Sophia dutifully strode next to Katarina and waved at the peephole the man was undoubtedly looking through. Vale kept out of sight.
The moment the man opened the door Vale disappeared, likely to reappear inside the home somewhere. Aiyanna hoped he kept quiet—she needed these men to trust her enough to give her the lead she needed…because they were all she had to connect Cael to the crime he probably didn’t commit.
“Welcome,” said a man with dark brown hair that curled around the collar of his shirt. “I’m Sean O’Malley.” His face was in the shadows, obscuring his expression.
They quickly made their introductions and he ushered them inside his home, which was thankfully more well-lit than his doorstep. As Aiyanna predicted, he offered them tea, looking genuinely concerned they were cold. They followed him into a small living room and sat where he indicated, each taking a cup of tea when he brought a steaming tray into the room a few minutes later.
This was what a stereotypical man’s house looked like. The walls were bare, save for the occasional sword hung above a mantle or doorway. A Northern Ireland soccer jersey lay over a small table, otherwise leaving the room occupied by dark wood and leather chairs that surrounded a wooden coffee table.
“I keep it chilly in here to help me think, but it can present a problem when guests arrive.” Sean sent them an apologetic glance, double-taking when he caught a closer look at Katarina.
“You look an awful lot like my sister,” he mused thoughtfully, nodding to her. “She was right beautiful, you know. Every lad in our pack thought so.” While his words could have easily come off as creepy or sad, he simply spoke fondly, as if Katarina’s appearance was a nice reminder of someone he once loved. He smiled into his teacup and swirled its contents.
“Speaking of your sister, where is she now?” Sophia asked innocently. “It would be nice to meet some female weres while I visit.”
“Oh, she’s gone.” Now he looked into his teacup as if it had the answers to all the world’s problems. Aiyanna wished she weren’t here to make him rehash painful memories, but it couldn’t be helped.
“What happened?” she asked gently.
That made him look up. “She was killed by her lover. It was an accident, and the man did his time. From what I know, he may have been released from his clan prohibitum by now.”
He watched Katarina as he spoke, but there was no anger in his tone. He’d accepted his sister’s death and didn’t seem to hold any grudge toward Cael. He really believes it was an accident.
Thankfully, Katarina spoke next. “Are you sure it was him?”
Sean’s eyes went wide, astonished. “Of course. No one else was around; there wasn’t anyone else who could have done it.”
The man seemed reasonable enough. He’d taken them in off the cold streets and given them tea. It was time to be honest with him.
“We’re not really here about moving to Belfast,” Aiyanna said in her most nonthreatening voice. “We’re here because we’ve come across information that causes us to believe Cael wasn’t really the one who killed Ava, and we thought you might help us find the true killer.”
The werewolf went white. He had enough sense to set down his tea without breaking the delicate cup, but it was obvious from the tremor in his large hand that he didn’t have much more control than that.
“What makes you think this?” he asked quietly. Again, he fixated on Katarina, his frown pained.
Aiyanna told him about Big Mama’s declaration, making sure to convey her revered position as High Witch. It wasn’t hard, physical evidence, but it was enough to stand in a shapeshifter court if such evidence had been presented.
Witches that powerful were seldom wrong.
“Is there anything you can tell us?” Sophia pressed. “This man has beaten himself up for a century, possibly for something he didn’t do.”
“Sean?” another male voice sounded right as Sean opened his mouth to speak. He still frowned deeply, but there wasn’t the same conviction Aiyanna had seen in Cael. From the way his eyebrows drew together, she knew he considered the possibility of someone else having hurt his sister.
It was enough to make her heart soar. Of course Cael didn’t do it.
“I’m in here, brother,” Sean called.
A shorter, stockier version of Sean came into the room, studied their little group and zeroed in on Sean. “We have guests,” he said in the same way Aiyanna imagined he would say, “We have a termite infestation.”
