Dead in the Water (Gemini: A Black Dog Series Book 1) Page 19

  “Come on, lady. Think about it.” The ursine shifter must have heard my molars grinding. “This close to water? She probably ducked into the lake to heal.”

  “She’s a saltie.” Admitting Harlow was human and that’s why she wouldn’t have returned to the water to regenerate was a bad idea. Harlow was defenseless in her current state. Humans were soft, their bellies tender, and every fae here was a predator. “I’m going to search the woods.”

  “Don’t wander far.” Leonard’s voice thickened like his mouth had trouble forming the words. “Stay where I can see you. If I have to bring you down, you won’t like it.”

  Chills swept over me. No. I suppose I wouldn’t. I’d had enough near-death experiences for one night, thanks. I wasn’t about to pit my pitiful athletic abilities against a death-touched fae. Death always won in the end.

  The sky lightened. Violet clouds faded to ones with soft pink lining. The brighter conditions made searching easier. Wargs—on two legs and four—had trampled the area. There was no hope of picking a single path as the one medics might have taken. Careful to stay in sight of Leonard, I swept the outskirts of the forest for a hint of where the trio had gone. Several yards deeper than I should have ventured, a dark blob puddled on a smattering of leaves. Casting a wary glance over my shoulder, I located the bean sidhe. His rich skin had paled, and he wet his lips as though a fierce hunger had ignited in him. Making use of his distraction, I stalked deeper into the woods. I toed the clump with my boot, and it made a squishing sound. Confident the mass wasn’t something disgusting, I bent down and pinched what I now felt was a ball of wet fabric between my fingers.

  Harlow’s shorts. Not just any shorts, but the enchanted pair that sprouted scales when exposed to water. Would an injury sustained to the tail be inflicted on her legs? Had the medics removed clothing in order to treat her?

  My faith in the medics’ competence plummeted. They had discarded a high magic article of clothing at a crime scene. Tossed aside like rubbish when they should have ended up in an evidence locker at the local marshal’s office, she would be pissed when she came to without them and her personal effects bag turned up empty. The shorts held sentimental value as well as being critical to her wellbeing as long as she continued her mermaid charade.

  Hairs rose along my nape, stinging as they lifted one by one. Magic, cold and eternal, swirled around my ankles and tickled up my legs. I swiped at a tickling sensation on my cheeks, and my fingers came away bloody. A bone-deep wail of grief saturated the night, shaking leaves from the trees and turning my breath to fog.

  The bean sidhe sang with all his soul.

  Death prowled the woods with me tonight.

  Wiping my fingers on my pants, I ventured farther from the chilling melody of Leonard’s song. A glimmer of white caught my eye, and I made my way toward it. The closer I came, the louder the bean sidhe’s music hammered at my skull. I stumbled and caught myself against a tree. When my brain translated what I was seeing, my knees buckled and hit the damp earth. The stretcher rested inches away from my ankle, its canvas center torn to shreds. The medics, what was left of them, were scattered in chunks of glistening meat in a six-foot radius.

  The speck of white that had caught my eye was Harlow’s shell-handled dagger, and it was no longer pristine. The grooves were stained pink, the hilt imprinted with a smudged handprint a size smaller than mine, and the blade glistened crimson.

  “Harlow,” I cried out, voice ragged, her shorts squelching in my grip. “Harlow.”

  The static thrum of white noise answered me. My ears ached, and my throat itched where thin rivulets of blood dried and cracked.

  A fly buzzed my nose, and I swatted it aside. Fingers shaking, I reached out and touched a fractured elbow. Dola. This medic had been one of the Slavic spirits who embodied human fate. I wondered if he had foreseen this end. Numbed by the shock, I sent my magic probing, and there it was, as I had known deep in my bones it would be. That now-familiar sheen of energy that coated everything Charybdis touched with his magic permeated the corpse.

  The ounce of relief I experienced at the kelpie’s death evaporated. Separating the Charybdis persona from the kelpie had been a struggle as I battled doubts over what manner of creature or creatures had pitted themselves against us. Kneeling here, I resonated all the certainty I previously lacked.

