“There seems to be something with the photos,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper as he inspected the first case file, singling out a photo and bringing it closer to his face. “This isn’t the real picture. Is this the ABI’s version of classifying? Slapping a badly constructed obfuscation charm on the file and calling it a day? My nine-year-old cousin could break this in her sleep.”
Mariana gave my tall friend a little smirk. “I’m sure she could, but elf magic is a whole other practice, as you well know. Tell me what you see, Mr. Hanson.”
Jimmy raised his head and stared at my mother. “I don’t know what you want me to say. What you see on the photo isn’t what is actually there.” He rose both hands and snapped his fingers. A tiny burst of gold sparks lit with the sound. “Look for yourself.”
Mariana snatched the photograph from the island, and her face went white.
“I fucking knew it,” she mumbled before slapping the photograph back down on the counter in front of me. The picture was mostly the victim’s body. Ferris Laramie was being inspected at the crime scene by a small female medical examiner, her dark curls causing bile to rise in my throat.
Tabitha.
She had been the one to inspect the body of a man who likely couldn’t have thrown himself down a ravine. The same Tabitha who convinced hundreds of people to murder for her here in Haunted Peak. The same Tabitha that had been trying to raise my father from his prison.
Now it wasn’t just a guess that these deaths were connected. It was for damn certain.
I passed the photo to Bishop, who was trying not to launch himself across the island and slap the shit out of my mother. If he held any tighter to my counter, he’d break the stone off, and I’d really be pissed.
Furniture could be replaced. Counters were expensive.
“How long did you know?” He spat the question through gritted teeth. “How long did you suspect she’d infiltrated our ranks? How long did you sit on this shit and wait for it to blow up? How many people are dead because you did nothing?”
Bishop may have started his questions in a low, menacing growl, but by the time he’d ended them, he was practically shouting.
“You sent me down here to keep an eye on Darby. To make sure she didn’t try to raise him herself when she knew nothing of him. You sent me here when you knew she wasn’t the one you were looking for because these deaths had happened long before… I swear to everything holy, you will go in front of the tribunal. Headquarters is going to know exactly what you’ve done.”
Mariana threw her head back and laughed. “You silly, stupid boy. Who do you think I’ve been hiding from?”
12
Bishop looked like she’d socked him in the gut. Hell, I probably looked about the same. Mariana’s lone statement about how she was hiding from headquarters implied a whole host of shit I was not prepared to think about.
And I wasn’t working for them by choice.
Bishop had alluded to a deal he’d made when we were in the Dubois nest. A deal he regretted.
Shit.
Sarina, in all her oracle wisdom, latched onto Bishop’s arm before he could do something supremely stupid. I knew very little about my own powers and probably less than nothing about Mariana’s. Who knew what she could hit him with if he wasn’t careful? Plus, who knew what she would do to him, or who she had in her back pocket?
Bishop’s jaw was in danger of breaking under the strain of his gritted teeth.
“You stupid, selfish cow,” he fumed, practically vibrating with rage. “How long have you known?”
The repeated question did nothing to move Mariana. Instead, she sniffed, inspecting her manicure before plopping back onto my favorite chair. “A while. Well, almost as long as I’ve had the job. I have a feeling that’s why I’ve progressed so fast. Keeping your enemies close and all that.”
That didn’t make much sense to me. “If you’re hiding from them, why tip your hand? I mean, if you don’t want them to know you’re on to them, why wave a red fucking flag in front of a bull?”
Mariana gave me a scathing glare like I was some simpleton that needed shit explained in crayon. “I put you away for damn near a year. They were supposed to think we were on the outs. If you went poking around, they would assume I was out of the loop. It’s why I slipped a few cases in that weren’t exactly what I was looking for. How in the hell was I supposed to know he’d immediately send someone to burn the place down?”
Stunned, all I could do was blink at her. And then it wasn’t Bishop that needed to be held back.
It was me.
