“…knew what he was getting into…”
“…kids grow up without their father…”
A pang rocked me when I realized they were talking about the marshal who had died in the line of duty. Why or how the woman had fixated on Harlow puzzled me. Part of me worried it was my fault. If Harlow hadn’t stayed behind an extra night in Wink to babysit me, she would have left town before the widow got a chance to confront her. The whole situation made me that much more nervous about the secrets she was keeping.
“I’ll take this up with the magistrates,” the angry woman cried. “She never should have been on the scene.”
“She’s a consultant.” Thierry sounded short on patience. “The Southeastern Conclave assigned her to help us with a difficult case.”
“She’s an abomination,” the woman shrilled.
Emerald light blossomed in Thierry’s palm. The brunette didn’t appear to notice, as she was locked in a glaring contest with her, but the older woman did, and she took a shuffling step back, dragging the man with her.
“The conclave doesn’t discriminate.” Thierry ground the words out through a clenched jaw. “I’m sorry your husband lost his life. Jasper was a good man, but you can’t hold Ms. Bevans responsible.”
Discriminate? Against mermaids? Or against Harlow in particular? I zeroed in on the leggy girl inspecting the faux woodgrain on the door with a quiver in her lip. What did these people know that I didn’t? How much had I missed while I was recuperating?
The grieving widow lunged at Harlow, fingers curved into ragged talons, but smashed against Shaw’s chest when he stepped in front to shield her. “You heard what my partner said.” He gripped the woman by her shoulders. “This is over, Mrs. Rebec. If you have a problem with the consultants hired by the conclave, then make good on your threat. Take it up with the magistrates.”
“Letitia,” the brown-haired man said. “This won’t bring Jasper back. Come on. Let’s get Mom home. I’ll call the marshal’s office in the morning and lodge an official complaint.”
The old woman wrapped an arm around her daughter, and Letitia allowed her mother to lead her away.
“You okay?” Thierry planted her hands on her hips and grimaced in Harlow’s direction. “We got here as fast as we could.”
“I’ve had worse.” Wincing, she brought her fingers up to probe her jaw. “That woman has a killer right hook.”
“You can press charges,” Shaw offered. “She jumped you in the hotel lobby. That’s assault. The night manager is willing to give a statement that he pulled her off you. We can also get our hands on a recording of his phone call to the marshal’s office as evidence.”
When he shifted to stand beside Thierry, the light moved with him, and I swallowed a gasp. Harlow’s delicate jaw was split and bloody. The widow must have been wearing her engagement ring when she socked her. A bare hand wouldn’t have caused that kind of damage.
“No.” The maybe-mermaid ducked into her room. “I don’t want to hang around. I’ve already stayed longer than I should have.”
“I’ll be right back.” Thierry excused herself and crossed to my room before knocking gently on the door. A satchel weighted down one of her shoulders, and she shoved it behind her. “Anyone home in there?”
I would have heard the smile in her voice even if I wasn’t staring right at it, which made it easier to brush off my knees—and my dignity—and stand. When I opened the door, so much blood rushed into my cheeks I felt lightheaded. “I heard shouting.”
“There was a misunderstanding.” Thierry skimmed my appearance, and her grin widened. Flushed, I yanked on my towel turban and let the damp waves of dark blonde hair fall over my shoulders. I doubted it was much of an improvement, but it made me feel less frazzled by comparison. Her gaze slid past my shoulder to where I had laid a pair of brown slacks and a lavender blouse at the foot of the bed. “It’s settled now.”
As confident as she sounded, I hoped she was right and the woman wouldn’t make a second attempt before Harlow left. Some fae took the whole eye-for-an-eye thing literally.
“You look like you’re getting ready to go somewhere.” She pulled a phone from her pocket and checked the time. “Did you book a red-eye or something?”
“No.” I hadn’t cracked open my laptop long enough to plan that far ahead. “I crashed pretty hard. I’m starving, and room service hours ended around ten.”
