Black Wings Gray Skies Read online

  BLACK WINGS, GRAY SKIES

  HAILEY EDWARDS

  Copyright © 2022 Black Dog Books, LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Edited by Sasha Knight

  Copy Edited by Kimberly Cannon

  Proofread by Lillie's Literary Services

  Cover by Damonza

  Illustration by NextJenCo

  CONTENTS

  Black Wings, Gray Skies

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Join the Team

  About the Author

  Also by Hailey Edwards

  BLACK WINGS, GRAY SKIES

  Black Hat Bureau, Book 4

  Monsters with a taste for children are nothing new, but fairy tales never mentioned this nightmarish predator. Rue has her hands full tracking the creature hunting the streets of Charleston, but a call from home divides her attention—and her loyalties.

  A stranger has come to Hollis Apothecary, asking questions that prickle the hairs on her nape, but she can’t abandon the victims based only on a bad feeling. The pit in her stomach only grows when the stranger takes a hostage and makes his demands. He wants to talk to Rue, face to face. Or else. What he has to say will change her life, and her perception of her past, forever.

  1

  Forearms braced on the chill metal railing, I gazed out at Charleston Harbor from the Battery. From here, I had a clear view of Fort Sumter, Castle Pinckney, Fort Moultrie, and Sullivan's Island Lighthouse. Behind me sat a trim row of historic, and historically important, antebellum mansions with price tags in the tens of millions. White Point Garden wasn’t far. And, being a peninsula, the Atlantic Ocean swirled around us.

  Charleston might be a small city, but it was plenty big enough for our missing kids to get lost in.

  A breeze ripe with hints of green apples and smoky cherry tobacco teased my nose, and I filled my lungs. I bargained with Asa to wear his long hair loose today, and the wind thanked me for it, teasing the velvet black strands. The way the ends whipped into his serious peridot eyes must have driven him nuts, but he let me enjoy myself.

  Probably because his inner daemon was counting down the hours until I brushed out the tangles.

  The bar through his septum glinted, titanium bright, and his rough-cut druzy earrings sparkled in the sun as he approached me.

  “We have another victim.” Asa mimicked my pose, his hands tight on the metal. “A seven-year-old boy.” His fingers flexed. “Andreas Farmer.”

  “Human?”

  “Yes.”

  The most peculiar aspect of this case was the choice of prey: human children.

  A classic, yes, hence the storybooks, but few predators dared hunt them openly in the era of cellphones, hobby drones, and traffic cameras mounted at every intersection. Shadows were no longer dark enough for monsters to hide in. Not with humans wielding night vision goggles and brandishing thermal imaging.

  Modern technology was its own kind of magic, and paranormals were rapidly losing ground to science.

  The parents had no idea what had happened to their children. Neither did we. They assumed the boys had been kidnapped, because we couldn’t afford to let them think anything else. Even with what we knew, we were no better informed, really. We assumed, given paranormals’ tendency toward predation of humans, that we were hunting a killer and not a serial kidnapper, but we simply didn’t know yet.

  Ding. Ding. Ding.

  What a way to ring in the new year.

  Early-morning sunlight glittered on the water, but a chill had settled in my bones. “Are we sure…?”

  “There was no body,” he allowed, “but the child lost too much blood to have survived.”

  The same as the others.

  “Where was he taken?”

  “Fort Sumter.” Asa reached over, twining his fingers with mine. “His parents both work full-time, so they enrolled him in an educational day program at his school. The program offers students adult supervision during holiday breaks when parents are unable to watch their kids for extended periods. The curriculum is heavy on field trips, and that’s how his group came to tour the island. They were scheduled to leave at noon, but he didn’t get back on the boat. His teacher worried he might have climbed where he shouldn’t have and fell in the water, but the park rangers didn’t find anything. Neither did Marine Patrol or the Coast Guard.”

  Civil War-era cannons, hulking cast iron beasts, made popular jungle gyms at Fort Sumter, and kids never thanked adults who warned them away from dangerously good fun.

  “A large blood smear,” he continued, “was discovered by a young girl this morning. The body volume of blood was nearby in the grass.” His fingers twitched in mine. “The girl and her little brothers are visiting their grandparents in Charleston over the holidays. It’s family tradition to visit a historic landmark a day to keep the children occupied during their long break.”

  The layout of the fort was hazy in my mind, jumbled with other maps I had skimmed. “Where did she find the blood?”

  “In an alcove where restoration work is being done on a cannon.”

  “Those poor kids.” I blew out a breath. “I’ll file the paperwork to have a witch sent to them.”

  The director—well, one of his underlings—would lie about what agency offered the children help adjusting to their trauma. Say anything, do anything, promise anything. Whatever it took to get a Black Hat special agent through the door. From there, the family would receive the same treatment I had administered to Camber and Arden. Except in a much higher dose. With no follow-up appointments.

  Should they recall any damning specifics later, they might rate a second consult.

  Their final.

  With anyone.

