“I’m sure you know why we’re here,” he said in his eloquent Wonderlandian accent.
Cheshire shrugged one shoulder. The ebony of his skin glowed a deep blue because of the way the light played off his flesh.
“Say I do. What’s in it for me, Detective?” His question hadn’t been for Hatter.
My nostrils flared. After what the bastard had just done, how dare he think I’d be inclined to help him with anything?
“We can play this game one of two ways, cat. Either you tell us what we want to know go on about your night, or I book you on charges of—”
He snorted and raised a hand. “I see your flare for the dramatic hasn’t changed a bit, fish. Fine. We do this your way, then. Show me the claw.”
“How do you know about the claw?” I barked.
He snorted. “I know everything, lass. Now, stop wasting my time.”
Irritated but also feeling more at ease, I stepped out of Hatter’s embrace and dug into my pocket, pulled out the baggie, and slid it across to him.
Cheshire picked it up and looked at it for less than half a second. Then, that infuriating, hypnotizing grin for which he was so well known spread across his face.
“Yeah, I know who this belongs to.”
I waited for him to tell us, but as the seconds ticked by, I began to grow impatient. He raised a brow, taunting me, daring me to have another outburst. If I had to take a stab at it, I’d say he wanted me to show my true colors, or at least what most of Grimm thought were my kind’s true colors. But he’d already used against me the one thing that would hurt enough to make me forget my training, and I wasn’t falling for it again.
“Well?” I asked, nice and slow.
He sniffed, as if disappointed, before licking his front teeth and pushing the baggie back at me. “Like I said, what’s in it for me?”
It was against GPD regs to barter. Yes, this was Wonderland, and there was a certain level of wiggle room afforded me. Had it been anyone else, I might have considered it. But he’d pissed me right the hells off tonight, and I wasn’t in the mood to play his games.
“You tell us what we need to know, or so help me goddess, I’ll book you and put your arse in jail for impeding the progress of an active investigation.”
Cheshire chuckled. “Oh, come on, Detective. Is that anyway to treat your old friend?”
And now I was reminded why, regardless of how attractive he was, we’d barely gotten on before and why I’d been in such a rush to leave Wonderland—mostly because of him and his insufferable mind games.
Narrowing my eyes, I gripped the bar top and leaned forward. “I could make you sing like a canary, kitty, if I really wanted to.”
I let him feel just a small drop of my magick, that dark power that I kept locked and hidden deep inside of me, that addictive magick that could make any man, woman, or beast yield to my ways. I was forbidden to use the magick while I wore the badge, but I didn’t give two hells right now. Cheshire had picked at a pain too completely devastating and too damn fresh for me to take the high road. If Bo caught wind of what I was doing, I could be suspended, but again, I just didn’t give two hells right now.
My smile was ruthless as Cheshire’s narrowed in dawning awareness of just what he was up against. The air between us sizzled with tension.
But then Hatter was there, stepping between us and gently maneuvering me behind him. “What do you want, shifter?” he asked grimly.
I wasn’t sure what Hatter was getting at, until I caught sight of his glowing eye.
“Hmm. Well now, that’s the question isn’t it? What do I want? You know what I want, don’t you, Maddox. You can see me.” He pointed to his eye, indicating Hatter’s own. “Show me, then.”
Rules said I wasn’t allowed to promise or bribe anyone in any way to obtain our answers. Those rules didn’t apply to someone outside of GPD, though. I didn’t like Cheshire. I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. But he had answers we desperately needed, and right now, I wasn’t above making a deal with the devil if that was what it took to finally nail some royal arse with the long arm of justice.
Shrugging out of his jacket, Hatter handed it over to me. I took it without a word, curious about what in the hells was going on. He undid the buttons of his left sleeve and rolled it up slowly.
Even in the dim lighting, I caught sight of the tattoos. My heart hammered in my throat at the exquisite and detailed drawings of demons and monsters on them. Every part of his flesh that he revealed was covered with black and gray artwork.
