by J. R. Ward
“Are you serious?” Rochelle frowned. “Not at all. I was just glad you were happy. Are happy, that is.”
“Well, I only want you to be happy. As far as I’m concerned, that’s all that matters.”
Lowering her head back into her hands, Rochelle started to shake—and Boone stroked her shoulder, letting her have a moment of emotional release.
“She’s dead,” Rochelle said. “My love is dead . . .”
“Oh, God.” Boone eased to the side and got out a handkerchief from the back pocket of his leathers. “She’s dead?”
Sniffling, Rochelle accepted the square and pressed it to her face. “She’s dead and part of me died with her. I haven’t been the same since. I am never going to be the same.”
“Dearest Virgin Scribe . . . Rochelle. Tell me what happened.” He rubbed her back again. “From the beginning. And I can’t imagine what it’s like, holding this all in.”
His friend took a shuddering breath. “When I came here, a year ago, to break the arrangement with you, she and I had decided to stop fighting the attraction and commit to a relationship. I was scared about my family finding anything out, but she was . . . she was my whole world. I’d never been so happy, so complete. And she didn’t know about you. She didn’t know about . . . all of this and everything that comes with it.” Rochelle indicated the formal room with her hand. “I knew I couldn’t go through with the mating with you. Not just because of what it would do to her, but because of what it would do to you. Both of you deserved more than that. And she especially deserved my respect and my love. She was no one’s shameful secret.”
“So you came here . . .”
“And I told you, and you called me brave.” Rochelle sniffed again and patted her nose. “I’m not brave. I was trying to hold on to my family and have her at the same time. I knew my parents would never understand or accept her, and worse, I’m their only offspring. After me? There is no one left of the bloodline. I was hemming and hawing over this so-called problem . . . when . . .”
Distantly, he caught a whiff of hot chocolate and straightened. Maybe he should tell Helania to wait a moment? After all, even though he trusted Helania with everything in his life, she was a stranger to Rochelle.
“Ah . . . listen, Rochelle.” He reached for her hand. “I’m just going to—”
As the contact with his friend’s palm was made, Boone froze, a sense of shock and disbelief flooding through him. While Rochelle sniffed again and looked at him as if she were waiting for him to finish her sentence, he slowly turned her hand over.
There, in the center, was a network of fine scars that had been salted into place.
“What is it?” she asked him.
Boone swallowed hard as he stared at the wounds. “Where did you get these?”
“I buried my love. Out at a state park. With her sister—”
The crash of a tray shattered the quiet, and Boone jumped up. Helania was standing in the archway of the parlor, her face white, her hands shaking, the mugs of hot cocoa and plates of sandwiches in a mess at her feet.
“What are you doing here?” she croaked out to Rochelle.
THIRTY-NINE
Helania went completely numb as she stared at the female who was sitting, composed as a matron, on Boone’s formal sofa. The clothes and the jewelry were nothing familiar, nor was the makeup or the hairstyle, but the face . . . that face was unforgettable.
And the recognition was not only on Helania’s side.
The female slowly stood up, her hand falling out of Boone’s, her visage going pale. “It’s . . . you.”
Helania went to take a step forward, but when she put her foot down, it was on broken china. Falling off-balance, she caught herself on the archway’s molding. When she looked up next, the female was right in front of her.
“I don’t understand,” Helania said.
The female stared at her for the longest time. “You look so much like her it hurts.”
The next thing she knew they were embracing like family who had been separated for a generation. And in that moment, Helania did not care about anything other than the fact that this stranger, whom she’d met at a great, tragic turning point in her life, was here.
“They found Isobel’s killer,” Helania said in a rush. “We have him. I was trying to reach you to let you know.”
“They do?” The female pulled back. “They found him?”
“Yes. The Brotherhood has him.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“I tried to contact you on Facebook to let you know. He didn’t just kill Isobel. He killed another female—”
“I know.” The female looked at Boone. “And that’s why I asked to see you tonight.”
It was at that point that Helania put two and two together more properly. “Wait . . . you were arranged to be mated with Boone. You were going to be his shellan.”
“Yes.” There was a long pause. “I’m Rochelle.”
“Rocky B. Winkle. On Facebook.”
“Yes.” The female looked back and forth between them. Then she stepped away. “Helania . . . how much did Isobel tell you about us?”
“She said that you were best friends? And you told me that yourself.”
Rochelle took another step back. “Did she . . . tell you about her boyfriend?”
“Yes, oh my God, do you know him? Can you get in touch with him?” Helania nodded toward Boone, who was sitting with great stillness on the sofa. “He and I have been working on the investigation into Isobel’s death—and also on a second killing. That’s how he and I met, by the way. And we’ve been hoping to find that male who meant so much to Isobel.” She glanced back at Boone. “See, I told you Isobel’s mate wasn’t the one who killed her. I knew he made her happier than I’d ever seen her before.”
When no one said anything else, Helania looked to the female, but Rochelle just kept staring at Boone. Who kept staring up at Helania.
“What?” Helania said.