Sean introduced them without telling Hugh why they were in the brothers’ home. Hugh came to each of them for a friendly enough handshake, though his firm grip and swift jerk of Aiyanna’s arm made her visibly grimace. Thankfully, Hugh didn’t seem to notice and moved on to Sophia before taking a seat beside his brother.
“What are Americans doing in our home?” he asked. He smiled, but it didn’t quite meet his eyes. The way he shifted in his seat, his eyes fleeting between each of them too quickly, he was obviously unnerved.
Apparently he didn’t see the resemblance between Katarina and Ava.
“They came across news pertaining to Ava,” Sean said slowly.
The moment he said Ava, an unnerving glint appeared in Hugh’s eye. On the armrests of his chair, his claws sliced out enough to puncture the leather.
“Oh?”
Sean nodded. “They think…well, they think there’s a chance Cael didn’t kill her. A High Witch told them so.”
In any other circumstance, Aiyanna would have claimed Hugh moved too fast for her to react in time. In this case, she couldn’t have responded well anyway because moving hurt.
If it were anyone else’s ass on the line, she’d be back in her comfy little apartment in the Irish Channel, hot buttered rum in one hand and the other on top of her favorite heating pad, which would have been soothing her aching ribs. But this was Cael, and she’d be damned if he lived another day with misplaced guilt.
The moment Hugh practically flew toward her, she was thinking about that heating pad, her hands braced in front of her to protect her injury.
Sophia wasn’t fast enough to get between them, but she worked a ball of flame into a whip fast enough to give Hugh pause.
Dizzily, Aiyanna registered that the sword she’d seen hanging on the wall was pressed against her neck. Hugh jerked her forward, away from everyone, and pressed it harder without drawing blood. The sword was dull, and at closer glance, covered in rust. If that thing cut her, Aiyanna would march herself into a human hospital, just to make sure she didn’t catch anything strange.
“Don’t burn me, little ginger. I may not have the sharpest of swords, but I can put it through her before you can burn me to death. I promise you that.”
Behind Sophia, Sean had moved in front of Katarina, a move that seemed to shock the warlock…until she caught sight of something else. Aiyanna followed Katarina’s gaze to Vale, who stood very still in a shadowed corner of the room.
She didn’t consider changing into her panther form. There was no way of knowing what that would do to her injury, and this was not the ideal situation to test it out.
“Why the violence, O’Malley?” Aiyanna wanted to distract him from noticing Vale, but she was also curious. What reason did he have to react that way to this kind of news?
Unless he killed Ava.
Aiyanna decided to take the gamble. “Are you angry your secret’s about to be exposed after getting away with murder for long, or are you just scared of what they’ll do to a man capable of killing his sister?”
“It was our parents,” Hugh bellowed, hitting her in the side of the head with the flat of the blade. She stumbled forward, unseeing, and hit something hard right in her stomach.
“Damn.”
After a dazed moment she could see again and realized most of Hugh was now on fire…or was surrounded by fire. Somehow, standing stock-still, he screamed a string of curses and rants about his parents, Ava and money, but none of it m
ade sense. Aiyanna ignored him and simply let herself fall into the chair where she’d been sitting before Hugh had yanked her up.
When Vale appeared next to Hugh, his expression was solemn. “Will you not burn his hands while I cuff him?”
Sophia suggested Vale take his cuffs and shove them somewhere unpleasant, but she kept the flames farther away from Hugh’s arms and sides so they wouldn’t burn him.
Suddenly an enormous, swirling ball of flames flew directly in front of Hugh’s face, causing his short beard to smoke.
“Bring that water any closer to this room, and your head will be inside that. Got it?”
With a jolt of surprise, Aiyanna watched as a massive wave receded from where it had loomed right beyond the window. With the surprises and her current state, she’d completely forgotten Hugh was a water elemental. She’d been sloppy; she was lucky Sophia wasn’t.
“What was he talking about, with your parents and money?” Katarina asked Sean, whose face was getting redder by the moment. Aiyanna suspected his reaction wasn’t only due to the heat of the fire.
