“Hmm, let’s see,” I said sweetly, giving my chin a thoughtful tap. “Nope, they won’t be an issue.”
“All debts were repaid, then?” She was pushing her luck. Alex shuffled nervously next to me, his tension leaking out of him and all over me, so much so, that I contemplated taking a step away from him, just to avoid feeling his anxiety as well as my own.
“Yup,” I said, keeping my voice light, “paid in full.” I left out the part where I murdered the fae who tried to rape me. Perhaps I was misreading her, but I had a feeling that if I opened my mouth and confessed what I had done, I’d find myself on the wrong side of Division 6, and even I wasn’t that stupid. Plus, I wanted out of the conversation as quickly as possible. I had baited her but, in the end, she had the upper hand and she bloody well knew it, too.
Revulsion traced down my spine, like a trickle of ice water but I crushed it down. Even thinking about Kypherous and his desire to use me as little more than a brood mare caused bile to crawl up the back of my throat. I still had the nightmares – his face looming over me, his lecherous breath fanning against my face, my heart thudding in my chest… Even though I’d fought him off in reality, my nightmares didn’t often give me that respite, and most nights I was forced to live out the horror of what might have been.
“Good.” One word was all she said. I stared at her, the seconds ticking by as I clenched my hands into fists.
“You can go now,” she said, her attention once more on the papers in front of her.
Drawing in a breath, I opened my mouth, but before I could utter a syllable, Alex dragged me out into the main office and shut the door quickly behind him, leaving me with a bunch of insults and no one to hurl them at.
Alex held my arm firmly in his grip even after the door was shut. I began to protest, but he ignored me, instead tugging me after him as he rounded a corner and down a narrow corridor. At the end of the hall sat a thick metal door with a wide steel bar across the front of it. A blinking green light over the door told me where the exit was, which was comforting to know. Ever since I’d escaped Kypherous’ clutches, I’d become hyper aware of bolt holes and escape routes in sticky situations. And with Alex’s hand still on my arm, the itch was growing between my shoulders, the one that told me I needed to run, to escape. The little research I’d done on it suggested it might be a form of panic. My fight or flight mode kicking into overdrive.
“Let me go,” I said flatly as he came to a halt halfway down the hall.
“Christ, Jenna, what was that about?” he demanded, swinging around to face me.
The sudden confrontation sent alarm bells buzzing in my head, and it was all I could do not to punch his lights out then and there. Instead, I spun away from him, slamming my hands against the concrete wall. The cold solid surface beneath my palms brought me a little comfort.
You’re not trapped, Jenna, you can leave anytime you want to. No one is keeping you here… Relax. The words whirled in my head as my breath came in little pants.
“Jenna,” Alex said again, and I could feel the heat of his hand as it hovered over my shoulder.
“Don’t touch me,” I said coldly, drawing air in through my nose.
“Listen to her,” Grey’s soft tone slid over me, bringing with it the tingle of his magic.
“Stop trying to make me calm, Grey,” I said, biting the words out. I turned my head to the side, keeping my forehead pressed to the wall, my gaze meeting his.
He was closer than I realised, his dark unfathomable eyes pinning me in place.
“Hi,” he said softly. He was leaning against the wall, his arms folded loosely across his broad chest, his head cocked to the side so that it was pressed against the same wall as I was.
“Son of a—” I cut the words off and jerked away from the wall. He gave me a rueful smile and pushed up so that he, too, was standing straight.
“My mother wasn’t a female dog,” Grey said, managing to keep a straight face.
“I was going to say witch,” I said, rubbing my arms to clear the lingering effects of his magic. It clung to me like the early morning mist, pressing against my skin, so light you would miss it if you didn’t know what to look for in the first place.
His smile increased. “She’d be happy with a tag like that,” he said softly.
“Why would you do that?” It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to calm me with his magic, but it was the first time he’d done it through mutual contact with an inanimate object.
