It's a Charmed Life

by Selene Charles

  “Detective?” Hatter asked brusquely as he folded the towel and laid it back on the basin.

  I jerked, shaking my head slowly. What the hells? I’d slept with Ich. That should have been enough to see me through this investigation until I got home. I sighed a trembly breath.

  “Right. Um, where was I?”

  He grinned as he reached for a razor and shaving cream. “She’s connected. Seems I’m not the only one that needs rest, Detective.”

  I rolled my eyes but didn’t give him the satisfaction of answering. “She is. Her ribbons were there.”

  “Planted,” he muttered even as he brushed the cream onto his face.

  I frowned, not sure I wanted to see him remove the shadow of the beard. It gave him a rugged look I shockingly found appealing.

  “Likely,” I murmured.

  Leaning over the sink, he maneuvered the blade deftly over the sharp angles of his face. His strokes were smooth and sure, and in next to no time, he was clean-shaven once again. Rinsing off the razor, he set it down on the sink. Taking up the hand towel once more, he patted his face dry.

  “Definitely. What’s your point, Elle?”

  My toes tingled whenever he called me by name. Hatter wasn’t at all like the detectives of my realm. There was a level of intimacy and familiarity that existed between us and had almost since our first meeting. I understood that things worked differently in other realms, but I’d never felt this ease with one of my peers before.

  He moved like a sleek panther back toward me, leaning down on one leg on the mattress as he curled the other beneath him and took a seat.

  It would be so easy to imagine that we were lovers in such an intimate setting. I fanned my fingers open on his rumpled coverlet. The air smelled of brandy and of him.

  I forced myself to think of the case. “My point is that I think Alice knows the killer. And I think she knows him or her well enough that they could easily get their hands on her ribbon stash. Who is Isa?”

  He wrinkled his nose, shaking my words off as nonsense. “I’ve known Isa for years.”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled as they took on a faraway look. He’d just thought of something, I was sure of it. So I waited for him to tell me more, if he wanted to. His eyes darted from his lap to mine and then back again, his reluctance to speak obvious.

  I raised a brow, and he stared at me unflinchingly before his lips twisted and he leaned his head back with a weary sigh.

  “Fine. When Alice and I were together, she required... well, to put it succinctly, more than I could give her.” He shrugged. “I had no problem with it. I was busy with my duties, and there were times when I sought to release my needs elsewhere too. We had an understanding, and it worked for us. Isa was one of those understandings.”

  I nodded. “That’s very forward thinking of you. Most human males aren’t exactly keen on sharing their partner.”

  He grinned. “Sexuality isn’t black and white to me. More than that, sex is simply one part of a relationship. The real bond lies in what happens beyond the sheets. Alice and I were strong in that department. Men and women came and went, but Isa was a constant, and over time, she and I developed our own relationship, mostly out of convenience. But she’s harmless and cares deeply for Alice. On that, I’d stake my life. When I... left...” He swallowed, like the words were hard to say. “Isa remained and has been a true companion and friend to Alice, and for that, I’m grateful.”

  “I don’t mean to pry”—he grinned, and I knew exactly what he was thinking—“but what do you know of Isa, really?”

  He shrugged. “She’s a nymph.”

  “That much I gathered. Judging by her coloration, I’d say her genus was water.”

  He grinned. “Correct. Though, she’s landlocked now and has been for a great many years. She’s married to a pan.”

  “Nymphs and satyrs—not exactly an uncommon pairing. And her partner, does he know of you?”

  Hatter held up his hands. “You’ve no reason to worry on that account. Alice and I were always discerning. We would never engage in an affair, ever, unless our partners were willing. If they were mated, their partners not only knew but had to agree to our arrangement. If they didn’t, if there was even the slightest whiff of hesitation, that was as far as we’d take things. It kept matters less complicated that way.”

  I grinned. “You are just full of surprises, Constable. I’d never have taken you for the type, to be honest.”

  “What’s that?”

