Under Suspicion

by Hannah Jayne

  “Oh, honey, your fingers are always so cold.” He brought her pale fingers, entwined with his, to his lips and kissed them. “I told her she should see a doctor about her circulation problem.”

  I nodded while Nina pulled Harley behind her. “I’m going to say good-bye to Harley, Soph. He’s leaving for Seattle in the morning. You going to be okay for a little bit, or should I call Vlad to stay with you?”

  Vlad—that reminded me.

  “Hey, Neens, there was a pipe in the back of your car. Do you know what that was for?”

  Nina’s brow furrowed. “A pipe?” Then she brightened. “You mean the long silver bar.”

  I nodded.

  “It’s a closet extender. Vlad is helping me add a little closet space. So, should I call him?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I told Nina, glad for a little peace of mind, quiet, and clothes.

  “That nephew of yours is a really odd kid,” Harley was saying as they walked out the door. “All the dark clothes and nail polish. Is that what they call ‘Emo’?”

  I slipped out of the paramedic’s blanket and dropped it on the bathroom floor, pulled off my underclothes, which had now stiffened with dried soap and blood, and lowered myself into a hot bath loaded with peach-scented bubbles. I felt everything—Will, Alex, Roland—slide off me and drown in the sweet-scented water. I stopped counting the scratches and bruises and instead washed my hair and luxuriated until my skin was puckered and pink. Eventually I got out, wrapping myself up in my fluffiest chenille bathrobe and pushed my feet into soft pink slippers, which Nina had gotten me.

  I was making myself a nice evening plate of grapes and peanut butter crackers, when there was a stiff, clipped knock on the door. I considered ignoring it and pretending that I was Sophie Lawson, Normal Girl, spending a quiet Saturday night at home after a trip to the farmer’s market or something. I imagined anything other than what I had done—anything that didn’t include a public restroom—but the knock sounded again.

  I pulled my robe tighter over my chest and yanked open the door, about to tell Will that I wasn’t interested in company.

  But it wasn’t Will.

  The air was silent, like the entire building was holding its breath. I could hear the electric buzz of the overhead lights, could hear each straining pump of my heart. I swallowed and willed myself to snap the door closed, but my hand was melted to the knob.

  My fingers in a solid death grip.

  “It’s been a long time, Sophie.”

  Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of Hannah Jayne’s next Sophie Lawson novel, coming soon from Kensington Publishing!

  He stood in my doorway looking remarkably comfortable, without the faintest glow of otherworldly aura or the oozing, fetid sores I had come to know on those who returned from the dead.

  “Sophie.”

  He said my name and my hackles went up; I was all at once intrigued, delighted, and horrified.

  I opened my mouth and then closed it again, willing the words that tumbled through my brain to form some coherent, cohesive thought, something great and all encompassing enough to explain what I was feeling.

  “I see dead people,” I mumbled.

  Without conscious thought my arm snapped back and the door clamped shut. I ran backward into my apartment, falling over the arm of the couch and landing with a thump on the pillows, ending in an inelegant heap on the carpet. My pup ChaCha trotted over to me, sniffed, and walked away. It’s happening, it’s happening, it’s happening ...

  I was shaking, the mantra rolling through my head as I curled in on my chest, rocking gently. I knew it was only a matter of time before I developed some sort of mystical powers—red hair and an insatiable appetite for chocolate or anything in a take-out box couldn’t be the only things I inherited from my mother and grandmother, who both had been powerful mystics with the ability to tell the future.

  “I’m getting my powers.” I licked my lips, terror and joy bounding through me.

  That was it.

  This was my power.

  “I see dead people.”

  I felt the words in my mouth, the exhilaration of finally belonging and finally feeling a connection to my paranormal family chipping away at the terror that sat like an iceberg at the bottom of my gut.

  The jiggling of the ancient hardware on my front door brought me crashing back to the reality of a doorknob turning in front of me. I stared at it as it moved horror-movie slow, and my blood pounded in my ears. The person on the other end of the door knocked again. This time it was a quick, warning rap and when he pressed the door open, the air that I had gulped in a greedy, terrified frenzy whooshed out.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He grinned. “I thought you’d be happier to see me.”

