by Jenn Burke
Something in my chest cracked, and the breath I heaved in was painful. “I was going to tell you. The day after, when I realized things were weird. But you were so excited about retiring and making plans and—”
“Excuses.”
“Yes! I know! But I was scared.”
“I thought you trusted me.”
“I do.”
“You don’t,” Hudson growled. “How can you say you do, if you thought I’d walk away because your magic got jacked up? Huh, Wes? Tell me.”
I shook my head.
“You can’t, because I’m right. You don’t trust me.”
A sob caught in my chest, because fuck him to hell, he was right. I didn’t. We’d found each other again, we’d rediscovered the love we had—or maybe it was new love built on the foundations of the old—but we’d broken up once. The precedent was set. Back then, he’d shown me that his priority wasn’t me. It had never been me. And his words and promises that that was true this time couldn’t battle the doubt and worry living in my head and heart.
I swept at the wetness on my cheeks and blinked hard. “I don’t.”
Hudson reeled back as though I’d struck him.
“But you don’t trust me, either,” I said. “What happened to me being a partner in this investigation firm?”
“What are you talking about? You are a partner.”
“You don’t treat me like one. You talked to Iskander without me. The two of you made decisions without me. You dismissed the idea of a job at the group home at first.”
“I apologized—”
“You did. But it doesn’t change the fact that you haven’t once considered my input.”
“That’s not true. We ended up taking the job at Aurora House, didn’t we?”
“Only because you decided to.”
Hudson jerked a hand through his hair. “How is this at all related to you keeping a big fucking secret?”
“What errands have you been running?”
He froze, mid-hair-swipe. “Huh?”
“Your errands.” I squinted at him. “Any tie to you wanting to rush into a burning house to grab your research notes?”
He met me glare for glare. “That’s not the same thing and you know it.”
“Then why not be open about it? I thought you had put the search aside.”
“I never said that.”
“You implied it.” My breath caught. “Isk knew, didn’t he?”
He turned away.
I shook my head and slowly regained my feet. “So I didn’t trust you with my secret, and you didn’t trust me with yours. Doesn’t say much for us, does it?”
As I reached the door, Hudson said, “Where are you going?”
I almost said home, but if I was honest with myself, home meant Hudson’s house, and it was gone. Destroyed. “My apartment,” I said instead, and hesitated. “You could—”
Before I could finish my offer, he said, “I’ll be fine here.”
Cold slithered through me at his rejection. I told myself as I opened the door that I resolutely was not waiting for him to call me back.
Good thing, because he didn’t.
* * *
Michael was waiting for me when I walked into my apartment, because of course he was. He was extra glitchy with jerky movements that threatened to give me vertigo, and even though I could see his mouth moving, all I heard was random noises that made no sense. I could usually figure out what he was trying to say, but tonight all I wanted was to be alone.
I reached into my liquor cabinet and pulled out a new bottle of Jack, my buddy. By the time a quarter of it was gone, Michael had shut up. I could still see him, though, and I hadn’t drunk enough that I couldn’t interpret the pity in his expression.
I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t fucking look at me like that. After the day I had, I’m damn well allowed to drink.” Lifting the bottle to my lips, I proved the veracity of my words. The alcohol burned my mouth and my throat, but settled into my chest in a nice, warm ball. “You don’t get to judge me. You don’t ever get to judge me.”
Michael’s mouth stayed closed, so at least my pickled brain didn’t have to try to decipher his words.
“Hudson’s scared of me.” The confession poured out, lubricated by Jack. “I saved him and Evan with my super-duper magic, and he’s scared of me. Not that I can blame him,” I added with a huff of a humorless chuckle. “I mean, what the fuck? Why am I like this?”
Michael opened his mouth but nothing came out, and a moment later he was gone.
I lifted my bottle in a mock salute. “Yeah, thanks for nothing,” I shouted, then took a hearty swallow.
I didn’t remember going to bed, but that’s where I woke up. The first thing I focused on was the half-full bottle of Jack sitting on my nightstand, and the previous day came rushing back with all its awfulness. I groaned and shoved myself up. My bladder let me know gravity was indeed a thing and I stumbled into the bathroom. When I finished up, I was tempted to pick up where I’d left off—there was half a bottle left, after all. Instead, I picked up my phone to see if there was any news about Lexi.
There wasn’t. I should be used to the “no news is good news” thing by now, but I wasn’t. Beyond that disappointment, I had sort of thought Hudson might reach out—but no. There was nothing. No calls. No messages. No emails.
I sat hard on the bed and stared at the lack of indicators on the device. No one had reached out. Not even to check in.
Seriously—what had I expected?
I had fucked up. Royally and completely. I’d pushed Evan into a low point. I’d shut Hudson out, when we were supposed to be all about letting each other in. And yeah, he wasn’t blameless, but I couldn’t justify my actions by pointing at his like a toddler and using them as an excuse. My choices were on my head, and I’d made some truly shitty decisions in the past few months.
But the fact that no one had reached out...
I tossed the phone onto my nightstand, flopped on my side, and pulled the covers up over my head.
