by Raven Snow
There were no thoughts of toilet water then, only a heart-stopping kind of panic. Was this how Wyatt would find me? Floating in some bathroom with a ghost laughing her head off outside?
The thought was enough to send fire down my body, keeping me afloat for a few more seconds. With those last few seconds, I drew the magic from within me. My mind was too addled for a spell, so I just shot magic at the doors and walls, trying to blow a hole for water to escape.
One lob of magic torn right through the door, but the water didn't flow out, staying right where it was. Mrs. Tucker looked a little strained on the other side, but she managed to keep the water in place. I had no doubt she'd succeed. After all, she just needed to wait a few more minutes for me to drown. And I was out of magic.
I bobbed up for air one last time, trying to stay on top of the water. The space between the water and the ceiling was almost nonexistent by that point, and my arms wouldn't move anymore. I thought I heard something calling my name right before I went under for the last time. All I could focus on was the cold though, and the screaming in my lungs.
An outraged yell so loud I heard it underwater sounded in the hallway. My eyes flew open, the frozen water burning them, and I saw Wyatt through the hole I'd blown in the door. He slashed at her with a cross. To my surprise, she screamed and backed away.
Mrs. Tucker's concentration blown, the water started to pour out into the hall and through the drains. It happened in a big surge, washing Wyatt away and carrying me out to the hall. My last glimpse of Mrs. Tucker was one of her cursing at me as only a highborn lady can and then disappearing while I coughed up water.
While I retched, warm arms encircled me. I didn't panic, because there was only one person they could belong to. Wyatt smacked me firmly on the back, helping me purge myself of the gallons of water I'd inhaled.
My mouth and nose burned from taking in so much water, and I couldn't feel my toes or fingers. The rest of my body was shaking so hard it was impossible to get out words like "let's get the hell out of here" or "you are so getting laid tonight." Even through all the hurt though, the feeling of air going into my lungs was the most beautiful thing I'd ever felt. If I hadn't been suffering from hypothermia, I would've just sat there, soaking up all the oxygen.
But I wasn't out of the woods yet, and the air and water around me was still frigid, just like me. Wyatt forced me to my feet, taking most of my weight when my frozen limbs wouldn't cooperate. All the way upstairs, he kept up a constant stream of comforting words. None of them made sense to my scrambled brain cells, but the sound of his deep voice was heaven.
The main floor of the library was empty, the lights completely off. It seemed they'd closed while all this happened. My lip curled, thinking of the dragon lady listening to my screams and locking up behind herself with a smile. In reality, the screams had probably started after she left, but I wouldn't have put it past her.
The front door to the library was off its hinges, and I blinked at it, glancing at Wyatt as he lugged me along.
"Did you break down the door?" I croaked.
His lips twitched. "If the police ask, it was already broken when I got here."
Another involuntary round of shivers went through me, and he was all business again. He grabbed a blanket from the trunk that smelled like dirt from our last camping excursion and wrapped it around me, lifting me into the front seat.
"How did you know the cross would work?" I asked once he got in the driver's side seat, my words slurred.
"Your grandmother," he said, putting the heat on full blast.
"She's probably going to make you do something horrible for that information."
He looked sideways at me, taking my fingers between his to warm them up. The heat was almost painful, but I still gravitated closer to him, anything to get a reprieve from the cold.
"It's worth it," he said quietly, speeding away to the hospital.
Chapter Twelve
A day later, I was still cold. When the doctors sent me home, Wyatt and Cooper immediately dressed me up in layer upon layer upon layer. I started looking like the some kind of doll that children in Antarctica would play with. Despite all that and kicking the heat up to 90 in the house, I was still shivering.
"Sorry. Sorry," I said, knowing my constant shaking was keeping Wyatt up at night. He ignored me, pulling me closer and wrapping his lusciously warm body around me without complaints. If I hadn't seen the dark circles under his eyes every morning, I wouldn't have even known he was suffering.
