Winterstruck: an urban fantasy supernatural crime thriller

by Sara C. Walker

  Had I really done it? Had I finally ended the threat that plagued this city?

  I heard my name again.

  I needed air. I needed to escape the heat. I needed to get out. But I had nothing left to give. I collapsed on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, satisfied that I'd done my duty. I'd rid the city of the fire bug, thus saving more citizens, saving our agency's reputation with the police. Saving Luke.

  A bubble of pent up emotion burst. The anger within me rolled over to allow grief to take over. A sob escaped my mouth, tears splashed down my cheeks. Smoke filled my lungs, stung my eyes.

  I'd had a good run…and now it was over.

  Large sections of the ceiling continued to burn. It was kind of pretty...my vision clouded over with smoke and dark blotches.

  A large shape stood over me.

  Everything went black.

  30

  I knew before I opened my eyes that I was in a hospital. And I knew I wasn't alone. But the person in the chair next to my bed wasn't who I expected.

  "Detective," I said. My throat hurt and my voice came out more like a croak.

  "Welcome back," Craddock said. He put down the newspaper he'd been reading and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

  He gestured at the tray of food on the table. "I hope you don't mind," he said, "but I ate your Jello."

  I tried to laugh, but my lungs felt like someone had taken a cheese grater to them and I ended up coughing. I tried to bring a hand to cover my mouth, but found the left one loaded up with an IV drip and the right one with a pulse monitor, while a plastic tube delivered oxygen to my nose. I coughed into my elbow and then tore off the pulse monitor and oxygen line. Randy stopped me before I could yank out the IV.

  "You're dehydrated," he said. "You need it."

  "Luke?" I croaked.

  "He got out. He's in a room down the hall. The firefighters said it was a miracle you both got out," he said. "But you and I know it wasn't a miracle. How did you do it? How did you get out?"

  Ah. So that was why he was here. To investigate the faeries that helped me.

  The truth was, I was still trying to figure out how I got out myself. I certainly didn't do it on my own two legs. I'd had help from that mysterious dark shape. I was guessing Leander came back to help me, but I wasn't going to tell Craddock that.

  I reached for the plastic cup of water on the food tray and sipped instead of responding.

  "I reckon the reason you're not covered in burns to ninety-five percent of your body has something to do with that thing there." He pointed at the little table next to the bed. "We found it in your coat pocket."

  Next to the phone was the glass pinecone. I supposed this meant the faerie queen's gift had some form of protection to it.

  "Did you know the pinecone is a symbol of enlightenment? Yeah, the story is that the pineal gland is named after the pinecone. The pineal gland is right here." He tapped the middle of his forehead. "It produces melatonin, which helps you sleep. It's also known as the Third Eye. Or the second sight. Fairy sight."

  I quietly sipped my water, letting the professor carry on with his lecture.

  "Pine trees have been around for millennia. And because they're evergreen trees, ancient civilizations used the pinecone to symbolize fertility and eternal life. They're also considered symbols of luck because the little scales form a perfect Fibonacci sequence on every single pinecone."

  He leaned back in the chair. "But you and I know humans have been coming up with very creative explanations for magic for a very long time."

  There was a warning woven into his words: Don't lie. I'll know it.

  "Am I under arrest?" I asked. My cup was empty but my throat was starting to feel better. There was a small plastic container of orange juice but I thought I would skip that; the acid would burn my raw throat. Next to the juice was a squat hard plastic cup with what was probably hot water when the food tray arrived, but now had gone cold. I picked that up.

  "Why would you be under arrest?"

  I shrugged. "The police took over the case. I...took down Hammond. I interfered with their investigation."

  "He was in your home. You were protecting your fiancé. There's no reason to arrest you."

  Yet. He wasn't saying so, but I got the definite sense that some weren't at all happy with my actions, and I would be under observation for a while.

  "Magnusson and Oshaun were arrested."

