Free Lost Soul (Harbinger P.I. Book 1) by Adam J Wright Page A

only look like them because of a glamor. Once the real James and Sarah show up, the glamor will be broken, and we’ll see those creatures for what they really are.”
    “And then?”
    “And then I kill them.”
    She nodded and took a bite of her burger.
    There was no other acceptable outcome to this. These faeries had meddled in human affairs, so they had to die. It was because of events like this that the Society of Shadows existed; to protect humans from preternatural beings.
    “So, when do we go to Dark Rock Lake?” Felicity asked.
    “Tomorrow,” I said. “It’s too late to drive up there today. We’d be stumbling around in the dark by the time we got there. I need to take some equipment, too, and that’s in a box somewhere at my house, so I have to find it before we leave.”
    “Check the boxes in the room next to the master bedroom.”
    Well, that would make things much easier. My stuff might be still packed into boxes, but it seemed that Felicity had categorized the boxes to make my life easier. “I will. Thanks.”
    We ate in silence for a while and I concentrated on the way the burger tantalized my taste buds. From the speakers on the walls, Kenny Rogers was singing about a gambler. Through the window, I watched the cars traveling up and down the highway, the sun glinting off their windshields.
    “What’s the plan for the rest of the day?” Felicity asked me as she finished her burger.
    “I guess we return to the office, check the answering machine, and hang around there for a while. If it looks like we aren’t going to get any new clients, we can go home.” Now that we had lost Mrs. Robinson and were only going to make the Society flat rate of pay on her case, we needed more clients if we were going to survive.
    I waved at Sandra and got the check, leaving her a substantial tip even though I could barely afford it at the moment. But that burger had been so good. Anyway, I could bill the lunch to the Society now that they were picking up the tab for this case.
    Outside, the day had heated up even more. I was definitely having a barbecue in the yard later, and a couple of cold beers. I saw the black and white police cruiser pull off the highway and enter the parking lot just as I was getting into the Land Rover. Sheriff Cantrell was behind the wheel. I started the engine and backed away from the diner as the big man heaved his bulk out of the patrol car and went inside.
    He would be investigating what had happened to the stolen Taurus, particularly how the hood and engine had been cut by some sort of blade. He’d probably still be wondering about that after he retired because I was pretty sure that “enchanted sword” was outside his list of possibilities, and there would be no sign of the car thieves now that they’d been reduced to faerie remains.
    I joined the traffic on the highway and drove toward Dearmont at a sedate speed.
    When we reached Main Street, I said to Felicity, “Looks like we have a client.” Standing outside the door to our building was a tall young man in a T-shirt and black jeans, wearing thick-rimmed glasses on his hawkish face. He cast nervous glances up and down the street while he waited and checked his watch constantly. “I’ll drop you here,” I told Felicity as we reached the corner before our block. “You take the guy inside and find out what he wants while I park around back.”
    She nodded and I let her out of the Land Rover. While she crossed the street toward the nervous-looking young man, I drove around the back of the building and left the Land Rover in the same space it had occupied earlier. While I was walking away from the parking space and busy checking my cell for messages or texts, I bumped into someone on the sidewalk. When I looked up from the phone to apologize, I was momentarily startled.
    The woman was in her late twenties and pretty in a dark-eyed, dark-haired, sultry kind of way. She wore a dress of lace and black velvet that was probably