The call came in the early hours of the morning. I rolled away from Wyatt, hating to leave the comforter and his arms behind me. My voice was groggy, and my words shook along with my body.
"Your little client has gone missing," Officer Kosher said on the other end of the line, sneering. "If you want to see the crime scene, you'd better be here by the time I count to ten."
Shoving aside the blankets, I slipped on my shorts and a t-shirt, shaking Wyatt awake unnecessarily. He'd been listening to the conversation. He went to grab me a coat, but I shook my head. For the first time in days, I wasn't cold. I was too pissed off for that.
The motel room door had been blown off its hinges from the inside. I stepped over it cautiously, Wyatt right behind me. The interior of the room had fared about as well as the door. Hardly anything had been left unbroken, and I couldn't see a single piece of furniture that hadn't been at least knocked over if not split into pieces.
"Might have been a struggle," Kosher said nastily, picking at his teeth. I resisted the urge to knock them in for him, save him some trouble.
"The neighbors heard the young woman screaming," one of the uniforms told Wyatt. "When we came to investigate, we found it like this."
Wyatt nodded his thanks and joined me in the bedroom. Fate's sheets were completely covered in oil, and when I stepped closer to examine them, a candy wrapper crinkled under my shoe.
Shaking my head, I leaned on Wyatt. "Where would a ghost take someone?"
"The afterlife?" Kosher asked from the doorway.
"That's enough, Peter," Wyatt said, his voice as cold as the water I'd taken a dunk in.
Without a word, Kosher left. I should've been angry with him—I always was, after all, but he'd just said the very thing that had been on everyone's mind. What did a ghost need a hostage for? It couldn't very well disappear with Fate like it could with other ghosts.
My client was probably dead.
A shiver went through me, and Wyatt wrapped me in his arms, thinking it was the residual hypothermia. I didn't correct him, because I really wanted to be held right then. Not that I would've said so with Kosher in a five miles radius. That was just inviting ridicule.
"I could've stopped this," Wyatt said suddenly. "All of it. If I hadn't had my head in the clouds this whole time you never would have been…" He took a sharp breath, looking away from me. "I should've solved this a long time ago."
Grabbing his chin, I turned his head back to me. His eyes were bleak, and I knew he was thinking of someone else he hadn't been able to save. I couldn't do anything if he wanted to blame himself for that. Fate, however, was on my conscious.
"This was our case, Wyatt, not just yours. And I'm supposed to be the supernatural expert. If we're going to blame anyone, it's going to be me."
He shook his head automatically, a sharp denial in his eyes. I pressed my finger to his lips when he would've spoken. "Then, we're not going to blame anyone, okay? We've got to just move forward and save who we can."
That had almost been too easy, I thought, with a little guilt. I knew Wyatt would never blame me for Fate's loss, and I'd used it against him. Well, all is fair in love and war.
I went back to checking the room, hoping against hope that something had been left behind in the clue department. Wyatt stayed by the bed, watching me for a moment. When he did speak, it was words I never would have thought would leave his mouth.
"I think I should resign."
Straightening so fast my head
spun, I asked, "From the case?"
"From the department."
That quickly, I was mad. Stomping over to him, I poked Wyatt in the chest, relishing in the sight of watching him back up in surprise.
"I suppose that's going to bring Fate back, huh? Losing the best detective on the case?"
He looked a little taken aback, which was exactly what I'd wanted.
"And the next girl this happens to?" I asked. "I'm sure she'd rather you wallow in self-pity than help her."
I poked him one last time for good measure and then went back to tearing through Fate's stuff with a vengeance. Though I'd never show it, Wyatt's declaration had rocked me to my core. The idea of Wyatt without a badge was almost too absurd to wrap my head around. What next? Kosher growing a pair? Vic no longer wearing spandex? I couldn't live like that.
After a little while, Wyatt bent down to help me look through the drawers. "Thanks," he said softly.
I gave him a dazzling smile that didn't betray how much he'd rattled me. "Always happy to kick your ass into gear."
