Bound In Fire: Phoenix Shifter Paranormal Read online

  I will remember you.

  I will.

  But then the dream shifted, twisting into the long, dark halls in the cavernous underbelly of the museum. In the blink of an eye, they morphed from the nondescript drywall of the institutional hallways to something more akin to a passage underneath a castle in Game of Thrones.

  “Isobel…” Her name echoed down the darkened passage. Fear made her limbs weak but she somehow propelled herself forward.

  “Where are you, Isobel?” The voice taunted.

  She kept running, but froze as she found herself facing a blazing wall of fire.

  The boy’s face appeared within the blaze and she reached out, only to have her hand singed by the flames.

  “Izzy. I’m here. Let me help you.” His image flickered and solidified, then faded.

  Goddess. Why couldn’t she remember his name?

  She whispered it on the tip of her tongue but it fluttered away just out of reach as the fire came toward her and morphed into the shape of a great and terrible bird.

  Tangled up in the sheets, Isobel woke in a pool of sweat, her heart pounding. For a moment she lay there as the dream sputtered and faded.

  Who are you?

  But this time…this time she’d actually seen him. Maybe next time she would hear his name. Was this the accident that had taken her memory?

  These were questions that had driven her nearly insane. And now she had a few new ones. She lay there, willing her pulse to slow and thought about her friend Marlene.

  Marlene Ironsides was a witch in her own right as well as private investigator for Gibbous Moon Investigations, who specialized in cabal and coven complications. She’d met her at a museum function the year before and after some wine at the bar across the street after the exhibit was over, they’d become well acquainted. They’d met a few times for dinner and drinks, and she’d told Marlene the sketchy details about her past.

  “I’m intrigued,” she replied, bringing the Manhattan to her lips.

  Isobel held out her hand. “Nothing official.”

  “Of course not. But you can’t hand candy to a baby and expect it back, right?”

  Isobel laughed. “I bet you have a stash of Snickers in your office drawer.”

  “Close,” Marlene beamed, reaching for a cheese puff. “Those little coconut bars with all the chocolate and almonds.”

  “Ugh. Coconut.” She shuddered. “How can you stand the stuff?”

  “It’s brain food. Right up there with fried pickles and ranch dressing.”

  “Okay. I’m a Texas girl at heart. You’ve redeemed yourself.”

  “Here’s to friendship and freaky little mysteries.” Marlene held up her glass and Isobel clinked her strawberry daiquiri against it.

  “Here, here.”

  Marlene knew people who could help her; people who traveled into the darker side of information gathering. Conventional wasn’t cutting it and she had a feeling her new friend was going to help her where others had not.

  It was time to reclaim her life and wrest control from her parents’ machinations. If she believed they were out for her good, that would be one thing, but time after time they had proven that politics and rising above the rest were more important than her well-being. The job interviews with coven cronies and the constant monitoring of her whereabouts. But what bothered her most of all were the unanswered questions about her memory loss and why she couldn’t remember what caused it.

  Marlene had once been a member of a coven and understood its workings. And she knew how to use the very things that the puppet masters used against the masses in line, making her a valuable ally in piecing together a past that seemed determined to remain hidden.

  “There is a reason you aren’t able to remember,” Marlene told her, her voice slipping into the Texas twang that on occasion softened her harder edges. Nut brown hair and Hank Hill glasses aside, she had a steel backbone with a homespun apple pie exterior. “Either your mind is shielding you from something horrible out of sheer self-preservation, or something is purposefully blocking you. Which do you think it is?”

  Isobel didn’t know the answer to that question but it had given her food for thought. When she had reached out to her friend after work yesterday to tell her she had a question to run by her, the other woman insisted she pop over.

  “My five thirty cancelled. And it’s been three months. We need to catch up. Besides. I have dirt.”

  “So do I.” Boy did she ever. “I’ll be right over.”

  The butterflies that had taken residence in her stomach since the week before had become a swarm of locusts. All day the sensation of being watched would not leave her, making her jumpy. It was almost too much to think about.

  Ducking out of the museum had been easier than she thought. With the Mythsterious Exhibit ready to roll, and the director nowhere in sight, she slipped out unnoticed and walked the three blocks to where the private investigator had her office.

  “Glad you could make it. This will be infinitely more fun than informing my client his wife was cheating on him.” Marlene stood in the doorway to her office and beckoned her inside. This close to dinnertime, there was no one in the waiting room and her receptionist had gone home for the day.

  “Ouch” Isobel replied, tucking her damp umbrella to her side. “I’d hate to be him.”

  She could barely sleep the night before and what little she managed to get was full of terrifying supposition at what may or may not have happened to her co-worker. Combine that with the usual night terrors and she was ready for a bottle of wine and a night of staring at a mindless show on Netflix.

  “Sit.” Marlene shut the door behind them, moving behind her desk. Isobel lowered herself into the now familiar stuffy chair, the feeling of being swallowed by the enormous piece of furniture almost funny.

  “This chair freaks me out.”

