Secrets of Skin and Stone

by Wendy Laine

  “How?”

  “I spoke with the librarian today and asked her more about him shooting the library. It turns out there’s a plaque in the reference section saying it was donated by his ex-wife—she ran off with this estate lawyer. Also, I called the place he’s being held and he’s still there. According to the librarian, it’s not the sort of place you can wander in and out of.” Her hand hovered over the names. “Now, I’m down to nine names.” She frowned. “I’m not crossing out Coach Laramie, though, ‘cause he really does hate me.” She wanted to. She wanted to be down to an even number of suspects again.

  Finally, she put the pen down and headed toward her bed. My eyes followed the sway of her hips. It was gonna be a long night.

  “Maybe you should wear more clothes tonight,” I murmured.

  Piper eased open drawers slowly, then donned a T-shirt on over her tank top and sweatpants over her boxer shorts. She crawled into bed after making certain that metal flashlight was on her bedside table. She wouldn’t need it. I intended to make sure she got a nice, long night’s rest, free from fiends.

  “I can’t even remember the last time I was this warm,” she whispered. “Gris?”

  “Yes?”

  “Just checking. I couldn’t see you.”

  “I’ll be here all night, sweetheart. I won’t let anything get you.”

  “What if you fall asleep?”

  “I don’t sleep at night. Not usually. It’s why I didn’t go to public school. That and I wanted to be done with school faster.” And my changing wasn’t as deliberate as my parents might’ve liked when I’d been learning how to control it. My wings had sprouted for first time after a weird dream—an embarrassment few boys ever had to deal with. They shot straight through my pajamas and scared me to death. It would’ve been nice to have somebody my age to talk it through with, but it wasn’t something I shared around. It was a centuries-old secret.

  “Do you like being on your own like this?” she asked.

  I remembered what her mother had said about Piper trying to get far away from here. I couldn’t blame her for wanting to be away from prying eyes. I’d only had a few days of Hidden Creek, and the town was peeling back the layers of my secrets. I didn’t care for it even a bit.

  “No. Well, sometimes. I like not having to answer to anybody, but sometimes that just makes the whole thing lonely. I like my family, but my mom likes to run my life. My aunt is more casual. Since I got here, I’ve realized how quiet an empty house is.”

  “Did you interrogate your uncle and cousin like we decided?”

  I pushed off the beanbag and sat on the edge of her bed.

  She tucked the quilt shyly around herself.

  “I talked to them about Hank and his dad mostly, thinking I’d get an idea about their thoughts while I did. I can’t decide what to think of them. I can’t see Danny’s dad killing a dog—unless it was an accident or the dog was attacking somebody. But what you described couldn’t have happened by accident.”

  Piper wagged a finger at me. “Don‘t fall for that.”

  “What?”

  “You’re making the evidence fit the suspects.”

  “I just can’t see a clear motive for my uncle or Danny. On the other hand, Hank…”

  “Yeah, but don’t forget that plain, ornery meanness is a motive also.”

  “That’s why I mentioned Hank and I brought up my great-uncle. Critch is not right. The more I talk to him the more I realize he’s got some terrifying ideas.” I wasn’t going to go into those ideas. At least I’d settled, in my mind, that Critch wasn’t implying Piper was my long-lost cousin with that comment about her looking like Tawna.

  “I’ll talk to Hank next, then.”

  “No, you won’t. Bastard didn’t think twice about jumping me with a group, and if he did kill your dog, he’s dangerous alone, too.”

  Rather than agreeing, she said, “It doesn’t sound like you crossed anybody off our list.”

  “No, but I did find out that Hank and his dad dislike you because they’re both jealous.”

  “Of what?” She looked so genuinely perplexed.

  “Because you’re smart and beautiful, and Hank’s dad once had eyes for your mom.”

  “Ew.” Piper wrinkled her nose. “Sometimes I can’t figure out why we moved here.”

  She’d ignored the first part of my statement, but the soft pink blush on her cheeks said she’d heard it.

