It was a silly comment that had Harry snorting as he gulped his coffee.
But Delphi seemed to understand his underlying sense of helpless gratitude. “We’ll be fine.”
He walked out as two tiny whirlwinds ran in, screaming.
“Pancakes! Pops!”
Harry grinned at them. Then smiled at the woman pursuing them. “Morning, Veronica. This here’s Jet from next door.”
Jet barely had time to nod before he was hustled out.
“Wouldn’t believe I’ve got great-grandkids, would ya?” Harry thumped his chest. “Eighty two years old and still kicking.” But that was his last boast. Once they were inside Jet’s house, it was all about the work that needed to be done. Harry got out his phone.
Delphi sent her sister-in-law, Veronica, off to her training course after a brief recap of the situation next door.
“You need to stop looking after everyone and get a man who’ll look after you,” was Veronica’s comment as she settled her kids at the table with a pancake each. “One! You’ve had breakfast.” She was as feminist as the next woman, but along with most of Delphi’s family, she thought Delphi needed a steady guy. “What’s Jet like?”
“Uncle Jet is nice.” Tony seemed to be coming out of his shell.
He’ll have to, Delphi thought ruefully, or the terrible twins would bulldoze over him and Grace. Lori and Steve were great kids, but they were also bounce-off-the-wall energetic. She remembered being a bit that way herself as a child.
Veronica glanced at Tony, startled for an instant. Then grinned at Delphi. “Nice is good. Naughty is better.”
“Oh, go to class.” Delphi sent her off, laughing.
Breakfast over, she filled the dishwasher and while it chugged away, she took the kids for a walk to the park. Once there, she’d chase her niece and nephew until they stopped showing off for Tony and Grace’s benefit, and became children and not miniature rapscallions. She saw her cousin Uma getting gear out of her electrician’s van as they passed. “Can you tell Jet I’m taking the kids to the park, please?”
“Park! Park! Park! I get the big swing!”
Uma eyed Lori and Steve as they shouted excitedly and mock-fought. “If you promise to leave the twins there.”
Grace edged nearer to Delphi and slipped a hand in hers.
The trusting touch of that little hand pierced Delphi’s heart. She squeezed the girl’s fingers gently. “Sorry, Uma. You know I never leave a kid behind.”
Uma grinned at the riff on the marines’ motto.
The kids didn’t get the joke, but they understood that Delphi had sided with them. The twins skipped around Uma who pretended to whack them on their butts, always missing.
“Go to the park,” she said. “And let a woman get on with her work.”
“How bad is it?” Delphi asked.
Uma grimaced. “Beyond repair. The wiring needs replacing. I’m going to quote on it. I’ll have to juggle my schedule, but the munchkins need some place to live.” She scrunched her nose at Tony and Grace.
“Thanks, Uma.” Delphi walked to the park, thinking about her neighbor’s problems. Even if he could manage the financial side of things, replacing the wiring and plumbing would be a nightmare with young children. He and the kids would have to move out, having just moved in, and from what he’d said, he and the kids were only just getting together as a family.
Grace tugged at Delphi’s hand as they reached the park.
“Yes, pumpkin pie?”
“Auntie Delphi,” Lori protested the Halloween endearment.
“Go. Run,” Delphi ordered. “Steve, chase your sister.” The twins ran shrieking. Tony hesitated. “You should help Steve,” Delphi suggested.
After a doubtful stare, Tony joined in.
Lori’s shrieks redoubled.
Little flirt. Delphi grinned as she crouched down, nearer to Grace’s height. “So, Grace, what should we do?”
“Swing?” The girl looked hopefully in the direction of the swing set.
“A very good idea.” Keeping an eye on the children as they ran around the playground, Delphi gently pushed Grace on the little kids’ swing.
Lori and Steve were soon bickering over the “big swing”. Lori pushed her brother off it, while Tony watched.
“Another lap of the playground,” Delphi ordered. “Tony, you have a swing, while they run.” And yes, Delphi was aware that she was “the meanest auntie ever”, she just didn’t care. Surviving the day meant tiring out the twins.
