, painting pretty pictures and making you listen to music you probably don’t even like.” The quiet had been a peaceful respite the first few days here, but he was used to constant comings and goings, the sounds of the city, and the crashing waves below his condo. He’d cracked yesterday and asked Mac if one of his devices had enough juice to stream his favorite jazz channel. It had also been the music playing right before he’d been taken by the giant. He thought maybe it would jog his subconscious. Would help him put some of the channeling techniques he’d been working on with the witches to good use. No such luck. “I haven’t even had another dream.”

“One, I like the music. Two, finding Icarus was a cold case you helped solve.”

“Not on purpose,” Paris said as he gave the ducky two beady, black eyes and an orange beak.

“You still did. Three, we’re following up on your list of potential informants in your father’s organization. And four, as to the case we’ve been working, we’ve identified ten missing persons who may be connected to the giant who took you.”

He tossed aside his brush and wiped his hands on the sweats he’d sacrificed to the paint gods days ago. “But we still don’t know who or where he is.” He slid into the chair beside Mac and gestured at the spread folders. “Or where all these poor people are buried.”

“If they’re buried at all. The vampire in your dream was eviscerated. The altar you were on was incinerated. You would have been ash if we hadn’t rescued you.”

“So there was nothing else in the area? No clues, no souls, no other evidence of the mystic or mundane?”

“Nothing. Just you and your dreams.”

Propping his elbows on the table, Paris scrubbed his hands over his face and groaned. “Make it make sense, Mac.”

“Okay, let’s start from the top,” he said, and Paris was glad his hands were still over his face. They muffled his chuckle at the very detective-like opener. “He was a giant,” Mac continued. “Going by your dreams and my case files, he hunted from Portola all the way up to Talahalusi. He and the three other giants we know of in that range are allied with Chaos, and history indicates they are most active in the run-up to Samhain, when they make a coordinated offering in an attempt to open the veil and bring Chaos all the way through.”

Paris shivered. “It was there that night. The darkness had already started to push through over the altar.”

“Meaning the veil is particularly weak there.”

“In the Canyon Lands? No shit, Mac, I could’ve told you that, and I’m just a human.”

Mac’s answering laugh was cut short by some realization, his brows snapping together as he yanked the files closer. “We know he needs a human to channel the souls through for his offering.” He tossed aside three folders, reducing the number to seven. “These are the missing humans.” After a flurry of keystrokes on his laptop, a map appeared, seven dots stretching from Talahalusi to Yerba Buena to Portola. “And where each lived when they were taken.”

“Can you add dates?” Paris asked. “Each time they were taken. And add mine.” The earlier deduction about the giant hunting and toying with his victims had significantly narrowed their pool. “Color them by year. I need the painting to come together.”

And it did, Paris recognizing the pattern. “He hunts a few years in one place, then moves,” he said. He pointed at the cluster in the south. “Lola and two others in Portola three to five years ago.” Then to the group up north. “Two potential victims inTalahalusi seven to ten years ago.” Then to his home. “Three in YB the last two years.”

“But we don’t know for certain that’s the only place he’s hunting,” Mac said. “We rarely have more than one per year in my files, and we know the giants make sacrifices all through the month.”

“But if the pattern holds,” Paris argued, “he’s in YB this October. He took me from YB.”

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