  “Tomorrow, you’ll tackle Coach Laramie, and I’ll keep looking at the other suspects,” I said.

  “Next time, you should find out enough so that we can cross them off. At least one of them.” Her eyes darted to the list on the desk. It was killing her that it had an odd number of names.

  “Maybe I’ll eliminate two of them.”

  Her aggravated frown made me laugh.

  “You could also add Critch’s name.”

  “On which page? My list is still for suspects that might have killed my dog.” There was a stubborn wrinkle between her eyebrows. It figured that I’d be attracted to a girl as pig-headed as me.

  Leaning over, I kissed her forehead right above that wrinkle. “There. You’re all tucked in. I could tell you a bedtime story.”

  She reached out and shoved my shoulder as I got up.

  I dropped back down into the corner and opened my laptop. I tried to concentrate on the screen, but I could see Piper wriggling anxiously under the blankets. She glanced from me to the ceiling to the window. The darkness built outside as fiends approached. Humming softly, I wrapped the shadows around Piper while trying not to slip into form. It was a pain, and my fingertips tingled from my talons a few times before Piper’s breathing lengthened and deepened.

  I took off my shirt just in case I needed to transform. It’d been hard enough to bind the darkness around her without loosing the Watcher inside me. It’d seemed to settle her down, though. It settled me down, but maybe that was the Watcher side of me comforted by the approach of midnight—the deepest part of the night.

  “Sixteen,” Piper murmured, turning onto her other side where I could see a near scowl tugging at her lips. Even when she wasn’t bedeviled, Piper was…troubled.

  “Hush.” I pulled the dark around her again.

  My talons slid out. The night was deeper, and there was a presence prowling around outside. Crap. Fiends were coming. There might be something buried on her property dragging them near. I closed down my laptop and got to my feet. I wasn’t about to transform fully if I could help it. I only needed my talons to get to their hearts. Transforming partway was tougher, but I could do it. As understanding as Piper might’ve been about things that crept in the shadows—that wouldn’t extend to dating one.

  The first few fiends I shoved back as they entered the room through cracks near the floor. Light specks freckled my vision from the amount of power it took to maintain a partial transformation. My body didn’t want to be part Watcher and part Gris.

  Two fiends snuck in at once, and I knew it was time to stop shoving them away and start killing. The first one was easy enough. I pinned it to the ground with one hand, while reaching into its chest with the other. The second fiend had made it to Piper before I could snatch it. To maximize my speed, so I wouldn’t be repeating last night, I broke the restraint on my form. My wings slid out as I dove toward it. At full strength, I was a force to be reckoned with. I yanked it from Piper with the darkness and my talons all at once. Its heart dripped through my fingers and vaporized in the light.

  Light!

  The beam glinted off my talons. It was a circle on my thick, gray chest. The rush of adrenaline created a haze in my brain, as did the blood pumping through my veins from the burst of speed, power, and heightened awareness that came from my Watcher state. For a moment, I could only marvel at the gloss on my long, black talons before it occurred to me the beam of light was not good. Not good at all.

  I looked up from my talons right into Piper’s wide eyes. She was standing beside her bed and the b
eam of her flashlight blinded me.

  Chapter Twelve

  Piper

  One minute I was staring at something that seemed to be some mixture of man and monster and snap, I was staring at Gris who groaned with a twitch of pain.

  “Gris?”

  “Yes?” His voice sounded raspy and uncertain. A thin sheen of sweat covered his bare, upper torso.

  My own breath quickened. It was impossible, but it was. I knew it was. I knew what I’d seen. “You were just a…what were you?” I kept the light trained on his chest. That had happened. I gestured with my free hand. “I woke up to this flash of ice crawling across my skin.”

  “A fiend got in.” He winced in the light as if it bothered him, but maybe it was my staring—‘cause he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “I turned on my light, and you were here, but you weren’t you.” It sounded ridiculous to my ears. I couldn’t believe what I’d seen, but I couldn’t deny it, either.

  “Of course I was.”

  “No.”

