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He’d promised he’d be there and back again, and I trusted he meant it. We’d had weird timing where I’d been on a tedious job that’d taken a full week, his family had a monster hunt they desperately needed him on. I’d sent him to Scotland with a kiss and a promise to not do any other job until he returned. Lachlan promised he’d be back as soon as the beastie was dead. Neither of us liked the temporary separation but life happened. I felt spoiled by having him now. Really, having now experienced such support, I questioned how I’d ever functioned without him.

Besides the professional aspect, though, I just missed him. I missed couch cuddles, and sexy shower times, and hearing him hum in the mornings as he made coffee. I sipped my sake and felt briefly sorry for myself. I knew he was fighting something crazy, and I was worried about him, too.

Maybe I should have gone anyway. I’d finished early. Would I even be able to get there in time to make any sort of difference, though?

My phone rang and I damn near dropped the sake as I scrambled for it. Oh, damn, it wasn’t Lachlan.

Huh, it was Donovan? Um. Something wasn’t on fire, I hope?

I barely knew Donovan Havili, in truth. I knew his brother Brandon far better, having done that case with him, and of course now being a mentor along with Mack for Gwyn. Still, I’d talked with Donovan over the phone once or twice, mostly about Gwyn, and knew him to be a gentle giant much like Brandon. I’d only heard of his husband, Jonathan, but had been quite curious to meet the man. I’d heard many good things, but also some crazy shit like him killing electronics just by staring at them wrong. How did psychic power even burn that hot?

Hopefully my friends weren’t in trouble. I swiped accept and put it on speaker. “Hi, Donovan.”

“Seiji, hi, listen, I need you in Nashville, and I need you here now.”

The urgency in his tone had me putting my plate of snacks hastily down on the coffee table and shifting to the edge, ready to spring up to my feet. “What’s the situation?”

“I’m texting you a few pictures and one video, as I don’t even know how to describe the situation. But just know, Jon’s freaking out over here, and he’s insisting the only psychic he knows who can handle this is you.”

This was getting worse by the second. Just what the hell were they handling over there? I saw text notifications pop up as pictures came in, and tapped on it.

What I didn’t expect to see was a pool of dark reddish liquid swirling in a silver basin, connected to nearly a hundred mini-portals glowing with energy. I kept staring, my rational mind trying to dismiss what I saw, as it was incredible but also absurd. The amount of psychic energy it would even take to make that many small portals was insane! Not to mention fueling them!

Horror climbed up my throat, constricting it, and queasy knots sprouted in my stomach.

This was very, very bad.

I raced for my bedroom in the back of the house and mentally planned out how fast I could get to Tennessee.

“Donovan, I am on my way, lock that room down, no one go in there or touch it. I fear that even getting too close will suck you into that energy drain and you’ll be dead in minutes.”

“Fuck, seriously? Okay, everyone out, out, no one’s going within ten feet of this place. Seiji, Jon wants to talk to you.”

“I want to talk to him, for that matter, get him on the line.”

There was a bit of scuffle over there before another, lighter tenor greeted me.

“Hi, Seiji, Jon speaking.”

“Hi, nice to finally meet you, what the hell are you seeing?” Reader that he was, he’d be able to see the psychic energy around the pool, but I didn’t know what else, if anything, he could see. I was desperate for information right now. I needed to know what the setup was or even a guess, just to know what tools to bring with me.

“Listen, I don’t know what that setup is, I can’t even guess the purpose, but the thing scaring the willies out of me is that I can read the energy of that pool.”

I paused right in the middle of hauling my favorite suitcase out of the closet. “What do you mean you can read the energy?”

“Just like if a living person stood in front of me. I can read the energy. I have a very bad feeling the blood is connected to living people. It’s the only feasible reason I should be able to read it. I can’t read the deceased, I can barely see the outline of a spirit.”

“Fuck,” I breathed as full realization swept over me. No wonder he was freaking out, hell, I was going to join him. “That pool’s tied to living sacrifices, that’s what you’re saying.”

“I’m terrified I’m right. But like that strand over there, sixties, female, and from this area. I can’t read shit like that unless it’s tied to a living person’s psyche.”

“How much can you read?”

“Not a lot of detail. It’s all mixing up with other people, so it makes it hard to analyze and separate people. But I can read an overview of sorts.”

Which he shouldn’t be able to do at all and wow, I was going to really hate this case.

Urgently, he pushed, “There’s also a mummified corpse laying next to the…altar for lack of a better word, so I think you’re right on the money about it being able to kill on contact. We haven’t dared get close enough to even process the corpse.”