“He gave it to me. He gave me the apple for our—”
She scoffed. “Like they’ll ever believe you, a lowly filthy whore, over me.”
I stomped my foot in hopeless fear. “You said I was done the last time. You can’t keep hanging this over my head. You said if I helped you the last time, I would be done. I helped you. I killed them just like you told me to. I’ve done everything you said!”
Isa laughed. The sound was beautiful and made my blood turn to ice in my veins. “I see why he’s taken you. Pretty face, but oh so stupid. Did you honestly believe me? More fool you. You’ll never be done with me, Mary. Not ever. I own you.”
“He told me you were supposed to be the one who—”
She slapped me so hard that my ears rang and my cheek blazed with heat. I gasped, covering my throbbing cheek with my hand. Her eyes narrowed to thin, dangerous slits.
“Hang for him? You’re even more a fool than I’d imagined. If they catch him, they’ll never tie this to me. But you...” She grinned, revealing sharp, tiny fangs. “Well... you’d better stay on my good side dear, because the same cannot be said for you.”
Trembling with panic and fear that she was right, I felt shameful tears slide down my cheeks. My baby. My beautiful, beautiful child. Pain twisted my soul in two as I realized I had no hope of ever getting out from under her thumb. I was doomed, and my child would pay for my crime of loving a monster.
“I hope you burn in the twin hells for this.” My voice quivered.
Isa sneered. “You first, whore.”
Then she turned and slammed the door in my face.
Suddenly, I was me again and not Mary. I was me, and I was flying through time. I saw myself planting the ribbon in Goose’s garden, saw a man with hooves plowing through her roses and azaleas, leering at me with sharp, wide teeth.
Then I was back in Mary’s head.
I was seeing the man I’d once thought myself in love with. He was a stranger to me now. A hateful, hurtful monster. Mama had always warned me of my bad taste in men, but I’d thought this one was different. I’d thought he was so, so different. A man of the law. He was supposed to be good. He was supposed to be the one.
“Do it now, ye fecking whore,” he snapped. “Now!”
His hair was brown. His eyes too. He wore a badge, a Grimm PD badge. There was nothing all that memorable about him, except the hate that emanated off him in waves.
Except that.
I knew little of forensics. I wasn’t a bright woman. I was a poor woman. A desperate woman. But I knew this ribbon was the only key to my salvation, the only way I might make it out of here alive.
The only way I might be able to help my child.
So I whispered a hex, a small hex, into it. Just a little thing. A little one only. It was a call to the one who would help me most. The one who would make it right. And I dropped it in the Goose’s garden.
“May the goddess forgive me,” I breathed.
And then my one-time lover was grabbing me and grinning evilly. “Now ye come with me.”
And we were traveling, flying through stars. And then we were here. At a pub. On the grass. With millions of jeweled stars twinkling in the sky.
And his face was no longer cruel but set and determined. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wickedly curved claw and silver shears. I gasped, crying and pleading for mercy.
“I did what ye asked me to! I did it, I did—”
“Ye wee, filthy bitch!” he raged. “I told ye to never let Isa know of us. I told ye, and she found out anyway. You betrayed me, Mary. You betrayed us!”
I shook. “No! The... the baby was so hungry, and there was an apple there, and she saw our daughter. She saw our child, and she knew. I said nothing, Ta—”
He smacked me so hard that my teeth cut into the inside of my mouth, and I cried out. I sobbed, clutching at my face, looking at the man I’d thought my entire world. He shook his head, and the rage was gone. Now there was only pain on his face.
“Why? Why couldn’t you love me enough?” he asked brokenly.
I didn’t know what to say. I’d loved him more than he’d deserved, and I saw that now. I only wished I’d seen it then. He reached for me, and I hoped the beating was done. Hoped he would hold me now, make this all go away. Make this better.
I sniffed, face still ablaze from the sting of his slap, but I moved into his arms anyway. I was so terrified of the world that even a monster could bring me some relief.
