Secrets of Skin and Stone

by Wendy Laine

  “There’s also during church. Your house would be empty then, I’d guess.”

  “I don’t go every Sunday.” I side-eyed him. “Do you?”

  He tilted his head. “I don’t. I could. I’ve just never affiliated myself with religion because I stay so busy. Being a Watcher has felt like a type of religion. I could go to church while I’m in Hidden Creek. I imagine that’d be important in this town.”

  I nodded, even as I groaned inside. Mama had asked me a few subtle questions about that, seeing as the Porters were in our congregation. If Gris went, I’d definitely have to go. “Maybe the sacks were a prank?”

  He lifted my hand and kissed it. “No, something has gone sour in Hidden Creek. The sacks in your room, Jester, the grave robbing, Jared, all the fiends. Two of those were aimed at you, so somebody has it out for you. I’m almost certain they figured the sacks weren’t enough so they killed your dog to set fiends on you.”

  “Then it is my fault Jester’s dead.” My stomach hurt just thinking about it.

  “No. Not at all. You’re in the way of something. Jester was in the way.” He frowned. “If we could figure out why, maybe that’d tell us who.”

  “What’s in those pouches that pulls them in?” I asked.

  “They’ve been changing it up. The only thing consistent is the sulfur. Some topical creams contain sulfur. When elderly folks use them, it often makes them the first victims in a population. It’s terrible. Whoever is messing around with those pouches might’ve killed Jester because I came to town, too. It stepped up their timeline. Maybe they figured it was only a matter of time before I started getting the fiend population under control.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Though, if they thought that, they had a higher impression of my abilities than I’ve shown. Hidden Creek is infested with more fiends than all of Atlanta.”

  “Well, how many people around here know what you do?” He’d made it sound like few people outside of family even knew Watchers existed.

  “It depends. I don’t know what Danny told people.” His smile was wry and frustrated. “Also, some people might just…know. There might be a whole line of Watchers here, without an active Watcher in it, but they’d know. Also, my dad wanted me to ask about a pastor here. Pastor Green.”

  I blinked. “Why? You think he’s involved?”

  “My dad says he’s been visiting Phil, and local religious leaders might know about both fiends and Watchers. They did in the past.”

  “Oh.” The stiffness in my body relaxed. It wouldn’t have been right—Pastor Green being out for blood and evil. I needed a constant in this tilting world of myths and gray areas. “Of course he’d go visit Phil. That’s just how Pastor Green is. He’s spent time with everybody who’s had problems. He even insisted on a proper search party after Trina disappeared.” Though why that hadn’t included the creek, I didn’t know.

  “And you trust that he’s just being…Christian?”

  I shrugged. “I’m not as religious as my parents would like me to be, but no, he’d never make my list.”

  “Ahh, your list. The one that had both our names on it.”

  “Mock all you want, but I know whoever killed Jester is on my list, even if I have some vague categories. If you’re certain the sacks were put in my room by a person, that might help narrow our suspects down on account of not everybody has access to my room. Your uncle, Danny’s daddy, he’s not, umm, the right size to be going in my window, but he’d know how to jimmy a lock, I suspect, due to working on machines. Danny would, too, for the same reason. The coach doesn’t live nearby so it’d be noticeable if he was around our house.”

  “There’s my great-uncle.”

  I squinted at him.

  “I’m serious,” he said, seeming to sense my disbelief. “He’s more logical a suspect than Danny’s dad.”

  “Mr. Porter is farm-raised, Gris. I overheard him talking about going in on a cow with our family. My daddy couldn’t turn down that offer fast enough, even after Mr. Porter offered to do the slaughtering. We don’t eat anything that didn’t enter our world by way of a Styrofoam, shrink-wrapped package.”

  “Critch is a former Watcher.”

  “He’s also like a million years old.”

  “Eighty. But he was a Watcher.”