“Because any time I’ve done it in the past, I’ve made the mistake of touching you. And frankly, I don’t want my nose broken again…” He touched his face almost absentmindedly. “There’s only so much magic can do.”
I studied his face. His nose was a little more crooked than it had been in the past, but rather than detracting from him, it gave his face more character. And when he smiled… I cut off my thoughts. Now was really not the time to focus on how handsome I thought he was. It was one of the things that made Grey so dangerous. He distracted me, pulling me off my game easily, which only served to unsettle me further.
“What’s wrong,” he said, noting my silent study of him.
“She met Sophia,” Alex interrupted before I could even open my mouth. “The two of them had a dick measuring contest in there.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of Sophia’s office and I glared at him.
“I did not measure any appendage with her,” I said. “I wouldn’t waste my breath.”
“Who won?” It took me a second to figure out just what Grey meant by the question.
Alex shrugged. “Not sure, they’re both pretty high strung. Sophia wasn’t giving an inch, though, I’ll give her that.” He seemed genuinely impressed by his boss, as though her argument with me had proved interesting to him somehow.
“There was no competition,” I said again, folding my arms over my chest defensively.
Grey cocked an eyebrow at me, his smile was infuriating and my palm itched to slap the grin from his mouth.
“Anyway, wonder boy here,” I said nodding in Alex’s direction, “said I won’t be working on whatever you’ve got.”
Grey’s grimace was all the confirmation I needed. Clearly, the powers that be didn’t trust me, or at the very least they didn’t want me running around with the big boys, and where Division 6 was concerned, Grey was definitely one of the heavy hitters. Even when I’d worked with them, he’d been a power among the agents. Every few months there would inevitably be whispers of how he would be fast tracked for a promotion but for some reason it never happened. I’d never thought to ask him why, though.
“You’ve got desk duty,” he said gently, as though afraid of my reaction.
“Desk duty,” I replied, my voice soft.
“We all had to start at the bottom,” Alex said, earning him another glare. He was enjoying this far too god-damn much.
“We had a deal, Grey,” I said. “I won’t work desk duty. I’m a consultant, out in the field only. I don’t do sitting-at-a-computer-twiddling-my-thumbs-all-day.”
He nodded. “I know, I know, I tried to tell them that but they said it was against protocol and—”
“Screw protocol. What are you working on?”
“I don’t think you…” I knew he’d read the expression on my face. He sighed, his shoulders drooping, and he scrubbed his hand over his dark stubble. “Fine. Someone is trafficking humans in and out of the country. Some have magic, others don’t. Far as we can tell, there’s no connection between the victims, they’re different ages, ethnic backgrounds, male, female, old, young, there’s no preference.”
“Have you got any leads?”
“Aside from the items left at the scene, nothing.”
“They’re leaving things behind? Like a signature?”
Grey shook his head, his smile grim. “Not like you think. They don’t mean anything. Chicken bones and pebbles, that’s it.”
“Don’t forget the dirt,” Alex said. “Whatever is doing this leaves tra
ce amounts of soil behind.”
“You’re right, that’s not really a signature. What if it’s just sloppy and the dirt is coming off its shoes—”
Grey’s expression was unreadable. Clearly he was holding something back from me, which meant I wasn’t asking the right questions.
“Have they traced the bones and pebbles yet?”
Grey shook his head. “Still running analysis on it all, including the dirt. Preliminary suggests it’s not native to this country.”
“Any bodies?”
They both shook their heads.
“I guess no news is good news, right?” I paused, mulling over everything he’d told me. “You said it’s a trafficking ring. If there’re no bodies, then how do you know they’re trafficking?”
Grey’s expression grew dark, his lips drawing down at the corners, displeasure evident in every line of his body. “One of the victims managed to get away.”
I stared at him in shock. “Talk about burying the lead, why didn’t you say this before?”