  I shrugged. “The sharing type. Men of my realm, well... our sexuality is very fluid both ways, so to me, none of what you say is all that scandalous. But I’ve found few humans who feel the same. And yet you seem to have found a happy stable of lovers.”

  He glanced to his left, staring at the water basin. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but you give me far too much credit. Alice meant a lot to me. Beneath the silks and the trappings of lust, she has a good heart. She was also the mother of my child.”

  The muscle in his jaw twitched as he grew silent, and I twisted my lips, wishing I’d not brought this up.

  Painting on a fake smile, he turned to me and shrugged. “And for that, at least, I will always fight for her. Our history matters to me, whether we’re together or not. But I had my own secrets. Our relationship fractured for many reasons. She fought for us, but there are some things you just can’t fight, no matter how hard you wish to.”

  Plucking at the rumpled sheet with my nails, I shook my head. “Well, if not Isa. Then someone. Somebody. Somewhere. Alice is tied to the killer.”

  “Yes, but how? And the more I think about it, how in the two hells is she tied to Goose? Why did they even attempt to plant her ribbon in that garden?”

  I shook my head. “I thought you’d know that.”

  He shrugged. “Alice and I haven’t been together in years, so it’s possible that she and Goose have knowledge of one another. If I’d been thinking more clearly, I might have asked her about the connection. I can’t place them together, and that’s problematic for me. Why Goose?”

  “Hmm.” I sniffed. It was a problem only insofar as linking motive to the crime, but a court didn’t need to have motive to convict. The connection was obviously there for the perp to have planted Alice’s ribbons. Of that, I was certain.

  “To that, I have no answer. But I’m sure that if we had more time to dig, we could find the connection somehow.” I shrugged, and he propped his chin up with his hand. “But that’s not why I’ve come.”

  He cocked his head and frowned in question.

  “I was hoping there might be a way to activate your sight. I don’t know. Is there?” I looked at him hopefully.

  His lips thinned.

  “I saw you do it with Cheshire. I mean, that’s what it looked like to me.”

  Sighing deeply, he riffled his fingers through his hair. “Goddess, Elle.”

  The way he said my name, with such an empty and forlorn sound, made me shiver. I could hear his pain and loneliness.

  He held himself aloof from others, buttoned up and fastidious. But inside, he was a raging, ravenous animal. I could see it. I could sense it, that bristling serpent inside of him that he kept so tightly in-check but that sometimes escaped with fangs and claws and snapping teeth, just as it had with Crowley earlier.

  “What I showed Cheshire was nothing more than a vision I’d seen before. That was it. It was nothing I could conjure up on my own. Sorry.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek, telling myself not to ask, but damning myself ten types of a fool because I knew I would. “And what did you show him? What wasn’t he supposed to see?”

  Hatter tensed, and his eyes began to burn both green and blue. I wet my lips, my own dark lure responding to the rise of his power.

  “Sometimes,” he chewed out, “I can’t control what spills through. It’s why I don’t like to channel my markings that way. Sometimes others see too much.”

  I nodded, and hopped to my knees, knowing I wa
s playing with fire, but not scared enough to stop. If there was even the remotest possibility that we could solve both our cases and absolve Alice of any wrongdoing, we had to try.

  “Have you seen me before, Maddox?” I asked, suspecting I already knew the answer.

  His nostrils flared, but he said nothing.

  My insides quivered.

  “Because maybe, if you have, you can show me, and then maybe something else might just spill through.” I held my breath, tense and expecting him to deny me but hoping he wouldn’t.

  Shock rolled through me when he tipped his head back and laughed. The sound was dark and heavy and full of terrible, terrible pain.

  But still he said nothing.

  I pressed my flattened palm to my throat.

  His breathing inched up, growing deeper, heavier.

  I felt breathless myself. Jittery, like I couldn’t catch a proper breath.

  Nervous, because he still wasn’t speaking, I said, “It’s not like we can do anything else right now. It’s worth trying, right?”

  He scowled, body bristling all over. The air between us was as taut as a strained bowstring. But he was slowly moving toward me. For just a second, I felt not like the predator, but the prey.

