Hidden Goddess (Shadows of the Immortals Book 4) Page 3

  I snorted. *Don’t let him catch you calling him a dog.* Werewolves got particularly sensitive about that.

  I waved to her as I came out of the café, and she yawned ostentatiously. Maybe someone should have got more sleep last night. But if her lost sleep and its cause made her this chipper, I was all for it. This cocky Syl who drank and flirted in human form, who could go all night and still be up the next morning delicately grooming herself as the smuggest cat in creation—this was the Syl I’d been missing. It was good to see her again. I was inclined to approve of her new best friend, even if he was louder in the sack than I would have preferred. If he hung around for long, I’d have to invest in some earplugs to wear to bed.

  As I crossed the street towards the bookshop, a man came out of Tegan’s hair salon next door sporting a neatly trimmed white beard. It wasn’t until he smiled at me that I realised it was Winston.

  I stopped on the pavement, taking in the new, shorter haircut, the grey trousers with the neat crease pressed into them, and the pale green shirt. “Wow, look at you! I didn’t recognise you.”

  He looked down at his shiny new shoes self-consciously. “I thought I should look less conspicuous when I go out today with Rosie looking at houses. You were right about how much my temple robes made me stand out.” He sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve never been much good at subterfuge.”

  “That’s not actually a bad thing,” I pointed out. “But no one would ever guess now that you’re a priest.”

  He beamed. “The tiger lady told me where to go to get the clothes, and what to buy. She’s been very helpful.”

  That figured. Tegan loved organising other people. “And she cut your hair, too. You’ve had a busy morning.”

  He gestured back at the hair salon. “I was just showing her what I’d bought.”

  Tegan waved to us through the window. I bet he’d been under instructions to come back for inspection, so she could make sure his choices were up to her standards. It was a wonder she hadn’t insisted on going shopping with him, too. Probably only the fact that the salon was crammed with people this morning saved him, otherwise she would have. Winston nodded gravely at her. Perhaps waving was beneath the dignity of a priest. She gave him a cheerful thumbs up before she went back to cutting hair.

  He walked a few paces with me before I stopped at the bookshop door and pulled out my keys.

  “I’m going in here. This is where I work.”

  Winston looked up at the windows of my apartment, and nodded approvingly. “That’s very convenient. Is that your cat? She has a good view from up there—she can see the whole street.”

  I paused, my hand halfway to the door. The keys jingled once then fell still. “It’s Syl, actually. She’s a cat shifter.” She has a good view from up there. My heart began to beat a little faster.

  I turned and looked up and down the street with new eyes. She can see the whole street. The other shops were like the bookshop—they all had rooms of some kind above them. There was an accountant’s office over the café across the road. Tegan had a yoga studio above her salon. The pub had accommodation for travellers in its upstairs rooms. Others used their upstairs rooms as additional storage for the businesses below, and a couple were apartments like ours. All of them had windows that overlooked the street, giving anyone looking out a good view of what was happening below.

  What if Becky had been looking out of one of those windows when the shit with Anders went down? I cast my mind back, trying to picture the street—but it was useless. I’d been far too occupied with the fireballs flying back and forth, and the threat of impending death, to pay any attention to what was happening above our heads.

  Would Hades have noticed her? He said he’d wiped the memory of the battle from the minds of everyone who’d seen, but what if he’d missed one? People would have rushed to their windows as soon as they heard the noise of the crash, but if Becky was a mole for the shadow shapers, she would have taken extra care not to be seen, once she realised what she was witnessing. It would have been a dream come true for her, to find the Lord of the Underworld announcing his identity on the open street.

  And next morning, she would have packed up her life in Berkley’s Bay and hurried back to her masters to report what she’d discovered. Maybe that night in the pub with Rosie, hearing about the sudden inexplicable departure of one of the local schoolteachers, Hades had realised his mistake. But why hadn’t he sought refuge in the underworld when he realised his cover was blown? No shadow shaper could reach him there. So where had he gone?

  “Yes,” I said, glancing up at Syl, “she does. A really good view.”

