No Broken Beast

by Snow, Nicole

  But it’s nothing compared to the way the two of them are together, and ever since Doc and Ember got married, I don’t even know when they stop to have time to live.

  But I guess with Ember pregnant—though she’s not showing yet, and I only know because Gray broke his stoic silence and texted everyone—they’re finally slowing down and checking out before midnight.

  So when I find the office locked up and the windows dark, I track them back to their house.

  I haven’t been here in a while. But I remember it as a spartan place, grey and utilitarian.

  It’s completely changed.

  Their lawn has wildflowers everywhere, though they’re beginning to wilt as autumn settles in, and the trees along the edge of the yard light up brilliant orange. Cozy patio furniture draped in bright-colored but slightly lumpy quilts dots the porch.

  There are actual curtains hanging in the windows, replacing the militant simplicity of Gray’s old blinds. There’s a blindingly neon plastic playset already set up on one side of the yard, even though Ember can’t be more than two or three months along, and they won’t need it for years.

  Can’t blame Doc for being overenthusiastic.

  And I can’t blame him for finally moving on, either.

  I’m fucking glad he did.

  I guess this is what married life does to a man. And I’m happy at least one of us gets to pick up, start over, and leave the bad memories behind to have a real life.

  But although Gray is one of the only people in Heart’s Edge I can speak to safely, one of the only people who doesn’t think I’m a murderous, disfigured monster, I’m still edgy, tense, as I step up on the porch and knock.

  The door opens a minute later.

  Not Gray, but Ember, sleepy-eyed in an oversized, faded sweatshirt and a pair of cozy pajama shorts, a fuzzy black cat twined between her legs and looking up at me with curious golden eyes that seem to recognize me.

  Baxter.

  That damn well takes me back a few months. Makes me think of people I don’t want to remember.

  Like Fuchsia Delaney, the cat’s original owner. Just thinking the witch’s name makes my skin crawl. I hope thinking damn well can’t summon her, too.

  So instead I offer a smile at a squinting Ember, even if I know it’s not visible behind the hood pulled up over my head. “Hey, Ember. It’s–”

  Ember blinks, her eyes widening as she snaps awake with a gasp.

  “Leo?!” she says, and from inside the living room there’s an echoing What? before she reaches out to grasp my arm and tug me inside. “Oh my God, get inside. The neighbors might...just come on!”

  It’s both heartwarming and sad that my best friend’s wife actually touches me without disgust and immediately jumps to thinking about my safety, if I’m seen, instead of flinching back from the giant, scarred beast in front of her.

  There’s that old echo of family again.

  In another life, Doc and Ember could be my brother and sister.

  It’s not something I’ve ever had, not really. That doesn’t stop me from wanting it.

  Also doesn’t stop me from basking in the warmth of their home, shuffling into a living room that crackles with the crisp fire burning in the hearth. I find him in the living room, perched in an overstuffed chair.

  Though there’s tension now, as Gray stands, emerald-green eyes watching me intently behind his glasses, the battle-readiness of a former soldier already flowing through him. “Leo? Are you all right? Is everything—”

  I hold up one hand, hovering near the door.

  I don’t want to intrude, and I don’t intend to stay.

  I’m not taking him away from his hard-won family.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Nothing to worry about. I just wanted to know if you’ve heard anything about the break-in at Sweeter Things. From what I’ve got, somebody took Deanna Bell.”

  Ember’s eyes widen, her fingers clutching at her chest—while Gray’s brows lower. He sinks back down in his chair again, steepling his hands. “Damn, it always amazes me how you know things like this before anyone.”

  “I have eyes and ears. The evidence is pretty clear.” I frown. “What? Is it being kept secret?”

  “From what Langley let slip...yes.” But Gray’s evading something; I can tell. He sighs, avoiding my eyes, raking his hands through his thick, dark hair, looking at the fire instead. “I’m guessing you’d like me to be your ear to the ground and relay back anything I find?”

  “If you can. Obviously without drawing attention. Don’t get in too deep, Gray. Not the hell again.”

  “I’m already in, man. I’ve been ‘in’ this for most of my adult life, same as you, and just because we cleaned things up a few months ago doesn’t mean it’s over. Not with the company still intact.”

  Those piercing eyes of his slide back to me. Gray has this way of looking at you like he knows all the things you hide from yourself, and he does it to me far too damned often.

  Because he cares, I guess, as hard as that is to accept.

  And that caring resonates in his voice, warming from its usual cold precision as he says, “It won’t be over until you don’t have to hide anymore. Until we clear your name, Leo. If I just—”

  “No!” I can’t help the harshness as I cut him off, retreating back a step till the doorknob hits my back. “It’s not time for that yet.”

  “That’s what you said months ago.” Gray just watches me quietly, while Ember settles in on the arm of his chair, her pale-blue eyes so worried. It’s like she actually knows me enough to give a damn.

  No one knows me that well anymore.

  I’ve kept enough distance to make sure of it.

  Turned into the monster in the hills, prowling the darkness, forbidden to ever step into the light.

  “Will it ever be time?” Gray asks softly, and I growl, looking away.