  Ever again.

  That fear lived in me every day when it came to the girls, but they had me, and now they had Aedan too. The director himself couldn’t touch a hair on their heads without bringing my wrath down upon his.

  After checking my phone for the millionth time, I forced my thoughts away from home. “Where’s Clay?”

  Asa jerked his chin behind me, and I twisted around to find Clay bristling with armloads of bags.

  Dressed in his Black Hat finest, he cut a trim figure. The formal suit made the purple beehive hairstyle he rocked that much more ridiculous. No. I take that back. What pushed it over the top was the glittery grape eyeshadow. He drew wide-eyed stares and more than a few smiles, but no one dared to laugh outright.

  When you were seven feet tall and four hundred pounds, no one questioned your fashion choices.

  Except me.

  “Tell me who did this to you.” I pounded a fist over my heart. “I solemnly vow to exact vengeance.”

  “It was me,” Colby chimed from within the wig. “Isn’t he pretty?”

  “In that case,” I backpedale
d so fast I was in danger of falling into the ocean, “he’s never looked better.”

  Lash extensions fluttering, Clay laughed at me with his eyes, happy to sparkle if it gave Colby joy.

  For a guy without organs, he had the biggest heart of any person I had ever met.

  “You visited the city market.” Asa eyed the paper bags. “I thought you were scouting for a new hotel.”

  The one we hit last night crawled with agents like ants on a mound, which made me twitchy.

  Our trio didn’t blend in with the other teams. Part of it was fear of my reputation. Part of it was curiosity over my disappearance. And part of it, I suspected, was the peculiar magic thrumming through me these days, drawing unwanted attention to my power signature as the familiar bond bound Colby and me tighter to one another.

  Sooner or later, they would figure out I no longer practiced black magic.

  Until then, the fewer Black Hats who knew about Colby, the better.

  “We had more important business to attend.” Clay breezed past us. “The business of breakfast.”

  The smells hit me a heartbeat later, and my stomach rumbled when it identified the sources.

  “Biscuits?” I pushed off the railing. “Cajun boiled peanuts?”

  “Also teeny-tiny sweet potato donuts dusted with sugar, coffee for Ace, and Arnold Palmers for us.”

  “That sounds amazing,” I confessed, “but the hotel—”

  “The guy at the hotel gave me a coupon for Bridge’s Biscuits when I turned in our keycards. He wanted us to get fifteen percent off an amazing breakfast to start our day off right. Who am I to deny his final wishes?”

  “That makes it sound like he bequeathed you the coupon on his deathbed…”

  “Shh.” Clay pressed the black coffee into my hand. “Just eat, drink, and be grateful.”

  The sip of scalding hot coffee puckered my lips with its bitterness, but Asa watched with rapt attention that made it hard for me to swallow. I slid my eyes to his, our gazes locked, and heat swept through me.

  “Enough of that.” Clay plucked the cup from my hand and passed it to Asa. “Here’s your tea, Dollface.”

  “Sweet tea?” I cracked the lid and sniffed. “Heavy on the lemon.”

  “That’s an Arnold Palmer for you.” He doled out a paper straw. “Half tea, half lemonade.”

  “Ah.” I offered it to Asa, who tasted it with a considering hum, before I drank. “I like it.”

  “Next time, you go first.” Clay scoffed at my easy approval. “Then give me your unbiased opinion.”

  Beside me, Asa focused on his coffee, his expression bland if you didn’t know his tells.

  “Don’t look so smug.” I elbowed him in the ribs. “Your spit has ruined food for me.”

  Finger tapping the lid on his drink, he eyed my straw. “It’s not the saliva so much as it’s—”

  “No one cares about the specifics,” Clay cut in. “You two take your bag and swap spit muffins over there. Way over there. Colby and I, the normal people, will eat our breakfast on the steps.”

  A golem and a moth girl were as far from normal as a witch and a dae, but I was too hungry to argue.

  “Then Asa and I will eat our breakfast on the seawall.”

  “Hey, Hairnado.” He flicked an elastic at Asa. “Pull that mop out of your face.”

  “Hairnado.” Colby snorted. “Good one, Clay.”

  Though my eyes couldn’t detect the gleaming pedestal under Clay’s feet, I suspected Colby had set him high up on one.

  Several yards away, Clay plonked down with his back to us. With much enthusiasm, he launched into the tale of how General P. G. T. Beauregard watched the bombardment of Fort Sumter from the piazza of what Clay called the Edmondston-Alston House, which signaled the start of the Civil War.

  His choice of location, across the street from the historic home, and his topic, Fort Sumter, told me there had been time between card swipes on his shopping spree for him to catch up on our latest victim. In his way, he was preparing Colby for what lay ahead. Namely, a small island in the distance.

  A brush of my fingers down the leg of my pants comforted me that my wand and kit were within reach.

  The familiar bond with Colby was my greatest weapon, but I preferred not to lean on her too hard. More than any other case that came before, this one would establish our work routine, and I wanted firm lines drawn to create a healthy work and play balance that allowed her to contribute while still being a kid.