  I rolled over onto my back and pushed myself up, my eyes still trained on the man—the apparition?—that stood in my foyer, smile wide, welcoming, and corporeal looking.

  “Mr. Sampson?” His name was a breathy whisper that made my bottom lip quiver. “You need me to help you cross over,” I said.

  I took a tentative step toward the man whom I had known so well—who had been more like a father than a boss to me for so many years, who had given me my start at the Underworld Detection Agency—whom I had watched being tortured until he finally disappeared, news of his death reaching me months later.

  I reached out in front of me, fingers shaking and outstretched, willing myself to touch him, knowing that all I would feel would be a cold burst of nothingness of the displaced molecules that should have been a living, breathing human form.

  I stuck my index finger in his right nostril, my thumb brushing his bottom lip.

  “Oh, gross!”

  “Sophie! What the hell?” he snapped.

  My hand recoiled back in near-boogered terror. “Oh my God! Mr. Sampson! You’re alive!”

  My heart threw itself against my ribcage and every fiber of my being seemed to expand with joy. I crushed myself against Pete Sampson, feeling his wonderful heart thudding against my chest, relishing the human feeling of his tender, warm skin against my own.

  He shrugged me off—gently—and held me at arm’s length. “You look wonderful.”

  “You’re alive ... You’re alive.” I mumbled it dumbly again and again until my eyes could focus on the stiff reality under my fingers. I massaged Mr. Sampson’s arms, feeling the ropey muscles flinch underneath his soft flannel shirt, my fingertips working down his forearms until I found his bare skin, his pulse point. I paused, counted.

  “You’re not dead at all. You’re really, really alive.”

  A smile cut across Sampson’s face—a smile that went up to his milk-chocolate eyes that crinkled at the corners and warmed me from tip to tail. I stiffened, shook his hands off and slapped him across his chest, anger and betrayal walloping me.

  “How are you alive? You’re dead. You were dead! I mourned for you! And Alex,” I huffed, a sob choking in my throat, “and Will.” I sniffed, “And I’m the Vessel ...” Tears flooded over my cheeks and dripped from my chin as I hiccupped and quaked. “Will’s my Guardian.”

  Sympathy, with just the slightest tinge of amusement, flitted across Mr. Sampson’s face as he took me by the wrist and offered me a stiffly starched hankie. I held it in my hand, my fingers working the burgundy stitching—the letters P and S embroidered elegantly against the white cloth.

  “You look so different.”

  The Mr. Sampson whom I had known was always freshly shaven and dressed impeccably in tailored suits that highlighted his powerful build. He kept his dark hair close-cropped and slicked back. This man sported a three-day beard peppered with gray stubble and looked unkempt and disheveled in a wrinkled unbuttoned flannel shirt over a plain white T-shirt. He wore a pair of jeans that were a combination of broken-in and over-worn, but as I held the handkerchief to my nose I smelled the faint scent of the Mr. Sampson I used to know—a scent that was spicy, familiar, with just the slightest hint of salt and p
ine.

  Sampson pulled me to the couch and I sat down next to him, leaving just enough space to let him know that despite his heavenly return from death, all was not forgiven.

  “What happened to you?” I managed to whisper.

  It was then that I noticed the easy laugh lines that had sat like commas on either side of Sampson’s mouth were hard etched now; it was only then that I noticed the latticework of worry lines between his eyes, the thick frown line that cut across his dark brow and the thin streak of gray that sprouted at his hairline, peppering his deep brown hair with a washed out sheen.

  “I’m sorry I never contacted you.” Sampson shook his head and stared at his hands in his lap. “I wanted to; the last thing I wanted was to have you—you and everyone else at the UDA—worry about me. But if you knew I was alive, that’s what would have happened. You would have worried.”

  He offered me what I assumed was to be his appeasing smile but it only served to stir up a hot seed of anger in my belly.

