My fingers clenched around the phone until the plastic shell creaked. Vause must not be the only one keeping tabs on me. What would Graeson have done if Vause hadn’t suspended me? I don’t want to know. I was learning he was a warg with a plan for every possible contingency and that he had no qualms taking what—or who—he wanted. The thing was, with Charybdis still at large and my ties to the conclave temporarily severed, I didn’t mind the idea of having backup when it came to protecting my family. Getting Aunt Dot and my cousins out of Tennessee until Charybdis reared his head again relaxed the part of me that had been fretting over the killer’s apparent fascination with my current home state.
Had Graeson mentioned this plan, I might not have laughed in his face. Now we would never know, because he did what he always did, which was hatch a scheme, assume his way was best, and expect everyone else to fall in line behind his hairy beta warg ass.
“You don’t sound thrilled.” A horn blasted in the background, and Aunt Dot swore revenge against the driver of a red Jetta, telling me the caravan was on the move. “It’s not too late. Should we pass on his invitation?”
“No.” I massaged my forehead. “I just didn’t expect Graeson to tell you about us.” I clenched my teeth. “He must have wanted to surprise me.” Shock was a good word for it. I’d had no idea there was an us. Let alone that we had gotten so serious as to involve our families in our relationship. “I have to exchange my ticket, but I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
Accepting Graeson’s hospitality felt a whole lot like strolling into a wolf’s den while modeling a Kobe beef necklace, and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt who would be waiting to collect me at the other end of the flight with warm hazel eyes and a smug grin.
Cord Graeson. Wolf with a taste for vengeance. Man with an agenda. And, apparently, my new boyfriend.
Head Above Water
Gemini, Book 2
Head Above Water Blurb
Gemini, Book 2
Camille Ellis has tracked many killers during her career, but this time it's personal. Cut off from conclave resources, she won't let a small thing like a suspension keep her from accepting Cord Graeson's offer of help.
Pretending to be mated to him is one way to secure allies, but the best that can be said of the Chandler Pack is they haven't killed or eaten her. Yet. Between the alpha's displeasure and the pack's distrust of fae, she's working overtime to keep her head above water.
Just when the fur starts to fly, a tip cracks her case--and her life--wide open.
Chapter 1
I disembarked my flight from Mobile, Alabama with a laptop tucked under my arm and the breathless expectation of a reunion with a certain hazel-eyed warg only to be met with a sea of eager faces, none of which brightened in recognition of me. I stood there, heart in my throat, but the man who shoved through the outer doors and strolled into the lobby wasn’t Graeson.
“Hey coz.” Isaac greeted me with a brief hug that brought his burnt-metal scent into my lungs. He dropped the keys to my pickup into one hand then pressed a paper cup of chai into the other. The latte was welcome, but even piping hot, it did little to ease the ache from what somehow stung like rejection. “Nice suit. Trying to impress the boyfriend?”
“No. I’m not,” I huffed. “I had a meeting.” Wearing jeans, a white tee with a black and red checked flannel shirt buttoned over it and ratty sneakers, Isaac had no room to judge my wardrobe choices. “Since when are you the fashion police?”
“I’m not.” He shuddered. “One cop in the family is plenty.” He picked at a dried mustard stain on his shirt pocket then started cleaning the yellow crust from under his nail. “So is Cord meeting us here or…?”
“No.” I scanned the now-empty lobby one more time then checked my phone before turning to go. “He’s not.”
Cord Graeson and I weren’t actually dating. That was just the lie he had told my family. Being a fake boyfriend, he wasn’t obligated to do the couples thing and meet me at the gate. Though it might have been nice if he’d at least texted me an excuse instead of hanging me out to dry with Isaac.
“You want to take point?” Isaac jingled his own keys in hand. “You’re the one familiar with the area.”
“Not hardly.” The state of Georgia and I were acquaintances, not friends. “I’ve been to Villanow once.”
“That’s once more than Mom or me.” He tossed his keys in the air then caught them. “Keep it between the lines, Cammie. Mom will watch your six. I’ll take the rear.”