“There’s a coffee shop across the street.” Her shoulder bumped the door. “It’s crap, but it’s close. Join me for a cup?”
The way she said it made me think I didn’t have much choice. Good thing my stomach wasn’t about to argue.
Chapter 5
Much to my dismay, the shop across the street turned out to be cramped and gloomy, and the air inside smelled the way I imagined soup would if it were made of sweat socks left to boil on the stove overnight. The booths were upholstered in cracked vinyl with pocked yellow foam rupturing from the seams. The stink of ancient cigarette smoke puffed out when my weight hit the cushion, and the sharp edges raked at my pants like tiny claws.
After the waitress left us each with a steaming mug of blackish sludge and a pastry whose glaze resembled earwax, Thierry leaned forward. “I filed an incident report with my office and flagged your name on it. It’s standard when someone on the team—or a consultant—gets injured.”
I dumped in two sugars, and the spoon smoked as it stirred the caustic brew. “Is it supposed to do that?”
“Damn it.” She poked at her own mug. “Mervin must be working the kitchen tonight. He’s a cherufe.” At my blank expression, she made a rolling gesture with her hand. “It’s a kind of lava-lizard thing. Once he spat magma on the road, scooped up the molten asphalt and tried to pass it off as the soup du jour. Work crews were patching potholes for days.”
I pushed my mug toward the center of the table where it bumped into hers. “If he’s that much of a nuisance, then why hasn’t he been fired yet?”
She snorted. “Do you want to be the one to tell him to hang up his apron?”
“No.” I laughed. “I guess not.”
Our amusement waned, and Thierry began worrying the bowl of her spoon with her thumb. “Look, Camille, here’s the thing. I don’t know you, and I don’t know your security clearance level, but I know what I saw today. You risked a lot to save your friend, and that makes me think you’re one of the good ones.”
“Thanks?” My voice rose on the end, making it a question.
“With that in mind,” she said, flicking poppy seeds off her pastry one by one, “I’m going to offer you some free advice.”
Free advice had a way of costing all the same. “Okay.”
“This thing you’re hunting?” She cleaned a black dot from under her nail. “It might be Faerie stock. As in the blacklisted, do not pass go and enter the mortal realm variety.”
The kind so predatory as to not discriminate between fae and mortals, the kind who would make the rivers on Earth run crimson with innocent blood.
My mouth went dry. “That’s not possible.”
Fae who petitioned for residency in the mortal realm required conclave approval. That didn’t mean good fae didn’t go bad or that bad fae didn’t grease enough palms to slip through the cracks, but there was a subsect of Faerie-born who were never allowed to enter this realm. Most fae called them ancients. Humans would title their arrival apocalypse.
“Nothing is impossible,” she contradicted. “Some things are just less plausible than others.”
“Magistrate Vause—” I began.
She cut me off by waggling her index finger. “That’s all you get for free.”
Thinking back to the confrontation in the hall, to her defense of Harlow, I accepted she knew more than I had been told. The only question remaining was could I afford to acquire what she knew? “What will the rest of the information cost?”
“You asked for my blood yesterday.” She produced a slender dagger and a charm resembling a cha
rred bird’s nest from her satchel. “I’m asking for yours today.” The cashier blinked at the blade then went back to picking hairs off his shirt and dropping them on the floor behind the counter. “I’ll have to bind you so that the secrets I confide won’t be repeated.” She poked the ratty twist of straw. “This particular charm is outfitted with a loophole you’re probably familiar with since you work high-profile cases. It allows for collaboration between people bound by the same enchantment.”
Relief at the familiar gusted through me. She was right. It came standard issue in the arsenal of law enforcement officers and was implemented in cases involving sensitive material. I had subjected myself to such bindings on multiple occasions. Once more wouldn’t hurt. Not when she had already whetted my appetite. “I’ll do it.”
