Relief at the familiar gusted through me. She was right. It came standard issue in the arsenal of law enforcement officers and was implemented in cases involving sensitive material. I had subjected myself to such bindings on multiple occasions. Once more wouldn’t hurt. Not when she had already whetted my appetite. “I’ll do it.”
Thierry placed the charm on the tabletop between us then pricked her thumb with the dagger. One drop of blood welled before the cut knit closed, and she smeared it over the charm. “Your turn.” She passed me the blade hilt first, and I replicated the gesture. Only my blood continued beading after the requisite drop fell. The wound throbbed as the crimson mixed, and magic slithered a winding path up my arm and throat until it prickled in my lips, binding us to shared secrets.
“Okay.” She passed me a napkin. “I’m guessing since my lips feel like I just made out with a porcupine that the charm worked.” At my look, she ducked her head and dusted the remains of the spell into her mug where it sizzled and dissolved. “Spellwork isn’t my forte. I’m still learning, but I have an excellent teacher.”
After wrapping my finger in the thin paper, I settled in while she pulled out a secondary charm and smashed it with the heel of her palm. My ears popped as a privacy spell activated. That one had definitely worked. The restaurant muted around us until the sound of our breathing was all that remained.
“The tethers linking the mortal realm to the fae realm have been severed. I figured it was safe to assume, considering you’re with the Earthen Conclave, that you were briefed when the new security protocols were put into place.” She waited for my nod. “We’re on our own now. That means fae in this world, whether residents or visitors, are subject to conclave law. As I’m sure you’re aware, some of the older fae aren’t thrilled with the prospect of becoming permanent citizens of Earth. They’re bucking the system, and those rebellions are being stamped out as soon as we catch a whiff of them.”
“I was flown to Lebanon for debriefing the day after it happened.” Kansas that is. I had never been to Faerie myself—my family was Earthborn going back three generations—but even I grasped the magnitude of the situation. We were alone now. Trapped in a world unaware of the existence of fae, but growing so technologically advanced that soon even magic would fail to cloak us from human eyes. If we were discovered, and if mortals reacted to learning there were predators in their midst the way they reacted to most unsettling discoveries, war would break out. Our people would battle—not only the mortals but one another—for control of this world since our native land was lost to us. “I had no idea the tethers were a physical thing that could be cut like string. What sort of fae could be that powerful?”
“Who knows?” Thierry picked at her thumbnail with the single-minded focus of a brain surgeon performing a craniotomy. “Either way it’s done now.”
I accepted she wasn’t going to elaborate and pressed her in another direction. “What does this have to do with Charybdis?”
Her eyebrows lifted, though her gaze remained downcast. “There were other, localized incidents that weren’t covered outside of the magistrates’ chambers.”
Leaning forward, I braced my forearms on the tabletop. “Such as?”
“A few months back a portal opened here in Wink, at the marshal’s office actually.” Her eyes flicked up at me. “We contained it as fast as we could, but we didn’t move to close it quickly enough. Something got through.”
“Few fae, even those born in Faerie, can open portals to this realm.” That was why losing the tethers had shut down transportation between Earth and Faerie. “From what I’ve read, theory suggests it requires the cooperation of another party on the side you intend to visit. Someone to open the door for you. That means you need two powerful fae, worlds apart, coordinating their efforts.”
“Trust me when I say there was no consenting anchor on this side of the divide.” Reddish-brown crust dried around the cuticle of the nail she wouldn’t let be. “How it happened doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it did.”
“How can you say that?” I rapped the table for emphasis. “If there’s a fae out there who can bore a tunnel back to Faerie, the conclave will offer amnesty to them if they can do it a second time. That’s assuming they aren’t recruited by the private sector. A lot of people want to go back, and they’ll pay anything—do anything—to get a ticket home.”
“That train has left the station.” Thierry puffed out her cheeks on an exhale. “The fae responsible has been detained in Faerie and is out of the conclave’s reach.”
The relief in her voice at the thought of a return trip to Faerie being impossible stumped me. As a legacy, she had a direct familial link to the other realm. Though, as a half-blood, which most Faerie-born scorned, she might have been all too eager for that bridge to burn. For all I knew she had toasted marshmallows in the flames.
“So what you’re saying is one fae opened a portal and another one slipped through.” The idea it might be Charybdis kicked my pulse up a notch. “Were the two fae cooperating?” That seemed the most likely scenario. “Or was the second incident, the portal breach, a crime of opportunity?”
“We aren’t sure.” A grim scowl. “With Faerie off the grid, we have no means of confirming their alliance until the second fae is captured here.”
I chewed over that bit of information. “What can you tell me about the incident?”
“Not much,” she admitted. “We have surveillance footage courtesy of a camera mounted in the hall opposite the office where the breach occurred. The door was open, so it got a clear shot, but the angle is bad, and the quality is crap.” Not exactly encouraging. “That said, it shows a humanoid figure stepping through a portal anchored by a closet. It entered the hall, spotted one of the marshals, got spooked, and vanished into thin air.”
“How sure are you that this fae and Charybdis are one and the same?”