I’d nearly reached Mariana before Bishop’s arm banded around my middle, and my father had put himself in between me and my quarry who had smartly vacated her chair in favor of making herself a moving target.
“You left me in there to rot for nine months because you were throwing someone off your scent? Do you have any fucking idea what they did to me, you bitch?”
I was amazed the windows didn’t rattle with as loud as I was screaming. But did she care? Based on Mariana’s stony expression, she absolutely did not. Had I really ever come from her? Even my birth father who had been imprisoned for years treated me better than this woman.
I wanted to slap her. Hell, I wanted to set her on fire or launch her into the sun or tie a cinderblock to her ankle and watch her thrash in the ocean.
And Bishop’s iron hold was pissing me off. I didn’t want to hurt him, but if he didn’t let me go, I was gonna.
Biopsies and tests and everything else. I’d have nightmares about needles until the end of time all because she wanted plausible deniability. All because she wanted to throw some nameless, faceless boogeyman off her trail.
“Of course I knew,” she snapped back. “Who do you think ordered the tests? It had to look authentic.”
She really should have kept her mouth shut on that one, because one second I was struggling against Bishop’s hold, and the next he and my father were ass over tea kettle on the floor and I had Mariana in my sights.
But did I kill her? Did I choke the life out of her? Did I snag the Glock I kept in a tucked-away gun safe under my favorite chair?
No, I did not.
Instead, I did the sensible, rational, non-homicidal thing.
I punched her right in the face.
Cocking my arm back, the move was as telegraphed as a punch could get. Too bad Mariana wasn’t what I’d call a fighter. She seemed almost surprised I’d accost someone like her, the shock on her face almost as good as the crunching impact of my fist against her jaw.
Also?
She was a fucking wimp. One little baby punch and she was out like a light, crumpling to the floor like a sack of potatoes.
My father—who was still on the ground—stared at his former wife in awe before he snorted out a guffaw. Killian Adler wasn’t a fan of violence, and he’d never, ever raise his hand to anyone. But seeing his ex on the floor? He had zero problems with that.
Sarina plopped onto the chair Mariana had vacated and stared at Mariana, shaking her head.
“I told you she would make you eat your words one day,” she chided her unconscious boss. “You should have listened to me.”
I couldn’t help it. I snorted out a laugh. Only Mariana would ignore a psychic.
“Oracle,” Sarina corrected, rolling her eyes.
“We talked about this,” Bishop groused, scolding Sarina on reading thoughts without permission. Really, I needed some mental wards or something.
“Yeah, yeah,” she replied, waving off Bishop’s words. “Wards are all well and good until some jerk infiltrates your office and kills one of your friends. You think you want wards on everyone just so you can get a moment’s peace, and then poof! You remember why you hate them.” She sat back hard in the chair, sadness etched on her face.
“You know what happened isn’t your fault,” Bishop murmured, dropping down in a squat by Sarina’s seat. “We were all caught off guard. Just because you see a lot do
esn’t mean you’re a god. You can’t put that kind of pressure on yourself.”
Sarina shook her head as she wiped a tear from her eye. “It’s my literal job. I’m supposed to keep an eye on threats. I’m supposed to find people who can’t be found. What good am I if I can’t do that?” She sniffed and Jimmy handed her a box of tissues. “What am I even doing here? I mean, I knew something was up, but had I known she was hiding from the brass, there was no way I’d have signed on. I thought I was doing some good in the world, and after the attack in Ascension, after today, how am I supposed to get ready for work every morning and look at myself in the mirror?”
I tried to put myself in her shoes. Had there ever been a time I couldn’t trust my captain? Was there ever a time when I thought he was doing wrong or I didn’t trust him to lead me?
I couldn’t say I had ever had the misfortune of not trusting my leadership. Just the thought felt awful. But maybe if I were in her position, I would stay like she had. Maybe I would try to do as much good as I could while fighting for change.
That’s all anyone could do, right?