By mid-afternoon her house was festooned in Halloween decorations and the kids were collapsed in front of the television watching a movie. Grace was asleep.
Delphi had an hour, maybe two, of me-time and she was contemplating spending it baking to feed the numerous workers (mostly her family) that she could hear hammering, drilling, shouting and singing next door when her nan walked in the back door, carrying her famously large basket, this time filled with pumpkin spice muffins.
“You are officially my favorite person,” Delphi said, inhaling the heavenly aroma.
Nan tilted her head, listening to the movie soundtrack from the living room. “The bairns are quiet.” She was a small, plump woman with silver hair and smiling eyes. She’d been born in Hong Kong which was where Pops had met her on his travels. Her mom had been Chinese, her dad a Scot, and she was fond of the odd Scottish phrase.
“They’re quiet, finally,” Delphi said, reaching for a muffin. “Lori is inexhaustible.”
“She likes spending time with her favorite aunt.”
“Ha.” Delphi grinned at the compliment, knowing full well Nan would say the same thing to Delphi’s sister, Megan.
“Your mom and dad will be down in a few minutes,” Nan said.
“I didn’t realize Pops would rope in so many of us to help next door.” It was part apology and partly a fishing for answers. Delphi had been watching her family and friends busy next door and occasionally wandering into her house to grab a coffee, use the facilities or borrow anything from a roll of duct tape to a cushion (she didn’t ask why), but she’d been fully occupied with the kids and unable to question them. Tony and Grace would have listened to the answers.
“It’s a chance to learn what your new neighbor is like,” Nan admitted calmly. “Also, Harry likes him. He got the brief version of how Jet came to stand guardian to his two cousins.”
Delphi popped a magical privacy bubble around her and Nan just to be sure Tony and Grace couldn’t overhear. “Go on. I’m dying of curiosity.”
Nan was the friendliest of gossips. She’d help anyone, but she liked to know about them. She’d know all the important details about Jet. “Jet Walsh works for an insurance agency. He investigates fraud cases. He used to work internationally, but he arranged permanent work in New York when Tony and Grace needed a guardian. Their mom was his cousin. She was a drug addict. Her parents are dead. So is Tony’s dad and they don’t know who Grace’s father is. Tony and Grace were destined for foster care when Jet stepped in.”
“Stepped up,” Delphi corrected, feeling proud of a man she’d only just met, which was ridiculous. Ridiculous, but true. “Not every man would take on two young children.”
Nan nodded. “Which is why Harry and everyone are helping him. Jet did the right thing. Now, he needs a livable house so that the children’s case worker doesn’t take them away.”
Delphi thought of her next door neighbor. “He wouldn’t let them go.”
Nan looked alert. “You respect him?”
“Nan.” Delphi loaded her voice with warning even as she lifted the privacy bubble. This conversation was over.
For Nan, respect was more important than liking in the initial stages of a romantic relationship. “Liking,” Nan was inclined to say. “You can like a dog, a cat, a flavor of ice cream. But respect, respect is a solid foundation on which to build.” Now, she smiled. “You respect him. I look forward to meeting this Jet Walsh.”
“So do I.” Delphi’s dad, Mike, walk
ed in the back door with his wife.
“I liked what I saw of him,” CeeCee said. “And I looked into his background briefly when he moved in. No arrest record.”
Delphi rolled her eyes. She also filled the coffee maker and put the kettle on. With her family, she was used to catering for large numbers.
The kids burst in, led by Lori. “Nan! Gramma! Gramps!”
Tony and Grace lingered in the doorway, wide-eyed, cautious, but curious.
Delphi thought their curiosity was a good sign. They were growing confident.
Mike accepted Lori’s enthusiastic hug, ruffled Steve’s hair, and nodded at Tony and Grace. Then he escaped next door to see what was happening and to call everyone over for coffee and muffins. He returned later than most, deep in conversation with Jet.
