Peasblossom scowled at me from where her head poked out under the edge of my shirt. “You did what you could. Scath stopped you, and he didn’t say anything about forbidding that. Besides, you didn’t melt them down.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t have time to dwell on it.
Andy.
Peasblossom tightened her grip on the edge of my shirt as I ran for the car. I didn’t wait for Scath, didn’t check to see if she still had Majesty. I didn’t need her help to get to the car now. I could have run back to Andy’s house on the adrenaline coursing through me.
By some miracle, I made it to Andy’s in one piece. The entire drive there, my mind tormented me with images of all the horrible things that might have happened to him. All the ways that bloody message could have come to pass. Marilyn had acted like she was surprised I’d shown up to take advantage of her invitation. But that didn’t mean Simon hadn’t been expecting me. Or Morgan.
“She did this,” I seethed.
Peasblossom crawled onto my shoulder, hopping toward my neck with wobbly legs until she could grab onto my ear. “The blood?”
I nodded. “She helped Simon. He needed time alone with Catherine to steal her knife, and she knew just how to distract me.” My throat threatened to close, and it took me three tries to swallow. “The question is, how far did she go for the distraction? Did she use a stranger’s blood? Or did she count on Scath being there? Did she need to make sure it was convincing?”
I fell out of the car, hissing as my knees hit the asphalt of Andy’s driveway. I had too much adrenaline pumping through my system. It was making my whole body shake, and I couldn’t hold onto a coherent thought for more than a second. By the time I got to the front door, I was already crying, hysteria in full swing. I pounded on the door with my fists, biting my lip to keep from hollering his name and waking the neighbors.
A light switched on inside. Andy answered the door blinking and wearing baggy sweatpants and a plain white T-shirt. His hair stuck up at odd angles, and his face was slack like someone who’d been in deep sleep seconds ago. His brow furrowed as he tried to focus on me.
At first, my brain didn’t even recognize him. Without his suit, without his impeccable grooming, he didn’t look like my Andy. I thought he was someone else, not Andy but a relative come to settle his affairs.
Andy opened his mouth, then took one look at my face and thought better of it. All traces of sleep fled from his face, and his brown eyes sharpened, tension seizing his shoulders, pushing him to stand up straight.
I didn’t even realized I’d entered the house until suddenly his soft T-shirt was under my palms, then I was sliding my fingers over his arms, checking for injuries, anything that might tell me the blood on the rocks came from him. I avoided the fresh marks on his wrist and shoulder from Scath’s teeth. They were mostly healed thanks to my magic, but fresh scars still lingered.
Next I ran my hands over his back. I found nothing new there, nothing open and bloody. I shoved his T-shirt up, looking over his stomach, his sides. My brain superimposed a memory over his skin, a memory of when he’d been shot, the last time the kelpies had taken him. I shook the image off, ran my hands over his ribs, checking to make sure nothing was broken.
Andy pulled his shirt off, realizing I wanted to examine him, resigned to showing me he wasn’t hurt. I ran my hands over the scars on his back. He stiffened, but didn’t pull away, and didn’t try to stop me.
I stared at the scars, but they were all old, all healed as much as they ever would be. Nothing new there. I was shaking again. Andy slid the legs of his sweatpants up, and I stared at his legs, checked the path of the femoral artery. There were a few scars on his legs, different from the ones on his back. Mostly on his knees. But no new injuries.
I was kneeling on the floor now, my search for wounds over. I knelt there and tried to regain control of my breathing, tried to find some peace to go with the knowledge that he wasn’t hurt. The message had been a warning. Or some horrible prank by Simon. Who knew? But it wasn’t Andy’s blood. It wasn’t too late to make sure that message never came true.
Andy put his clothes back in place. Without a word, he knelt beside me. He slowly drew me against him, letting me cry. I let him move me, let him press my ear to his chest. His heart beat strong and steady under my ear. A little faster than it should have been, thanks to having a hysterical witch show up on his porch, but still calm. Still strong.