  “This isn’t about me,” I snarl. “I just want to make sure Deanna’s found. You know Clarissa. She’ll never get over it if something happens to her last surviving family. I don’t want anything to force her here, dragging her back to this hell.”

  The silence that descends is hushed, terrible.

  A warning or an omen or some fuckery I can’t even put into words.

  Raw instinct pricks my skin again, and I retreat another step. I can’t go any farther when the door bumps my shoulder.

  “What? What is it?” I can barely choke out the question.

  Gray eyeballs me somberly. Some twist of my stomach and the painful beat of my heart tells me what he’s going to say even before it comes out.

  “She’s already here, Leo,” he says, and my mouth goes dry. “Clarissa Bell has returned to Heart’s Edge.”

  3

  Stuck in the Middle (Clarissa)

  There’s something I’m missing.

  It’s been two days of torture.

  The cops from Missoula have been all over the crime scene, but wouldn’t tell me anything besides disturb nothing.

  In my own freaking candy store.

  Okay, so technically it’s Deanna’s shop, but it’s mine, too. I started this company. And now I’m not allowed to touch anything there because I might damage some tiny, overlooked clue.

  I can’t even clean up the bonbons smeared across the shop floor, nothing but chocolate puddles now over two days of melting in the sun and then cooling and hardening at night.

  It’s going to be pure hell to get out of the grout between the tiles.

  Or maybe I’m just hyper-fixating on the little things so I don’t panic.

  But I’m also hoping one of those little things will finally point me to something the cops missed.

  They haven’t been back to the crime scene since the first day. I don’t even know if the relief team is still in town.

  It’s like they don’t care at all. Too swept up in 'just doing their jobs.'

  Like they’ve already given up on finding Deedee alive.

  I can’t accept that. I won
’t.

  So pardon my French, but screw don’t disturb. If they won’t look harder, turn over every last thing for my sister, I will.

  I pick my way slowly through the front of the shop, careful not to touch anything or even kick aside a shard of glass. I can’t make sense out of this chaos.

  My sister’s hand is everywhere. I see it in all the little flourishes like the pink plastic cocktail swords stuck in the truffles and the little blue ribbons sealing toffee wrappers closed.

  But her hand isn’t in this violence or this mess.

  I don’t want to think about the person who’d do this, or why.

  Honestly, I don’t want to think about this kind of force inflicted on my sister at all.

  So I swallow the lump lodged in my throat and focus.

  Nothing in the front of the shop, nothing in the kitchen, so I duck into the back office, dipping under the crime scene tape stretched across the door.

  It’s been tossed, too. File cabinets tipped over, the desk toppled, papers strewn everywhere. The desktop computer’s monitor is totally smashed.

  Then I see the tower’s been ripped open. There’s no hard drive inside.

  Hmm. I’m no computer genius, but I know what a hard drive looks like, and it’s missing from the slot where it belongs inside the machine’s dusty black case.

  Frowning, I crouch down in front of it, peering inside.

  Just why?

  There’s nothing special about this basic computer. Should just be for accounting, inventory, and order tracking, and for updating the shop’s website. Maybe Deanna played Minecraft on it or something, but...

  But it tells me what they came here for. Even though there shouldn’t be any info on that hard drive to provoke this.

  There’s something Deanna knows that she shouldn’t.

  Something they want.

  Even if it’s senseless and grim, that gives me hope.

  Because as long as she doesn’t tell them what they want to know, they can’t kill her.

  I start to turn away—only to pause as something else catches my eye, something that got lost in the general chaos, half-hidden behind a tall file cabinet that’s been shoved aside.

  A hidden wall safe.

  Its door hangs open, practically blasted off, dangling by one hinge.

  I frown, drifting closer to the wall. I signed off on every bit of the construction plans for this shop, even if I never actually set foot here in person.

  There was no flipping wall safe in the initial design.

  Especially not one this heavy duty, made from what looks like six solid inches of steel.

  Jeez. I don’t even use a safe like this at the main branch in Spokane. All I’ve ever needed is a cubic foot-wide strongbox. We’re not a bank. Just a candy store.

  When did my sister install this thing? And what was inside that was so devilishly important?

  Whatever it was...it wasn’t the money. A few zippered cash bags sit in the back of the safe, their sides bulging with rectangular bills.

  Just like the untouched register.

  Ugh. There’s nothing else damning inside the safe.

  Nothing that’d warrant this kind of protection. Either the intruder didn’t find what they wanted...

  Or they did.

  And they took it.

  But there is something else, pushed up haphazardly, half-crushed against the cash bags.

  A bouquet of flowers, so wilted their scent is barely a ghost.

  White lilies, gone yellow as they died—mixed in with the pink and blue wildflowers that grow all around Heart’s Edge.

  I can’t stop frowning. It just keeps getting weirder.

  Though I know I’m not supposed to touch anything, my curiosity gets the best of me. I reach inside and open the little folded card tied to the bouquet by a slender, shining blue satin ribbon.

  I’m sorry, Clarissa.

  Um, what? My heart stops. My breath, too, and my entire chest aches.

  These flowers were for me? From who?

