The Mirror Prince Read Free Page B

Nighthawk wasn’t in his apartment . . . She punched another number into the phone, this one with only eleven digits. Malcolm’s machine answered immediately, but the outgoing message was not in the voice she expected.
     
    “If you’re trying to contact Dr. Malcolm Jones,” a gentle contralto instructed, “please call Detective Sergeant Sonia Rascon at—” followed by a number. Cassandra dropped the handset back into the cradle and drummed her fingers on the varnished tabletop. It looked as though the Old One was to be trusted after all. She stood up. It was dinnertime in Seattle, and Seattle she could reach without a crossroads.
     
    She turned again to the chest behind her worktable, this time opening it and unfolding the layers of thick silk that covered her gra’if weapons. She hesitated over the swords but finally settled on a poniard, easy to conceal if she had to, and a pair of finely mailed gloves with attached gauntlets which she pulled on her hands. She had a leather suit jacket hanging on the back of her door, and she slipped it on before checking her reflection in the window glass. It was dark enough outside for the window to act as a mirror. She nodded. With the jacket on, her gauntlets could pass at a glance for ordinary driving gloves.
     
    She stood, closed her eyes, and thought about Malcolm Jones’ front door. In her mind was the image of her room. She began to erase the image, piece by piece. Subtracted the oak captain’s chair, the carved chest. The little crystal paperweight in the shape of a dragon with its paw on a sword. The fountain pen leaking ink onto a pad of paper on the table. Subtracted the pad of paper and the table. The hand-knotted wool carpet under her feet, the oak floor under the carpet. Into the image she added heavy granite flagstones, neat short grass carefully edged, a prizewinning rosebush still wrapped in burlap for the winter. The wooden raised-panel door painted a bright raspberry, with its egg-shaped agate knocker.
     
    The air CRACKED, the temperature dropped, and the wind blew raindrops into Cassandra’s face. She shook her hair back out of her eyes. It was early evening in Seattle, but even with the overcast sky and the rain, it was much too dark. She stepped back and frowned when she saw there were no lights on in the house. Malcolm and Jenny wouldn’t have taken the children out on a school night.
     
    Cassandra reached for the doorbell and stopped. The luminescence given off by her gra’if -mailed hand was faint, but it was enough to show her the padlock on the door, the crime scene tape, and the police seal.
     
    Once she’d twisted off the padlock, the seal presented no problem. She stepped into the foyer and held up her hands, waiting as her pupils adjusted to the soft glow. Even for her eyes there was not enough light to show color, but Cassandra didn’t need light to tell her what color the dark areas on the floor and the spray of splashes up the staircase really were. Blood somehow manages to have color, she thought, even when there is no light, and even when it’s hours old.
     
    The Rider known to humans as Malcolm Jones was a Singer, more interested in tales and histories than blades, but he had stayed alive without difficulty for the whole of the Banishment, just over a thousand years. He was not slow or unskilled by human standards, and it could not have been humans who had killed him.
     
    Of the three Wardens who guarded the Exile, only Nighthawk had started the Banishment as a Warrior, and he had spent much of their early years training the younger Wardens until Cassandra and Malcolm had met his standards. Cassandra had loved the art more than Malcolm, but she wasn’t in Nighthawk’s league and never would be. But he hadn’t come himself; he’d sent the Troll. Was it possible that their time here in the Shadowlands had slowed him? Cassandra shook her head, the cold lump that had been in her stomach since the Troll came into her office