  He kept acting like that was enough, but what happened to Jester was a sight more vile than what I’d seen Gris do, and the way he’d described fiends—they weren’t cute like Jester. “I will say that both Mr. Porter and the coach seem unlikely suspects for putting curse bags in my room.” I winced. “Though, somebody I think put pouches in the gym today, and that might’ve been the coach.”

  Gris pulled me to a stop and turned my way. “What?”

  “Today, when I confronted Hank, he wanted me to meet him in the gym. But when I went into the gym, Hank wasn’t there, fiends were.”

  Gris took a step back before pushing up one of my sleeves to show light scratches. “Piper!”

  I pushed my sleeve back down. “They’re not that bad. I sprayed the fiends with pepper spray and then ran outside. I would’ve been fine if Hank hadn’t kicked my backpack out of the doorway, leaving me in the dark gym with the fiends. Hank was waiting outside and that’s when we talked.”

  “Maybe he set the fiends on you.”

  “I think it was somebody else. Somebody else was inside and laughing at me anyways.”

  Gris closed his eyes and inhaled deeply before opening them. “I swear, Piper, you’re going to be the death of me. You were attacked by fiends—probably these hopped-up, nasty fiends, right before you confronted a bully that might’ve killed your dog and, last night, left a friend to die.”

  “Well, I didn’t know that then.” I gestured with my free hand. “About him leaving Jared to die. But wait until you hear what I learned.” I pulled him back into walking. We’d reached the woods leading to Hidden Creek, and it was kind of sweet to be holding hands and surrounded by all the trees with spring buds on them. “Hank said on the night Trina disappeared, she’d snuck out the window to go skinny dipping in Hidden Creek with her boyfriend, and she didn’t take anything with her. She kept a stash of money under a floorboard, and she left it behind. That’s important.”

  “You can’t keep putting yourself in harm’s way like this. And Hank, well, he’s harm’s way. He might have something to do with his sister’s disappearance.”

  “He doesn’t. Besides, as I said, I had my pepper spray with me.”

  “How do you know he’s not a suspect?”

  “He was too sad.” Okay, it sounded dumb when I said it out loud.

  Gris’s expression seemed to validate my opinion.

  “Well, how about he’s not smart enough?”

  “To kill?” Gris asked.

  “No, he’s not smart enough to make those curse sacks, and he hasn’t really had the opportunity to put them in my room. He attends church, and he’s at school when I’m at school.”

  Gris wiped his free hand down his face. “Anybody with access to the internet could look up instructions and make the sacks. They’re not particular to a certain dark practice, and it’s possible some fool might’ve just wanted to prank you, not knowing it’d draw fiends.”

  “But why kill Jester in that case?”

  “They’re sick and demented and it’s unrelated.”

  “You really think that’s the case?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No, there’s more connections than I’d care to see. The real question is: Do they know what they’re doing?” He shook his head. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but that grave they robbed was a Watcher’s grave. It‘s possible they might be doing something related to that and not just causing mischief.”

  I gave him the flat stare that my mama always gave Dale when he fudged the reality of a situation. “Mischief? If they know they have y’all’s super special bones, what might they be doing?”

  He winced. “They might have found a method to open up a gateway for fie
nds to amass in Hidden Creek. Or it might be related to the birthright—though, if it was, I’d have guessed they’d be trying to kill me.”

  “And nobody’s tried that?”

  He shrugged. “Not with any success.”

  “Obviously,” I said, my tone as dry as the desert.

  We reached the outskirts of Hidden Creek and circled the murky reservoir. It was fully-surrounded by woods and the road we’d walked down to get to it had ruined more than one axle. The shade of the trees meant that the deep reservoir was cold and shadowed most of the year. Several of those trees had fallen during a winter storm, and the sun speckled the far side of Hidden Creek.

  “Not much to look at, is it?” Gris gestured. “I’d expected something bigger. I could swim across this in about fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m sorry our itty bitty reservoir isn’t up to your high standards, Gris. The creek that feeds it is over there.”

  “That tiny trickle? You sure you don’t want to go skinny dipping?” Gris slid me a mischievous look.