  “I must go,” Winston said. “Your friend Rosie is picking me up at eleven.”

  “Good luck with the house hunting.”

  And when she’d reported Hades’ whereabouts to her masters, what had they done? Whatever they usually did when they found a god, I supposed. It always seemed to work, whatever their method was. Gods disappeared and, if the shadow shapers got their hands on their avatars, gods died. Wherever he’d gone, they’d found him, and the best I could hope for was that he was indeed a captive. Because if he wasn’t, he must already be dead.

  3

  Little Mireille was crying as I came up the stairs to the apartment. Her newborn wail sounded more like a kitten crying than a human, though Joe assured me that in a couple of months she’d be much louder. He’d been through it all before with Cody.

  Holly was a first-time mum, but she was a pretty laid-back person, and motherhood hadn’t changed that. “Come in, it’s open!” she called when I knocked, so I let myself into the tiny apartment, a mirror image of our own. In a moment, she appeared, Mireille over her shoulder. She was rubbing the baby’s back with firm strokes.

  “How are you doing?” I asked.

  “We’re fine, aren’t we, Miri?” She kissed the top of the downy little head, ignoring the noise. A small towel was draped over her shoulder. “Just need to get a burp out.”

  “Do you need anything?” How could she appear so calm with the baby wailing in her ear like that?

  “More sleep.” She did look tired. Her brown hair was pulled up into a messy knot on the top of her head, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She was a tiny thing, even more delicate than Syl; it was hard to believe she could turn into a werewolf. But appearances were deceptive—she was small, but tough. Even though she only came up to Joe’s shoulder, there was no doubt who was the dominant partner in their marriage. “Always need more sleep. But everything else is under control—everyone’s been so helpful. Have a seat.”

  I sat down, but she continued to pace, jiggling the baby as she patted her tiny back.

  “Norma’s been bringing meals every day, which is very sweet, but now we have enough food here to feed an army. And it’s not as though I can’t cook—I’m not an invalid, I just had a baby. Women have been doing it for centuries.”

  Most of them hadn’t had such a traumatic birth experience as Holly had, but I didn’t bring that up. I could understand why Norma might be overcompensating.

  Holly’s efforts suddenly bore fruit as Mireille burped, and I discovered what the towel was for as a rush of partly digested milk came with the burp. Already expert, Holly wiped it all up with the towel, dumped the towel in the bathroom, then came to sit down with a baby who was now magically quiet in her arms.

  “That’s typical pack behaviour, though, isn’t it, for everyone to rally around?” I asked. Holly’s parents-in-law were the alphas of the local pack. “You could hardly expect Norma not to get a little excited when it’s her own granddaughter.”

  Holly rolled her eyes. “This child already has more toys than I can fit in her toy basket, and she’s only two weeks old. Don’t you, darling? Grandma is spoiling you!”

  Mireille gazed up at her, drawn to the sound of her mother’s voice, and Holly and I both stared at her for a long moment. There was something so compelling about babies. Such tiny perfection. As I watched, her eyes bega
n to drift closed, and Holly sighed.

  “She doesn’t stay awake long. I suppose I should enjoy it while it lasts, but I kind of wish I had something to do while she slept.”

  “Don’t you sleep yourself?” It seemed like the ideal way to catch up on all that lost sleep.

  “I can’t sleep in the daytime, unfortunately. Never have been able to. This place is so small it doesn’t take much effort to keep it tidy, which leaves me with a lot of time on my hands. There’s only so much daytime TV a girl can stomach. I’d love to get out and see people, but she sleeps so much, and I don’t want to drag her all over town.” She smiled at me. “Anyway, it’s good to see you—it’s nice to have someone to talk to. What’s happening?”

  “I was just wondering if you knew where Becky lived.” She’d been a friend of Holly’s—or, at least, Holly had been a friend of hers. Who knew whether Becky had really liked her shifter “friends” or if that had been part of her charade. I’d last seen her at Holly’s baby shower.