  It was how he looked at me, his eyes burning with madness and magick, his strong body so controlled, so exacting.

  “Leave my room, Detective. This is the only warning you’ll get.” He said it softly, but with gritted urgency.

  “And if I don’t?” I breathed, feeling my skin begin to tingle and burn with the soft glow of my rising lure.

  The devil’s light filled his eyes. “Don’t play coy. It’s not becoming.”

  I grinned. “Fine. I won’t. I want you, dammit. You’ve driven me bloody mad, and I’m not used to this. I don’t like this. I haven’t felt like this since...”

  I trailed off, squeezing my eyes shut, fighting that desperate pull to slide into my own darkness.

  “Then you decide, once and for all,” he said. He grabbed my hands and laid them on his chest.

  I sucked in a sharp breath, feeling the chained strength of him, like a dragon on a leash. I could leave, walk away before I got burned. Or...

  I grinned, and just like that, it was over for me.

  My hands were frantic as I tore at his shirt, throwing the buttons off in a thousand different directions. When I shoved his shirt back, his skin was gleaming, his markings burning both white and red. The demon and the angel glowed under my touch.

  His hands were just as frantic on me. He reached for my shirt, but I had to shove his hands away. “Don’t. I can’t do without it.”

  Sucking in a sharp growl, he bunched the fabric in his fist and shoved it up just enough to reveal the underside of my breasts. His mouth was on me, sucking, teasing. His hands fondled my sensitive nipples.

  I keened, the sound piercing and almost too painful for a human. But his growls only grew deeper, like it didn’t bother him, but rather, excited him.

  I wasn’t sure when it had happened, but suddenly I was pinned beneath him, his big body cradled between my arms and legs as he rubbed his clothed and heavy center on my aching wetness. Moaning, I arched my spine and ran my hands down his flesh. Our scents grew fuller and deeper in the stillness of the room.

  He bit down hard on the vein at the side of my neck, so damn hard that I nearly came off the bed. But it was wonderful too. The pain spiraled into something bigger, greater, better.

  “Gah,” I moaned, and even as I latched my teeth on to his bottom lip, I shoved that shirt off him. He helped me, wiggling madly to kick off not only his shirt, but his pants too. He was covered in tattoos all over, broad swirling designs that were both intricate and delicate. Butterflies, so lifelike in their design, looked to be taking flight each time he moved.

  I gasped when I felt his naked length press against my inner thigh. “Now, now, now,” I moaned incoherently.

  “You want me?” He growled low, teasing my center with just the tip of his rigid thickness.

  “Goddess.” I knocked my head back against the pillow, squeezing my eyes shut so hard I saw stars.

  “Tell me!” he demanded with a vicious-sounding bark to his words.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw not a man, but a devil moving over me. My heart leapt in its cage.

  “Yes. Yes!”

  Slowly, he entered me, just the once, running his exquisite cock deep into my aching center. I groaned and cried out as more and more of my lure glowed from deep within me.

  Sirens could kill. But we could also give life, a gift rarely given because we did not usually care enough to bother.

  As I glowed, he began to make noises, moans that rolled and rolled like an endless wave upon a shore.

  “Say my name. Say it, Elle. Not Constable. Not Hatter. Say—”

  “Maddox!” I cried, and he thrust in so deep that he hit the very back of my womb and made me scream from the pain and pleasure of it. Our joining was quick, fiery, and tempestuous, all madness and fury.

  He took my hands, using his strength to pin them above my head as he owned me. But I wasn’t a simple human woman. My strength was as fierce as his. Even more so.

  With a grin, I hooked my leg around him and reversed our positions, pinning his arms above his head. He grunted in surprise, but then his mouth tipped into a feral grin, and he undulated as I rode him harder and harder and harder.

  He moved like he wanted to take back the dominant position, but I wasn’t giving it up. I latched on to his wrists, curving my fingers around his thick forearms. The tip of my pinky landed on the burning red glow of his demon, and suddenly, I was no longer in that bed with him.