  This was incontrovertible proof. Charybdis was a separate entity, and he was still very much alive.

  I stood and skirted the dead medics, walked into the underbrush and called out to Harlow. Charybdis, being a creature of Faerie, would have understood the bean sidhe’s wail and fled. My cries failed to illicit a response from Harlow, but it summoned the others, who, after restraining me with a Word, resumed the search.

  Jaw flexing with the force of keeping my mouth shut, I stood there like a model prisoner. Arguing would slow down the hunt, and my pride wasn’t worth so much that I couldn’t model steel bracelets for a few minutes until the paranoia of finding me standing alone by yet another corpse, two in fact, died down.

  The kelpie was the first strike and these two the second and third. As far as they were concerned, until Vause verified my credentials, I was out.

  Harlow’s disappearance had failed to sway the marshals—the prejudice against mermaids ran deeper than I ever imagined in the waterfront towns where Charybdis had chosen to strike—but two of their own had been slaughtered, and that lit a fire under them.

  “That Ellis?” A squat man with a rolling gait snuffled in my direction. “Magistrate Vause is asking for her.”

  “I would take the call,” I said, wiggling my fingers, “but I’m tied up at the moment.”

  “Lady, she wants a face-to-face.” He snorted loudly through his nose with an open mouth. “I’ve got orders to escort you to the safe house in Falco.”

  “We can handle things here,” Leonard assured me as he approached. “You’ve done your job. Now let us do ours.” A sparkle made his eyes dance, and his cheeks were flush. Death looked good on him. “We’ll locate the one responsible.”

  “Find the mermaid.” I made it an order. “She’s a victim here too.”

  Good old Leo sighed his counter-Word and unbound my hands. “I’ll be in touch.”

  I wouldn’t hold my breath.

  Under the watchful eye of my new escort, I made my way down to the original crime scene, which still buzzed with activity as marshals attempted to coax Roni from her bubble. After the bean sidhe’s performance, I could have told them that shield between her and the rest of the fae world wasn’t going anywhere.

  I broke away from my escort and darted toward the pier before his meaty fist closed over my upper arm. “Give me a minute.”

  “Hold up.” He fell behind after a few steps, panting hard as his thick body protested the vigorous exercise. “I didn’t say nothing…about making no pit stop.”

  “Be right back,” I called over my shoulder, scooping up a broken tree limb on my way to the pier.

  “Make it…quick.” One long wheeze dissolved into a coughing fit. “Be grateful…I’m a nice…guy.”

  I was grateful all right. That he was too out of shape to catch me.

  My knees trembled as my feet thumped over the warped planks. My stomach soured when I pressed it against the wood, inhaling rot and dampness, getting as close to the rippling water as I dared. Using the stick, I pried the barnacle from the leg of the pier and hauled it up beside me. As the material repelled the last of the moisture, the crusted, pasty exterior darkened to brown leather. I opened it, shoved the balled-up pair of shorts inside the center pouch and hot-footed it back to my escort.

  The marshal gathered wind in his barrel chest for an argument, but I slid the bag over my shoulders like I had every right to wear it. “Sorry about that.” I adjusted the tight straps to fit my taller frame. “All my ID is in here. I didn’t want to leave it behind.”

  “Dames,” he grunted. “Need anything else, Princess?”

  “This is all,
” I assured him.

  “Hurry up.” He beckoned me to follow. “I ain’t paid enough to play chauffeur. I ought to be out there helping find whoever killed Rogers and Donohue, not carting some fancy-pants agent out to Falco.”

  I tuned out his grumbling, and my shoulders tensed as hiccupped bawling erupted. Roni cupped a cellphone to her ear thanks to the persistent marshal who managed to weaken a spot in her shield, and she rocked while crying her eyes out to the person on the other end. The tension drained from me, allowing me to slip back into that comfortably numb space where the last twenty minutes hadn’t happened, where Harlow was safe and Charybdis was defeated, and I resumed picking my way toward the fleet of black SUVs. My stride hitched thinking of the many times Graeson had stuffed me into the backseat of similar vehicles. But there was no warg to twist my arm this time. I climbed inside of my own volition, and let my lids droop closed to keep from checking the forest for the burn of golden eyes.