  He took in a breath. "Questioned," he corrected. "They’ve been released. I tried to stop them from being brought in. But the secrecy of what we do has created a problem. Cops can smell secrets a mile away, and it just makes them believe there’s something going on that they need to know about. Someday, we might be able to bring them in on what we do, but not today."

  He sounded exhausted.

  "Am I fired?" There had to be some reason Craddock was here instead of Magnusson. The very thought of my boss brought back the recent knowledge that he'd lied to me about Harry and it hit me like a punch in the gut. "You know what? Never mind. I quit."

  He let out a long, slow breath. "That's not going to go over well. I suggest you take some time to think about it."

  "I have been thinking about it. Ever since I found out about Harry. Did you know?"

  He cringed. Yeah, he knew.

  "So everyone knew but me?" I fell back against the stack of pillows behind me.

  "It was what Harry wanted."

  I raised an eyebrow. "Harry? Harry wanted everyone to lie to me? Or Magnusson did?"

  Craddock cleared his throat. "Harry wanted to retire."

  "By being put into a coma? What about his wife and kids?"

  "The PTSD of this job is real," Craddock said in a hurry. "He wanted to forget it all. He felt that was the best option for his family."

  "But a coma forever?" He was nearly sixty. He didn't have much life left. I couldn't imagine wanting to give it up.

  "His choice," he said. "He didn’t want any risk of remembering."

  "And he felt this was his best option? Or Magnusson ordered him?"

  Craddock didn't respond to my accusation.

  "Let me get this straight, my first partner abandons me and tells the whole team to lie to me, and my second partner loses his mind trying to cope with the realities of this job." I picked at the tape strapping the IV to the back of my hand. "And you all wonder why I want to quit."

  Craddock stood up. "This has been a difficult week. How about you take some time to heal, recover—"

  "Sweep up the ashes of my life? I have nothing left."

  "You have family."

  I let out a laugh. "You know my mother tried to have me arrested, right?" But his words reminded me of something Luke had once said.

  For the first time, Randy seemed uncomfortable. He tugged at the sleeves of his shirt. "It was a power move, no question. But I'm sure that deep down, she only did it because she cares about you."

  I snorted. Real deep. Right. My mother's heart was buried alongside the mythical treasure on Oak Island. Booby traps and all. She only cared about herself and her money.

  Still, there was the question of her extreme weight loss. And that Luke was so insistent I talk to her again. He was always so much better at talking to people, at putting people at ease than I was. If he’d been with me at the Breckenridge Conservatory, I wouldn’t have been arrested. That was for certain.

  I shook my head. I couldn’t keep dragging Luke into my problems. I had to solve this on my own.

  "I'll be in touch," Randy said, heading for the door. His words were laden with the proviso: don't leave town.

  "By the way, the official story is that it was an electrical fire. But the cops know what you did and they send their regards. Case closed." He stopped and turned around, holding a hand to his stomach. "Maybe avoid the orange Jello."

  He left.

  Ruby had been right about Harry, about Magnusson keeping secrets. And that meant the heart of the problem, the thing I'd been avoiding facin
g, was that the team was gone. Whatever we'd had over the years was done. I didn't know exactly when it changed—likely sometime during Thatcher's breakdown or maybe when Harry "retired"—but this wasn't a team.

  And this was the last straw.

  I had no intention of working for whatever band of individuals this was. An orchestra doesn't work when everyone plays whatever they want. A hockey team doesn't work when someone decides to practice landing triple axels instead of passing the puck. A good team has to have all members on the same page, working towards the same cause. That's what I wanted. I wanted the team.

  "So it’s true."

  I woke up to the sound of my mother’s voice and found her hovering in the doorframe.

  "Mother, what are you doing here?"

  She crossed the room and perched on the end of the bed. "Who would have thought you would end up in the hospital before I did."

  I rolled my eyes. "What are you talking about?"

  She heaved a sigh. "Your fiancé maintains a tight lid on doctor-patient confidentiality, I’ll say that much for him. I’m dying."

