Red Night ((Book 1) Timewalker Chronicles) by Michele Callahan Page A

quick, she pressed a kiss into his palm, then opened her door. “I’ll be back.”
    She was out of the vehicle before he could protest, her black slacks and shirt melting into the shadows. If not for her hair, he’d have lost track her. Then, with a little wave, she vanished. “Damn it.” How was he supposed to keep her out of trouble if she kept disappearing? At least this time he knew where she was going.
    When he reached Trent’s back door, he was rewarded by the sound of Alexa’s sexy voice cursing, and the door handle rattling. “Need a little help?”
    “You were supposed to wait in the car.”
    A chuckle escaped, despite the situation. “Sit still like a good boy while you go in there and get yourself killed? Not in this lifetime, angel.” He hated talking to air.
    “But they can see you.”
    “Yeah, and we’re all dead tomorrow anyway.”
    Apparently she didn’t have a sassy comeback for that. Alexa reappeared in front of him and he sighed in relief. So far, she’d had no luck picking the lock. Then he heard a soft click and her soft sigh of relief. “Finally.”
    The heavy oak door swung open silently and they both tensed in anticipation of an alarm sounding. Instead, an unnatural silence crept out of the house to envelop them in its cold embrace. The alarm panel next to the door stared back at them with an eerie green glow.
    Worried blue eyes flashed back at him over Alexa’s shoulder. “Something’s wrong.”
    He wanted to argue, but couldn’t. The very air seemed to dread their entry. Sliding his arm around her waist he forced her behind him. “I don’t suppose you’d go wait in the car?”
    She tried to shove past him, but he tightened his grip. “Stay behind me…and disappear.”
    The house was wrecked. Expensive artwork torn off the walls and smashed over antique chairs in the front room. Tables overturned. Lamps shattered. Plush couch cushions embroidered with scenes of nineteenth century social life, ripped to shreds. Dishes in pieces on the paisley patterned carpeting. Even the drywall was punched through. Holes of various sizes dotted the walls in a haphazard fashion where someone had obviously used a sledgehammer with gusto. Spray paint adorned two walls in the dining room with curse words and juvenile insults. Luke shook his head. “Looks like kids.”
    Alexa’s disembodied voice answered from the other side of the formal dining room. “That’s what they wanted it to look like.”
    “Maybe.” He had a bad feeling about this. “Alexa, go back outside. Don’t touch anything. I’ll look around.”
    Silence.
    “Alexa?”
    “I’m not leaving.” Her answer drifted to him from another room. Was she upstairs? His gaze darted to the circular staircase that hugged the left side of the marble-floored foyer.
    “Shit.” He sprinted up the stairs two at a time.
    In contrast, the second story was pristine. Gilded mirrors and paintings decorated the walls in precisely measured intervals. Artificial flowers sat undisturbed in imported vases that lined the hallway like sentinels resting on the hardwood floors. The quiet was more pronounced here, the well paid for perfection of their surroundings drove the silence home like an exclamation point at the end of a sentence. All the doors were closed. All but one. “Alexa?”
    Where was she? His instincts screamed at him that someone was up here, waiting for her. Thank the Lord she was invisible to the naked eye. With her penchant for rushing headlong into trouble he hoped that ability would be enough to keep her from getting killed.
    He crept closer to the open doorway and was almost glad she didn’t answer. If he didn’t know where she was, no one else would either.
    The one open door loomed in front of him and he stood to the side for a moment, just listening. Silence. He slid into the room and looked around. Two ivory reading chairs and a burgundy loveseat huddled around a gas fireplace along one wall. Thick navy carpeting muffled