The other female took a deep breath and dropped to her knees. One by one, she gathered the broken china pieces and put them on the tray that Helania and Thomat had worked so hard on to kit out nicely.
“We’re going to need a cloth of some kind to properly clean this up,” Rochelle murmured. “Perhaps we should call a doggen—”
“You can tell her what you just told me,” Boone said softly. “It’s okay.”
Rochelle froze with half a plate in her hands. Lifting her eyes, she stared upward at Helania. And then in a quiet voice, she whispered. “Your sister . . . was my one great love.”
Helania opened her mouth to say something—but then she blinked. Did a double-take. Felt sure that she had not heard what she had, but rather had read the female’s lips incorrectly.
“Isobel . . .” Rochelle repeated, “was my lover. We were so much more than friends.”
Tears threatened in the female’s lovely eyes . . . and then spilled down her cheeks, dripping off into the ruined china.
“I never knew,” Helania heard herself say hoarsely. “I never guessed . . .”
That my sister was gay, she thought.
“I told her she couldn’t tell anyone.” Rochelle placed the half plate onto the tray and sat back on her high-heeled boots. “I made her promise, because of who my family was, that she wouldn’t tell a soul. And that was the first of so many regrets for me after she was gone.”
“I never guessed,” Helania repeated. “She referred to you as her—”
“Boyfriend. I know. I told her to.”
“Wait, that night.” Helania lowered herself down so they could be eye to eye. “That night you came to tell me she was dead . . .”
“I knew where she lived. She’d told me your address. When we found her in that club . . . I can’t even tell you what that was like. I knew she would want you to know immediately—instead of having to wonder and worry about what had happened to her when she didn’t come home. So I took her body to my secret house, the one I bought on m
y own and my parents never go to—”
“The white house.”
“On Macon Avenue. Where we prepared her for the Fade Ceremony.”
Helania glanced back at Boone. “So we were close tonight.” She refocused on Rochelle. “We were trying to find that house. I couldn’t remember the address. I was desperate to find you.”
“I live there now.” Rochelle let herself fall back so she was sitting on the floor, and the fact that her pristine white slacks were getting stained with hot chocolate didn’t seem to matter to her in the slightest. “That night, while you and I were preparing her, I wanted to tell you the truth. But I’m a coward—and I didn’t know how you’d react, either. The last thing I wanted to do was spoil your memories of your sister. She loved you so much. She thought about you all the time. All she ever wanted was to take care of you—and the idea I might ruin that memory of her in your mind . . . I couldn’t tell you because I didn’t know what your thoughts on us were going to be.”
Helania remembered back to the months leading up to Isobel’s death. How Isobel had been so very happy, so radiant, so optimistic. Unlike anything Helania had seen before.
Reaching out with her scarred palm, she put her hand on the other female’s shoulder. In a strong, certain voice, she said, “Let me tell you what my thoughts are. You were the love of her life, too, and you made her happier than I’d ever seen her.”
Rochelle’s eyes welled with new tears. And then the female put her scarred hand over Helania’s.
“I cannot tell you,” the female said roughly, “what that means to me. It’s like Isobel just spoke to me from the grave.”
• • •
Sitting on the sidelines, Boone was both having trouble catching up and feeling very proud of the two females on the floor in front of him. Surrounded by the broken shards of the glymera’s propriety, Rochelle and Helania were reaching across, literally and figuratively, the divide of misinformation and lifestyle and death . . . and finding solace in each other.
Even though he’d never met Isobel, he had to imagine she was staring down from the Fade, glowing with happiness that the two most important people in her life were finding a measure of peace.
After they embraced for a second time, Rochelle looked at Boone. “But there’s more. And this is why I asked to see you.”
Boone got up off the sofa and decided to join the not-so-tea party on the hard floor. It just felt so right to throw convention and standards away and cop a squat here in the archway, broken crap all over the place, secrets being revealed, questions being answered.
Healing beginning.
He picked up the handle of a mug and toyed with it. “Tell us.”
“It goes back to before. When the arrangement was made.” Rochelle frowned and shook her head. “Shortly after I met you, I started to feel as if I were being watched. Followed. I couldn’t pin it down, but I would be at my parents’ house and I would look out the windows . . . and I would swear that somebody was there. It was so eerie. And then one night, I met up with Isobel at Pyre, and I felt like this male was following me as I went around the club.” She looked at Helania. “We used to go there because we didn’t have to hide our relationship. With all those masks and cloaks, we could be free. But I remember that night—we’d gone in my car because I’d just gotten it and I felt like driving. After we arrived . . . I just had this strange sense I was being trailed.”
“Fucking Syn,” Boone muttered.
“It kept up for quite a while. And then . . . Isobel was killed.” Rochelle closed her eyes. “I didn’t go back to the club after that and it disappeared. The sense . . . went away. I didn’t think about it again until . . .” She looked back and forth. “Until Mai was killed a week ago.”
Boone jerked forward. “Mai? Wait, what? You know about her killing, the second one?”
“She was our friend. Isobel’s and mine. She was the only person who knew about us.”