Outside the airport, the caravan waited. Four silver Airstream trailers, three trucks, two parking violations and Aunt Dot. Stepping into the parking lot felt like coming home.
I climbed behind the wheel of my truck and settled in for the forty-five minute drive ahead of us. All those empty miles allowed me to work up a good head of steam over Graeson’s absence. We had a missing changeling to find and a serial killer to put down—for good this time—and he was burning precious hours by playing hide-and-seek.
Two quarters of the way into our trip, I stabbed the button on my infotainment screen and gave the voice command to call Aunt Dot, who was hauling Theo’s trailer in addition to hers.
“ETA fifteen minutes.” I drummed my fingers. “Don’t run me over this time, okay?”
“That was one time, and I paid the insurance premium to have your trailer repaired.” She puffed out an insulted breath. “The audiobook I was listening to was intense. I wasn’t prepared when you made a sudden stop.”
At a red light.
Hence the fifteen-minute warning.
“Maybe turn off the radio until we get where we’re going?” I suggested.
“You dent one bumper, and people act like it’s the end of the world,” she muttered, ending the call.
The remaining miles slid past my windows, a montage of evergreens that blurred after a while.
Our caravan rolled to a stop on neutral ground, a stretch of country road shaded by forest that marked the eastern border of the Chandler pack lands, in time for a cricket serenade. I exited the vehicle and checked the coordinates Graeson had rattled off to Isaac after he’d finished buttering up Aunt Dot, but our welcome party consisted of a turkey vulture and the picked-over remains of what might once have been a beaver.
Great. I had been stood up. Twice in one day.
Isaac laid on the horn, and my middle finger itched to rise. The blame for this visit sat squarely at Aunt Dot’s feet, not mine. She had accepted Graeson’s invitation without consulting me, not the other way around. Choosing that moment to stick her head out her window, Aunt Dot winked at me like this was all part of some grand adventure, and I made a fist instead.
“Well?” she hollered as she craned to see around my trailer. “Where does Cord want us?”
“He’s not here,” I called back. “I guess we wait.”
Arms crossed, I leaned against my truck’s front bumper. A forest of pines, hickories, oaks and the occasional dogwood tree created a natural barrier to protect the wargs’ privacy. I kicked at one of the clumps of grass responsible for the bumpy drive and watched the clod go sailing. It landed with a dull thud, and a heartbeat later twin specks of gold winked into existence deep in the velvet-dark heart of the forest.
“Maybe I spoke too soon,” I murmured, straightening.
One blink. Two. The apparition vanished, and the woods went silent. Chills swept down my arms in a prickling cascade. Eerie quiet lured me nearer to the leaf-strewn line separating the single-lane road from the encroaching wilderness.
Wind swirled blond strands of hair into my eyes and kicked up dust at my feet. Leaves rustled over my head as if the hickories were shooing me away, warning me to climb back in the cab to safety. I rocked back on my heels, prepared to heed their warning, until a pitiful whine from the underbrush played on my heartstrings. “Graeson?”
A door opened behind me. “Pumpkin?”
“It’s fine.” I flung out my arm to keep her and Isaac corralled at their vehi
cles. “Get back in the truck.”
A throaty rumble issued from the woods that grated like laughter in my ears. Fear dug talons into my spine a second before the wolf I had assumed was Graeson leapt for my throat. Black as the oncoming night, the sinuous beast widened its maw. All those months of marshal academy training snapped like a rubber band in my brain, and I swung my left forearm up high in a defensive pose that absorbed the impact of the wolf’s body smacking into mine. Teeth grazed the tip of my nose as I shoved up with my right arm, turning as I used the wolf’s momentum against it and flung it aside.
It landed nimbly on all fours and, as if its legs were spring-loaded, pivoted and launched itself right back at me.
The fingernail of my right hand’s middle finger wobbled and fell off. A sickle claw extended from my nailbed. Clacking teeth grazed my chin before I cinched my hand around the wolf’s throat. Spur fully extended, I punched its curved tip through the thick fur protecting the beast’s throat, sucking in a gasp as its blood wet my fingertip, its magic flowing over my tongue.