  “That water must be freezing, and do you even know how filthy it is?” My cheeks felt hot just from the suggestion.

  He laughed. We were talking about dark rituals, murder, and skinny dipping—and he laughed. “Why are we here, then?”

  I shrugged and peered at the water. “I don’t know. This is where Trina and her boyfriend were headed the night they disappeared.”

  “A year ago,” he reminded me.

  “Yes.” Dropping his hand, I squinted at the water that now had sunlight flickering across it.

  “What?”

  Looking at a nearby tree, I said, “Hey, help me up into that tree, will you? I want to see something.”

  “You’re going up into a tree?”

  “Gris, I’m a Southern girl. I’ve climbed a tree or two in my lifetime.” He helped me up, and I’m sure he smothered one of his charming grins as his hands lingered on my thighs. Brushing off my hands on my jeans—thoroughly—I looked down into the water from above.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “There’s something reflective, but it’s too deep to really tell. This was all in shade last year, though. We had a bunch of trees come down around here in November.”

  Gris swore.

  “Don’t profane.”

  He pointed at me. “Stay right up there. You hear?”

  “In a tree? Why?”

  “Because you’re safe. And you might want to close your eyes.”

  “Closing my eyes while I’m up in a tree isn’t very safe.”

  “Fine. Then you can watch me do some skinny dipping.” He pulled off his shirt.

  I closed my eyes. Most of the way.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gris

  The water looked cool and deep. Probably too cool for most people to swim in. But even if it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a pool table, I could still go in; water held darkness like the night did. Watchers could absorb enough to change partially, even during the day. I could use my thicker Watcher skin to keep me from freezing long enough to check out whatever Piper was seeing.

  I stripped down to my boxers and dove into the reservoir. The water made my skin tingle. I wrapped the shadows around me. My skin felt slicker and my muscled form was much heavier, but I was stronger.

  Keeping my eyes open, I plunged underwater. The world below the water opened up for me as bright as if it was no deeper than a few feet. The cold and the darkness likely prevented the locals from exploring down too far. It was about thirty feet, give or take, and murky since locals had thrown junk in. Not that this was unusual. Hopefully, whoever’d thrown that fridge there felt a stab of guilt, though.

  Piper‘d probably seen the car. I swam toward it. Not an old one from what I could see, and it didn’t seem to be in pieces. It was an older car, sure, but not in such a bad way you’d think somebody would throw it in here instead of selling it for parts. Had somebody gotten drunk and crashed it? How long had it been down here?

  I approached it from behind. The trunk and license plate came into view first. Tennessee plates.

  Then, I knew exactly how long it’d been down here. It’d been down here as long as Trina and her boyfriend had been missing. Damn.

  …

  I wasn’t the chattiest guest for dinner, but all that time I’d spent underwater helping the sheriff tow out the car had guaranteed I had an appetite, and Mrs. Devon’s cooking wasn’t to be missed.

  I knew Piper wanted to talk about it. She’d gone running home to call the sheriff. My replacement phone hadn’t arrived yet.

  Piper was nearly vibrating in her seat beside me now. Her brother Dale had tried a few pointed questions before his mother had shut him down.

  They knew it was Trina and her boyfriend. That had gone around the whole town before I’d even returned. Hidden Creek was turning out to be so much more than I’d bargained for. Any reasonable person would’ve asked for help. Hell, any reasonable person would have left town.

  I wasn’t turning out to be very reasonable.

  When Mrs. Devon announced she was making cookies for dessert, but they wouldn’t be ready for an hour, I gave in to Piper’s pointed invitations to go for a walk.

  She dragged me by our joined hands toward the barn, cutting across the field—due to her thing with straight lines. I could feel somebody in the Porters’ place watching us. Either Critch or somebody else. Hell, it might be Danny’s little sisters. I was getting paranoid. Hanging out with dead bodies could do that to you.

  Just outside the barn, we both stopped. She stared at the patch of peeled paint, right beside the door with a focus that seemed like it could light the barn on fire. Then, with a guilty look back at me, Piper peeled a piece off.