______
I was thinking hard about Fate and how I should’ve grilled her within an inch of her life when a chicken wing hit me in the back of the head. Whirling around, a piece of cheese smacked right into my exposed face. After that, I dove behind a park bench, taking cover.
The restaurant I was walking past was experiencing some kind of undead food fight. Every human patron was running from the place, food sticking in their hair and to their clothes. Inside, it looked like a food tornado, invisible hands catapulting food everywhere. In the back, I could hear the owner crying that they were bankrupting him.
Stepping over the threshold, I held my hands up to protect my face against the drinks and entrées being thrown at me. Some spaghetti landed right on top of my head, marinara sauce going into my eyes.
I took another step forward and at least half a dozen ghosts materialized, all looking at me. Freezing, I flashed back to my almost drowning. My breathing picked up and a sweat broke out all over my body. Finally, I forced a smile on my lips and said, "You're all getting detention for this."
One by one, they started speaking. Though they were all as white bread as they come, the language was unmistakably Dari—exactly the dialect that the Afghani woman had been speaking when she'd shown up in our bedroom.
Slowly, I backed up, getting ready to run for it. They continued chanting, and I kicked myself for only learning Spanish and a handful of Latin. When one took a step forward, I turned on my heel, running all the way back to the car. When I got there, I didn't stop, speeding through traffic to get home to Wyatt.
He was in the living room, standing in front of a dry-erase board with glasses on. I froze mid-step, enjoying the sexy nerd thing he had going on. It would've been better if the glasses hadn't been pushed up to his forehead.
When he turned and noticed me watching him, he took them off and cleaned them, a motion that looked so smooth and natural I knew he had to have done it before.
"They were my grandpa's," he admitted. "He was a detective too. The best there ever was. They help me think when I wear them."
Because I saw the opportunity to tease him, I took it. "Yes, clearly there's some dark magic at play here," I said, taking them in my hands. "Mystical, even."
He rolled his eyes and clipped the glasses to the front of his shirt. I felt a little giddy that I'd made him focus on something other than work. For the past day or so, all he'd done was stare at the board that held every piece of information we'd gathered for this case. In other words, it wasn't very full.
I hated to bring him back to focus. Everyone deserved a break, but I had to tell him about the ghosts speaking Dari. Listening without commenting, his face went back to serious lines, and he copied down the new clue on the board.
"It points to your Afghani ghost," I said hesitantly, not wanting to get my head bitten off about it. Wyatt was still being unreasonable about her probable involvement. His guilt was too strong for him to see clearly, glasses or no.
"Or it points to someone trying to make us think she's involved."
“Right. It’s a ghost conspiracy.”
He shot me a look. “Let’s not jump to any conclusions. The oil and the candy still point to Leah Anthony. Not to mention the fact that her husband bloodied up Oliver pretty bad.”
“Like you secretly haven’t always wanted to do that.” I fell onto the couch, frustrated. “I didn’t find anything magic in her house, though. You don’t suddenly wake up and start summoning ghosts.”
While Wyatt stayed at home and categorized our evidence, trying to find something we’d missed, it was my job to get the feel of the town. Any changes in the ghosts’ behavior had to be noted because it was all we had to go on at this point.
While walking past the motel where Fate had stayed, I stopped for a moment, letting myself feel grief for the young woman. She’d been my first client, and I’d failed her. With a track record like that, I was pretty sure she was going to be my last client, too.
I wanted desperately to make up for Fate’s loss, but it seemed a daunting task just then, especially with Wyatt so gung-ho on it not being the most likely suspect. I mean, Leah Anthony? A witch? Please.
Just then, a thought popped into my head. I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it before. If the Afghani woman was haunting the men responsible for her son’s death, why was she just after Wyatt?
I ran all the way back to the car, about to go into the lion’s den for the second time that week. Barely blinking at the over-the-top extravagance that had thrown me at Stellerman’s house the other day, I flung the door open without knocking.
