Wild Card by Lisa Shearin Read Free Book Online Page A

imagination, but my contacts and investigative methods wouldn’t endear me to the higher-ups at watcher headquarters, so I kept turning Janek down to save both of us from being in a situation that’d be awkward to say the least.
    That and I’d been told I had a problem with authority. I didn’t take orders very well, especially those I didn’t agree with—which were most of them.
    I hadn’t gotten much sleep, but apparently I’d had more than Janek.
    The chief watcher was lean and all ropy muscle, the build of a man who was constantly on the move. From the dark circles under his eyes, it looked like Janek and his muscles needed to stop moving for a couple of hours. 
    I showed him the book and gave him the essentials of my case. “Essentials” meaning things I didn’t mind sharing with law enforcement. The things involving me circumventing the law that might get me put in one of Janek’s jail cells, I kept to myself.  
    “We’ve had complaints from families who’ve been swindled by this guy’s resurrections,” Janek said. “Any attempts to prosecute have always run up on a dead end—no pun intended. People want justice; they just don’t want to testify against him to get it.” He flipped through the book, his smile growing with each page. “Looks like Lord Mortsani could have had a secondary career as a bookkeeper. He recorded each resurrection and how much he made. You said this is written in his own hand?”
    I nodded. “Lady Kaharit said she’s seen him writing in it on more than one occasion.”
    Janek chuckled. “Dumbass. This is just the ammunition those families need.” He put the book on the desk, and his smile vanished as he sat in the desk chair and ran his hands over his face.
    “You know why I’ve been awake; what’s been keeping you up?” I asked.
    “Kidnappings.” A muscle in his jaw clenched. “Children.”
    In my opinion, if heated spikes didn’t cover the floors in the part of the Lower Hells where they put people who took and abused children, there should be.
    “How many?” I asked.
    “Eight.”
    I gaped. “Eight? But I haven’t heard—”
    “Because we’re just now confirming that they were kidnapped.”   
    “Uh, either they’re gone or they’re not.”
    “Souls, Raine. The kidnappers left the bodies. They took the souls.”
    There were acts too horrifying to contemplate. Stealing the souls of anyone, let alone children, was one of them.
    The cries I’d heard last night coming from Sethis Mortsani immediately came to mind. Nachtmagi communicated with souls and helped them get to where they were going. I’d never heard of one being able to actually imprison one. That was an activity left to dark mages of the highest level.
    “At first, parents thought it was some kind of illness when they couldn’t wake their children up,” Janek told me. “A lot of healers haven’t had any experience with missing souls. Two of them knew the signs and reported it to the watch. And we figured if two had been taken. . .”
    “There were more,” I said.
    Janek nodded. “We hoped we were wrong, but weren’t going to put out too much hope. We immediately got the word out to the healer community of what signs to look for.” He paused. “As of this morning, we have eight kids missing.”
    “Did anyone see a cat sith lurking around?”
    “This wasn’t your usual cat sith wandering over from the Daith Swamp looking for a late-night soul snack. The kids went to bed, and their parents couldn’t wake them the next morning. The doors and windows of the houses were locked; no one came in or out. The healers who’ve seen this before got together some clued-in colleagues. They’ve made the rounds to the affected children and put them in stasis.”
    I knew what that meant. In cases of poisoning when an antidote isn’t immediately available, or medicine in the case of an illness, an experienced healer can put a patient under the effects of a temporary stasis spell to keep