Shifting Loyalties

Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Marina occupied a reasonably large two-story home in an affluent suburban neighborhood north of town, along with her husband and a couple of lazy house cats named Xander and Willow. I knew the cats from the old days before I made the dumbest decision of my life and pushed Marina away. The husband, obviously, was new.

His name was Richard Delgado. He was a general contractor who did pretty well for himself renovating old houses. For a while he had a show on one of those cable channels, you know the ones, where they sneak into somebody’s ramshackle old digs and give it a makeover and then surprise them at the end. I met him once, couple years back. I had a few too many drinks and crashed Marina’s engagement party. That didn’t end well. I never got to know the guy. I only knew he was rich and good looking and bought Marina a beamer and a ring with a rock the size of a car battery and I really wanted to punch him in the face.

The cats were good people though. I always liked them.

I drove my shitty hatchback into the neighborhood. Passed Marina’s house. Down another block. Turned and parked on a side street. With the engine still running, I poked my attention into the Tapestry of Destiny to see what was what. Not that I didn’t trust Marina. It was just habit, all those years on the run.

Something wasn’t right. Nobody was home.

I got out of the car and limped my way back up the street to Marina’s place. I scanned backward a ways on its place thread. It had been empty all morning. And most of the previous night. As I stepped up on the porch, I could see Xander sitting in the window like a big, round throw-pillow with eyes. He blinked at me, but otherwise showed no reaction. The birdbath in the front yard was far more interesting to him than I was.

I scanned further back while ringing the doorbell. Marina had been there the previous night. Probably emailed me from there, around nine o’clock. It wouldn’t have worried me much, except that her thread didn’t spin off to another place. It didn’t go anywhere. It just ended. Around midnight.

I tried not to panic. There were other reasons Marina’s thread might have disappeared. Besides the obvious answer that she had died. She could have had a mirror spell cast on her. Not likely. She was a shifter, so she could have transformed into her animal state. Also not likely, with the full moon still a week away. But no other threads shared the place thread at the time Marina’s thread ended. She was alone when her thread stopped. That was good. Probably not a violent end.

The back door was just as locked as the front door, but residential-grade locks are pathetically easy to pick. They had a security system, but it wasn't activated. I didn't see any evidence of forced entry. As I shut the door behind me, Willow plopped down off the kitchen counter and walked a few figure eights around my calves, rubbing the length of her body against my jeans.

With nothing interesting to see in the Tapestry, I opened my inner eye onto the astral plane. I picked my way through the house. The dishes in the dishwasher were clean. No indication of a physical struggle. The place wasn't turned over. Typical astral glow on most of the objects, from frequent human use. The conspicuous things were the ones that were not there. Marina was gone. And there was no sign of the imbued talisman I knew she had to keep. The talisman that contained the location of the key that Marina guarded. Maybe she didn’t keep it at home. Maybe she took it with her. Nothing to explain why she had left in the first place.

The one unusual thing that was there, was not physical. Upstairs, in the master bedroom. A huge astral splash covered an area between the king four-poster bed and the open bedroom window. Some seriously powerful mojo had been worked in this spot last night. That explained why her thread disappeared from the Tapestry.

There was a pink suitcase in the closet. No other luggage. A dresser with some cologne, but no watch, no wedding band, no razor. Next to that, a make-up mirror, with the full battle array of feminine magic powders and elixirs on the table in front of it. There didn’t appear to be anything missing. In the his-and-hers closets, hers was packed to the brim. His had clothes, but with a gap filled by several empty hangers.

I figured the husband had packed for a trip. Marina had not packed so much as a weekend bag. But of course, she wouldn’t need clothes or make-up where she had gone.

After my inspection, I had a pretty good idea what had happened to Marina. I didn’t have a clue why. I made my way back downstairs. Opened the sliding glass door onto the patio. Stepped down into the yard where I could get a look at that open upstairs window from the outside. I squinted against the noon sun.

I heard a man’s voice, very close.

"I told you if you ever came near my wife again, I would kill you."

The statement was followed by the distinct cha-chunk of a pump-action shotgun behind me.