  Chapter 18

  The stocky fae drove me back to Falco, Alabama with his meaty fists clamped on the wheel and the blare of country music in my ears. His humming reminded me of the scratch of a match striking, but he seemed happy enough now that our trip was underway, and I didn’t feel like talking, so I let him play songbird.

  We reached the safe house early enough most fast food places were still serving breakfast, but I wasn’t hungry. I did help myself to chai from the food service station before allowing him to escort me to a tidy office with a name I wasn’t familiar with engraved on a plaque on the door. The woman sitting behind the pressboard desk, however, was someone I knew well.

  “Magistrate Vause.” I turned the cup in my hands, allowing the hot liquid to warm me through the paper. I told myself it was because my fingers were chilly from the AC and not because I had been evicted from a crime scene. “It’s nice to see you again. So soon.”

  One of her delicate eyebrows winged high on her forehead. “I somehow doubt that.”

  The marshal rubbed a hand over his bristly hair as though straightening it. He must not have counted on getting this close to the magistrate. Usually a private audience took months and an appointment. Which meant he probably didn’t realize she had her guards tucked somewhere nearby. I could almost feel their warm breath tickling my nape.

  “You may go.” She flicked her fingers toward the marshal, who bowed his head.

  “Yes, Magistrate.” Flushing bright red, he squealed out her title.

  Once the door shut behind us, she withdrew a button-sized charm, placed it on the desktop and crushed it with a black metal stapler. My ears popped as the spell activated. If Vause felt the change in pressure, she gave no outward indication.

  “What news do you have from Abbeville? Has Harlow been found?” I seized control of our meeting by asking the first rapid-fire questions. “Have they located Charybdis?”

  “Charybdis is dead.” She squared her shoulders, preparing for a fight. “I was sent pictures of his corpse for confirmation.”

  A prickling sensation told me we weren’t on the same page. “So they found the person responsible for the medics’ deaths?”

  “You left the state without checking out of your hotel room.” She dusted the used charm into the trash bin. “Where did you go?”

  She offered up her palm, and the scent of hand sanitizer perfumed the room as it squirted from thin air. Invisibility? That was a dangerous magic, though it shouldn’t surprise me to learn the conclave employed it for their high-profile members.

  Two could play this game. “I touched one of the corpses, and I’m ready to swear before the full senate of magistrates that whatever killed those medics gave off the same magical signature present at all the previous crime scenes.” I stared her down. “My skills are documented, and my identifications have never been contested.”

  “You were last seen exiting your hotel and getting into a cab.” Her clear gaze never left mine as the two different conversations merged into one. “The warg followed minutes later. Where did you go?”

  “You had someone following me?” That tidbit of information shouldn’t have surprised me. Then the implications of her statement sank in, and fury trembled in my voice. “What are you insinuating?”

  “I have made no insinuations,” she informed. “I have stated facts in an attempt to clarify your whereabouts during the past few days. As to your former question, yes. I did not trust the warg, and I assigned a guard to you for your protection.”

  I held in my snort and almost choked on it. A guard. Assigned for my protection. No doubt her plant had texted her updates on our every move. Nice.

  “I have other information at my disposal. Either I reconstruct the timeline with possible errors, or you can report to me now.” She cocked her head, expecting a recitation of dates and times and other damning intel. “The choice is yours,” she prompted, her gaze tagging the chair opposite hers. “Do have a seat. You must be tired from your activities last night.”

  I sank into the plush cushion and debated how much to confide in the magistrate I wasn’t sure I trusted anymore. I chose the safer option, the one where she filled in blanks and I corrected her when she got things wrong. “How much do you know?”

  “A substantial amount,” she said, not falling for the ploy. “Enough that any deviation will be apparent.”