“I monitored news from around the country for days, waiting to see what it would do.” Her fist clenched, and light spilled through her fingers. “The first body surfaced a month later, and the autopsy confirmed the girl had been dead for almost that long.”
“The timing could have been a coincidence.” Fae were a brutal race. Murder was much less taboo among our people than mortals. “You can’t be certain it was the same fae.”
“Oh, but I can.” She tapped the side of her nose. “I flew out to view the body. The degree of decomposition and exposure to the water made it difficult to parse the smells, but I picked up faint traces of the same scent on the body as I did near the portal.”
As powerful as her talents were, I had no reason to doubt Thierry’s word. By linking the fae from the portal to the first body, she had established a chain of evidence, because I had tied it and all the others to the same magical signature. “You reported this?”
“To the magistrates, yes.” A frown developed. “I also counseled them to call in an expert to work the case. The body wasn’t getting any fresher, and I had a feeling that wasn’t the end of it.” The lines cut deeper into her forehead. “I hate that I was right, but I’m glad they brought you onboard, even if I am curious why Vause sent you here.”
“You knew this case wasn’t linked to Charybdis.” It hit me a second later. “You could tell by the scent.”
“Yep.” Her lips twisted. “I reached out to Vause when I got a heads up about a consultant visiting the site. I tried to save you a trip, but she made a point of not answering her phone or returning my calls until you had already arrived.”
The magistrate had known the death was unrelated to Charybdis, had wanted me in Wink. Staring across the table at the powerful young woman gazing back at me, I had to wonder if this interlude wasn’t the entire point. Did that mean Vause had orchestrated my arrival, positioning me in such a way that Thierry’s natural curiosity would take over? Or did it mean this comradery was false? That Thierry was Vause’s creature? And that our accord was one of many layers in a scheme I would have to peel back to
reveal the core of truth?
“Why did you pull out?” I wondered, at the same time realizing this was why her first words to me were that she had been expecting me. She had known I was coming, or someone with a similar talent was, because I was there by her request.
“I’m not a field agent anymore.” She grimaced. “I was reassigned elsewhere. My involvement with the portal was a fluke of timing. The magistrates snatched Charybdis out of my hands before I got my fingerprints on the file.”
That she still seemed to be working the case without their blessing, I didn’t mention. “So I have you to thank for my string of recent consultations.”
“Yeah.” She winced. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s no problem.” Vause always brought me the mysterious cases in the hopes I could solve with a touch what others struggled to link through evidence. The unspoken agreement she would forward all drowning cases gave me ample opportunity to punish myself. Whatever she thought of my self-flagellation she kept to herself. “This is the job, right?”
“Just know I’m here if you need help.” She removed a card from her pocket and pushed it across the table with a finger. “Call if you need anything. Information. References. Backup. Whatever. It’s yours.”
“I will.” I accepted the card and tucked it into my pocket for safekeeping. “I appreciate the offer.”
The tension slipped from Thierry’s shoulders, and I got the feeling she had accomplished her mission in treating me to coffee at the diner.
“So…Earthen Conclave. They must have been tripping over themselves to enlist someone like you.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “How did that recruitment letter go? Did they let you say goodbye to your family before they packed you up and shipped you off to one of their training facilities?”
“I didn’t get a letter.” No one would have thought to send me one. Not with my life expectancy. “I applied to the marshal’s program right out of high school. I was drafted from there by Vause after we met on a case I worked in her region.”
“You volunteered?” Thierry cocked her head and studied me as though she had never seen me before that moment. “Why?”
“I’m not like the rest of my family.” The mention of my otherness made my throat tighten. “I wanted to forge my own path, and the conclave offered to pave the way.”
“Hmm.” Thierry appeared thoughtful. “I figured someone with your talents would have been scooped up earlier and given fewer choices about it.”
She wasn’t the only one entitled to her secrets. “Guess I slipped through the cracks.”
Never in a million years would the conclave have come looking for me. Even if they had, they would have had trouble locating Aunt Dot’s traveling caravan because of the layers of concealment spells she wove around our mobile homes. Gemini were restless souls. Always on the move, always looking ahead to the next thing. Content to leave the past in the past. We enjoyed our own company and preferred our own kind. Untrusting of outsiders, and that went double for those wearing badges. No. The conclave never would have found me if I hadn’t wanted to be found.
Aunt Dot had given me an earful when I got my acceptance letter. She saw my attending the academy as penance and still felt like I had turned myself in to the authorities for the crime I hadn’t committed as a child. She wasn’t wrong. Someone ought to pay for Lori’s death. Why not me, the last person to see her alive?
“Guess so.” The overhead lights fascinated her for a second while she gathered her thoughts. “Though I suppose we all end up where we’re meant to be.” Her gaze cut to me. “Fate and all that jazz.”
“Sure,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I agreed with her. Fate and I weren’t on speaking terms. An anemic bell tinkled, and a woman with a long brown ponytail entered the diner. The smile proved she wasn’t Mrs. Rebec, but her arrival was a sobering reminder of the scene we had left behind. “Do you think Harlow will be safe tonight?”
Thierry’s head lifted, and she stared through the large windows positioned across the front of the diner. “We have a guy watching the hotel tonight just in case the widow gets any ideas.”