  I clenched my teeth, suddenly awake and mentally reviewing everything Luke had said about my mother. His urging me to call her, talk to her. Was this what he was trying to tell me?

  "You’re lying," I said.

  She sucked in a breath and looked up at the ceiling. "Am I?" She pulled up her sleeve and revealed an intravenous tap taped to her arm. "I was in for my treatment when one of my friends from our volunteer group—you remember I’m a volunteer with the hospital?—told me you were here. I had to see for myself." She rolled down her sleeves and motioned with her hands like a magician revealing a white rabbit. "You’re not the only one with secrets, my dear."

  "Get out."

  She stood up. "Your fiancé wanted us to reconcile. I told him you would never let that happen. I was right."

  "You had me arrested, Mother."

  "You were trespassing."

  "I was doing my job."

  "So you say," she said. "But how am I supposed to know? You don’t tell me anything."

  "I’m sorry," I said, dripping with sarcasm. "I’ll have my team of lawyers get in touch with your team of lawyers."

  She cringed. Actually cringed. What did that mean? Did she regret saying that to me?

  The fire in her eyes died. And then miracle of miracles, she walked out. She left without another word. She left without one last dig. For once, I had the last word.

  It didn’t feel as good as I thought it would.

  The moment my mother left, I tore the IV off my hand, found my smoke-saturated clothes stuffed into the little table next to the bed, and dressed. I found my shoes and put them on my feet. I reached into the pocket of my jeans and discovered my engagement ring still there. I slipped it on and headed out into the hallway, running my fingers through my hair. I had to find Luke.

  I went to the nurses’ station. "Luke Thomas was brought here by ambulance. Where can I find him?"

  Her eyes flickered to where I held my thumb over the IV wound on the back of my hand. "You're not supposed to be out of bed—"

  "Where is he?"

  I could only imagine how crazy I must have looked with wide eyes and wild hair. The nurse was probably contemplating calling security.

  "Please," I said, changing my tone, letting all the emotion I felt show through my voice. "He's my fiancé." I held up my left hand. "I just need to know he's okay."

  Just as I became convinced she was going to call security after all, she nodded. "I was on when you both came in. I remember him."

  It would be hard to forget the survivors of a fire.

  "Where is he?" I asked desperately.

  "He was here but was taken to ICU a couple hours ago."

  ICU. No. Not good. My skin went ice cold.

  I got her to give me directions and then I tore down the hallway.

  "Wait—" she called after me. "You have to be checked by a doctor."

  I paid her no heed and kept on running. Luke. In ICU. When I last saw him, he was on the floor, coughing but okay. Craddock said he was fine! I'd expected him to be affected by lack of oxygen and smoke inhalation. But it was a fire started by Hammond. Faerie fire. A cold chill gripped my skin.

  No, no, no. I couldn't lose him now. Not after everything I'd done to change things so we could be together.

  I skidded to a halt in front of his room. The door was closed. Behind it, a woman sobbed softly.

  I reached for the handle.

  "Oh, no, you don't." Oshaun hurried down the hallway toward me.

  "Oh, no no no. Please." My voice caught. "Please tell me you didn't."

  "Standard procedure to remove the memories," she said softly. "I'm sorry."

  Remove the memories. Of Hammond. Which also meant removing the memories of me.

  "No." Tears streamed down my cheeks.

  "I’ve already removed you from his parents’ memories. He can't live a normal life having seen the things he's seen, now that he knows what he knows, Julia. You know that. His mind won't be able to make sense of it."

  "But you can. I can. Charlie—"

  "We're different."

  "Luke…" I tried to say it, I tried to tell her that he was different, too. That he could have handled it. But could he? I remembered his reaction after he found my gun, after I told him about my stalker. How he believed the tablecloths spontaneously ignited. He knew better. He knew the science couldn’t support that. The science would battle in his mind with the things he'd seen. It might not drive him crazy immediately, but it would slowly eat away at him.