Which proved to be a horrible mistake, because there, barely clothed, was Keith Stellerman making out with a girl at least half his age. Covering my eyes, I turned around. As a former stripper, I was used to nudity, but seeing Keith was one step too far.
“Come to join us, love?” Stellerman called from somewhere behind me.
I heard the girl gasp, and then there was the distinctive sound of a palm smacking a face. A few seconds later, the naked girl stormed past me and out the front door. I wondered if I should’ve called her back and told her about a troubling mole I’d seen on her in a hard-to-see spot.
“I’d ask if you were decent, but we both know the answer to that,” I said. “Are all the bits covered?”
“To your satisfaction, my lady.”
When I turned around, true to his word, Stellerman had covered up with a nearby robe. Ignoring the ick factor, I joined him on the couch, taking a big swig from the girl’s half gone martini.
“I suppose I’ll just have to hope you didn’t roofie that,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow, doing his best to look affronted. “I’m a millionaire war hero. I don’t need to drug anyone for sex.”
I lunged for the conversation segue like a drowning man to a life jacket. “That’s actually what I came to talk to you about.”
Wiggling his eyebrows in a way that made my stomach convulse, he scooted closer to me. “Drugs and sex?”
Out of principle, I slapped him on the other cheek. I wouldn’t want a dear friend of Wyatt’s to go around lopsided. I might’ve removed his equipment as well, but I knew Stellerman wasn’t serious. The man was many things and a good friend to Wyatt was one of them.
So he got to keep his male parts. For now.
“No. Your time in the war.”
That quickly, the charm was turned off, and he drew away from me. “If Wyatt’s not telling you anything about it, then I’m certainly not going to. Leave well enough alone for once, Harper.”
It was a shock to the system to hear him call me by my name, but I didn’t let it throw me.
“He told me,” I said quietly, not needing to hint at what he told me. Stellerman would get it. Comprehension and amazement dawned in his eyes, and I knew it was the former.
“He didn’t even tell his last wife.” He gave me a little golf clap. “Well done.”<
br />
“You were there when they stormed the compound, then? When the mother of the insurgent leader was killed?”
His gaze when it met mine was as unreadable as Wyatt’s had ever been. “Who do you think shot her?”
My mouth opened and closed in surprise. “But Wyatt…he blames himself. I thought—“
“Maybe you should stop doing so much of that, yeah?”
Stellerman was angry then, his eyes narrowed. I knew it wasn’t directed at me, though he seemed to be using me as an outlet. He got up from the couch, pacing in front of me like a caged animal.
“Wyatt hesitated, okay? Nate, too.” When he said his fallen friend’s name, his voice broke. “She got in front of our target. She was practically going after them with her bare fists.” He swallowed. “I didn’t hesitate.”
“Then why is she haunting Wyatt and not you?”
“After I shot her, her son charged us. Wyatt put him down right in front of the mother.” Keith looked away from me. “That was the last thing she saw.”
“Do you know her name?”
“Aaqila, I think. I saw it on a report years later. It stuck, though.”
I left him there to his thoughts, running home to Wyatt. I almost felt numb entering the house, like I was watching the scene from outside my body. Wyatt looked up when I walked in, but the smile on his face was wiped clean when he saw mine.
“You lied to me,” I said simply. “You didn’t shoot her.”
Like Stellerman, he suddenly found it hard to meet my gaze. “I didn’t say I did. I almost wish I did; that would’ve been more merciful.” He laughed without humor. “Wyatt Bennett. Forever splitting up sons and mothers.”
“What are you talking about?”
Sinking down into a kitchen chair, he hung his head. “You always assumed she left me. Cooper thinks so too. I’ve never had the heart to tell him otherwise. He’d think differently of me.”
His ex-wife. I sat down next to him, reaching out and stroking the hair at the back of his neck. I was more pissed at him than ever, but I was willing to hear him out. Lord knows, I’d told more than my fair share of lies.