People sat in Delphi’s kitchen and backyard, sipping coffee, chatting and eating Nan’s pumpkin spice muffins. Lori and Steve ran around, their energy renewed by having so many people to annoy. Tony and Grace migrated to Jet who looked at them searchingly even as he touched the boy’s shoulder and accepted Grace leaning against his leg. In the noisy chaos of Delphi’s family, Tony and Grace also had someone they belonged to and they glowed a little with that knowledge.
Delphi liked how comfortably Jet accepted his role as their security. His eyes met hers as she handed him a mug of coffee and she liked the warmth in his smile, too.
“Thanks.” Coffee was the least of what Delphi had done for him. Jet watched the woman who’d taken this morning’s disaster and turned it into a blessing. Yeah, he’d have to sell the classic Ford Mustang he’d inherited from his Great-Uncle Titus just to begin paying for the plumbing and rewiring, but it was more than worth it for the sight of Tony and Grace in the middle of a big, boisterous crowd and not hiding.
Delphi had given them that confidence.
She was so damn beautiful. There was a splash of orange paint on her right cheekbone and she smelled of craft glue from whatever projects she’d undertaken with the children, and he’d never seen or scented anything prettier.
“Muffin?”
Jet blinked and focused on the huge basket being offered to him by one of Delphi’s cousins.
The guy was grinning as he offered the muffins.
Oh man. How long was I staring at her? Jet glanced at Delphi, but she’d partly turned away, a blush tinting her cheeks.
He took a muffin and bit into it. He’d booked a hotel suite, a cheap one but family-oriented, and packed clothes and toys, and thrown them in his car where they’d at least stay clean. The way Delphi’s family worked, the house would be livable in a week. That was far better than he’d expected that morning.
His phone buzzed and he put down his coffee mug to answer it. One glance at the caller’s name and coldness settled in his gut. “Perez.”
Perez was a were—a jaguar-were—but also a police detective.
Another phone went off and Jet watched Delphi’s mom answer it, and go still. The way he was still. Mike had said his wife was a police captain, something Jet had guessed from the uniform she’d worn last night.
“There’s been another one,” Perez said over the phone. He gave an address on the other side of Queens. “It’s bad, Jet. A kid.”
“I’ll be there.” Jet shoved his phone into the pocket of his jeans.
The noise of the gathering, which he’d blocked, surged back. So did his realization that he couldn’t just go. He looked down at Tony and Grace, playing near him, and fury ran like ice in his veins. It was a fury so condensed and powerful that it burned cold. He wasn’t angry with them, but for them.
His brain chose that moment to present him with a vivid image of how he’d last seen their mom, his cousin Emma. She’d been dead, the skin flayed off her back and thighs; her body dumped in the Essex marshes outside London. If it had been anyone but a were running past, perhaps her body wouldn’t have been found, ever. But the wolf-were had been searching for something else and decomposition had a particular smell. The man had investigated. A little more research and the body had been identified.
Jet had been the nearest kin, apart from Tony and Grace. Fortunately, kinship counted among weres and they’d notified him fast. He’d been in Paris, on a job for the Suzerain, the (for lack of a better word) leader of the were community. Jet had gotten to London, and then, back to New York as quickly as humanly possible.
Tony and Grace, two kids he’d never met, had needed him. There’d been no one else.
And he’d sworn that by the time they were old enough to ask and be told the truth of their mom’s death, he’d also be able to tell them that he’d avenged her.
Justice.
Justice was needed for closure.
But now a child was dead and Perez would only have phoned him about it if—
Jet cut off the thought. It wasn’t one to have here in Delphi’s warm and family-filled kitchen. It wasn’t one to think of with Tony and Grace nearby.
Delphi touched his arm. “Problems?”
Across the room, CeeCee watched him as she ended her own phone call.
Deliberately, Jet met the police captain’s gaze and nodded. Then he focused on Delphi. “Yeah.”
Delphi watched her mom and Jet exchange a long look. They hadn’t known each other when they’d met last night, so this was…Delphi shivered. Her mom’s expression was one that locked away all emotion. Her cop face. It meant that something bad had happened. And Jet had just received the same news.