Sarina sniffed again before loudly blowing her nose into another tissue. “You’re right,” she said, reading my thoughts once again. After the day she had, I really didn’t mind. Kevin had been a sweetheart. A really good guy who was killed for no good reason. Sarina deserved a freebie pass on my thoughts just this once. “I can’t get out of my contract, but I can do good while I’m here.”
My gaze fell to my mother, her slack body still crumpled at my feet. She couldn’t answer a single question I had if she was unconscious. But maybe I didn’t need her. I knew someone who knew Tabitha long before she came to Haunted Peak.
I was going to have to call Shiloh St. James.
“You punched the Knoxville ABI Director in the face?” Shiloh asked like she couldn’t see Mariana still passed the fuck out on my living room floor.
I wondered if I should be concerned that Mariana was still passed out after that punch to the face, but decided that if she was still breathing, it really wasn’t my problem.
She’d heal. Probably.
“Yep,” I answered, popping the “P” with an unrepentant grin. “She deserved it.”
Shiloh in all her Amazon-tall glory had come alone to my house, leaving her coven goons behind. The last time we’d met, she’d had her whole coven with her as they’d tried to stop an evil bitch from hell from raising my birth father from his prison. They were… unsuccessful to say the least. Shi and I had been friends for years before that, but the fact that she’d known about the secrets buried in my own backyard put a solid strain on our relationship.
“And she’s your mother?” Shiloh asked, still staring at Mariana like she’d jump up any second and take us all to jail.
“Uh-huh. She’s a real peach, too, but I’m sure you knew that already.”
Shiloh snorted before shooting me a grin. “I always knew I liked you, Adler. So, you’ve got me here, said it was an emergency. Please don’t tell me you need me to hide a body because there is owing someone, and then there’s owing someone.”
“Oh, please. If I wanted to bury her in my backyard, you’d be the first one here with a shovel and you know it. But no, it doesn’t have anything to do with her.”
I crossed the room and pulled the photograph Jimmy revealed to us from the file. Jimmy had been hard at work removing the glamours from all the photographs and reports, but it was slow-going. Passing the picture to Shiloh, I asked, “See anyone you recognize?”
It took Shi less than a second to spot Tabitha crouching over the victim. “You’ve got to be shitting me. What the hell is she doing there? How old is this photo?”
“It’s from 1997. When was Tabitha in the Knoxville coven? Do you have any idea what she was doing here before you kicked her out?”
“That’s not her name—or at least that’s not the name she gave us. I want to say she was with us from 1990 on through the early 2000s, but I wasn’t in charge back then.”
I wanted to laugh, but I was pretty sure it would be considered bad form. The previous leader had been killed by mutinous members of her own coven who’d tried to hide their usurping tendencies behind some heavy curses. That crime scene had not been pretty.
“Do you know anything about her? Who she hung around, what she was doing in the coven? Anything you could tell us would be helpful,” Bishop said, his politeness at full force since Shiloh seemed to hate him. A lot of the arcaners I ran with hated the ABI. Their reasons seemed to be good ones, but I wondered if they hated the ABI because of a few rather than the many.
Shiloh shook her head, a frown marring her beautiful face. “I-I can’t think of anything.” She shook her head harder like she was trying to clear it. “Why can’t I think of anything?” She stood from her seat, fear etched on her face as she began to pace around the room. “I knew her. I swear I knew her. Her name was… it was… Why can’t I think of anything?” she repeated, the distress in her voice making it sound shrill.
Out of all of us, it was Jimmy who sprang into action. His big body was up from his seat and across the room in an instant, and he had his giant arms around her as he cooed in her ear, “Shh, it’s okay. I know what’s going on here, and you’re going to be okay.”
Just like the case files that hadn’t made any sense, and the deaths we couldn’t explain, someone had been monkeying around with the truth, and I didn’t like it one bit.
Shiloh had been spelled to forget, and we were at another dead end.
13
“Okay, Obi Wan,” I eyed Jimmy, “share with the class.”
Jimmy picked his big blond head up off his cuddle with Shiloh, a slight frown marring his beauty.