Thierry placed the charm on the tabletop between us then pricked her thumb with the dagger. One drop of blood welled before the cut knit closed, and she smeared it over the charm. “Your turn.” She passed me the blade hilt first, and I replicated the gesture. Only my blood continued beading after the requisite drop fell. The wound throbbed as the crimson mixed, and magic slithered a winding path up my arm and throat until it prickled in my lips, binding us to shared secrets.
“Okay.” She passed me a napkin. “I’m guessing since my lips feel like I just made out with a porcupine that the charm worked.” At my look, she ducked her head and dusted the remains of the spell into her mug where it sizzled and dissolved. “Spellwork isn’t my forte. I’m still learning, but I have an excellent teacher.”
After wrapping my finger in the thin paper, I settled in while she pulled out a secondary charm and smashed it with the heel of her palm. My ears popped as a privacy spell activated. That one had definitely worked. The restaurant muted around us until the sound of our breathing was all that remained.
“The tethers linking the mortal realm to the fae realm have been severed. I figured it was safe to assume, considering you’re with the Earthen Conclave, that you were briefed when the new security protocols were put into place.” She waited for my nod. “We’re on our own now. That means fae in this world, whether residents or visitors, are subject to conclave law. As I’m sure you’re aware, some of the older fae aren’t thrilled with the prospect of becoming permanent citizens of Earth. They’re bucking the system, and those rebellions are being stamped out as soon as we catch a whiff of them.”
“I was flown to Lebanon for debriefing the day after it happened.” Kansas that is. I had never been to Faerie myself—my family was Earthborn going back three generations—but even I grasped the magnitude of the situation. We were alone now. Trapped in a world unaware of the existence of fae, but growing so technologically advanced that soon even magic would fail to cloak us from human eyes. If we were discovered, and if mortals reacted to learning there were predators in their midst the way they reacted to most unsettling discoveries, war would break out. Our people would battle—not only the mortals but one another—for control of this world since our native land was lost to us. “I had no idea the tethers were a physical thing that could be cut like string. What sort of fae could be that powerful?”
“Who knows?” Thierry picked at her thumbnail with the single-minded focus of a brain surgeon performing a craniotomy. “Either way it’s done now.”
I accepted she wasn’t going to elaborate and pressed her in another direction. “What does this have to do with Charybdis?”
Her eyebrows lifted, though her gaze remained downcast. “There were other, localized incidents that weren’t covered outside of the magistrates’ chambers.”
Leaning forward, I braced my forearms on the tabletop. “Such as?”
“A few months back a portal opened here in Wink, at the marshal’s office actually.” Her eyes flicked up at me. “We contained it as fast as we could, but we didn’t move to close it quickly enough. Something got through.”
“Few fae, even those born in Faerie, can open portals to this realm.” That was why losing the tethers had shut down transportation between Earth and Faerie. “From what I’ve read, theory suggests it requires the cooperation of another party on the side you intend to visit. Someone to open the door for you. That means you need two powerful fae, worlds apart, coordinating their efforts.”
“Trust me when I say there was no consenting anchor on this side of the divide.” Reddish-brown crust dried around the cuticle of the nail she wouldn’t let be. “How it happened doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it did.”
“How can you say that?” I rapped the table for emphasis. “If there’s a fae out there who can bore a tunnel back to Faerie, the conclave will offer amnesty to them if they can do it a second time. That’s assuming they aren’t recruited by the private sector. A lot of people want to go back, and they’ll pay anything—do anything—to get a ticket home.”
“That train has left the station.” Thierry puffed out her cheeks on an exhale. “The fae responsible has been detained in Faerie and is out of the conclave’s reach.”
The relief in her voice at the thought of a return trip to Faerie being impossible stumped me. As a legacy, she had a direct familial link to the other realm. Though, as a half-blood, which most Faerie-born scorned, she might have been all too eager for that bridge to burn. For all I knew she had toasted marshmallows in the flames.
“So what you’re saying is one fae opened a portal and another one slipped through.” The idea it might be Charybdis kicked my pulse up a notch. “Were the two fae cooperating?” That seemed the most likely scenario. “Or was the second incident, the portal breach, a crime of opportunity?”