The wolf hit the ground hard, flung its head side to side, then bunched for a third strike.
Ebony fur erupted down my right forearm, the bones lengthening as my fingernails arrowed into claws. Droning white noise buzzed in my head, persistent bees, as a cacophony of presence clashed against a chorus of indistinct words without substance or meaning.
The pack bond.
“Cam,” Isaac roared.
“Stay back,” I growled. “I can handle this.”
The coiled wolf lunged, and I threw my weight behind swinging out with my clawed arm. Nails swiping across its neck, I ribboned the column of its throat. Crimson sprayed my face, my shirt, running hot and slick through my fingers. Gurgling wetly, the beast thumped on its side.
This time it stayed there.
Strong hands clamped over my upper arms, and I yelped at the pinch. Isaac spun me on my heels until the carnage I had wrought was hidden behind my back. Struck dumb by the sudden violence of the attack, the stickiness coating my palm, I let him fold me against his chest until the shock dulled enough for anger to flare in its place.
His chin bumped the top of my head. “What the hell?”
Breathless, I couldn’t speak and didn’t know how to answer. The fingers of my right hand—sleekly furred and razor-tipped—trembled where they scrunched his T-shirt into a fist.
Hard pops brought a lump to my throat, and I pivoted on my heel. The animal seized, back arched. Lips peeled away from its teeth, claws raked furrows in the dirt. Its gasping whimper as a human shape emerged caused me to dig my nails into my palms. That had to hurt.
A high-pitched whine accompanied the final, vicious crack of bone. The rich pelt shed and left a woman with dark-brown skin panting on the cushion of leaves. Her breasts were full and her hips lush, her body sheened with sweat. Short twists of burgundy hair covered her scalp, and even stained with the effort of her change, she was a beauty.
A beauty whose throat I had ripped out in self-defense moments earlier, whose flesh knitted together as I watched. Eyes the color of topaz soaked in Isaac like he was a tempting cut of prime beef that would tear softly under her teeth. It tempted me to test her regenerative capabilities by removing her windpipe for a second time. My cousin was not on the menu. Neither was I for that matter.
“Who are you lovely dishes?” she rasped, sitting upright and curving her legs under her. The pose was comfortable, not modest. Wargs weren’t prudes in either form. “Wander where you don’t belong out here, and you might get gobbled up.”
A glance down confirmed I had, stupidly, allowed her to lure me onto Chandler land without a warg escort. “I’m Camille Ellis. Cord Graeson invited us. We’re his guests.”
Magic shivered over my skin, contracting, and I lost my grip on the borrowed energy. Fur fell out in clumps down my forearm, my fingers shrank and nails reformed into perfect ovals. I eased forward, angling so Isaac stood a step behind me. “Who are you?”
“Handsome here can call me Aisha.” She licked her lips in Isaac’s direction before snapping her gaze to me. “You, beta, may address me as alpha. I’m Bessemer’s mate. These are our lands where you trespass.”
Oh. She was one of those women. Each time I transferred to a new marshal’s office, I got dropped into the frothing miasma of office politics. Thanks to those experiences, I recognized a power play when I saw one. If I bowed to her now, she would never let me off my knees.
“Aisha.” I cleaned her blood out from under my nails. “Can you tell Graeson his girlfriend is here?”
An unladylike snort ripped through her. “Wargs don’t have girlfriends, fae. We mate, and it’s for life.”
My every instinct is telling me you belong to me.
Graeson had said that to me right before giving me an impromptu haircut.
Too bad his every instinct hadn’t informed him when my flight was arriving.
“A wise woman once cautioned me never to get into a pissing match with a warg.” That wasn’t strictly true. I’d read it in the stall of a ladies’ restroom years ago. “Tell him or not.” I spread my hands as I backed onto land owned by the state of Georgia. “I’ve got nothing but time.”
A lie if ever I’d told one.
Chapter 2
We elected to set up camp off the shoulder of the road, a stone’s throw from Chandler lands. Close enough to accommodate Graeson and Dell visiting, but far enough to keep us on the right side of fae and human law.