Delphi scanned the room, but no one else was checking their phone or paying attention. She put a hand on Jet’s arm. “Problems?”
He looked at her and there was sorrow and fierce rage in his eyes, before he, like her mom, locked down his expression. “Yeah.” He took a deep breath and checked on Tony and Grace.
Fortunately, Nan was there, and Nan had impeccable timing when it came to children. It was almost her magical talent. She coaxed Tony and Grace to the table to draw a picture for her.
“I’ll be in the living room,” Jet said to them.
They nodded, intent on their pictures. Grace was drawing another cat.
“Thank you,” Delphi mouthed at Nan, who nodded, looking concerned.
Delphi’s mom and dad had already unobtrusively retreated into the living room. They stood by the front window which was newly draped in fake cobwebs for Halloween.
“What did you hear?” CeeCee asked Jet.
“A child’s body has been found and since Perez phoned me, I’m assuming the skin has been flayed from the body.” Terse words, but Jet’s voice rumbled with the emotions he controlled.
Why call you? Delphi stood beside him, shocked and concerned. All serious crimes were terrible, but those that involved children had a devastating impact.
“Perez as in…” CeeCee asked.
Jet nodded, once. “One of your sergeants. He’s a friend.” Jet’s voice went impossibly deeper. “He knows how Tony and Grace’s mom died.”
Cold horror flooded Delphi. No. From Nan’s gossip, and Tony and Grace’s behavior, Delphi had assumed their mom had been ruled by and died from an addiction. But Jet wouldn’t be radiating this banked fury if the situation was so tragically resolved. His emotions had a jagged edge. Delphi shifted nearer to him, instinctively wanting to soften the aloneness of his stance. She didn’t want to imagine what it would be like to face something so horrible alone, without her family.
CeeCee frowned. “No women have been—”
“In London,” Jet bit out the words. “Murdered. Flayed. I’ve worked with police before in my role as an insurance fraud investigator. I’m not going to let this go. Emma was my cousin.”
“I don’t work with civilians,” CeeCee said bluntly. “Particularly not those with an emotional involvement in a case.”
Jet’s big hands opened and closed. “I understand.”
So did CeeCee. “But you’re going to investigate, anyway.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Something to remember.
” CeeCee had managed people for years and she knew where to aim her arrows. “You’re responsible for three lives, now. Your own, but also Tony and Grace’s. Whatever we owe the dead, we owe the living more. Remember them.” She waited for Jet’s nod, before saying a quick good-bye and leaving. With a case like this, she’d be needed at headquarters. It wasn’t just the horror of the crime, but the media circus that would erupt once the details leaked.
“I’m sorry,” Delphi’s dad said.
“Yeah.” Jet turned and stared back toward the kitchen. Tony and Grace weren’t visible at the table, but he was obviously thinking about them.
“I’ll look after them,” Delphi said. “You go and do what you have to do. They can stay here, tonight, too. I’ll give you a key. Come home when you can.”
Jet stared at her, shocked.
“Delphi,” her dad admonished.
But Delphi knew what her parents didn’t. Jet wasn’t simply an insurance fraud investigator, big, trained and dangerous. He was also a bear-were. She didn’t know much about weres. They weren’t part of her life in the Collegium. But she knew enough to guess that Jet needed to be out and doing, releasing his emotions in action. However, he couldn’t do that till he knew Tony and Grace were safe.
He needed someone to have his back.
“You don’t know me,” Jet growled.
And yes, it was a growl. He sounded angry with her.
“A child has been found, flayed.” The horror of that silenced Delphi for a second.
Jet put an arm around her.
All his warmth and strength supported her. She was meant to be helping him, but he was propping her up. It confirmed that what she was doing was right. She finished her thought. “You can’t take Tony and Grace to a hotel. They need to be somewhere safe. In a home.”
“The kids, yeah. But I’m a strange man whom you don’t know.”
And I have magic enough to keep myself safe, even dealing with a were. But that was her secret. “You’d be an idiot to try something when my whole family knows you’re here and my mom’s a police captain.”
Alchemy Shift Page 3