One drawing stood out the most. It was an image of a sensually beautiful demoness. She had large, bat-like wings outstretched, and they were riddled with holes. Her face held just a hint of a smile, and her long black hair whipped in the breeze. She was nude and reminded me a little of Alice in looks.
But that wasn’t what’d caught my attention. No, what I had noticed was the drawing’s eyes, the only point of color on his arm. They glowed a vivid, electric blue similar to one of his own.
With a lusty curve of his lips, Cheshire latched on to Hatter’s arm, and that tattoo radiated with a soft wash of white light that moved from Maddox into the cat, seeming to lock their hands in place.
Cheshire’s eyes closed, and his movements stilled completely.
Hatter, too, had his eyes closed.
I couldn’t help wondering what it was the two of them saw. Less than a minute later, Cheshire chuckled and drew his hand back. The light between them died.
Hatter’s jaw was held tight, and he drew his sleeve down with hard, jerky movements, as though angry about something.
“I’m not sure you meant to show me that, boyo,” Cheshire drawled.
The mystery was almost too much for me. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask them just what they had seen, but Hatter, as though anticipating my question, looked down at me with a glare that brooked no dissidence.
Oh, I was going to ask him about this later. No doubt about it. I had an investigative report to file, and if there was something he was keeping from me, then he’d better believe I was going to suss it out.
“Claw belongs to the bandercoot,” Cheshire said with what seemed to be a lack of interest at this point, as though his playthings had suddenly stopped being interesting. Typical cat. “Go. Stay. I don’t care. But I have work to do. Oh, and Hatter, just one last thing... friend to friend,” he said, but his eyes were for me. “It would be most unwise to trust a fish. They have a tendency to gut you if you do.”
I clenched my jaw, but I would not be goaded this time.
Hatter didn’t say anything or even look at me, but I saw his reflexive swallow, and I hated it.
With those words, Cheshire was gone, literally there one second and vanished the next. On the other side of the bar and five bodies down, a woman dressed in practically nothing shot up from her seat with a shocked cry as she grabbed hold of her bum and glared at the nothing behind her. After that, it looked like a conga line of sexy women pulled the exact same stunt. I guessed we’d stirred up something dangerous in Cheshire and he was making them pay for it.
But not my circus, not my monkeys.
I figured Hatter would be ready to move on, or at the very least, ask me what Cheshire had meant. But I’d be damned if I told him. The only person still living, besides me, who really knew what had happened that night was Bo, and I knew she wouldn’t talk about it. Shockingly, Hatter didn’t seem inclined to question me or even leave just yet. Instead, he sat, tapping his finger rhythmically on the bar top, staring off into some time I wasn’t a part of.
I flicked a glance at his arm, to the covered tattoos.
“I’m not seeing anything,” he drawled after a moment.
“But you did see something. Is it pertinent to our investigation?” My words were tempered. Somehow, I sensed that he’d not appreciate anything more. I hardly knew the man, but I was coming to respect his abilities as my temporary partner and liaison.
“No,” was all he sa
id, and then finally, he shook his head as though clearing the cobwebs loose. “Sorry about this.” He took back the jacket I still held in my hands and shook out the wrinkles before slipping it back on.
Sliding the baggie back into my pocket, I asked, “You think this is really the bandercoot’s?”
“Mmm.” He nodded, scrubbing his jaw lightly. “I do.”
Something was wrong with him. The vision he’d seen had shaken him. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew it had. He was distracted and unfocused. The last thing in the world I wanted was to have to go back for Harry. Hatter had proven himself and then some, so far as investigating went. But I couldn’t have him like this either.
“Do you think,” he said slowly, “that there’s hope for redemption, when the path that saved you is littered with evil?”
His question was so far out of left field that I was momentarily struck dumb. “What?” I blinked, confused by his sudden shift in focus.