“You killed her for money?” he shouted, making Sophia quickly recede her flames so Sean wouldn’t get burned. He poked the pinkened skin of his brother’s chest, revealed by a hole burned in his shirt. “I knew you were pissed when Ma and Dad left everything to her, but you don’t kill her for it! You don’t do that, Hugh!”
With that, he punched Hugh so hard he fell to the floor in an unconscious heap.
Sean shook out his hand, and Sophia quickly reduced the small fires beginning on their area rug to simple burn marks.
“Sorry about your furniture.” Frowning down at Hugh, she didn’t sound contrite in the least.
Sean waved her off. “I have to set things right with Cael. I should have never thought it was him—he was always so gentle with Ava.” His voice broke. “At least she didn’t know it was Hugh. That would have made this lot all the worse.”
“You’re right about that,” Aiyanna managed, wrapping her arms around her ribs. Her landing on the chair didn’t help her, but it thankfully hadn’t punctured a lung, either. “What are you going to do with him?”
After cursing his brother, Sean rocked back on his heels. “First, I need to find out how he did what he did. Then I’ll turn him over to the Elders.”
“Warlocks,” Katarina said instantly. “It was definitely warlocks.”
Sean stared, and she released a long sigh. “I came pretty close to becoming one, and I can tell you they’re good at making what they do look like things other people did. Trust me, your brother paid off a warlock or two to pull this off.”
“It wasn’t even that much money,” Sean murmured. “When he got his half, he blew through it, spent it on booze and a car he wrecked.”
Silence ensued. Each of them wore horrified expressions, as if they couldn’t comprehend why one man would hurt someone so much for a bit of money.
“Hey, Vale, you’d better take Aiyanna back now. She looks worse than that time she tried to out-drink me.” Sophia raised her eyebrows at her in challenge, but Aiyanna could only give a half-hearted grimace in return.
“I did out-drink you, munchkin.” A bout of coughing punctuated her words, and it felt like a knife pulled through her midsection. She didn’t try to hide the blood that landed on her lips and hand, knowing the weres in the room could smell as much.
So she was wrong about the lung.
“Take me to Briony.” Her voice was hoarse. “She said she could help with this.”
Aiyanna didn’t quite feel up to getting near enough to death for the healers to be able to patch her up. In this case, she hoped feeling like death and being nearly dead were on vastly different ends of the spectrum.
“Go ahead,” Katarina urged. “We’ll stay with them.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Vale took her hand. He brought her to the hall where Briony and Sebastian lived in the firehouse. Clearly, they weren’t there. Vale and Aiyanna didn’t linger. The next thing she knew, Vale was lightly pushing her back onto the bed she normally slept in there, and then he was gone, off to find the witch in question.
Through her pain, Aiyanna couldn’t help but smile. Cael and I can finally be together. When she felt better, she would stand up and dance.
Chapter 13
IT took Cael a while to calm down. The coffee he drank at the diner kept him warm for all of a minute during his run through the snow, which helped him get a grip on his anger after a good hour. When he finally stopped, he had no idea where he was as he stood next to a beautiful river, his hands on his knees.
The top of the river was frozen solid but water underneath flowed freely, its sound muted by the jagged thump of his heart pounding against his chest. He really needed to run more instead of only lifting weights.
Each breath he pulled in was ice in his lungs, but like a receding fog, his mind cleared, replacing his fury with guilt for yelling at Briony and leaving Aiyanna while she remained hurt. He should have stayed with her, but if he had he still didn’t know what he would have done. She agreed with Briony about something he hadn’t, in a century, let himself contemplate.
That he might be innocent.
That he never lost that much control over his air abilities, and someone else set him up for the crime.
Now, the idea was still puzzling, it even angered him, but he wasn’t mindless over it anymore. He could see how Briony wouldn’t doubt her own grandmother’s proclamation. And of course Aiyanna believed the best of him. She always had, something he’d never been able to handle correctly.