  “You could have let us decide whether or not we worried about you,” I spat. “I thought that the Chief killed you. That’s what Alex said—”

  I stopped, the words going heavy and bitter in my mouth. I felt my eyes narrow, and knew that I was holding my mouth in a hard snarl. “Did Alex know? Did he know this whole time?”

  Sampson pushed himself off the couch, avoiding my gaze. “Sophie, Alex—”

  I launched myself up then, too, hands on hips. “Alex knew this whole time, didn’t he?”

  “Not the whole time, Sophie. I had to hide. I had to make it look like I was dead or they would keep coming after me and no one at the Agency would be safe. I wasn’t going to do that to the Underworld, Sophie. I needed to know when it would be safe to come back again. And the only way I could do that—the only way I could do that and still even have the slightest hope of coming back was to have eyes out here.”

  “Alex’s.”

  “He helped me, Sophie.”

  I thought of Alex, of his ice blue eyes and that cocky half smile, of the two-inch scars above each shoulder blade that had grown silvery with age after years of wandering the earth without his wings.

  Alex was a fallen angel, earthbound but determined to do good, to one day be restored back to grace. He had been my protector, my lover, my friend; and he had lied to me.

  “Does he know you’re back now?” I wanted to know.

  Sampson made a show of looking around my apartment, his silence a clear answer. I made a mental note to Google “ways to kick a fallen angel’s ass” on the Internet.

  “So, where were you?” I asked.

  Sampson cocked his head. “Everywhere. Nowhere. After that night—”

  An involuntary shudder wracked my body. The memory of being chained with Sampson in an underground basement while a madman sharpened the sword he was going to use to pierce my flesh was still as cold and as fresh in my mind as it was two years ago. Sampson slid a comforting arm across my shoulders and I slumped against him, my body relying on muscle memory because my brain was still calculating, figuring, tying to make sense of Pete Sampson, alive, in my living room.

  “I was rescued—or so I thought—from that damn little kennel.”

  Sampson clapped a hand over his chin and rubbed where the salt and pepper stubble littered the firm set of his clenched jaw. He looked at me and I could see the smallest flitter of embarrassment cross his face; his shoulders seemed to sag under the weight, under the memory of being chained, being beaten—being treated like an animal by a man whom he had once considered a friend.

  “There were people; they said they knew about the Underworld. I didn’t have a choice. I got in the car and immediately passed out. I must have been drugged. Then I was crated, moved. I woke up in a shipping yard, somewhere. I knew it was woodsy, or forested, but that’s all I knew. Nothing was familiar.”

  “They dropped you in the woods? In the middle of nowhere? That’s awful!”

  Sampson wagged his head, the hand that was stroking his chin now raking across his ragged curls and over eyes that were tired, heavy. “I was starving, naked, in the middle of nowhere and by the time I came fully to, so did they.”

  I gulped, the sour state of my own saliva catching in my throat. “Who were they?”

  “The werewolf hunters.” He licked his lips. “Trackers. It’s an ancient calling ...”

  I nodded. “I know what trackers are, Sampson.”

  I knew all too well. It had only been a couple of weeks since Will—Will, the man charged with keeping me and all my Vessel of Souls-filled self safe—had had a run in with Xian and Feng Du, Werewolf Hunters. And although werewolf hunters sound incredibly elegant and Van Helsing-esque, you should know that werewolf hunters these days have come out of the silver-bullet forging days of ancient, dusty castles and now took up residence in more urban environments—like in the back of a retro delicatessen in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

  You should also know that werewolves are not the drooling, shirtless mongrels that modern cinema would like us to believe, changing each time the moon becomes full. First of all, it’s not just the moon that brings on the hairy changes in werewolves. If it was, I might have never gotten my first job at the Underworld Detection Agency under Pete Sampson. What edged out the other applicants—a fairly well-put together zombie woman with melon-shaped boobs and a vampire so newly formed that his fangs were still short—was my ability to chain up a grown man in thirty-four seconds flat.

  I licked my lips, choosing my words carefully. “So why now? Why did you come back now?”

  Sampson swallowed slowly, his eyes flicking quickly over mine, then working hard to avoid my questioning stare.