“Victim isn’t much use to us,” Alex said. His complete dismissal of the victim made my blood boil.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” My tone was razor sharp and his shoulders stiffened in response.
“I just mean they can’t tell us anything. It’s almost worse than getting nothing at all.”
“What Alex is trying to say,” Grey said far more patiently than I’d have managed, “is that the boy is in a coma. He was found washed up on the shore. If he wakes up, they don’t think he’ll remember anything, and that’s if he hasn’t suffered brain damage from the lack of oxygen he suffered.”
“And you know this is all connected how?”
“We didn’t at first, but they found the same dirt in his pockets and under his fingernails that we’ve been turning up at the locations they’re going missing from.”
“Can I see him?” The words left my mouth before I could stop them. It wasn’t as though I could do anything to help him. The power I had wouldn’t help to heal him, but something inside said I needed to see him, so I asked.
I could see the hesitation in Grey’s eyes but he sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “If it makes you happy, then I don’t see why not.”
Alex brightened up a little. “You can take a look at the case files on the way to the hospital, that way Sophia won’t know you’re involved in the case.”
“Good.” I bit back my acerbic response. Alex had been right to say she had rubbed me the wrong way, she certainly had. I didn’t like uncertainty in my life, and to me, Sophia represented a rather significant piece of instability. I didn’t know what she was, not that it mattered a whole lot. She could have been an Elder god for all I cared, it wouldn’t have made a difference to me. The real problem was that I didn’t know how much of a threat she truly was, or could potentially be. And I didn’t like getting involved with anyone I didn’t have a set measure of.
Not to mention just how aggressively alpha she was. As it was, I didn’t work well with others, having someone like that on my ass all the time wasn’t going to lead to trust falls and team building laser tag weekends.
“You’re doing that thing again,” Grey murmured, leaning in toward me as we made our way out of the hallway.
“What thing is that?”
“The one where you get lost in your thoughts, worrying and panicking about the people and situations you’re meshed with.”
He was right and his insight earned him a small smile. “What makes you so damn perceptive?”
Grey raised a shoulder, an elegant shrug, his face light with amusement. For a man as tall as he was, with such broad shoulders, the grace in his movements was oddly catlike. If I didn’t know what and who he was, I might have suspected him to be some kind of shifter. But I knew the truth and druids were definitely not shifters… That wasn’t to say he couldn’t use his magic to control the minds of the creatures he was closest to. I’d once witnessed him transport his consciousness into that of a hawk, allowing him to observe undetected a witch we were tracking.
“Whatever you’re thinking about now, you should keep it up.” He’d paused in front of me, barring my path, and I hadn’t even registered that we’d stopped moving. His hand hovered near my cheek and I held my breath, willing him to brush his fingers against my skin. My chin tipped toward him. He was so close I could feel the heat radiating from his palm. I closed my eyes, awaiting his touch.
Nothing happened, and my lids sprang open, meeting Grey’s eyes.
One by one, he curled his fingers back into a fist, his hand dropping back to his side. For some reason he hadn’t completed the gesture but I could see in the burning intensity of his gaze that he wanted to. Why not? The question sat unasked on the tip of my tongue. I desperately wanted to know the reason but something made me hang back.
“We should go,” he said suddenly, and the moment was broken. Why hadn’t I just asked him? He turned away and I felt heat suffuse my cheeks, at least with his back to me he couldn’t see the humiliation flood my face and eyes.
Biting my tongue, I followed him, squashing down the feeling of foolishness that welled inside me. I’d missed something important and that only made me feel worse.
Perhaps I’d misread the longing in his gaze?
“I’ll drive,” he said, throwing a glance over his shoulder in my direction. Nodding mutely, I followed him into the elevator and clenched my fingers into my palms, hard enough that my nails sliced into the skin, the sting of pain was enough to refocus my thoughts. Getting lost in memories of Grey, of what might have been, wasn’t going to solve the case and that needed my attention far more than the druid standing next to me.