  “It was just your imagination.” Gris’s eyebrows scrunched up as his forehead wrinkled. Even if I hadn’t seen his eyebrows draw together, I could tell by his tone—trying too hard to be casual. He was lying his sorry tail off.

  Ice shot through me, worse than the fiend’s touch. It stole my breath.

  He was lying to my face.

  Worse—he was trying to make me think I was seeing things in order to keep it secret.

  I knew what I saw. He could turn into something else. He had been partly a creature of some kind.

  “So you’re saying I’m crazy?” I clenched my jaw tight enough to break teeth.

  I wanted to trust him so darn bad. I did.

  Please, Gris.

  Behind his eyes, I could see him running through options. His gaze was unfocused and his forehead was furrowed. I suspected the options he was considering weren’t lie or tell the truth, but lie or dodge his way out with charm.

  He looked at the window. “I ought to go. You need your sleep, and I ought to go.” He headed toward the corner to gather his stuff.

  Ouch. That stung in my heart. I wrapped my arm across myself and dug my nails into my skin. It didn’t hurt enough through the sweatshirt. If it’d hurt enough, maybe I could be as casual as he was managing. Instead, I was all on display. I clenched tighter.

  I couldn’t believe Gris preferred having me doubt my sanity over actually revealing the truth about himself. I had too much pride for this. I firmed up my spine.

  “Fine,” I said. “Leave. But, don’t come back. I won’t want anything to do with you.” It came out squeaky and hesitant, but it came out. The light from the flashlight in my hand was still trained in his direction, so I saw him freeze.

  “Don‘t do this, Piper.” He didn’t turn around. “There are some things you don’t want to know—that you don’t want to see.”

  “The truth, you mean? So, it’s okay for you to expose every part of my life and drag my secrets out, but that’s just me, isn’t it? Well, damn you, Gris. Damn you. And I won’t even beg your pardon for swearing. I’ve a right. You even know what I say in my sleep.”

  “It’s just counting. It’s not the same.”

  “It’s not just counting, and you know it.”

  I waited for him to do something—to say something, but he just stood there, staring down at the floor, his stuff in one hand, and his back to me. Finally, I realized he was waiting for me to relent, hoping for it. Maybe he reckoned I’d doubt what I saw if he was quiet long enough, still long enough. Hard to believe I’d thought he was different. I’d kissed him this last time. I was such a fool. A naive fool.

  I sniffed and shook my head. I had too much pride for this. “Look, now we both know something about the other we’ll never tell anybody. You can leave, and we’ll pretend the other doesn’t exist. We can do our own investigations. You can leave Jester’s murder to me, and you can do…whatever else. As long as you stay away from me.”

  He’d probably be gone soon anyway, leaving behind memories that I’d worry over at night. Hidden Creek would poke at the wounds. But it’d only be a few months, and then I’d be gone. I’d blow out of here and forget Gris. Having somebody in the world who knew about me made me feel itchy and uncomfortable. I had ways for dealing with that, though. I threw a glance at my side table, waiting for him to leave.

  “Is that what you want?” Gris asked, interrupting my thinking. “Now that you know something dark about me, or think you do?”

  ‘Course, I didn’t want that. I bathed in the darkness every day. I breathed it. Lived it. My thoughts were all painted dark.

  “No, but I’m not gonna let you lie to me and act like it’s okay.” That hadn’t sounded so wishy-washy in my head. “And, apparently, you’d rather I believe I was crazy than know the truth. It’s different when it’s your secrets, isn’t it?”

  He turned with a fury in his eyes and his jaw tight. “So, you’ll be going with option B, where I tell you everything about me, and you want nothing to do with me because it’s ugly and unnatural? Sometimes the lie is kinder than the truth, Piper.”

  His anger made me take half a step back. “Yeah, that set of rules comes in handy when it’s you and not me, doesn’t it?” I liked things even. I liked things fair. This wasn’t, either, and it wasn’t the way I lived. My skin itched. My skin itched so bad. And the screaming in my head wouldn’t quit—it was so loud. My mind was so crowded.

