Page 36 of The Shadowed Oracle
Ingrid left it. She didn’t need more on the subject of powers, anyway. Her imagination had run wild and she preferred it at that juncture to reality. Picturing herself washing away every last Wrane with a snap of her fingers had been the only soothing part of any of this.
And as for Makkar, she’d quickly drawn a picture of him in her mind, too. She’d known plenty of men like that. Men with far less influence and power, but still, conceited enough to think they were owed everything they ever wanted.
“He won’t stop. Ever. Will he,” she said. It wasn’t a question. Dean had said as much, but it was now sinking in fully for her. “Those murders, here, they’re just a fraction of the violence to come.”
“We can only guess,” Dean said. “But the toll is likely somewhere in the thousands across North America alone.”
“Thousands?” Ingrid repeated it under her breath. There was no way to quantify that number in her head. How many people had she met in her lifetime? And how many of them could she remember by name? “And the government, the FBI, have they caught on to the connection?”
“Yes,” Dean said simply. “You met with just the one agent, but there are more here. All investigating the same thing, just not willing to accept that the unexplainable really isunexplainable. They’re helpless without the aid of someone who knows about Ealis.”
“You mean like you and your team?” Ingrid asked. “The one that was out there hiding in the park today?”
“Yes.” Dean answered quickly, proudly. “You’ll meet them very soon. If you want to, that is?”
“All up to me, right?” Ingrid nearly laughed. “Like I’m just going to go back to bartending after today?”
Dean’s eyebrows dropped. “Wait, weren’t you just about to leave? You’re not telling me that was more acting, are you?”
Ingrid looked to the door, then sheepishly back at Dean. “That might’ve been a little brash of me.”
“Well, just so you know,” Dean lifted his hands, shrugging innocently. “I’m not stopping you. You can leave whenever you want.”
“Sure. Just head back home. Get a good night’s sleep. Then right back to work tomorrow. How’s it going boss? My weekend? No, a little strange actually. I’m being hunted by creatures from another world and I’m not a human being. But anyway, did we get the new cocktail menus printed yet?”
Dean absorbed the string of jokes, paused, then burst into laughter. Ingrid joined him, shaking her head playfully. Communicating with just their eyes, their shrugs and subtle movements, they settled into an easy silence. For a moment, they were just two people. Two people around the same age who could relate to one another more than either had thought possible in a long, long time.
After a minute, feeling the ache in her chest from that fall in her hallway, Ingrid said, “I need to get some sleep.”
Dean nodded coyly, standing and leading Ingrid to the door. He opened it for her and walked a good distance behind as they snaked their way back to the surface level of the house.
The naked walls seemed to echo every sound as they made their way to the master bedroom.
“I’ll be on the couch,” Dean said, leaning against the doorframe. “Just in case you need to find me.”
“I won’t.”
“Easy there, I wasn’t being crude.” He handed her a comically large keyring, jangling with every key to the house. “The place is all yours.”
“If I can guess which key is which, you mean. This is a mess.”
Dean lifted the clanging set and directed her attention to the small labels on each key. “Right here, smart ass. Oh, and I probably don’t need to explainwhythere are locks on everything, right?”
“I worked that out for myself. It’s like an escape room in here,” Ingrid smirked, taking stock of all the glinting metal and fortified thick wood. “Speaking of, there aren’t traps set around the house, are there? Not gonna fall into a spiked pit while getting some water from the kitchen, am I?”
Dean kept a straight face, “No traps.”
“Good. That should do it then.” She clapped her hands together, trying desperately not to look at him, then closed the door and locked it without a word. She could almost feel Dean winding up some sarcastic remark when she reversed the process she’d just gone through, whipping the door back open to stare at him with tired, glossy eyes.
“Okay,” she said. “It works.”
“Fully functional locks,” Dean’s tone went stale, almost bored. “No ulterior motives. No traps. And adequate protection. Just like I promised.” He pulled out another viseer stone from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.
“What am I supposed to do with this? You never taught me how?—”
“Put it under your pillow,” Dean interjected.
His eyes drifted downward, searching her slowly. She had a sudden flash of self-consciousness when he stopped his examination at her waistband, where the gun now resided.