We looped our caravan into a tight arc formation: truck, trailer, truck, trailer, trailer, truck, trailer. Magic flowed easier through circles, and the shape gave us a compact shared backyard within the boundaries of the protective magic Aunt Dot cast while Isaac and I made the trailers level on the uneven ground.
Sweaty from establishing our base, we each retreated to our homes for a much-deserved rest break. The satellite dish mounted to Isaac’s roof twitched to wakefulness as I scanned the woods for signs of life and found none. The soft murmur of Aunt Dot’s soaps drifted from her living room window and coaxed a sigh of contentment from me. Even with crusted blood on my hands, it was good to be home.
Home being relative considering Gemini were rooted in people and not places.
I climbed the two steps leading into my trailer and grabbed a hot shower. I remember sitting on my bed to dry my hair, but the heat must have flipped my switch, because I woke to a quiet camp and found a note taped to my door. Aunt Dot and Isaac had gone into town for supplies, taking the grocery list off my fridge with them.
After stretching out the kinks in my back, I hauled my laptop out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. One of my favorite nooks in the whole house was the booth with built-in dining table. Sliding across the vinyl seat, I set up my workstation—computer, sticky notes, pen, legal pad, pencil and freeze-dried banana chips—then opened my web browser.
A quick check of my empty inbox set off a pang in my chest. Thanks to my forced leave of absence from the Earthen Conclave due to my friendship with the now-missing Harlow Bevans, and the murky nature of my relationship with a certain absentee beta warg, I was cut off from my usual resources and most of my contacts. Most. Not all. I still had one willing to stick her neck out for me. And then I had Graeson. Maybe. I’d thought we shared the same goals, but now I wasn’t as sure.
Fist pressed into my cheek, I rested my elbow on the table and started combing over my notes on the Charybdis case files, focusing on the kelpie we had taken down in Abbeville, Mississippi. When nothing new jumped off the page, I rubbed my eyes and began pondering dinner options.
A noise at the front of the trailer raised the fine hairs down my arms. The scritching of claws against metal dumped a load of adrenaline into my system. Was Aisha back for round two? Heart clogging my throat, I hauled myself out of the booth, crept to the door and peered out the window.
No one was there except for a mosquito hawk who thumped against the fist-sized exterior porch light mounted beside the
steps.
Cocking my head, I filtered out the ambient noise until I heard the soft hum of the wards. They were intact, so if we had visitors, they were the friendly sort. Holding on to that comforting line of thought, I unhooked the inner screen door then shoved both it and the outer metal door open. I froze with my hand on the latch and swallowed convulsively.
White fur, matted with saliva. Slender ears perked for sounds they were past hearing. Head twisted perpendicular to its spine. Muscular hind legs still twitching.
A rabbit.
I really, really hoped this wasn’t the warg version of a welcome present. Or an apology. Aisha didn’t strike me as the kind to make amends, but I could picture her thinking nothing said I’m sorry quite like a fresh kill left to bleed out on your doorstep.
Chiding myself for getting choked up over a bunny, I took the first step down then leapt to the ground, knees protesting as they absorbed the impact. Nape crawling with the sensation of being watched, I forced myself to squat and trace the furrows etched into the metal siding with a fingertip. A sweeping glance under my lashes told me the gift-giver hadn’t waited around to witness its reception. I picked the furry corpse up by the ankles and set it on a spare cinderblock while I decided what to do with it.
“Ellis.”
Pivoting my weight to one side, I witnessed the moment Graeson exited from between two enormous oak trees. His rumpled shirt looked marginally fresher than his wrinkled jeans. His feet were bare and stained brown with grime. When he smiled at me, my pulse kicked up a notch. “Where have you been?” I stood and dug my bare toes into the soft dirt to anchor myself. “I met your alpha female earlier, and by met I mean she went for the jugular.”
The woman who stepped into the clearing behind him was as tall and lanky as a teenager, with sun-kissed skin and a splash of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her china-blue eyes shone, and her strawberry-blond hair spilled over her shoulders as she bounded toward me as naked as the day she was born. She smacked into my side and wrapped her arms around me, almost toppling us both.
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