  “I know.” Marlene grinned. “It’s fun to see how people react to it. Tells me a lot about a person. Move if you want. I won’t judge.” She gave her a haughty wink.

  Like hell she would.

  “Nope. All fine here.” Instead Isobel curled her legs beneath her and settled in. “Do you have another appointment?”

  “No.”

  Relief slid through her. “Good. Got time to go over to The Rusty Nail?”

  Marlene grinned. “After the day I’ve had, hell, yes. But I have some stuff I wanted to show you first.”

  “Yeah, me too.” She started from the beginning, relaying the information on Denver’s disappearance, her boss’ insistence on her taking over, his handsy proclamation, and finally what she had discovered the night before in Denver’s office.

  “Now I wish we had started drinking.”

  Isobel nodded. “Tell me about it. I just don’t know if I’m being paranoid, but something about Shipton is off. I just can’t figure out what it is.”

  Marlene frowned. “You mean other than him putting his hands and his man parts on you without permission?”

  “Um. Yeah. There’s that.”

  “So he’s a dragon?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “I don’t like this. You need to get out of there.”

  “I don’t either. But what can I do?”

  “Not much. Unless you want to give away your hand.” Marlene scratched at a notepad on her desk, her lip drawn between her teeth. “Tell me about the night terror. Did you do like I told you?”

  Isobel nodded and gave Marlene a recap. “I did.”

  The woman understood because she had her own demons. That much was clear.

  “And did it help?”

  “I think so. I mean…this time I saw his face. And the fire. I was in a car. Or truck. It…went up in flames. And this boy was screaming my name.” The sting of tears made her blink and she wiped at her eyes angrily.

  Marlene had heard this before. More times than Isobel wanted to admit telling her. At least, the part about the fire.

  “But what about when the drea
m morphed into the museum?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, I think it has to be due to what’s happening. And Denver’s disappearance.”

  Marlene looked up from her notes and slid a file out from underneath her papers.

  Something was up.

  “What is it?”

  “Let’s talk about that in a sec. Last time you told me how your parents had been having you see a psychologist since you were a teenager.”

  Isobel made face. “Yeah. I mean, I was until about six months ago.”

  “They were all associated with the Bradford Coven?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you see any of them about the dreams?” Marlene asked. “I mean recently.”

  Isobel recoiled with her hands in the air. “No. I don’t want any of them in my head. Besides, you’re a great shrink when you’re half way through a bottle of wine.”

  Marlene snorted. “I knew that minor in psychology would come in handy sometime.”

  “Well, this time I think we need more wine.”

  “You asked me to help you piece some things together.”

  “Thanks for agreeing to help. These dreams are really starting to get to me. And, now, with Denver gone, I really don’t know what to do.”

  Marlene sighed, her expression resigned. “I did a little digging based on the information you gave me. Well, me and a friend of mine who works with me from time to time. We started with the town you say you were from and the hospital you were brought to from this mysterious accident that wiped out your memory.”

  Isobel’s fingers tingled and she rubbed them on the arms of the enormous chair. This was what she’d wanted and never hoped to have answers to, but now that the moment was here, she was afraid to hear what Marlene had to say.

  “Go on.”

  “It seems that you were brought in without a scratch. But there had been a terrible car accident that night and you were initially reported as deceased.”

  A cold dread snaked through her stomach and she started as the words sank in.

  “Dead?”

  How did that even make sense?

  “That’s generally what deceased means.” Marlene replied wryly.

  “Well, I’m obviously not. Who reported me?”

  “From the first responder’s notes, it appears that they were treating a young shifter named Roark who swore a teen who went by the name Isobel was in the vehicle when it exploded. The boy was inconsolable. He and his pack mates helped to save some of the coven members and other civilians trapped in the pileup, but some kind of spelled fire burned the hell out of most of the vehicles. He accused the Bradford coven members present at the scene of maleficence.”

  Isobel wrapped her arms around her middle. The information was so close to her nightmare that she couldn’t out and out discount it.

  “But what about the investigation? Did they uncover any residue of magic at the scene?”

  Marlene met her question with a knowing stare. “Strangely, that is not in the report. What do you want to bet it was scrubbed?”

  “Probably. I mean, it wouldn’t surprise me. The coven controls everything that happens.”

  Why would she have been in a truck with a strange boy? And how much older had he been? The idea sent shivers down her spine. Did her parents orchestrate this? The coven?

  The idea made her blood run cold.

  “They never said anything.”

  “Your parents?”

  Isobel nodded, not able to speak past the lump in her throat.

  “A passersby found you on the side of a highway three days later, naked and out cold. Officers on scene figured you for an abduction gone wrong.”

  “Oh my God.” She struggled for any of it to make sense but she was still drawing a blank. Her fingers curled into a fist, the nails biting into her palm.

  “So when they took you home, you didn’t remember anything?”

  She shook her head. The place had seemed impersonal. “It was like someone had placed things that were supposed to be mine in a room. But nothing felt right. Not the view from the backyard. Nothing.”

  “That’s because it wasn’t.”

  “What?” Shock caused the word to wedge in her throat.