“Good.” I rubbed my arms. “She didn’t deserve this.”
“I hope it serves as a wakeup call for her. A good man died at the sinks because your friend couldn’t do her job.” Her lips pinched together. “We’re lucky Jasper was the only one we lost. Talk to Harlow. Convince her that her limitations need to be documented. A consultant who can’t do the job she’s hired to do won’t have much of a career once her clients catch wind of her record. This is the kind of black mark that never fades.”
The impulse to dispute Harlow was a friend while wearing her bracelet caused the words to stick in my throat. The girl was out of her depth, there we agreed, but how likely was a teenager to accept advice from someone she barely knew?
All of the marshals, even Thierry, were so eager to settle the blame on Harlow’s shoulders that they didn’t seem to grasp how hypocritical it was for them to cast blame. “There might not have been a black mark at all if she had gotten help when it first became obvious she needed it.”
“That’s part of the problem.” Her forehead puckered. “She shouldn’t have needed help.”
I scoffed, about to call bull. Harlow had been one girl pitted against a monster.
“Hear me out.” Thierry splayed her fingers in a peacekeeping gesture. “Merfolk rule the deep. They hold dominion over other aquatic creatures. A mermaid should have had that kraken eating out of the palm of her hand. Or at least been able to corral it until we cleared the scene. But Harlow went in search of the local mermaid pod and instead roused the beast into a killing frenzy.” She lowered her hands. “She seems like a nice kid, but…” Her exhale sent a straw wrapper skittering. “I’ve already filed a report. I can’t, in good conscience, allow her to be assigned to another case until she’s more forthcoming about her background and her limitations.”
A burst of rock music pelted the air, too loud to be coming from outside the privacy spell. My phone’s ringtone was much more sedate. That must be Thierry’s. “Do you need to get that?”
“Nah.” A smile split her cheeks when she read the caller ID. “It’s Shaw, but he can wait.”
“If something’s come up at work…” Food or no food, I was ready to ditch the pretense and call it a night.
“We’re off the clock in half an hour.” She tapped the cell’s screen. “If I pick up, then he’ll stick me with being in charge of bringing home dinner, but I know better than to answer him this late in our shift.”
“Home,” I echoed.
“We’re mated.” A mischievous glint lit her eyes as she muted her phone. “We’ve been living together for a whole glorious week.”
Of all the things she had told me tonight, this one took the cake. “You mated Shaw?”
“Yep.” She pocketed her phone and pulled out a slim wallet. “For better or worse, he’s all mine.”
That explained a lot and nothing at all. Incubi mated? For how long? To what end? Thierry must be a bold woman to trust an incubus with her heart. I got the feeling if he ever strayed, she would light him up like the Fourth of July. Maybe that made him the bold one.
After tossing a few bills on the table for a tip, she glanced up at me. “Will you be leaving tomorrow?”
“I should have been gone today. There’s nothing left for me to do here.” Harlow ought to get going too. Tonight’s confrontation wouldn’t have happened if she had gone home on schedule. “Have the boy’s parents been located?”
“No.” She flagged down the waitress and signaled for the check. “Not yet. He’s not local. We ruled out that possibility. He could be a runaway, but with a mouth full of metal, I doubt it. Braces require a lot of maintenance, and his were pristine.” She paid the tab despite my protests. “We’ll find his family. Don’t worry about that.” She slid out of the booth. “Come on. I’ll walk you back.”
We hit the hotel lobby in time to hear the screams.<
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Chapter 6
Spine-covered rats poured like spilled marbles across the tile floor, and I hopped an instinctive step back until I spotted Harlow struggling in their midst. Nails clacking, they scurried toward the exit Thierry and I moved to block. Their pointy shoulders were packed so tightly they formed a living carpet, and Harlow flailed her arms and legs as she rode them Aladdin-style across the lobby. Every time she managed to get a hand or foot on the floor, one of them bit her wrists or stabbed her ankles until she recoiled and the procession continued. The overnight clerk quivered on top of her desk shrieking and doing some terrified variation of the gotta pee dance. That accounted for the screams.
“Cam,” Harlow squeaked, catching sight of me. “Thank the gods. Get these things off me. Their spines effing hurt.”
“Hold on.” Thierry slung an arm out in front of my chest. “Let me think.”
The incessant screaming made my back teeth ache. “What are those things?”
“They’re hedgies—hedgehogs.” She glanced at me and lowered her arm. “Or they would be if they weren’t fae. These little guys are igel, and they’re usually harmless.”
“Can we hurry this up?” Harlow kicked at one gnawing on the heel of her shoe. “I feel like shish kebab over here.”
“Why are they fixated on Harlow?” Not a one of the creatures had given us a second glance except maybe to wonder how to skitter past without sacrificing their cargo.
A sigh puffed out Thierry’s cheeks. “Jasper Rebec was an igel.”
“So this could be his family.” Sent to fetch the one his widow blamed for his death.
“Yeah.” She patted her pockets. “I don’t want to hurt them. Grief makes us all lose our heads.”
Dead in the Water (Gemini: A Black Dog Series Book 1) Page 5