  “So, you’re the one desecrating this hallowed ground,” I said.

  “Hush.”

  I winced. “Actually, forget I used that wording.”

  “Why?”

  “Between the cemetery and the car—I’ve had enough to do with dead bodies as I ever plan to.”

  “Tell me about it,” she said with a sigh that made me smile.

  “Oh yeah?”

  She looked downright traumatized. “My day before I met up with Hank was more disturbing than after, and that’s saying something.”

  “How’s that?” I knew she’d come home after her brother, and her mom had mentioned something about a field trip.

  “Let’s just say that I don’t have a future ahead of me involving corpses.”

  “Well, you’re limiting your career choices, but I think you might manage.”

  She shuddered. It was adorable. It got even more so as I watched her repeat that hay bale touching routine she’d done the first day we met. “Don’t!” She held up a finger when she caught me watching her.

  “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “I like it here,” Piper said as she touched the last bale of hay. After scrutinizing it, she leaned against it.

  “I like that barn pixies like it here.” I smiled at her confusion. “You, that first day. In that dress with your hair pulled back, you looked sweet and temperamental. Like a pixie.”

  “Pixies are temperamental?”

  “Yes. Plus, you’re much smaller than me. You seemed so tiny in this wreck of a barn.”

  “Have you ever swung from the rafters in a barn?” she asked.

  I looked up. “In this barn?” Sometimes, her obsessiveness seemed to skip. How would she rationalize that as being safe?

  She pointed up at the thick loops of leather on the rafters above the big mounds of hay. “I put those up so I wouldn’t get slivers.”

  “Of course you did.”

  She climbed up the ladder to the hayloft while I watched her from below. In fact, she had my rapt attention.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “Your legs. You’ve got great legs, Piper.”

  “Gris.” Her scolding tone made me grin and want to kiss her. She jumped to the first leather strap a
nd hung, putting her exposed stomach at my eye level. Thin pale cuts feathered her skin, with a slightly pink line here and there. Another cut zone.

  “Stop,” she whispered, biting her lip.

  I met her gaze. “It’s fine, Piper.”

  “You’re not acting like it is.”

  I had to. I had to be okay with it because it wasn’t my place to judge what she did to survive. Stepping forward, I kissed her stomach, making her lose her grip. I wrapped my arms around her waist as I caught her, letting her drop down the length of my body. When we were nose to nose, I said, “We all carry stories on our skin, sweetheart. Your skin just happens to be beautiful without adding to it.” I meant every word.

  “Grisham,” she said, using my full name. The lack of eye contact softened any rebuke. Piper pushed out of my arms before scrambling back up the ladder, avoiding my gaze. When she reached the second leather strap, she asked, “Aren’t you gonna try it?”

  “I’m not convinced those beams will hold me. I probably weigh twice as much as you. Besides, the view from down here isn’t bad.”

  She kicked at me as I followed along beneath her—both because of the view and because I wasn’t convinced those decaying boards wouldn’t break.

  “You should try it, Gris, it’s like flying.”

  I laughed. I’d spent hours in and out of water, helping tow out a car of corpses because the sheriff’s department couldn’t handle the temperature or see the car. I should be grim and frozen. Instead, I was smiling ear-to-ear and warm from just being close to Piper, who was blushing again.

  “I’ll be the judge of that since I can tell you, with some accuracy, if that’s true.” I vaulted onto the platform, not even bothering with the ladder.

  Piper cannonballed into a bale of hay and, a moment later, I dropped down next to her.

  “You’re right. That feels like flying.”

  “Really?” Her arched brows called me a liar.

  “Yep, sorta.” Leaning over her, I said, “Of course, this feels better than flying.” I pulled her below me, lining up our bodies, and kissed her. The softness of her mouth was more exhilarating than a swift dive while in the air. I curled my hands into her hair. The strands felt so good between my fingers. Her gasp against my lips encouraged me to nudge her mouth open with my tongue and—