  “Look, your parents bought a house here and hauled ass out of Bradford right after the accident.” Marlene pulled what appeared to be a timeline out of her folder and laid it across the desk so Isobel could see it. “Here’s the purchase of their new house on Elm and the sale of the old one in Bradford.”

  Isobel climbed out of the chair on wobbly legs, trepidation slowing her steps toward the desk. It was neatly arranged. Dates and instances were mapped out to a tee. Hospital stays. New house. Old house. Her old school and the new one she’d come to despise here in Davenport.

  “It’s all here. Even your stint at college and your push to get your Master’s degree in Museum Studies.”

  But it wasn’t all there. Not by a long shot. She still didn’t know who the boy was. This Roark. They’d never supported her dating and had kept her so close to home it was stifling. At the time, she thought it was concern, but with the advent of the nightmares, she began to see more and more that something was afoot.

  “There’s a piece missing.”

  Marlene cocked her head, a frown settling over her features. “What?”

  “Why would my parents pull up stakes like that and bring me all the way here? Wouldn’t it make sense to have me in a familiar place so I might recover faster?”

  “I would think so. If we were talking about rational people.”

  “I’m not sure what to say to that.” She admitted.

  It was one thing for her to think her parents were up to something but quite another to hear it from someone else.

  “Your parents are deep within the coven structure. You’ve told me that yourself.”

  That was French for Marlene knowing far more than what she was telling her.

  “They are.”

  “When you came out of your accident, do you remember any burns? Scarring?”

  She didn’t. Because there hadn’t been any. In fact, there hadn’t been a scratch on her. How, in any possible universe, could this be the case?

  “No. There was nothing.”

  “That bothers me. You come from a lineage of fire witches, but according to witnesses, a spelled blaze was to blame for your death.”

  “But, I didn’t die.”

  She was standing right here for crap’s sake.

  “Let’s play devil’s advocate for a second. You supposedly survived an explosion, according to this young man who was clearly devastated.”

  “I don’t understand. I’m not that girl on Game of Thrones who can walk through fire and come out the other side with a dragon on my shoulder.”

  Marlene snorted. “Don’t be too sure of that.”

  Isobel’s mouth fell open. “Are you being serious right now?”

  “Humor me.” Marlene narrowed her eyes and pressed a button on her desk. “Okay. You can come in now.”

  Someone else was here?

  The door to the lobby opened up and in stepped a man who could have been a double for Stuart Townsend in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Queen of the Damned. His unruly dark brown hair brushed along the top of shoulders. A form fitting black tee shirt, black boots, and legs encased in denim completed the look. He was, in a word, drool worthy, but with an edgy quality that warned her to keep her distance.

  He strode forward, his steps confident, shutting the door behind him. “Hello, pet. My, you’ve had a bad time haven’t you?”

  The sardonic quirk of his lips opened up to reveal razor sharp fangs. It was then that she took stock in the predatory nature of his gait and the way the air stilled around him as he paused in front of her.

  Vampire.

  A spark of fear jolted through Isobel and she had to struggle to tamp down her primal instinct to bolt out the door.

  Isobel opened her mouth to speak, but nothing seemed
to come out. Her pulse sounded loud, her heartbeat booming, and she took a step back, nearly falling into the large chair.

  “Oh. I think I’ve rendered the poor thing mute, Marlene.”

  Her friend rolled her eyes and sighed. “Isobel, I’d like you to meet Guidry, one of the investigators I work with. He’s the one who’s been helping me research your past.”

  “But he’s a…”

  “Vampire. Yes. Sad but true.” Guidry glanced at Marlene, laughter dancing in his eyes. “Oh. I think I’ve shocked the dear girl.”

  “I’ve heard of vampires.” His amusement stung, and she found herself getting angry. But angry was better than scared so she went with it. There was something hiding in the back of her mind, like a word hovering on the tip of her tongue. She had encountered a vampire before. The fact that it was one more thing eluding her just pissed her off more.

  His eyebrow rose. “Hmmm. Well, seeing one in the flesh isn’t the same as late night television, now is it?” He ran his finger along the desk and picked through a couple of papers. “You have an interesting situation. The Bradford Coven has been very, very busy where you’re concerned. The question is, why?”

  Stomach churning, she swallowed and tried to focus on the question.

  “My parents are members. I grew up with them. More than that, I honestly have no idea.”

  “Hmmm.” The vampire met her gaze, his stare unblinking. “I think you do. The trick is, delving into that head of yours to find the answers.”

  “But I don’t know.” Isobel clenched her fists in frustration, wanting nothing more than to wipe that smug look off the vampire’s face.

  Guidry glided forward and placed a finger under her chin, tilting her head up so she was forced to meet his eyes. “You’d be surprised what people hide inside their labyrinthine minds. All those tangled scraps and threads of memories and facts. All just waiting to be unraveled, one strand at a time.”

  His eyes gleamed red and Isobel gasped as she felt something brush the inside of her thoughts. Probing and trying to slide in behind her awareness.

  Get out.

  A hiss resounded through the room and with startled clarity, Isobel realized the sound came from her.