That phase lasted a couple of hours, until I couldn’t stand my own stink anymore. I needed a shower. I pushed myself out of bed and tried to pretend it was like any other day—pointedly ignoring my phone. Under the spray of water, I considered my options.
One: I could return to my cocoon, smelling all fresh now, and continue to ignore the world. Tempting, but hiding—running—had never worked for me before.
Two: I could reach out and force a conversation with...someone. Hudson, maybe. Or Iskander—he might be a better choice. Except the last I’d seen of him, he was in full-on rawr protector mode over Evan, so maybe not. Besides, nothing good ever came from forcing something.
Three: I could apologize. I mean, that was a given. I was going to do that. But I was pretty sure I needed to wait more than twelve hours for their tempers to cool. If I hadn’t heard anything by this time tomorrow, I’d head over to the office and try to get one of them to listen to me.
Four: I could get some work done. Not in the office, but I could still do some research. Answer some questions I hadn’t had time to answer.
Yeah, okay. I could do that. It was something tangible, something that needed to be done. As an added bonus, it would be the right sort of distraction to get me out of my head.
But first—coffee. Maybe a bit of food.
Then I’d dig up everything I could to present it as a peace offering.
Four hours later, I was battling watery eyes, a sore back, and a stomach that protested the amount of coffee I’d dumped into it...but I’d made progress in gathering info on Silvia Samuels, the woman who’d pawned the brooch. I pushed back from my laptop and stretched, rubbing my eyes with one hand.
My phone rang, making me jump. It was Rosanna. Heart in my throat, pretty sure there were only two reasons she’d be calling
me, I answered.
“Wes?”
I couldn’t tell if that was excitement in Rosanna’s voice or tears. For a moment, I hung suspended in some weird sort of limbo, terrified of the next words that would come across the line.
“She’s awake.”
Chapter Fourteen
I didn’t think I’d seen so wonderful a sight before as Lexi’s open, watchful hazel eyes. They looked sleepy, not entirely focused, but goddamn—they were open.
“Hey,” I said from the doorway. My voice cracked.
She waved me in with her good hand and patted the bed. I sat down, then bent over to kiss her cheek.
“How are you?” she said, her voice low and raspy from disuse.
I chuckled. “Doing better than you.”
“Ass.”
“Doctor been to see you yet?”
“Think so. It was hard to follow what she was saying. They’re moving me out of the ICU, though.”
“That’s good.”
“Gonna get me up and walking in a bit.”
“That’s...fast.” I frowned. “You think?”
She grunted. I wasn’t sure if it was in agreement or not—Lexi was usually a lot more talkative, and I wasn’t practiced in her nonverbalisms like I was in Hudson’s.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fuzzy. Sore. Want to go home.”
I brushed the back of my finger along her cheek. “Yeah, but the hospital’s the best place for you right now. Get you all healed up.”
“Mom said someone shoved me and I fell?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Nah.” Her eyes drooped. “Prob’ly for the best, huh?”
“Yeah. You don’t need to worry about it. Just focus on getting better.”
“Okay.”
That right there was the biggest sign Lexi wasn’t herself. Telling her not to worry about something was usually the best way to get her to dig into something to find out all the whys and whats.
A soft tap on the door had me looking up. A nurse in pastel pink scrubs was there, smiling gently. “Ms. Aster? Time for some tests and then we’ll be moving you to a regular room.”
I kissed Lexi’s cheek again. “I’ll be back.”
“Promise?”
“Absolutely. I’ve got to fill you in on all the fun you’ve missed.” Go, me. I managed to say it without any hint of sarcasm.
She smiled and let her eyes slip closed. “I’ll hold you to that.”
“Good.” I squeezed her hand and left the room.
Rosanna and Darrell were in the waiting area, where they’d been when I arrived. Iskander had joined them at some point while I’d been in the room with Lexi, and he was sitting across from them and leaning close, probably so they could hear his low whisper of a voice. I don’t know what I expected when I walked up to them, but the blank look I got from Isk wasn’t it.
It stabbed me like a knife.
“Hi.” My hands twisted awkwardly in front of me. I wasn’t sure what to do with them. “They’re, um, doing some tests and then moving her to a new room.”
Rosanna rose and enveloped me in a hug, and Darrell was right there too, slapping my shoulder in a celebratory kind of way.
“She’s going to be okay,” he said in his deep, no-nonsense voice.
“I’ll let the guys know,” Iskander said.
Rosanna looked from me to Isk, her eyebrows raised in a silent query. Iskander gestured to me, in almost a mocking sort of way—though I could have been misinterpreting that, given where my head was. I sighed, exhausted by the idea of explaining it again. Because I didn’t know how to explain it.
“My magic is...uh. Increased?” I rubbed the back of my neck. “These past few months, since the—the—you know.”
“Since the crown,” Rosanna said.
I let out a breath. “Yeah.”
“And let me guess—you didn’t tell anyone.”
Iskander pointed at her and mouthed, “Bingo.”
“Oh, Wes.” She pulled me close again and kissed my cheek. “You always did make things more difficult than they needed to be.”