“I’m okay,” he whispered.
I cried harder, and he let me. My face hurt, but I didn’t care. Something about that heartbeat anchored me to the moment. Kept me from drifting back to Marilyn’s. To the beach.
Andy didn’t stroke my hair, didn’t whisper nonsense words of comfort. He just waited. I had no idea how long we stayed there, but finally I wasn’t crying anymore.
“You have to tell me.” My voice was a wet rasp, thanks in large part to my now-stuffy nose and too much crying. I pulled back so I could look into Andy’s eyes. “You have to tell me what’s wrong.”
He held my gaze for a long minute. I couldn’t read his expression. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper.
I shook my head. “Don’t be sorry. Just tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
He put his hands on his chest as if reaching for a suit jacket to tug. He didn’t find one, just his soft—now wet—T-shirt. “Something is wrong,” he admitted carefully. “But I’m handling it.”
I closed my eyes, and the last of my hot tears streamed down my cheeks. I forced myself to look at him again. “That’s not good enough,” I said quietly.
Andy opened his mouth, but I held up a hand.
“I’ve tried to give you space. And time. I’ve respected your privacy. But you haven’t been getting better. You’ve been getting worse. So I need to know. You can tell me now.” I sucked in a sharp breath, forced the rest of the words out. “Or I’ll find out myself.”
I expected a fight. Goddess only knew that’s what he’d taught me to expect lately. But instead, Andy looked away, gathered his thoughts. Then he turned back to me.
“My birth parents were bad people.” He said it in a voice empty of emotion, a pure statement of fact. “I don’t want to talk about it. Most of the time, it doesn’t matter anymore. The past is the past.”
He settled into a cross-legged position and folded his hands in front of him. “When you didn’t speak with me for a month, I volunteered for a task force. It was a rough case, and it didn’t go as well as we’d hoped. I was in a dark place, and I made some bad choices. Fell into old habits.”
“What kind of bad choices?” I asked. “What old habits?”
Andy shook his head. “It doesn’t mat—”
“Tell me or I’ll find out myself,” I repeated. I hated forcing this conversation. I’d been in this position myself, been forced to spill my guts on a subject so personal I didn’t want to share it with anyone. But I couldn’t wait anymore. Not when his recklessness could get him killed.
Andy stared hard at me, as if he could make me drop it just by letting the silence stretch long enough. It was a good technique. It worked on most people, and it was probably a big part of his work as an interrogator. But I was a witch. Silence didn’t bother me.
“I almost struck a suspect.” His voice was softer, but still matter of fact. “I didn’t, but that doesn’t matter. It’s been building, and I should have done something about it sooner.”
I didn’t understand what he was getting at, so I waited without speaking.
He was quiet for a long minute, but then continued.
“I struggled with anger issues for a long time. My mom and dad,” he gestured to one of the photographs on the wall, indicating his real parents, and not the biological pair, “helped me cope with it.”
“The suit,” I whispered.
“Dad was big on suits. He said nothing kept people from getting on your case like a good suit. If your suit is cl
ean, no stains, no wrinkles, then as far as the world knows, everything is just fine. It shows the world a man who’s in control, a man with authority. And he was right. People treated me very differently when I wore the suit.” He tilted his head. “I treated myself differently. I felt different.”
“Then your parents passed away.”
Andy nodded. “I didn’t realize how much I still leaned on them. So now I’m starting to realize I need to find a new way to deal with my anger.”
“The suit was a good way to cope with anger in the moment, but unfortunately, if you don’t deal with where that anger comes from, then it’s always going to come back,” I said. “Have you tried therapy?”
“Arresting bad guys was my therapy,” Andy said. “But then…”
My stomach tightened. “Then I pointed out there were bad guys getting away. There’s a whole new world of bad guys.”
“And I can’t arrest them.”