  “Becky Campbell? In Cranston Street. Tiny house with a big jacaranda in the front yard. Why?”

  “It’s starting to look as though she had something to do with Hades’ disappearance.”

  “Seriously? She was a primary school teacher. And a human.” Shifters had a hard time seeing humans as any kind of threat.

  “I think she was secretly working with the shadow shapers. I’d like to have a look at her house, see if she left any hints behind in her rush to get out of town.”

  Holly looked doubtful. To be honest, I was doubtful myself. I wasn’t expecting to find a signed confession, or a map of their hideout or anything, but I didn’t know what else to do. “The police already looked at her place.”

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t a crime scene. They didn’t go over it with a fine-tooth comb, they were just looking for her, making sure she wasn’t dead on the floor or anything. Rosie told me all her personal stuff was gone, so they were satisfied that she was just skipping out on her landlord and left it at that.”

  “If all her personal stuff is gone, what are you hoping to find?”

  “I don’t know.” I hated feeling helpless. “But I figure it won’t hurt to look. There could be something.”

  The door opened and Lucas wandered in, his rumpled hair and bleary eyes making it obvious he’d just crawled out of bed. “You guys have no food in your fridge,” he said to me in a plaintive tone, as if I’d emptied the fridge just to torture him.

  “There’s plenty in ours,” Holly said. “Your mother’s been going crazy.”

  He helped himself to a hunk of cold steak and stood in the middle of the kitchen wolfing it down. Eww. Cold steak—and it was practically raw in the middle. As soon as it was gone, he grabbed half a lasagne and a spoon, and came and plonked himself down on the end of the couch.

  “Heard you talking,” he said. “You planning on breaking in?”

  I grinned. I liked the casual way he said it, as if breaking in somewhere was no big deal. “Just for a quick look.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  I indicated the enormous bulk of him, sprawled on the lounge. “You’re great for breaking down doors, but kind of conspicuous for more subtle work.”

  He gave me a wounded look. “I can do inconspicuous. What if you need back-up?”

  “It’s just a little break and enter, and a quick look around. I won’t need back-up.”

  “If you want to be quick, it would be faster with more than one person,” he said through a mouthful of lasagne. His hair stuck up like a rooster’s comb at the back. “It’ll take longer to search the whole house by yourself.”

  “And you probably need a lookout,” Syl added from the doorway. She came in and perched herself next to him, on the arm of the lounge, snagging a scrap of lasagne from his dish and popping it delicately into her mouth. “I can help with that.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Guys, burglary is not a team sport. I’d be better off on my own.”

  Syl frowned at me as she tried to smooth Lucas’s hair into shape. “I thought you’d gotten over that god complex of yours. You don’t have to do everything on your own. We’re your friends. Helping each other is what friends do.”

  She seemed to think that ended the discussion. When even Holly agreed it was a good idea, I gave up arguing. It should be simple enough.

  ***

  The house in Cranston Street was as tiny as Holly had said. Painted a cheerful yellow, it was almost hidden behind overgrown shrubs and dwarfed by the majestic jacaranda that dominated the front yard. The garden beds were full of onion weed. Clearly, Becky had been no gardener. A For Sale sign on the front lawn said that this renovator’s dream offered two good-sized bedrooms and a sunny, north-facing backyard. Not a lot to recommend it. Hopefully the rent had been cheap, at least.

  There was no one on the street as Lucas and I left Syl in position on the low brick wall at the front of the property, ready to alert us if anyone appeared. She sat washing her little black paws in the sun as we walked up the driveway and around to the back of the house. A couple of pots on the small back porch held wilted plants. I checked under them in case someone had left a spare key, as people often did, but came up empty-handed.

  Oh, well, on to Plan B.

  “You always carry a set of lock picks with you?” Lucas asked as I crouched down and got to work on the back door.

  “No, just special occasions.”

  He watched me work for a moment, then wandered off to try all the windows along the back of the house.