He wrapped his arms around me, and for a second, it was good again. For a second, I thought that maybe it was finally over, that the madness had ended, and together, we could fix things so that me and my baby could be free.
I felt a searing, excruciating blossom of hurt flare through me. I gasped as I looked down at the claw just barely cutting into my gut. The bandercoot claw was pumping all its poison into me.
I gasped again, clutching at his arms. Soon I would be unable to move at all as the poison ate through me like acid. The death would be slow and painful.
He shook his head, brown eyes full of disappointment. “I loved you, Mary. I really thought you loved me too.”
And then he stabbed me, ripping through my intestines with the pretty silver shears. The pain was dizzying, mind-stealing, but it was a quicker death than the bandercoot’s claw.
“My baby,” I cried and whimpered, closing my eyes as he stabbed me over and over, drowning me in his words of hate.
“Your fault,” he said, “all your damned fault.”
I was growing cold, stabbed so many times that I could no longer feel anything. I choked on the blood welling in my throat, still reaching for my invisible child. My beautiful Rose with clear, colorless irises. She was my hope, my love, my everything.
She was alone. All alone now...
“The house of blue. Please, Detective, take her to the shoe.”
The ghostly voice rang like bells in my ears, and then the vision was gone and I was me again, on that grassy patch of dying earth, staring with crying eyes at nothing as I felt the cold and the terror and the pain.
Mary was gone.
She’d finished what she’d set out to do.
She’d saved her child, and now her soul could finally move on and find its eternal rest.
Hatter was on his knees in front of me, moving weakly as he grabbed my hand and squeezed.
“You saw her. You saw Mary, didn’t you?” he asked, voice gravelly and full of grit.
I swallowed, nodding hard. “Yes. I know who did it, Maddox. I know who did it. And you were right. It was one of mine. It was Isa too.”
He trembled, and tears spilled from the corners of his eyes as he latched on to my face with bloodstained fingers. There was so much pain in him that I felt it like a visceral blow to my stomach.
“I have to go now. And you do too. There is a child, Mary’s child. She told me the baby waited in the house of blue. Her name is Rose.”
He nodded. “I... I know where that is.”
I nodded and clutched desperately at his wrist. “Save the baby, Maddox. Alice will be all right now. She’ll be all right.”
Reaching into his pocket with trembling fingers he pulled out the key card and handed it to me.
I went to take it, but his fingers refused to let go. He stared at me, a look of utter devastation scrawled in them.
I nodded, understanding, because I felt the same. Moving into him, I framed his face with my hand and kissed him softly. Gently.
It was our goodbye. And it was all we had left to give.
Then I snatched the key away from him and swiped, only letting myself cry as I sailed through a tunnel of dizzying stars.
When I arrived at Grimm PD headquarters, I knew I looked like hell. Everyone stared at me with mouths gaping and stunned, shocked looks on their faces. I could hardly walk, my stomach heaved, and I wanted to die.
In fact, I was sure I would. But not until I saw him cuffed first. That bastard. If I could, I’d kill
him myself for what he’d done.
Crowley, who I could give two hells less about, was standing just inside the chief’s office, wearing that arrogant, fecking smirk of his.
Bo, dressed all in white, looked harried, and her eyes were bloodshot. But when she caught sight of me, she ran, wrapping her arms around me and giving me her strength.
“You... you have to call the White Queen, Bo. I...” I coughed. “I know who did it. I know.”
“What? What do you know, Elle?”
“What is this?” Crowley stood straight, glaring at us both.
White lights were starting to crowd my vision, and I was beginning to sway. I’d seen too much, felt too much, and that tiny bit of my waters was already weakening in my veins. I was a minute, maybe less, from collapse.
“Alice didn’t do it. Tanner did. Touch me, Bo, and see for yourself!”
And just as she reached for the staff around her neck, just as the bit of metal began to burn white-hot, I sank into the oblivion of peaceful, black waves.
Epilogue
Detective Elle
One year later
“Wonder who he is?” Ichabod teased me, waggling his brows at me from behind my desk.