“She was the other female?” Helania stammered. “That night I came to your house? But wait . . . oh, of course, I didn’t recognize her when I found her because she was wearing the mask. And then in those terrible pictures after she was dead . . . I couldn’t bear to look at them on that wall in the evidence room.”
“Mai was the second death down there.” Rochelle looked at Boone. “And I found out about it from a friend of ours the night—”
“Of my father’s Fade Ceremony,” Boone filled in. “That’s why you were so upset.”
“To lose her as well. It was almost too much.”
Outside the mansion, the storm surged with a gale-force gust, the lights flickering and going out. But just as Boone was thinking about finding a candelabra, the electricity came back on.
Rochelle put her hand over her heart. “When I heard about Mai, I didn’t know what to do. Who to talk to. I didn’t know whether the deaths were connected, although—”
“They were,” Boone said. “And it has to be the same male who was stalking you. There are too many connections.”
“That’s what my intuition tells me. Two deaths, in the same place, so close together? But I hesitated to come forward because I’d kept everything with Isobel a secret. I was stewing over it all when I saw the posting the Brotherhood put out on social media—and that’s when I got your direct message.” After she nodded to Helania, she looked again in Boone’s direction. “I texted you last night to come see you so we could talk it all out and figure out what to do.”
“We were at the training center. I meant to text you back, I’m so sorry.”
“We’re here now, it’s okay. And you tell me they found out who it was?”
Boone nodded. “He’s one of the fighters who works with the Brotherhood. He has a history of stalking and killing females.”
“So he must have found Mai and Isobel through me? But how did he find me, and why am I important?”
“He went to Pyre. Just like you did. He must have started following you because of that.”
“I guess that was the connection. So am I next?”
Before he could answer, she got a distant look on her face, and Boone frowned. “What else?”
“Well, it’s about Mai.” Rochelle took a deep breath and glanced at Helania. “I think she might have had contact with him. By phone.”
“How so?” Boone said.
“After Isobel’s death, Mai moved into my house on Macon Avenue. She said she needed a place to stay, but I think she was just worried about me, and I’d taken to spending a lot of the days there. I mean, I was crying at the drop of the hat, and I couldn’t explain to my parents why, you know? They’re good people, but they’re totally traditional. Anyway, over the last week or two, I could hear Mai arguing with someone on the phone during the day, her voice raised. Whenever I asked her what was wrong, she wouldn’t tell me. It was clear, though, that she was very upset. Maybe it was that male.”
“Syn has a cell phone for sure. And with the kind of reach the Brotherhood has? He could have found her contact information through a species database or something.”
“That must be how it happened.” Rochelle looked at Helania. “I go out and visit Isobel at her grave. Do you?”
“Yes, absolutely.” Helania frowned. “And you know, I kept all of her things. Would you like to come to my apartment and see them? Maybe you would like some?”
“You would do that?” Rochelle said in a choked voice. “Give . . . some to me?”
“Yes.” Helania smiled. “I am absolutely sure that that is what she would have wanted.”
“When can we go there?”
Helania glanced at Boone. “We’re headed back to my apartment now. Come with us. And we can update the Brotherhood from there if you like. You’d certainly have more privacy.”
Boone got to his feet and brushed off his leathers. Bending down, he picked up the tray. “We have a plan. I’ve just got to get a change of clothes and some books, and we’re out of here.”
Rochelle’s expression wa
rmed. “Are you two moving in together?”
“Ah, kind of,” Boone said as Helania stayed silent.
“Well, I’m happy for you both.”
“Thanks, friend.” He nodded at the tray. “I’ll be right back.”
As he took his leave, he heard the females start talking about Isobel, and was aware of being sad he’d never meet Helania’s sister . . . and Rochelle’s great love.
She must have been a helluva good person, he thought.
Back in the kitchen, he dumped everything on the tray in the trash and told Thomat to have someone clean up the floor in a little bit—he wanted to give his two females a little more time to themselves. Then he went back through the pantry and paused in the open door to Marquist’s former suite.
Ah, yes. Moving boxes. Just what he needed—
As his phone went off, he took it out, and as soon as he saw it was Butch, he answered. “I was just about to call you. We found Isobel’s . . .” He hesitated, unsure of how much Rochelle wanted to keep quiet. Plus God only knew where Marquist was in the house. “We found the friend who helped bury Isobel, the one Helania was looking for—”
“Syn didn’t do it.”
Boone took his phone away from his ear and stared at the thing. Then he put it back into place. “What did you say?”
“He lied. Wrath could scent it.” The Brother laughed in a harsh rush. “The great Blind King doubles as one hell of a polygraph test.”
“Wait, this makes no sense. Helania saw him with Mai, with the female he killed.”
“He was with Mai. But he wasn’t the last person to be with her.”
“That’s not possible. Why would he lie?”
“Look, I’m not going to argue or debate why in the hell that fighter would cop to something he didn’t do because I can’t fathom his reasoning about anything at this point. He’s really fucked in the head, to be honest. But be that as it may, he did not kill either of those females or the human one who was found first at the club.”
Boone thought back to that alley, and the human male he’d castrated and tortured . . . that Syn had taken responsibility for.