“That’s what you meant. At the docks. When you said it was my fault.”
“I didn’t mean it,” Andy said firmly. “Not you. It’s just…” His jaw tightened. “How much more do you need to know?”
“All of it.” It wasn’t the kindest thing I could have said, but I’d given him enough time.
He closed his eyes, then immediately forced them open, forced himself to look at me. “You look a little like my birth mother.”
The words were both a salve and a blow to my heart. On the one hand, I was grateful that it wasn’t me causing Andy so much pain. On the other, it meant that Andy’s bad temper had no easy fix. It wasn’t just something I’d said or done to upset him. These wounds ran deep. They’d taken a long time to inflict, and they’d take a long time to heal.
I looked behind Andy at the ghosts. His mother held her hand over her mouth as a tear slid down her translucent cheek. Andy’s father gritted his teeth. He definitely had anger toward Andy’s birth parents and how they had failed him.
“Is that enough?” Andy asked finally. He gestured between us. “Are we all right now?”
“You need to get help,” I told him. “You need to deal with the underlying issue. A coping mechanism equivalent of a Band-Aid isn’t going to be enough anymore.”
“I know. Are we good?”
I wanted to argue, to insist that he have a plan. Something actionable. But now that I knew a little more about what was going on, I realized there was only so much I could do to help. This wasn’t an Otherworld problem. He didn’t need magic. He needed a friend. And that meant taking it slow.
“Don’t shut me out,” I said. “As long as you’re taking this seriously, as long as you’re taking real steps to get better, then we’re good.”
Andy nodded, then got up and went into the kitchen. I heard him filling a pot with water, heard the click and soft whoosh of a stove burner flaring to life. The sound of mugs clinking together, the pantry door opening. I concentrated on those familiar sounds as I let my eyes drift closed. Now that I had my answers, and knew Andy was okay at least for the time being, the rest of the day’s events caught up to me. The pain of the burns began to make itself known, reminding me that it was time to reapply my salves. Drink another healing potion.
The scent of tea drifted over me. I opened my eyes to see Andy offering me a mug of hot tea. Honey and lemon.
He even had a honey packet for Peasblossom.
“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.
A tiny sob worked its way out of my mouth. “My face hurts.”
Andy studied the burns on my cheeks, his expression schooled into his serious FBI mask. Then he reached for the zipper of my waist pouch. I didn’t move as he pulled it open, lifted the flap a few inches. “Bizbee, do you have any burn cream?”
It was the first time Andy had ever spoken to the grig. Bizbee popped out, fuzzy antennae swaying, a tub of homemade burn cream in his arms. He stared hard at Andy, then at me, probably trying to figure out what had prompted the change.
Andy took the tub of burn cream and unscrewed the lid. The clean scent of aloe tickled my nose as he rubbed it over my cheeks, his touch surprisingly gentle.
“Tell me what happened,” he said.
I did. I told him about Alicia, and how she’d attacked me. I told him about Simon and my failure to save him. I told him about Morgan, and all her insinuations about Scath, her insistence that someday I would understand what she’d done, the spell that obviously kept her from saying more. I told him about how Vazkasi had melted the artifacts, and there was nothing left. Nothing to return to the owners. Nothing to allow me to satisfy Flint’s demands.
I told him I didn’t care.
Finally, I told him about the bloody message on the rocks.
Andy was silent through it all. He finished with the burn cream and set the tub on the floor, then sat back with his cup of tea cradled in his large hands.
He appeared to consider everything I’d said. “Do you want me to come with you when you tell Flint?”
I pushed my hair out of my face and shook my head. “It won’t help. Honestly, if he gets really angry about it, having you there might be worse.”
“Because he might take it out on me to upset you,” Andy guessed.
I nodded. Then I looked at Scath. The sidhe had come with me into Andy’s house, but she hadn’t moved from her position near the door. I thought at first she was guarding against intruders, but she was facing me. Watching.