“Shut the hells up,” I snapped, more than a bit pissed off at the thought that, against my will, the Chief had decided to give me a partner. I didn’t want a damned partner, and she knew it.
They all knew it.
“Aw, c’mon, little princess,” he teased. I bared my fangs, and he cringed and swallowed hard. “Erm, Elle, rather. It might not be so bad. He comes highly recommended. Said to have had the best scores in the history of the academy. I’d be damned glad if he were mine. Wish I could understand why all the bloody secrecy surrounding him, though. Bo’s sure being oddly uncommunicative this time.”
“Look.” I threw a pen into my desk drawer and slammed it shut. “I wouldn’t care if it was the queen of the bloody pantheon. I don’t want a fecking, bloody part—”
“Hello, Elle.”
I stopped speaking, skin tingling from head to toe. Hardly daring to breathe, I shot Ich a panicked look.
Ichabod sat behind his desk, mouth ajar, staring at the man behind me with wide, disbelieving eyes. “You? You beat my score?” he groused.
But then the male touched me on the back of my neck with his silky, callused hand, and I couldn’t help but grunt. Not giving a rip who saw me, I jumped to my feet and then into his arms, squeezing Maddox so damned tight that I heard the air rush through his lungs.
He only chuckled, nuzzling my neck and breathing me in. “I dreamed about you every night, Elle. Every. Single. Night.”
I sniffed, hating the tears, hating that everyone was witnessing what should be private.
“Oh sure. She snaps at everyone all goddessdamn year long, but you... you she hugs. Life, man,” Ichabod bemoaned.
I took Hatter’s hand in mine, ignoring Ich, ignoring them all, and raced for the back doors, not stopping until I was out the door and down the steps into the smoke pit.
There was only one fairy there, smoking her pipe. She never looked at us.
But I wouldn’t have cared. I feasted my eyes on him, refamiliarizing myself with every line, every sharp curve. The peaked brows. The full lips. And the razor-sharp jaw. The green and blue eyes. The patrician nose. His top hat, coat, and cravat. Not a square inch of him had changed, he was exactly as he’d been. As he was every night in my dreams.
And I kissed him.
I shouldn’t. We were on the job. But I kissed him like my bloody life depended on it. And he kissed me right back.
“Ugh. Get a fecking room,” the fairy hissed, and we broke apart guiltily.
She turned over her pipe, dumping out her tobacco and stomping it out before shoving past us.
I laughed, and so did he. Then I punched his shoulder. Hard.
“Ow! Bloody hell, Elle. What did you do that for?”
He rubbed at his shoulder, and I almost whispered an apology, but I was pissed as twin hells.
“One year, and you never called me back! I sent you countless letters, you bastard. I hate you.”
He grinned.
“No, you don’t. And I didn’t write you back, Elle, because I was at the Academy. I never got any of your letters.”
He moved in just a step, reaching out to me slowly, like someone trying to tame a wild beast.
I bristled, even as I desperately ached for his touch.
“You could have called me. I was so—” I stopped talking, clamping my lips shut, refusing to tell him just how terribly bad I’d missed him, or how an ache had grown in my chest every day since I’d left him back in the alleyway.
He shook his head. “I... I couldn’t, Elle. I had to breathe. I needed to see if maybe what had happened there was even real.”
He smelled so bloody good. I sucked in air, dragging his scent of cool nights and clean soap deep into my lungs.
“I hate you,” I said again, but this time with heat and trembly things behind it.
He grinned, and my stomach coiled into tight knots.
“Goddess, I missed you,” he said. “So damn bad I thought I would die from it. I missed you, Elle.”
My eyes closed, lashes fluttering as I absorbed his words and let them marinate in my heart. I’d been so sick with longing and pain, drowning my sorrows in man after man, sinking into misery all over again.
“My time in Wonderland scared me, Maddox. Ruined me. You brought up so many painful memories, and I cursed you every night. Every. Single. Night.”