  “It’s something that comes into play when one of us is a monster and the other isn’t.”

  I swallowed thickly. I was two seconds from bawling. Two seconds. I felt shivery and weak and tired of standing. “Fine, if that’s the case, you may wanna tell me which of us is which. ‘Cause I’ve thought I was a monster nearly my whole life.”

  The fight went out of him. His shoulders dropped, and he said my name on a sigh. “You’re not a monster.”

  “I don’t think you are, either.”

  “You will.”

  “I won’t.” I darn near growled. “Gris, when have you thought I didn’t know my own mind? Either fess up or shut up and go.”

  One corner of his mouth hitched up. “Either fess up or shut up and go?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  His shrug was defeated. He dropped his bag on the ground. Gris’s fists opened and closed at his sides before he exhaled thickly. “Fine. I’m a Watcher. One of us is born into my family in each generation. In other families, too, but it’s kept secret. I can control darkness. I get rid of fiends in areas where they become a problem.”

  “You looked different.”

  “That’s what I look like in Watcher form.” He glanced down at the floor, refusing to meet my eyes.

  “You had wings.”

  Shrug.

  “You can fly?” I asked.

  Another shrug. His mouth was set in a mulish line, as if any future comments would be similarly shrugged out.

  I don’t speak shrug.

  “Change back.”

  “No!” he whispered through his teeth, his eyes once again filled with anger. It was so sudden that I took a step back, bumping against my bed, and almost dropping the flashlight.

  “Why?” I blinked back sudden tears. I rarely cried unless something major happened. What was wrong with me? Well, besides the fact that Gris’d acted like I’d slapped him.

  “I’m not about to change just to satisfy your curiosity.”

  The emotional punch in his words knocked the breath out of me. My heart wrenched. He didn’t know me at all. Gris was all pretty words til it was about him. This wasn’t even. If it wasn’t even, it wasn’t gonna work between us. If he believed I was just curious, it wouldn’t have worked anyways.

  “You don’t know anything about me, Gris Caso.”

  I flicked off the flashlight and climbed into bed, yanking the quilt over my head. If I was gonna bawl my eyes out, I’d do it hidden underneath the covers. I bunched myself into a smaller target and started
counting in my head. Two. Four. Six. Eight. After one sniff, I felt the bed beside me tip as Gris sat down.

  “Go away,” I whispered. “Just go away.” Crap. I could hear the watery sound of tears in my voice.

  “No, Piper. I, uhh, maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have.” Another sniff, and I pressed my fists against my eyes to keep the tears in.

  Gris rubbed my shoulder with light strokes. “My cousin hasn’t seen me in my Watcher form.”

  “Yeah? Do you know what he says in his sleep? Do you kiss him?” I swallowed more tears before saying, “If you do, don’t tell me ‘cause that’s so wrong.”

  Gris laughed softly. “Come out and talk to me. I swear I’ll be nice.”

  “Will you show me?”

  He flinched, making the mattress twitch. His hand stopped for a moment. Then, he trailed it along my shoulder. “We‘ll trade.”

  I waited. Trading might balance this out. If we both risked getting hurt, we’d be even.

  “If I show you what I look like in Watcher form, you’ll work on being okay in your own skin, too. I trust you—you trust me.”

  I ducked out from underneath the quilt. I could see his shadow in the dim light of my nightlight.

  “You mean not…” I nodded at my shoulder.

  “If that’s what it means to you. Do you want to stop?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it? I’d never wanted to start, but it’d become a habit, and I couldn’t break it—not without a good reason. “Yes. I think so. Yes.”

  “Then, your debt with the world is settled. You’re good just how you are. You don’t have to pay for being different.”

  “You want me to stop on account of it being creepy?”

  “No, I just want you to be okay with being you. You defined what that meant. It looks painful, but we all wear our past in some way.” He leaned forward and wiped a tear from my cheek. “Trade? You promise?”

  “I get the flashlight on.”

  He inhaled, appearing to consider it—but it seemed more for show. “Fine. You have to promise, though.”