I grimaced and shrugged, because she wasn’t wrong.
She drew back. “You want me to help you with some meditation? Control?”
“Control isn’t a problem.” If it had been, I would have spoken up. Probably. “It’s a lot. It doesn’t fit anymore.”
She frowned. “That doesn’t sound like magic I know.”
Darrell nudged her shoulder. “Because you’re a witch. Wes isn’t. That’s got to have something to do with it, right?”
“Maybe.” Her eyes grew unfocused, which reminded me so much of Lexi when she was planning how to research her way out of a puzzle. “Let me do some digging.”
“Thanks.” I offered her a small smile, then turned to Iskander. “Can I, uh, talk to you for a second?”
He lifted one brow, but nodded over to the opposite corner. Once we were there, I pulled out my phone with my notes on Silvia Samuels, but instead of saying anything, I stared at them for what felt like a full minute. My heart was somewhere close to my throat, and my breath was starting to come hard and fast. With an effort, I calmed it, inhaling deeply and refusing to give in to the urge to panic.
This was Iskander. My friend. One of my business partners. And yeah, sure, he might hold the future of my friendship with Evan in his hands, because damn, protective much...and maybe even the future of my relationship with Hudson, now that he and Hudson were besties and he could maybe influence him to drop me like a hot coal...
Okay. None of those thoughts were helping.
“Do you still want me as a partner in the firm?”
Isk jerked back like I’d slapped him. “What?”
“I could sell my share. If you need me to. I mean... I fucked up, and you don’t—you don’t like me much right now, and—”
“I’m pissed at you, yeah. I think you—” He cleared his throat. “You made some shitty decisions. You almost made shittier ones. You messed with my brother-in-law’s brain. And—” He paused to swallow and take a breath. “And you hurt Evan. Like, a lot.”
“I know.”
“But none of that’s business.”
“Yeah?” I said, looking up and knowing hope was probably etched across my face. Also, I felt so young. Young and stupid. I remembered what Hudson had said to me when we’d first reconnected months ago—that I was stuck, unevolving, forever locked into the mind-set of a twenty-three-year-old.
“Yeah.” Iskander’s lips twitched into something that might have been a smile. “What’ve you got?”
My phone’s screen had gone dark by now, so I nudged it awake. “I looked into Silvia Samuels, the person who pawned the brooch. She’s dead.”
“Damn. How?”
I made a face. “She froze to death in her apartment.”
“Dear god.”
The papers had articles referring to the event for weeks, stories I vaguely remembered reading at the time, about six years ago. It was the sort of “it bleeds, it leads” story that newspaper editors salivated over. Add to it that she’d died during a particularly frigid cold snap, in a city that was no stranger to winter and epically low temperatures? And the fact that her landlord was immediately under scrutiny due to rumors he’d shut off the heat to her apartment because she hadn’t paid her rent in three months?
Oh yeah, the papers practically had an orgasm over the scandal.
“She was in her late sixties with no known family. Apparently she was an, uh, entertainer in her youth.”
Iskander arched a brow. “Burlesque? Prostitute?”
It was a good guess, because if she’d been an actor, that’s what they would have called her. “No idea. I couldn’t find those details. But I did see a comment from a friend of hers tha
t Silvia had pawned the brooch to help raise enough money to get caught up on her rent.”
“That’s awful.”
“Right?” I closed my notes app. “It’s all gross, but it doesn’t explain why a ghost suddenly decided to retrieve Silvia’s brooch now. I mean...was it her? And if so, why?”
“It’s good work,” Isk said. “Take a break, let it percolate. Go back to it later. I’ve got something else you can look into.” He pulled out a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to me.
I unfolded it, revealing a black-and-white image and some text. It took me a minute for my brain to pick out the patterns in the image, but when I did, a creepy old Victorian house jumped out at me. The text was easier to understand.
Investigate the things that go bump in the night!
The Ghost Squad is looking for new members. No experience required. Just an open mind and a steady soul. Meetings on Friday nights.
You’re not afraid, are you?
“Where’d you get this?”
“Evan and I went for a walk on campus last night. He wanted—” Iskander broke off, looked at his feet, and started again. “He wanted to get a glimpse of Scott, make sure he was okay.”
“I didn’t hurt him.”
“You did. Not physically, maybe. But...” Isk tapped his temple.
Yeah, okay. Point. I sighed. “Did he see him?”
Iskander made an affirmative sound. “But he couldn’t bring himself to say anything to him.” He flicked a finger at the paper. “We found that on a lamppost.”
It was somewhere to start, I guessed. Nothing on the sheet of paper tied the ghost-hunting group to Aurora House, but the kid who’d shoved Lexi had been young, and definitely not a resident. Even if he wasn’t a part of this Ghost Squad, I didn’t imagine the ghost-hunting community was that huge. Maybe one of the members knew him.
At the bottom of the sheet was a number to text for information on the next meeting. “Think I should check it out?”
“I think you and Evan should.”
I jerked my gaze up. “Evan’s not gonna want to go with me, are you kidding?”