“We aren’t sure.” A grim scowl. “With Faerie off the grid, we have no means of confirming their alliance until the second fae is captured here.”
I chewed over that bit of information. “What can you tell me about the incident?”
“Not much,” she admitted. “We have surveillance footage courtesy of a camera mounted in the hall opposite the office where the breach occurred. The door was open, so it got a clear shot, but the angle is bad, and the quality is crap.” Not exactly encouraging. “That said, it shows a humanoid figure stepping through a portal anchored by a closet. It entered the hall, spotted one of the marshals, got spooked, and vanished into thin air.”
“How sure are you that this fae and Charybdis are one and the same?”
“I monitored news from around the country for days, waiting to see what it would do.” Her fist clenched, and light spilled through her fingers. “The first body surfaced a month later, and the autopsy confirmed the girl had been dead for almost that long.”
“The timing could have been a coincidence.” Fae were a brutal race. Murder was much less taboo among our people than mortals. “You can’t be certain it was the same fae.”
“Oh, but I can.” She tapped the side of her nose. “I flew out to view the body. The degree of decomposition and exposure to the water made it difficult to parse the smells, but I picked up faint traces of the same scent on the body as I did near the portal.”
As powerful as her talents were, I had no reason to doubt Thierry’s word. By linking the fae from the portal to the first body, she had established a chain of evidence, because I had tied it and all the others to the same magical signature. “You reported this?”
“To the magistrates, yes.” A frown developed. “I also counseled them to call in an expert to work the case. The body wasn’t getting any fresher, and I had a feeling that wasn’t the end of it.” The lines cut deeper into her forehead. “I hate that I was right, but I’m glad they brought you onboard, even if I am curious why Vause sent you here.”
“You knew this case wasn’t linked to Charybdis.” It hit me a second later. “You could tell by the scent.”
“Yep.” Her lips twisted. “I reached out to Vause when I got a heads up about a consultant visiting the site. I tried to save you a trip, but she made a point of not answering her phone or returning my calls until you had already arrived.”
&
nbsp; The magistrate had known the death was unrelated to Charybdis, had wanted me in Wink. Staring across the table at the powerful young woman gazing back at me, I had to wonder if this interlude wasn’t the entire point. Did that mean Vause had orchestrated my arrival, positioning me in such a way that Thierry’s natural curiosity would take over? Or did it mean this comradery was false? That Thierry was Vause’s creature? And that our accord was one of many layers in a scheme I would have to peel back to reveal the core of truth?
“Why did you pull out?” I wondered, at the same time realizing this was why her first words to me were that she had been expecting me. She had known I was coming, or someone with a similar talent was, because I was there by her request.
“I’m not a field agent anymore.” She grimaced. “I was reassigned elsewhere. My involvement with the portal was a fluke of timing. The magistrates snatched Charybdis out of my hands before I got my fingerprints on the file.”
That she still seemed to be working the case without their blessing, I didn’t mention. “So I have you to thank for my string of recent consultations.”
“Yeah.” She winced. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s no problem.” Vause always brought me the mysterious cases in the hopes I could solve with a touch what others struggled to link through evidence. The unspoken agreement she would forward all drowning cases gave me ample opportunity to punish myself. Whatever she thought of my self-flagellation she kept to herself. “This is the job, right?”
“Just know I’m here if you need help.” She removed a card from her pocket and pushed it across the table with a finger. “Call if you need anything. Information. References. Backup. Whatever. It’s yours.”
“I will.” I accepted the card and tucked it into my pocket for safekeeping. “I appreciate the offer.”
The tension slipped from Thierry’s shoulders, and I got the feeling she had accomplished her mission in treating me to coffee at the diner.
“So…Earthen Conclave. They must have been tripping over themselves to enlist someone like you.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “How did that recruitment letter go? Did they let you say goodbye to your family before they packed you up and shipped you off to one of their training facilities?”
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