“I have help,” I said, staring at Scath. “Flint won’t hurt me.”
I realized as soon as I said it that it was true. Flint could hurt me if he wanted to, under the contract. He couldn’t kill me, but he could hurt me. But if he tried, then I’d hate to see what happened to him. Scath obviously didn’t like him. I would imagine she’d be happy for any excuse to hurt him.
“You know,” I said slowly. “The contract I signed with Flint was…sloppy.”
“How so?”
I sat cross-legged on the floor, remembered I wasn’t in my twenties anymore, and uncrossed them and scooted backward on my bottom until I could lean my back against the couch. “He knew I had a familiar, but he didn’t make her part of the deal.”
“You said he couldn’t. You only bargained away your freedom.”
“But he had to know she’d help me get around his orders anytime she could. Scath too. He could have accounted for them when he gave me this case, told me that any time one of my allies helped me get around his orders, he’d take it out on me. In fact, he knew about Peasblossom when we made the contract. He could have made the penalty for her helping me get around his wishes additional time added to my contract.”
I looked at Peasblossom. She paused, then nodded. “That would be a standard provision.”
“But he didn’t.”
“Why do you think that is?” Andy asked.
“I don’t know.” I took a fortifying sip of tea, the cream on my face providing a blessed barrier against the touch of steam on my abused cheeks. “But there are a few things about this whole situation that bother me. These cursed artifacts that he wants stolen from the thief after they’re used, but then returned to their owners. It doesn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t he want them returned to him once the curses are null because they were already stolen? Returning them to their original owners resets the curse. If he wanted them with the original owners, curses intact, then why not have me stop the thief?”
“It doesn’t seem like it makes any sense,” Andy admitted. “So if there’s no obvious immediate benefit, then maybe this is part of a bigger plan.”
“That sounds like a sidhe,” Peasblossom agreed. “They love the long-game.”
“If that’s what this is, then what part of this case benefited him?” I asked.
“Well, look at what happened. What were the results?”
“Simon is cursed,” Peasblossom suggested. “If he did inherit oracle abilities from Morgan, then he has to tell the whole truth. Maybe Flint wants information.”
“I do think h
e’s the one who got Simon involved,” I agreed. “And if having a chatty oracle was his goal, then that means he specifically dragged Morgan into it too. Given her hatred for him, he must have manipulated her.”
“The bracelet!” Peasblossom shouted.
Andy frowned. “What about it?”
“We think Flint might have used it to make it look like Simon had oracle abilities. Or at least some propensity for them. Morgan has been chatting with an oracle that won’t tell her what she wants to know. Maybe Flint found out and that’s how he lured Morgan into this case. He made her think Simon was the answer to her difficulty.”
“But that would mean Simon doesn’t have the propensity, so he probably wouldn’t survive having the visions. So then Flint couldn’t have done all this to get a chatty oracle,” I pointed out.
Andy held up a hand. “All right, slow down. From what you’ve told me, Flint is a planner. Right?”
“Most sidhe are.”
“Okay. And he specializes in desires, in reading people. Right?”
“Right.”
Andy leaned forward. “So what if we assume everything that happened is exactly what he wanted to happen?”
I shook my head. “The artifacts were destroyed. I can’t imagine that’s what he wanted to happen.”
“What if he did? What if there’s something about them we don’t know, what if he was forbidden from destroying them? Or what if an oracle told him that someday they would be used on him, used to curse him or something?”
“He knew I had a personal history with Simon,” I whispered. “He knew I’d want to save him, and I’d rather fail and see the artifacts destroyed than let him stay cursed.”
I jerked upright suddenly, staring at Andy. “You work in the organized crime division.”
Andy arched an eyebrow. “So?”
“So, you have to have a lot of experience with complicated enterprises. Businesses with moving parts, people who stay in control without actually doing the dirty work themselves. What if you analyzed Flint as a corrupted enterprise?”
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