  I have one good guess and no—no, it can’t be.

  So I shake my head, backing away numbly, swallowing, instantly nauseous.

  Not him.

  It must be a sick joke by the kidnapper. Someone connected with Galentron, mocking me after taking my sister.

  Oh, God. Not him!

  Violent shivers rush through me, and I fold my arms tight, desperately trying to hold myself together.

  This is vile. Frightening. Brutal.

  If only Deanna could’ve just walked away.

  If only she ran, got the hell away from Heart’s Edge, just like I did.

  Some things in life are better left behind. Nothing good ever comes from clinging to the past, much less shoving your nose in it.

  But then, Deanna didn’t see what I did that night. She was so young...

  To her, it’s just one more memory of fear, of loss, of sadness. Frightening men doing frightening things.

  It wasn’t her bleeding out on the floor after her own father tried to kill her.

  She didn’t watch the man she loved do the unspeakable to save her life.

  And she didn’t have to let the man she loved walk away from her and never come back, all because he had to be a big dumb hero and save the world.

  I won’t cry. I won’t. I—

  The sound of a footstep scuffs behind me.

  I spin around sharply, reaching out for something, anything I can use as a weapon.

  I come up with a stapler. Awesome.

  A pair of cool grey eyes stares back with condescending amusement. They’re attached to a tall, statuesque older woman in a sleek black sheath dress.

  I can tell with one look she’s not from Heart’s Edge.

  She’s too cosmopolitan, too elegant, her face sharp and harshly flawless, her ink-black bob haircut too severe, her clothing too expensive.

  Her eyes are hard, cold, knowing; the twist of her deeply mauve lips one step above a sneer.

  Jesus, I know her.

  A rush of cold familiarity tells me I know her, that I should be afraid of her, and I clutch the stapler tighter like some kid ready to chase an imaginary monster back under the bed. Except this monster’s real.

  I can’t remember her name. Just vague impressions buried in lost memories.

  But I know she can’t be trusted.

  She arches a sculpted brow, looking me over, that sour twist of her lips turning into a smirk.

  “Really now, Clarissa,” she says. “Are you going to put that thing down, or do you want to try to staple me to death first?”

  I tense, sinking down a little. Maybe I can bolt past her, get the drop on her, make it out the door. “I was thinking more of using it as a blunt object first,” I say breathlessly, tightening my grip. “How do you know my name?”

  “Oh, I’ve known you since you were very young, Clarissa Bell.”

  Just hearing my full name turns my stomach. It’s a cursed name, and no one in this town would say it out loud.

  But she just holds my eyes like she’s trying to tell me something and dips her hand into the pocket of her dramatically long black coat. I stiffen, bracing for a knife, a gun.

  It’s...a ball of hard candy, wrapped in clear cellophane. Violently pink.

  And then the memory comes crashing down on me like a ton of bricks as she purrs, “Hello, little girl. Would you like a piece of candy?”

  * * *

  Years Ago

  Papa told me to stay in my room—or else.

  He always tells me to stay in my room when his people come to visit late at night.

  I’m supposed to be asleep anyway, and Deanna’s curled up hugging her stuffed Elly and snoring like a big bear.

  But I can never sleep when Papa’s people are in the house.

  There’s something scary about them.

  I think it’s because, when I watch from the upstairs walkway, peeking through the bars of the banister...their shadows always come first.


  Long, marching black things, too thin to be human in my imagination, hollow and scary.

  I’ve convinced myself the shadows are what they really are, and the ordinary-looking humans in dark suits who come after are just costumes. It’s kinda like that old horror movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

  They’re monsters wearing human makeup, and I’m scared they’re slowly making Papa into one of them until he’ll go away somewhere, and there’ll just be a monster with a cruel smile in his place, looking down at me and calling me Clarissa and smiling like he knows me when he doesn’t anymore because he’s turned into a stranger wearing human skin.

  My real Papa went away after Mommy died. Maybe before when they fought so much.

  And I don’t think he’s ever coming back.

  It’s just the ice-cold monster-Papa now, and the shadow-people he talks to every night.

  I have to stay away, out of sight.

  Or they might just take me away and replace me with a monster-Clarissa, and throw me down in a deep, dark pit.

  I’m so focused watching those shadows move across the thick rug in the front entryway that I don’t realize someone’s behind me.

  Not until the woman speaks at my back, her voice sharp and weirdly rolling.

  “Hello, little girl,” she purrs as I tumble back with a muffled scream and get myself tangled up in my nightgown, staring up at her jet-black hair. And she gazes back with empty grey eyes, her smile full of teeth as she offers me a ball of pink candy wrapped in plastic. “Would you like a piece of candy?”

  * * *

  Present

  Oh, crap.

  I remember that candy now.

  How I took it because I was scared not to, and the first time I made myself eat it because she was watching and I thought, back then, that she was another shadow-thing in a human costume who’d hurt me if I didn’t.

  The stuff tasted gross and cloying, full of artificial flavors that gave it this nasty powdery aftertaste.

  The eight-year-old little girl that I was feared the candy was really some kind of scary magic to turn me into a shadow-monster.