Gah! Has he always been that pretty?
“It’s odd magic,” he replied. “Old. Older than Fae magic. I haven’t seen it in ages. But it’s concentrated on her head, so it has to be a memory working.” He guided Shiloh to sit on my disheveled couch. “I don’t know how to undo it, so I figure it shouldn’t be messed with. The web of it is too messy.”
It was J who piped up then, wonder coloring his words. “You can see it? The magic, I mean?”
It was something like interest on his face, which I hadn’t seen since the great Johnny Ruxby love affair in college. J was about as good at picking partners as I was—AKA, we were fucking terrible at it. But I had a good feeling about Jimmy.
Jimmy nodded. “Most of my kind can see magic. It’s how I knew Darby wasn’t human the moment I met her.”
He flicked his hair back over his pointed ears and settled beside Shiloh on the couch, his blush so high on his cheeks, he may as well have been a tomato.
But J wasn’t blushing. Oh, no. His focus was now laser-locked on Jimmy, and I could practically see the thoughts swimming in his brain. I just hoped he pulled his head out of his ass.
And soon.
But a hope for a possible love match wasn’t going to help me figure out who Tabitha had been while in the Knoxville coven, or who she was working for before her untimely death. I was tempted to kick something in frustration but decided against it. Instead, I rummaged through my takeout menu drawer and prayed someone was open late. With Hildy so close, there was a definite drain on me, and after so long without that feeling, I realized I was in no way used to it.
I needed calories. And caffeine. And sleep.
I also needed to figure out who had the fucking gall to mind-wipe the Knoxville coven leader, what to do with my mother—who was still passed out on my living room floor—and what takeout place was open this late. I was trying to decide between the all-night Indian place or making the trek to Si Señor’s when J, Jimmy, and my father’s phone all rang at once.
Given the day we’d all had, it was tough not to let my stomach drop at the sound.
There were only two reasons all three phones would go off at the same time. One: our precinct had been attacked just like the ABI had. Unlikely, but I wasn’t ruling it out. Or two—and
far more probable: there was a body.
At J’s “Yeah, Cap,” I knew which one it was. As I listened to the other end of the line, my mood did not improve, however, it did do a teensy uptick when J handed me the phone.
“Hello?” I answered, trying not to be nervous.
“If it isn’t my favorite detective. The FBI steal your phone, kid? You can’t call anyone?” The words were scolding, but full of a love so big, I wanted to burst. I had to wonder what Mariana had told him last year when I was up to my neck in shit. It wasn’t like the ABI gave me an opportunity to clean up my life before they threw me in jail.
I gave Uncle Dave—AKA, Cap—a nervous chuckle. “You know the deal. Gotta let people miss me sometimes. I hear you’ve got a body.”
“I hear you’re back in town. Want to help an old man out and take a look-see?” Cap asked, giving me exactly what I wanted. I couldn’t say why, but I did not want J going out there without me.
“Well, I guess. If you really want me to,” I joked before getting serious. “I missed you guys. You know that, right?”
“You know you have a place here as long as you want it, right? Any time you want to flip off those FBI bastards, you come on back. I’ve got your desk ready for you.”
Cap might as well have punched me in the gut. It was all I could do not to start crying on the phone. I mean, Cap wouldn’t care, but I hadn’t cried in front of him since I was fifteen and the first boy I’d ever liked had broken my heart.
“Quit being mushy,” I croaked. “I’m giving you back to J before you unman yourself, okay?”
Cap sniffed, a sure sign he was either already crying or about to start. “Yeah, yeah. Love you, kid.”
“Love you, too,” I replied before handing the phone off to J. And if I needed a Kleenex, well, then I was allowed.
Nine. Months.
Almost a year had flown by without anyone to talk to. Without Dad or Dave or J. My circle had always been small, but it was a good one. I couldn’t imagine going back to a life where I missed out on all my people every day.
Dead and Gone (Grave Talker Book 2) Page 8