  *Your new boyfriend is taking to the criminal life like a natural,* I told Syl. *Norma would be horrified if she knew.*

  *Rubbish. She thinks the sun shines out of his arse. He could rob a bank in front of her and she wouldn’t blink.*

  *Nothing moving out there?* My patient jiggling was rewarded with a click. *We’re going in.*

  *It’s all clear. Be careful.*

  Of what? It wasn’t as if Becky would have booby-trapped her rental house. With Lucas at my shoulder, I stepped inside. Though it was the middle of the day, all the blinds were drawn, so it was gloomy. We were in a small kitchen, with cupboards above and below the work area. I opened the closest one and found a neat stack of crockery. Becky must have been in a hurry to skip town.

  I moved the plates to one side and checked all around them. Lucas started on the cupboards below the sink.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Anything that might give us a clue where she came from, or where she might have gone. Letters, ticket stubs … I don’t know. Something.”

  ID from one of the human cities would have been nice. It was probably a wild goose chase, but it was better than sitting around waiting for Apollo. He could be busy sorting out the fireshapers for days, even weeks, and I couldn’t bear to do nothing in the meantime. Every moment that passed was another moment that Jake was forced to spend in Styx’s hands; another moment that Hades languished in captivity, cut off from his power.

  We soon finished in the kitchen and moved through to the first bedroom. It was tiny and completely empty—there wasn’t even a bed. I could only tell it was meant to be a bedroom because it had a small cupboard built in, with three shelves and a hanging space for clothes.

  The other bedroom was bigger, and contained a double bed. The wardrobe there was bigger, too, with sliding mirrored doors. Lucas slid the right-hand door out of the way, revealing white drawers and shelves built in. He pulled each drawer open, revealing that they were all empty.

  “Check the undersides of them, too,” I said.

  *Found anything yet?* Syl asked.

  *Nope.* Lucas’s eyes gleamed as he pulled out each drawer completely and turned them over. He was clearly enjoying himself. *Lucas is having a great time checking for secret compartments.* The bottom drawer stuck and refused to come all the way out. *Ooh, hang on, he might have found something.*

  *A secret compartment? That’s awesome!*

&n
bsp; “Don’t break it,” I cautioned Lucas.

  He tugged more gently, and wiggled the drawer on its runners. After a moment, he succeeded in lifting the drawer free, revealing a pair of black socks and a whole bunch of fluff and dust beneath it. He turned the drawer over with a crestfallen look. There was nothing odd about the bottom of it. It had just been caught on the socks. They’d probably slipped out the back of an overfull drawer and ended up trapped on the floor below it. He checked inside each sock, just in case, but there was nothing in them.

  “Damn,” said Syl. She lounged against the doorframe, arms folded. “I wanted to see a secret compartment.”

  “I thought you were watching the street in case we got company?”

  “It’s dead as a dodo out there. No one’s going to come.”

  We moved into the lounge room next, where the TV stood on top of an entertainment unit with three drawers. None of them held a thing, and the small bookcase was empty, too. Syl got down on the floor to look under the two lounges, then sat back on her heels. “There might be something in the bathroom.”

  I doubted it. Despite her hurry to leave, Becky had been careful to remove all traces of her life from this place. Furniture and kitchen utensils left no clue that I could follow.

  “I could check that shed in the back yard, too,” Lucas offered. Before I could reply, his head whipped around to stare at the front door. “Shit. We’ve got company.”

  He moved back into the kitchen as a key turned in the lock. Syl disappeared, leaving a black cat streaking for cover under the lounge, but I wasn’t quick enough. The door opened, revealing a very surprised Rosie on the doorstep.

  “Lexi? What on earth are you doing? How did you get in here?” Frowning, she stepped inside, followed by Winston, still resplendent in his new clothes. She was showing him this house? I could have kicked myself. I was losing my touch—I’d managed to steal the ring off the Ruby Adept’s finger without getting caught, and now this? It was downright embarrassing. Why hadn’t I borrowed the eyes of some of the local birds to keep watch for me, instead of relying on Syl? Curiosity may not have killed the cat, but it had sure landed me in an awkward situation.