  I was no longer smelling us.

  No longer in that room.

  I was on a beach. My beach. The moon was full and dancing over the waves. And there I was as I’d once been—a mad siren, screaming obscenely at it, vowing pain and torture and retribution for what had been done to me. I was slashing at my wrists with my claws as I bled black into the waters, wanting to kill and wanting to die.

  I went cold all over. I was seeing the night of Hook’s death, the night I’d very nearly lost my way and had temporarily forgotten all I’d learned about who I was.

  I’d never shared this story with anyone save for Bo. It was why I’d been sent to Neverland. It was the reason for my temporary exile.

  I’d gone mad. Completely. Absolutely.

  And she’d had only two choices—banish me to seek out help, or terminate me.

  I screamed as every terrible, horrible memory came lurching up like hot vomit. The yawning chasm of betrayal and desolation. The emptiness of losing the only thing I’d ever truly cared about.

  It all came back in a heavy rush. The madness that’d driven me out to the exact spot where Hook had been the night we’d first met. The love that had suddenly turned into a nightmare of never-ending blood and gore and death and curses.

  But soon, the scene shifted, and I wasn’t on a beach, but standing outside of a ruined, blackened building with great curls of fire still belching out of its desiccated form. Standing over the body of a small child, burned over every inch of its perfect little body. Only its hair remained untouched, and it was a beautiful snow white.

  Again, I screamed and screamed and screamed. The pain so deep, so all-consuming that I felt like I died as my voice flew out of my mouth, deep and raw. I dropped to my knees, reaching for the little butterfly.

  “Butterfly. My little butterfly,” I drawled in a guttural voice that wasn’t my own. It was deep and masculine. I saw myself in a puddle of water, and it wasn’t my eyes that I saw reflected back at me, but one burning blue and one burning green. There were wails and screams, feminine ones.

  Heart thundering in my chest, I turned to my right and saw Alice, dressed in blue, staring down at the figure at my feet with horror, the worst sounds imaginable pouring from her lips.

  Hate burned in her eyes when she looked on me.

  “It’s
your fault! It’s all your fault! You bloody bastard! I told you to hide it. I told you to keep her safe!”

  “My love,” I croaked, reaching for her, fingers outstretched, needing someone to share the burden of this all-consuming pain. But she would not come to me. She would not come...

  Everything shifted again, and I saw myself stabbing. Stabbing. Stabbing a body with a pair of lethal silver cutting shears until blood spewed from the woman’s mouth as she fought me off. She was dressed in a blue day dress, with pins in her hair and a blue ribbon clutched tight in her fists. Chilling words in the echoes of a man’s voice escaped my lips. “I told ye to shut up, Mary. I told ye. It’s all yer fault. All yer fault...” I sobbed as I stabbed...

  When I blinked, I was me again, back in that room, not moving, barely breathing, and cold all over.

  I looked up at Hatter. He looked as shocked as I felt. Shaking his head softly, his fingers spasmed as he reached for me then paused and pulled his hand back. The second vision had been him, reaching for Alice. She’d not taken his hand, and now I couldn’t take his hand either.

  Hatter was on his knees, his tattoos no longer glowing bright, and there was a bottomless pool of pain reflected in his dull blue and green eyes.

  He shook his head, worry etched on his face.

  Pain sliced through my heart as I felt it all over again. The child. My pain. The murder.

  I swallowed, eyeing him warily, feeling betrayed and furious but mostly sorrowful. My eyes brimmed with tears, and my voice cracked as I said, “Your Jane Doe was named Mary, and the killer knew her.”

  The door was flung open, and Harry came racing in.

  I jumped, scrabbling off the bed, holding my shirt to my chest in a protective stance, feeling numb and startled all at the same time.

  “I founds it. I did it. I done saw’d her. I saw Alice with them Deedles. Tape was blanked out after tha’, but thems didn’t scrub it all off. I founds them! I’d bet me soul on it. C’mon,” he cried then raced back out the door, so drunk on his findings that he’d not sensed the tension between Hatter and I.