Page 61 of Truthfinder’s Promise

19

Jensen was relieved when Meredith asked if he and the others felt like combing over every inch of her estate to look for the repository of magical items. Bored Shifters were bad enough. Bored Shifters in fragile emotional states in hostile territory were worse.

They were all gathered in the kitchen, ready to do a scavenger hunt for who-knew-what, located who-knew-where. The kitchen island held a wide array of homemade food items—okay, fine, snacks—and Hel and Dom looked a lot less irritable—fine, cranky—as they tore through them. Ren looked more irritated, probably because she was resolutely ignoring the banquet of said snacks. It included a tower of blueberry muffins, which were her favorite.

He was grateful when Hel shoved a muffin in her hand and said, “Just eat it.” Serenity grumbled but finally did.

He needed to talk to her. Clear the air. But when he’d tried, she’d refused to come out from behind the locked door of the bedroom she’d chosen, so short of breaking down a door in Meredith’s house, he hadn’t been able to force the conversation.

Meredith slapped a piece of paper down on the counter. It bore a hand-drawn map of the property on a piece of paper, complete with landmarks such as House, The Old Barn, and Greenhouse, all represented by little rectangles. “The total property is twenty-one acres. There’s an electric fence around the property line. It is functional, so touch at your own risk.”

“Any idea what we’re looking for?” Hel asked.

Meredith shrugged. “Forgotten cellar, invisible outbuilding, hidden inter-dimensional storage shed?”

“Is that last one actually a thing?” Hel asked.

“Probably not, but I wouldn’t put it past my mother to have found a demon and made a deal with it for something like that.”

“You expect us to believe you have no idea where it is?” Serenity said. “Haven’t you lived here your entire life?”

Meredith smiled sweetly. Jensen knew that smile. It was the one that preceded some awful tidbit about her life.

“Have you ever experienced pain so intense you thought your brain would melt down and ooze out of your ears?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Has that pain ever continued for so long that you couldn’t distinguish between what you were actually seeing and hearing, and visual and auditory hallucinations? Because that was my life any time I was home and my mother didn’t want me paying even accidental attention to something. So, no. I have no idea where it is.” She tapped her index finger on the map. “House, eastern half of the property, and western half. Who wants to start where?”

“Me, Dom, and Ren can take the east half.” Bless Hel and her chipper, if occasionally chaotic, nature.

“We’ll take the west,” Val said, indicating her and Random.

“Which leaves me and Jensen with the house,” Meredith said flatly. He wasn’t sure if she was unhappy about being stuck with the house, him, or both. “If anyone finds anything remotely interesting, radio the rest of us.”

She waggled her cell phone, where the walkie-talkie app she’d made them all download on their own phones was open. He’d picked up a burner cell at the store they’d ducked into earlier, and he was surprised by how much more human and normal the over-priced, sleek chunk of metal, glass, and plastic made him feel.

“If no one finds anything, we’ll all swap sectors and look again.”

“And if we don’t find it at all? What are you going to do then?” Serenity asked.

“Vacate the premises and let Julian ransack the place, I guess.”

No one had anything to say to that, so the outdoor teams left.

“Split up or go together?” Jensen asked.

“Together,” she said finally. “I don’t have any objectivity when it comes to this house. I’ve seen it all a million times, and I hate all of it.”

They started on the top level, working their way through room by room. Some of it obviously hadn’t been touched in years, if the outdated furniture and thick layering of dust were any indication. He’d developed a permanent sneeze by the fourth room, and his finger pads had a coating of grime from running them along baseboards and walls, looking for hidden doorways or levers or anything else unusual.

The longer they looked, the more he wondered why she stayed here. She had more than enough money to have a cleaning crew that regularly took care of the house, but if she hired anyone it looked like they only did the common areas and her room. She could have emptied the unused rooms and shut them up, if she just didn’t want to deal with them. She could sell the house.

Instead, she’d done this. Left everything the way it was and let it settle, like each room was a museum she didn’t want to take care of but couldn’t let go. By the time they’d worked their way down to the bottom floor, his curiosity had hit its peak. “Can I ask you something?”

She looked at him warily. “In my experience, when people ask that what they mean is they want you to not get your feelings hurt about whatever they say.”

“I don’t want to tell you how to feel. I just want to ask you something but I don’t want you to feel like you have to answer me.”

“Okay.” She blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Ask.”

“Why do you live here?”