Emmanuel drowned me. Could a kelpie have killed Ava from afar? No. He would have smelled another creature, and even if he hadn’t, an investigator would have.
Despite the impossibility of his innocence, he’d try harder to take Aiyanna’s compliments and suggestions in stride. That’s what couples did, and even if they couldn’t be a normal couple per se, it’s what he wanted.
Until she gets bored.
He shook his head, refusing to let that thought grow any further. It was a concern, but not one he would address until she decided to bring it up. If she did, he wouldn’t blame her. Presently so cold he felt as if he were turning into a rather large block of ice, his dick still felt better than in certain moments with Aiyanna. In those times, he just knew it would fall off unless she touched him.
But it was worth it to keep her safe. He’d tear himself to pieces if he caused her harm, making him to never consider having any kind of sex with her.
Her smiling face in mind, he brought himself back to San Francisco with some sharp, frigid nudging from air. The apartment was quiet, and Aiyanna’s room empty. Her scent lingered, but not strongly enough to make him think she’d been there even within the last half an hour.
She’d probably already gone home.
“Wait!”
Heath ran to the room, stopping at the door with a strange expression on his face. “Are you looking for Aiyanna?” he asked, his green eyes focused somewhere over Cael’s left shoulder.
Something was up. Heath alternately appeared awed and cautious, like Cael would lunge forward in a punch at any moment. That wasn’t what was strange, since Cael hit Heath more often than he didn’t. It was that Heath didn’t seem keen to fight back that brought him up short.
“Where is she?” he growled.
“She’s in her room at the firehouse.”
Cael didn’t respond; though, he heard Heath say something like, “I told them not to,” before he arrived back in New Orleans.
In her room, Aiyanna was propped up on her bed, a ludicrous amount of glittery pink cushions pressed against her back.
There was a blooming bruise across her face, and Briony leaned over her exposed stomach, soaking up blood with a sachet of foul-smelling herbs.
“Hey, honey, you’re home!” Aiyanna called brightly.
“Who did this to you?” Cael roared. All the calm he’d must
ered up over the past hour or so left him swiftly, bringing back even more rage than before. How could she have gotten hurt, again, in so little time?
“About that.” Aiyanna’s smile dimmed, and Briony looked up at him with a frown.
“Yell at her again, and I’ll put my version of ipecac in everything you eat for the next eight months,” the witch warned.
“And I’ll do this again.”
Cael whirled around to face Sebastian, who landed a punch square to his nose.
He supposed he deserved that, after his explosion toward Briony earlier. Shaking off the sting of the punch, he inclined his head to Briony.
“I’m sorry about before.”
Briony smiled at him, but Sebastian only narrowed his eyes, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
“Never go near my mate when you’re in that foul of a mood,” Sebastian growled. When he looked at Briony, his expression softened. “I’m going to the kitchen. Do you want anything?”
The witch rattled off a list of plants that sounded equally strange and poisonous, and Sebastian headed downstairs, his footsteps echoing down the hall. He wasn’t usually one to hold a grudge, but this time seemed to be an exception. Cael didn’t think on it too hard—the couple was newly mated, and both male and female werewolves were known for their feral protectiveness of one another.
He moved his attention to Aiyanna, taking in every scrape and bruise marring her beautiful skin. He crouched next to Briony so he could inspect Aiyanna’s face more closely.
“I shouldn’t have left you.” At this rate, he couldn’t bear leaving her for a moment. With her so weakened, a moment was all it would take for someone to do her irreversible harm.
It was something he wouldn’t allow. Cael gently brushed his hand against her bruised cheek and didn’t realize he was growling until she laughed, her golden eyes sparkling.
“It’s okay.” Still smiling hugely, Aiyanna brought his face down to hers until their lips met. Cael kissed her as softly as he could, terrified of causing her any more pain.
He barely registered the sounds of Briony quietly leaving them alone. If he hadn’t lifted his head to catch his breath, he was certain he wouldn’t have heard the soft snick of the door closing.
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