His green eye flared once, and then the pall that had lingered over his features since Cheshire shared his vision lifted. A tight but confident smile drew across his lips.
“It’s nothing,” he said quickly. “Never mind. We should get back.”
I was still confused and feeling like I’d missed something obvious, but I couldn’t afford distractions. My brain needed to be completely focused on the task at hand. Was I curious about Hatter, more so than ever? Yes. But I was close to having only a one-day supply of water available to me and a key card that would only remain charged for the next few hours.
“To the bandercoot?”
“No.” Hatter glanced at a clock hanging on the wall. “At this hour, the zoo will be closed to us.”
Zoo? Did the bandercoot live in a zoo? It seemed unlikely, but I knew I’d not misheard. However, he did not seem inclined to elucidate further. After another few seconds of silence I shrugged.
“So then?” I shook my head.
“We wait, Detective. So then, we wait.”
Chapter 7
Detective Elle
WAITING WASN’T SOMETHING I’d ever been good at. The second we arrived back at the constable’s station, I knew going there had been a bad idea.
Hatter was switching out work jackets. Apparently, the man was a touch type-A. I inhaled deeply, clapping my hands together and rocking on my heels, which served to draw his attention just like I’d hoped.
“Yes?” he asked, raising one of his devilishly arched brows in question.
“I’m no good at waiting, Constable.”
“Maddox,” he grumped reflexively. “And I already told you, we wouldn’t find the bandercoot at this hour.”
I shook my head. “No, I know. But you’re going back out. Take me with you.”
Harry walked in from the garden just then, popping what looked suspiciously like a bit of mushroom into his mouth as he did so. “Detective,” he said in that thick and very hard to understand southern Wonderlandian accent of his. “I wus wonderin’ when ye’d be making yer way back to me, then.”
I would rather die than beg, but if I was forced to beg, I absolutely would. The fine hairs on my arms were still standing on end and my nerves were shot to hells from the sexual beating I’d taken at Alice’s shoppe. No way did I want to be left alone with Harry right now. The goddess only knew what kind of trouble I’d find myself in by night’s end.
I nibbled my bottom lip, an action that drew Hatter’s eyes instantly. He wet his lips, and it dawned on me that the sensual resonance I usually kept so tightly reined was running rampant through my system right now. And though I’d rarely been one of those sirens who used her charms like a weapon, there were times such as these when the sacrifice must be made. If I wound up in bed with Harry as a partner because Hatter had abandoned me, I’d gouge my eyes out with a rusted spoon.
Fixing a smile on my face, I ignored the huff of excitement that dripped off Harry’s tongue as I sidled in closer to Hatter, who was looking at me with two parts wary caution and one part heated anticipation.
“Please, Maddox.” I used his given name, taking a gamble that doing so would help my cause. “You wouldn’t make me beg, would you?”
At that last bit, I delicately ran my hands up the collar of his tea coat. His face was an implacable wall that gave away none of his emotions.
A muscle in his jaw twitched as he glanced over at Harry, and I knew he was fitting two and two together, not that I cared.
I wasn’t completely heartless, though. I didn’t wiggle on him or fondle his chest, hands, or arms, even though I was insanely curious about those tattoos and wanted to know more.
I was a good siren.
So far as good sirens went, that was.
“You’re a very dangerous creature, Elle,” he mumbled with that wickedly dark voice of his that made me think of a fine, aged malt whiskey tapped straight from the barrel.
“Is that a yes?” I asked, voice kittenish and husky as I released more of my charm, wrapping that veil of pleasure around his head like a smokescreen.
I knew what I was doing to him physically, internally. His heart would be racing, blood pumping violently through his veins as it rushed south, shutting off all receptors in his brain save for the most basic and elemental ones—the need to mate, to mark, to screw.
His irises flared, and my smile grew wider.
He latched on to my hands, taking them off his lapels but not releasing his hold on me yet.
“Have I a choice?”
“Not really, no.”
