Guardian (The Protectors Series) Read Free Page B

you’re interested, give me a call. Word’s out about the wounds somehow, so I’ve set up a press conference for late this afternoon. You can get an idea what they’re talking about on the Oracle website.”
    Weird wounds and strange toxins sounded ghoul-related. Stefan turned to the computer and pulled up the Wayfarer weekly newspaper’s site. The murder was splashed across the home page. The victim, Lucinda Baldwin, was an elderly woman, a retired music teacher, but the sheriff’s department was withholding other details.
    Of course they were, or at least they were trying to, but there was a reference to a purple-eyed suspect and a description of deep, curving wounds, as though made from talons.
    Cold prickles rose on Stefan’s neck. Purple eyes, as in Void demon host? Talons, as in ghouls?
    The article said the woman had moved to Wayfarer from Essex, North Carolina. Essex. Lucinda Baldwin . No wonder the name seemed familiar. She’d been Camellia Wray’s music teacher, and Essex was Cami’s hometown.
    Memory slammed into him like a wrecking ball. It shouldn’t have, not after nine years, but he was exhausted, with no reserves to maintain the walls he’d put up around the old wound.
    He could still see Cami’s face, pale in its frame of dark brown hair, her gray eyes wide with hurt as she accused him of cheating on her.
    After they’d dated a couple of months, he’d realized he loved her, so he’d taken the first step of the Revelation Protocols, the steps mandated for introducing a Mundane to the idea magic was real. She’d reacted badly, so he’d backed off, trying to think of a new angle to try again and falling more in love every day. But then she’d caught him in a lie about what he did on the weekends. Driven by heart-stopping fear that he’d lose her, he’d taken a stupid leap.
    “Marry me,” he’d said in desperation, “and I’ll tell you where I go on those missing weekends.” If she would commit to him, he’d thought, maybe he could trust her with the truth. Maybe she loved him enough not to freak out if he told her he was a mage, that he went away on his off weekends to study magical healing techniques with a mage physician.
    “Tell me,” she’d flung back at him, “and maybe I’ll marry you.”
    Maybe hadn’t been enough for him to risk exposing the mages’ secrets. That would endanger both magekind and Cami. Instead he’d kept his silence and lost her.
    Stefan frowned at the screen. He’d been over her for years, of course, but he still remembered that kick in the gut she’d delivered, first by doubting him and then by leaving him.
    So what if this woman had taught Cami Wray? Cami had nothing to do with this case. Even if she came to the funeral—likely with a husband and kids in tow—he wouldn’t see her because he wouldn’t attend. Thinking of her shouldn’t make his stomach clench. That had to be tension from the hard day he’d had, one that was far from over.
    The picture accompanying the article showed the victim’s bright eyes and kind smile. She’d lived a quiet, ordinary life but died with a weird toxin in her blood, a toxin whose nature Stefan could probably guess without seeing the labs. A toxin he needed to sample, one no Mundane doctor could properly identify.
    If he was right, Dan Burton and his crew would be up against a foe they couldn’t hope to beat. Stefan picked up the phone.
    *  *  *
    “Thanks for clearing me so quickly, Sheriff Burton.” Considering the suspicion many local cops nursed toward any and all Feds, Mel wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d sat on her request. Instead, here she was, midafternoon of the very next day. “I appreciate your bringing me in on this.”
    They stood beside the corner desk he’d assigned to her, the only uncluttered one of eight in the room. With deputies serving as courtroom bailiffs, patrolling the county, and managing the press out front, she and the sheriff had the room to themselves except for