  “Graeson met me in my hotel room. He wanted to discuss the case. He asked for my help with a plan he had concocted. I declined.” I kept it short and to the point. “He refused to leave my room until I heard him out. I declined that too and left when he refused to go.” She nodded encouragement, and I continued. “I noticed Harlow hadn’t returned from the Sardis Lake site yet, and I made the decision to go to her, hoping by the time I returned the warg would have lost interest and left. At the site, I was unable to locate Harlow. Graeson appeared, without invitation, and we searched for her together.”

  “Did you feel threatened by the warg?” she interjected.

  “No.” There was no hesitation in my answer. “He would never hurt me.”

  “Hmm,” she replied. “You sound certain of that.”

  A tingle of doubt spread through me. I got the impression I had given away a personal truth I should have kept to myself, but it was too late now. If Vause had been following Graeson and me as closely as she claimed, she would know the warg had formed an attachment and that I was, sadly, not immune to his charms. Graeson was a gorgeous specimen of wargdom. I had seen every inch of him nude, many times, and had yet to isolate a single physical flaw. No. Those emerged as soon as he opened his mouth. The man was a master manipulator.

  “The Fury, Letitia Rebec, captured us,” I continued, to stall her next segue. “I was knocked unconscious and—”

  “I’m aware of those proceedings.” Vause waved a thin hand, appearing eager to reach a specific point in my narrative. “I have an eyewitness account of every moment from the time you left the hotel to the time you were taken into custody by Mr. Graeson and his associate, Adele Preston.” She leaned forward. “You were missing for several days, unwilling or unable to return any of my phone calls, and the next I hear of you is through a liaison informing me that you were in Abbeville and asking for me. What brought you to Abbeville, Camille? How did you end up in the middle of a crime scene?”

  I told her the truth. “Graeson believed that area was the next location where the kelpie would strike.”

  “How did he come across this information?”

  “He gave a scale we found at the Brushy Creek site to—” despite my irritation with them, I covered for the Garzas anyway, “—a witch. He used it to power a divination spell.”

  “Interesting. Not many packs employ witches.” Her gaze sharpened. “What else did this witch divine?”

  “All I know is what Graeson told me.” I spread my hands in a helpless gesture. “He claimed the kelpie would take its next victim in Abbeville, Mississippi, and that’s why he brought me there.”

  That Charybdis had been predicte
d to make an appearance in Tennessee, I kept to myself, unsure whether that timeline had been negated by the kelpie’s death.

  “What did he hope you would accomplish that his own people could not? He didn’t allow you access to any resources, which means your conclave contacts would have proven useless.” When I didn’t immediately answer, she gave a knowing nod and her lips thinned. I glimpsed the tip of an emotion too vast to be labeled as anger there, but she blinked, and her mask slid back into place. “I see. I suspected that might be the case.”

  Angry he beat you to the punch? The words almost flew out of my mouth, but I clamped my jaw shut and caged them. Pissing off a magistrate was far more dangerous than yanking Graeson’s tail ever could be.

  “Wargs are practical beasts. Graeson saw Lori, and he began plotting a way to use her.” Vause rubbed a finger over the creased skin between her eyebrows. “That was my fault. I acted…rashly…in allowing him to sit in on the McKenna girl’s interview. I apologize for sharing your secrets with him so openly.”

  “I would have agreed to help if he’d asked.” The urge to defend Graeson loosened my jaw. “I could have escaped if I’d wanted to.” I amended that to, “He would have released me if I’d asked.”

  Her hand dropped, and she stared at me. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I felt he had information pertinent to the case.” I shifted in my chair under the weight of her consideration. “Since native species are hesitant to trust fae, it seemed like a good opportunity to learn what they knew.”

  Vause let that statement hang suspended between us. “Yet you made no attempt to share this information with the conclave.”

  “He took my phone.” For the first time, I was glad for it. “Wargs don’t need them for interpack communication. None of the wargs I saw carried one. As isolated as we were, I doubt I would have had reception in any case, so the point is moot.”

  Not a total lie. I had held Daphne’s phone in hand, but I hadn’t checked the bars for signal strength. As far as I knew, I was telling her the truth.