Chapter 3
Merciful Angel Hospital was thankfully not too far from the Division 6’s office on the north side of Southampton. The light traffic meant we made it there in record time and I was more than happy to hop out of Grey’s SUV and escape the files Alex had provided for me. What little they did have was far too circumstantial, and the pictures of the bones and stones left behind in odd arrangements was more than a little disturbing.
The worst part had been the file they’d managed to put together on the only survivor they had.
Simon Waits was what the police liked to call low risk. He had a good family background, was in his final year of college, average student, who hadn’t missed a day until he went missing. When he hadn’t answered his mom’s calls, she’d grown concerned and called the police. They’d been the ones to find the pile of pebbles and bones left arranged on his bare mattress.
That had been eight days ago. Whoever had taken him, had him for a couple of days, at least before they’d dumped him, or he’d escaped, but considering the state he’d been in when he’d washed up on the shore, I was betting he’d been dumped.
“Really screws with the ol’ noggin,” Alex said, without an ounce of his usual teasing. It was enough to tell me just how hard he was finding the whole situation and I couldn’t blame him, there was nothing to go on, nothing to link any of the victims together. How could we catch something we couldn’t find? Without a lead, we were fumbling in the dark, hoping and praying for the perpetrator to make a fatal mistake. I didn’t like the feeling of knowing there were others out there who needed help, and that there was not a damn thing I could do about it.
“It’s like they vanished,” I said finally, when I’d finished sucking air in through my nose and out through my mouth.
“Whoever is doing it, doesn’t care that we can connect them to each crime,” Grey said, making his way around the car. “Smacks of arrogance.”
“They’re branding them,” I said quietly, the horror twisting my gut. I was reminded instantly of Kypherous. The tattoo on my back started to itch, as though the scales of the viper itself was sliding beneath my skin. After what had happened when I’d fought the Pied Piper, it wouldn’t have surprised me to know the snake tattoo was moving.
“It doesn’t say it in the file but there is a ma
gical element to the brand,” Grey said and I jerked my gaze up to meet his face.
“What does that mean?” My stomach twisted painfully. It was one thing to mark a preternatural with magic, but to do it to a human… There were lines that should never be crossed and that was definitely one of them.
“We wanted to keep it out of the main circulation,” Grey said. “The doctors aren’t sure what exactly it does, just that there is magic entwined with the brand. They think it might be the reason he’s not waking up.”
“Shit,” I muttered beneath my breath. “Are there any other symptoms?”
“He’s not responding to any treatment they give him,” Alex said.
“Why didn’t you say any of this before?” I asked, glancing between them. Alex shifted uncomfortably and refused to meet my gaze, but Grey’s dark eyes met mine head on.
“I didn’t want to upset you,” he said, his voice maddeningly calm.
“You didn’t want to upset me,” I repeated, not sure I had heard him correctly. “What the hell does that even mean? If these are the facts of the case, what does it matter how I feel?” I sucked in a deep breath and collected my scrambled thoughts before I continued. “And anyway, shouldn’t we all be upset by this? Disturbed even?”
“It bothers me greatly,” Grey said gently, “but I don’t feel a personal connection to it, no.”
I took a step back from him as realisation slapped me in the face, its sting sliding beneath my skin.
“You think I’ll be compromised by my emotions,” I said quietly, “you think I’ll screw this up somehow because I’m too close to it, or is it something else?”
I studied his face and he finally broke eye contact with me, staring instead at the black asphalt. Perhaps he was hoping the ground would just open up and swallow him whole?
“Are you worried I’ll be so affected by this case that I’ll lose control of my magic? Are you afraid of me, Grey?”
His head snapped up and his black eyes blazed with obsidian light. “Afraid of you, never.” The vehemence in his voice urged me to believe him but there was still something he was holding back from me. Something he was afraid to say aloud.
Stakes and Stones Page 3