  “Hey, who’s this?” He patted ChaCha who popped up on her popsicle-stick back legs and danced around like the ferocious ball of three-pound fur that she was. I snatched her from under his hand and held her to me.

  “Why now?” I asked again.

  “I couldn’t run anymore.” Sampson’s lips were set in a hard, thin line. “I would have to spend my whole life running. The trackers weren’t going to back down.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “They sent me a message.”

  He paused and I sucked in an anxious breath.

  “There was a den—about six of us, werewolves that had been driven from our previous lives. We were living off the grid in a nothing town north of Anchorage. The townspeople were good to us, didn’t ask questions, but,” he cocked his head, “they knew.”

  I put ChaCha down, hugged my elbows. “What happened?”

  “A few of us went out, decided to check in with one of the satellite UDA offices. When we got back,” Sampson swallowed slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the effort, “the whole den had been slaughtered.”

  “That’s awful.”

  Sampson nodded. “They didn’t stop there. The town had been ravaged, too.”

  I felt myself recoil, felt the ice water race through my veins. “They went after the townspeople? I thought the trackers were only after werewolves.”

  Sampson looked at me, his warm eyes full and wide. “It used to be that way. But this new breed of trackers,” he looked away, breathing out a sigh that seemed to dwarf his shoulders, seemed to carry the weight of the years in it. “They’re relentless. They attack werewolves ... and anyone who helps us.”

  I looked over my shoulder, the hair on my arms standing on end. Sampson reached out to touch my shoulder, then seemed to think better of it, his arm falling listlessly to his side. “I don’t want to put you in any danger, Sophie. I’m only here to warn you and Alex. I couldn’t stand it if I knew that this—” Sampson turned his hands palms up, “that I—was responsible for anything bad happening to you. I’m leaving tonight. I just needed you to be aware.”

  “You can’t keep running. You said so yourself. They’re just going to keep coming after you.”

  Sampson shrugged. “It’s nothing I’m not used to.”

  “No.”
I clamped my hand around Sampson’s arm. “I want to help you.” I paused. “I’m going to help you. Me and Alex—and Will, and Nina—”

  Sampson’s jaw clenched, fire blazing in his eyes. “I don’t want to get any one of you involved in this. It’s my fight.”

  “You said they were coming after the Underworld. It’s our fight now, too.”

  “You don’t understand, Sophie. It’s bad out there.” He gestured absently over his shoulder, toward the San Francisco Bay or the entire world, I couldn’t be sure.

  I sucked in a breath and forced a smile. “I’m okay with bad. I mean, how bad is bad? Werewolf hunters. Silver bullets, right? Heh, that’s nothing. I was almost blown up. And I was kidnapped. Held hostage in a restroom. A public restroom.” I raised my eyebrows, “beat that!” style.

  “After they attacked our den, they decapitated all the townspeople.”

  My stomach lurched and bile tickled the back of my throat. “That’s nothing,” I whispered hoarsely, the smile on my face painted on. “So it’s settled. You’ll stay here.”

  I looked around my apartment, feeling suddenly hopeful. “Yeah. Yeah, you could stay here. They wouldn’t come looking for you here, no one would. And Nina wouldn’t mind—you could probably even stay in her room. And Vlad—Vlad and Nina could probably track the trackers before they tracked you. You know,” I patted my nose with my index finger, “vampires and their sense of smell.”

  Sampson shook his head, a smile that held no joy on his lips. “It doesn’t work like that, Sophie. They won’t stop. If they can’t come after me directly, they’ll go after the things that are closest to me. That would be you, Nina, the whole Underworld. They’ll try and smoke me out by destroying the things that I care about.”

  “Like the townspeople.” The weight of what Sampson was saying, the actual meaning set over me, crushing my heart, squeezing what little hope I had managed to summon. “You came back to warn us.” I hugged my shoulders. “Because they’re already coming here. After us.”

  “They’re coming after the Underworld Detection Agency.” Sampson’s eyes were fixed on mine. “They’re going to come after you.”