His smile was nothing but teeth. Buried deep inside this buttoned-up man was something feral and wicked. I shivered, feeling a little like I could be playing with fire. Not something I was used to feeling around others.
I’d played with fire once before and had been consumed by it. I’d set out to make Hook my slave, but in the end, he’d dominated my siren, and I’d become addicted to the taste of him.
I would never give another male a hold on me like that again, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t missed the dance.
Hatter lowered his head until his lips were just a few feather wisps’ distance from mine, so close I could feel the heated wash of his words brush against my sensitized flesh as he said, “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re about, siren.”
His words said one thing, but the fire in his eyes said another. Just like back in the shoppe, I knew Hatter didn’t fear my beast. In fact, he rather seemed to revel in her.
I smirked, enjoying our banter much more than I knew I should.
Hard fingers dug into my wrists unmercifully. He, in turn, was testing me, seeing just how far I planned to take our little tête-à-tête. Well, fair was fair, after all. I’d started this game.
Spreading my legs until every inch of my lower anatomy brushed against every inch of his lower anatomy, I moved into him until hardly any space was left between us. Something hard and long poked into my thigh, and I almost purred.
That damn sex magick had stirred the waters, and come hells or high water, I was going to have to find some way to still the ripple before it became a full-blown tsunami of lust.
Leaning up on tiptoe, I whispered, “Then you know a siren always means what she says. Or doesn’t say.”
With the lightest of touches, I pressed my hand to his flat belly, delighted by the corded feel of his abdominals. Hatter was a walking, talking contradiction. A scholar with the body of an incubus. The appearance of a saint with the heart of a sinner.
Oh yes, I very much liked what I saw.
Lips pursing as though digesting my words, he chuckled from deep in his gut. “Then come, Detective, though I rather think you’ll find slogging through mud and weeds not at all to your liking.”
“You have no idea what I like, boy.” Then, with a flick of my fingertip to his nose, I stepped well outside his personal space and spread my arms. “After you, Constable.”
Clearing his throat, he suddenly looked discombobulated, and I felt a teeny bit predatory because of it. Sirens
liked nothing so much as the scent of blood in the water, no matter how insignificant an amount.
When I looked up at Harry, his jaw was gaping open and he was breathing raggedly.
“Wipe your chin, hare. You’re drooling.”
Hatter smirked. He looked as unflappable as usual when he brushed past me. But his brush was a deliberate press of chest to chest, and I heard his smoldering chuckle when I gasped from the contact.
As we traveled through the portal again, I thought maybe I’d been away from the siren game too long. That incidental bit of contact should not have been enough to make me feel as though I’d just taken a shot of liquid lightning straight to my veins. It should not have roused the beast as it had.
Even now, I was still sparking. I kept telling myself this was nothing but sex magick at play, but deep down, I worried that maybe I’d poked at a sleeping dragon. I nibbled the corner of my lips, stomach twisting and diving toward my knees.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Hatter said in a voice that told me he knew damn well where my muddled thoughts were at.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?”
His look was intense as he quietly said, “Maybe I would.”
I frowned as we stepped through the portal, wondering if he was still playing as we had been. But my thoughts were quickly diverted when I took my next breath.
The scent that lingered in the air was one I’d smelled before—at the Charming estate.
Blinking, I went absolutely still as we studied the layout of... wherever we were.
Hatter had led us here, and by the looks of the dirt path ahead of me, littered with halo-shrooms on either side, I could only assume we’d arrived at the crime scene Hatter and Harry had been at the day I’d arrived in Wonderland.
Several lit wall torches set within the stone siding of the pub behind us cast a soft, golden glow across the gathering veil of night. The cacophony of drunken patrons and plinking piano keys behind us was a hum of soothing white noise. I looked at Hatter, wondering which way we might go—down the path and into the forest, or into the bar. My money was on the bar. Potential eyewitnesses could still be in there, and it was a well-known fact that if you got a man deep enough into his cups, any number of surprising things could come out of him.
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