  I swallowed down the lump in my throat. "I want to see him."

  Oshaun protested. "You know I can't let you do that."

  "Oshaun, you put him into a coma. He's not going to know I'm even in the room." My voice came out as a quaking whisper with my chin quivering. Even though I knew the protocol and all the reasons why it had to be done, I still hated it. It still hurt.

  "I'll see what I can do. But you only get five minutes. No more."

  "How long is he out for?"

  "Three days," she said.

  "Wait, wait, wait. You’re just removing memories of the fire, right? That doesn’t need three days." A few hours. Tops.

  "Standard procedure for breach of security," she said. "You broke your cover."

  I held my trembling hand to my mouth. Tears streamed down my face.

  "I’m sorry," she said.

  I could never see Luke again. Remembering me meant that he might remember Hammond. Where Stuart’s encounter with Hammond had been brief and controllable with a spray, Luke had been held captive, his encounter more traumatic. Taking those memories required deeper work and a longer recovery period. Total erasure of me and our life together.

  Oshaun will have bent his memories of me to be about some other girl. A different name. A different face.

  I choked on a sob.

  "I’ll need a list of everyone who knew about the two of you," she said.

  It was a short list: his parents, a few friends, the landlord and security at the condo.

  And my mother.

  I told Oshaun I would handle my mother.

  "Handle?" She narrowed her eyes.

  "I'm going to tell her he broke up with me. I'll never hear the end of my failure to live up to her expectations, but the boundaries of her code of etiquette mean she won't talk to him about it."

  Standard procedure would have my mother's memory wiped of Luke so that if they ran into each other, it would be as if it were the first time they'd met with no chance of remembering me. But I didn't want her memory wiped yet. My mother had secrets—bodyguards, weight loss, etc.—and I intended to learn what was going on.

  Oshaun finally nodded. "I don't like it, but you will inform me if your plan doesn't work. If she speaks to him and he remembers her, he'll remember you and the fire and—"

  "I know."

  I would have to find my mother another oncologist.

&n
bsp; "Please don't relocate Luke. His life is here. His work is here. He's doing good things at the research hospital—"

  "There's too much risk of him running into you and having his memories return," she started.

  "I'll stay away. I promise. Just don't relocate him. Please."

  She looked like she wanted to argue it some more. "You've done good work for the agency, despite all of my misgivings about you. You took down Hammond on your own." She clamped her mouth shut, pulling her lips into a grim line. "And you should have been told about Harry. Letting Luke stay might be less troublesome than relocating him." She nodded.

  "Please," I whispered. "Can I see him?"

  "It goes against protocol—" She saw my mouth open to argue and continued, "—but Luke has helped people I know. He’s a good man." She put a hand on my arm. "Two minutes. No more. Wait here."

  I nodded again, and this time she went into Luke's room. A few minutes later, Oshaun came out with her arm wrapped around Luke's mother. Marjorie, with her head down, hair falling forward, and handkerchief to her nose, didn't see me. I had no interest in seeing her. Once they were out of sight, I slipped into Luke's room.

  He was tucked into the sheets with tubes and wires coming out him. Various machines in the room clicked and beeped. Beyond my own smoky cloud, the room stank strongly of that hospital smell.

  He looked so small, so frail. His warm and friendly personality normally filled any room he entered; I admired that about him. How effortlessly he put people at ease. How he got along with his parents despite not wanting to be anything like them. How did he do it? Was this the difference between being raised by natural parents versus adoptive parents? No. It was something more. More than smiling and nodding, as well, because that level of patronizing wasn’t authentic and Luke’s interactions were never fake.

  Tears streamed freely down my face.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I'm sorry I lied to you about who I was and what I did and where I was going."

  My chin quivered uncontrollably now. "When you wake up, you won't remember me, but I want you to know I'll never forget you…or what we had."

  The apartment we shared, the life we shared, was gone. By the time he returned to it, it would be completely rebuilt, newly furnished. Every trace of me wiped out.