I couldn’t stop the tears as I reached for his shirt and fisted it tight in my hands, rumpling his immaculately pressed self.
But he didn’t seem to care at all. He moved into me, large frame making me feel safe and warm and protected. I felt the tremors coursing through him and knew I wasn’t the only one. Something had happened to us both in Wonderland and it’d changed us, maybe forever.
His eyes were sad, haunted. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have—”
I shook my head. “No, no, you should have. I never hated you. I couldn’t have survived Wonderland without you, Maddox. But there is so much I don’t know. So much that still doesn’t make sense to me. And I don’t know if I can be with someone that I don’t trust.”
My words were soft, barely even audible.
But his voice rumbled as he wrapped his arms around my waist and held me fast.
“Ask me anything, Elle. I’m an open book.”
The one question I wanted to ask, I still wasn’t sure I could. He was a man of flame. His child, his little butterfly still haunted my dreams. I sighed and squeezed my eyes shut as I laid my head against his chest and listened to the gentle rhythms of his heart.
“Did you find the girl?”
He nodded, grinning from ear to ear. “I visited with her recently. Goose adopted her. Did you know all those children are adoptions? Goose is a brilliant woman. Entire town has pitched in for her. She does a good thing, that woman. Oh, and I eventually learned of Alice’s connection.”
I raised my brows, waiting.
He brushed his knuckles lightly down my cheek. “She funded all the adoptions.” His voice quivered, and I understood why. Alice and he had lost their child. Hatter had thrown himself into his work, and it seemed Alice had thrown herself into saving children. It made me like her even more than I already had.
I grinned, feeling stupidly happy about it. “I like kids.”
He snorted. “This coming from you? Have I died?”
I slapped at his chest, scrubbing off the tears that still hadn’t stopped with the back of my wrist. “Oh, shut up. I never said I wanted my own. I just said those little brats aren’t so bad. Maybe.” I shrugged.
He kissed me, and I melted.
It was always a bad idea to mix business with pleasure. Always. And yet I’d fight to the death to make sure Maddox stayed with me.
“Does Bo know?” I whispered. “And how the hells did you manage to
convince her to let you work with me?”
“Bo knows. We had a long chat, she and I. She saw everything with her staff.”
I cringed. I remembered so little of that day, other than I’d shoved into the office doors, decrying Tanner the Satyr the villain, and had promptly passed out like a fecking damsel in distress.
“I still can’t believe it was him. I always thought he was a nice guy. And I can’t believe I didn’t recognize his wife earlier. But it’s not like he’d ever really brought Isa around much. There was just a picture of her on his desk.” I shook my head, scowling as I thought about the destruction they’d wreaked and the countless lives they’d destroyed.
“I can’t understand why he did it at all,” Hatter said. “There are still holes for me. Like why kill the gardener and maid at the Charming estate?”
I rolled my eyes, sighing, but not letting him go.
“All clear and justifiable evidence ends at Tanner. But I know he wasn’t behind it all. He was the killer. He was not, however, the catalyst.”
Taking my hand in his, Hatter led us toward a bench and sat. I joined him, still clinging to his hand.
“Who was?”
My lips thinned. Ichabod and I had had many alcohol-fueled late-night talks, and our best guess was something that could see us hanged for treason.
I worked my jaw from side to side.
“You know you can trust me.”
I grinned weakly. “I know I can. That’s not what’s bothering me. What’s bothering me is that my gut tells me, with the active participation of BS in all of this, all the bribes and the hustle that went on behind the scene, there could only be one reasonable culprit.”
He frowned. “Who?”
“The very people now paying for Tanner’s children to live out their lives in comfort and ease. The very goddessdamned people who live high up on a charmed hill with too many damned bloody apples growing on their trees. The very people who, until just two years ago, had been declared sterile by even the most high-ranking wizards around but then one day, have a miracle daughter. The maid had been pregnant, did you know that? If the child had been born to her and not cruelly ripped out of her womb, the child would be roughly the same age as the princess.”
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