  Once they settled in, Asa sat on the concrete with his back against a post, giving him a view of the street. I joined him, hanging my legs over the wall, letting them dangle above the water, and dug into the bag.

  “Let’s see what we’ve got.” I extracted two small clamshell boxes. “Which do you want?”

  A slash of marker indicated biscuits. One sausage, egg, and pimento cheese and one sausage with gravy. Two sides of grits rested in the bottom, along with plastic utensils and various condiment packets.

  “I don’t enjoy pimento cheese.”

  “Are you sure?” I lifted the biscuit, brought it to my mouth, and bit down. “Mmm. Pimento-y.”

  Equal parts suspicion and hunger warring on his face, he watched me chew. “That’s not fair.”

  “All’s fair in love and biscuits.” I laughed at his torn expression. “It’s actually not that bad.”

  The mixture of cheese, mayonnaise, pimentos, and spices wasn’t my favorite, but it was edible.

  “I have an idea.” He wet his lips. “On how to improve its flavor.”

  After I swallowed, I waited to see which of his hungers would win. “Oh?”

  Asa leaned in, sank his teeth into one pimentoless corner, and gulped with a pained noise.

  “Who would have guessed that pimento cheese was dae kryptonite?” I surrendered the second box, still piping hot, to him. “Here.” I divvied up the grits next then explored the condiments. “Sugar or cheese?”

  “You don’t have to eat that abomination.” He grabbed for the biscuit in my hand. “I don’t mind, really.”

  Ignoring the obvious lie, I nudged him with my knee. “Sugar or cheese?”

  “I don’t understand.” He eyed the contents of the bag. “What about sugar or cheese?”

  “In your grits.” I resisted moaning around the next mouthful of pimento, aware the only reason its taste had turned addictive was the dae sitting beside me and our shared fascination. “Which do you prefer?”

  “Pepper and ketchup.”

  Sausage went down the wrong pipe, and I coughed biscuit crumbs into his face. “Eww.”

  The only way to dress up grits was to mix in sugar, as the goddess surely intended.

  “You asked.” He picked at the lid on his grits. “I learned it from Clay.”

  “Clay is a culinary heathen who changes how he eats grits as often as he switches up his hairdo.” I noticed Asa hadn’t begun his meal. “Can you eat if I don’t christen your meal first?”

  The weird factor lessened for me if I teased him, like our shared ancestry was a private joke.

  “Yes,” he said slowly, toying with his fork, still in its wrapper, “but your proximity dictates my hunger.”

  The cure, according to Clay, was to mate Asa. Or mate with Asa? A fine line separated the two, but I had yet to ask for clarification. Willful ignorance? Yes, please.

  As much as I wanted my palate back, I couldn’t let taste buds make life choices for me.

  “Give me that.” I stole his food, took a dutiful bite of each item, then passed them back. “Dig in.”

  The food interested him after that display, but he stole my fork before I could snatch it.

  While he shoveled in his meal, I picked at my grits, gave up on them, then checked my phone.

  Again.

  “The girls are fine.” He held out our fork, laden with sweet creamy grits dense enough to hold their own on the tines. “Aedan would have called if there were any problems.”

  “It’s har
d leaving them with a relative stranger.” I forced myself to pocket the cell. “A strange relative?”

  Aedan, my almost cousin, had little experience blending with humans, let alone under scrutiny from two girls with no filters. As the newest addition to the Hollis Apothecary staff, the better to protect Camber and Arden when I traveled for work, he was clocking eight-hour shifts. Without me there to ensure he wasn’t overwhelmed by stimuli, or his nosy coworkers, his probationary period had escalated into a trial by fire.

  Far from ideal conditions for an aquatic daemon.

  “Aedan wants this to work.” Asa fed me another bite. “You’re all the family he’s got left.”

  “He has siblings.” I pondered whether the grits had been prepared with cream cheese. “But fosterage…”

  To keep them safe from discovery by their eldest and uber homicidal sibling, Delma, he had placed his younger brothers and sisters in ironclad fosterages that guaranteed anonymity. Even from him. I had since killed her in a challenge she issued, but what was done was done. Aedan had no recourse. He was alone.

  Except for me.

  “He can’t take them back.” Asa read my mind. “He won’t see them again until they’re of legal age.”

  “Do you think he’ll live in my backyard until then?” I was joking. Mostly. “He seems happy out there.”

  Camp Aedan, as Colby and I called it, had been a stopgap measure to help him get his feet under him. He had nothing when he came to us but had since inherited the wealth Delma had spent decades amassing. In his mind, it was blood money, earned with his siblings’ lives, and you couldn’t pay him to spend it.

  There was no rush to kick him out of his tent by the creek. It wasn’t like I kept preapproved daemon renters on file, eager to take his place. He wasn’t paying anyway. It wasn’t truly a gift if it came with a price tag.