The Grimm Files Collection Boxed Set

by Selene Charles

  I thinned my lips. Things had cooled off between Maddox and me recently, probably beginning right around the time he’d told me of my dead lover’s return.

  My stomach quivered, and I bit the inside of my cheek. The last thing I wanted was this tension between us. If I was being honest, for a woman who’d never fancied herself being the type who needed or even wanted a partner, I kicked arse with Maddox.

  Our methodology was sometimes messy, and while we didn’t always agree on things, no one could deny we got things done. If I had to be saddled with a partner, even I could admit I couldn’t have gotten a better one.

  I sighed and held up my hands. “Look, my night was shite, and this morning wasn’t much better. Georgie had the right of it. I got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Can I get a mulligan?”

  I grabbed his forearm as he went to take his next step, clamping down hard on his elbow, my eyes imploring. I wasn’t used to playing nice with others—everyone knew that about me—yet for some strange reason I found myself trying harder with Maddox than I had with just about anyone ever.

  He stopped walking, not looking at me as he ground his molars. The shadow of his trimmed beard caused his strong jaw to look even more razor-sharp than usual.

  And just as I was sure he’d brush me off and walk away, Maddox sighed, glancing side eye down at me, lips still set in a thin, tight line of displeasure. But his shoulders were no longer stiff and erect, and at least he was looking at me. That was progress, so far as I was concerned.

  “I know you think,” he said in that deeply cultured Landian voice of his, “that I harp on you. I vow, Elle that I am not. But I am daily haunted by visions of this male, and I don’t think it’s wise for you to continue pretending that— ”

  I glanced up and down the busy, smog-choked streets before sighing deeply. I’d vowed when Maddox and I had become partners that I would try. So I tried.

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I held up my hand, cutting him off, and shook my head. “Maddox, I respect you. You’re my partner, but more than that, you’re a damn fine detective, and I trust your gut—implicitly.”

  “I sense a but ,” he grunted, and I shrugged.

  “But…” I clamped down on my tongue. Talking about this always churned up all the bad memories—that sense of quiet desperation that I’d felt when I’d watched Hook breathe his last in my arms. I squeezed my eyes shut, shaking just a little. “But,” I repeated firmly before looking back at him, “I… I cannot believe that this is real. Because if I believe this is real, I’m not sure I could be okay. Ever again.”

  He inhaled deeply, glancing over toward his left, looking beyond frustrated with my constant denial of his vision.

  Leaning up on tiptoe, feeling desperate he hear me out for once, I grabbed his face in my hands, forced him to look down at me, and opened up to him completely.

  “You and I, we understand what it is to lose, right?”

  His nostrils flared, and a smile that was less a smile and more a snarl flitted across his full lips. Maddox rarely spoke of Mariposa—the daughter he’d lost to still-mysterious-to-me circumstances. It was a sore subject for him, and I never used his daughter to dig at him, but I had to make him understand where I was coming from.

  “I held him as he breathed his last, when he stopped breathing completely. And I held him when he turned to sea foam in my arms. A tender mercy, I’d granted him, returning him to the world he loved most. Then, Maddox, I swam away. I swam away from him. I left him scattered to the tides. Do you get that? Do you understand what I’m saying? I left him.” My breath hitched, and I shuddered, clutching my arms to my chest as I thought about that terrible day. “I. Left. Him.”

  Maddox’s lashes fluttered, and the stern displeasure shifted into empathy. “Gods,” he rumbled, and I swallowed hard.

  Not even Ichabod had known that part. I’d never shared Hook’s death with another.

  “So please, I beg you, if… if you ever cared for me at all, please leave this be.”

  He closed his eyes and nodded once. “As you wish, Detective Elle.”

  Not just Detective, not quite Elle, but it was good enough. I gave a hard nod.

  He looked at me for several seconds then slowly lifted his hand and brushed his knuckles down my cheek, just barely grazing me, not lingering long. But I felt the heat of his touch move all the way through me and knew that my siren’s mark upon my forehead was starting to glow.

  “I hear you,” he said, and I gave him a wimpy smile of thanks.

  After that, we turned and headed as one toward the precinct and walked up the steps at the same time. Maddox opened the door for me, and immediately when I entered, I heard catcalls and chuckles, and even a few of the more daring cops wolf-whistled.

  “Damn, Elle, never knew that’s what you were hiding beneath those arse-ugly trousers you always wore,” someone rumbled to the right of me. It sounded like a troll’s voice. Trolls all spoke with the same inflection, as though they’d swallowed a bag of rocks for breakfast.

  I frowned, confused for half a second until I remembered what I was wearing. Glancing down at myself, I growled, then with a tight smirk, I gave them all a one-fingered salute.

  Maddox snickered beside me.

  “You gonna let her do us that way, Hatter?” someone else guffawed. The tone was soft, delicate. Faery blood. Recently, we’d gotten a rash of new cadets, and it was hard for me to place who was who anymore.

  Maddox shrugged and grinned affably. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, rookie, it’s that you never place a leash on a female—especially not a siren.”

  “Hey, Maddox…” This time, it was a female beat cop—Jane, Janey, something. I was shite with names. All I knew was she was a Valkyrie with clear-glass eyes and she was one badass bitch. “You should check Elle’s purse. Heard she’s got your balls in there.”

  “Touché, Róta,” he said with a smirk.

  There was ribald laughter, and even I grinned at that.

  Róta though? I frowned and leaned in toward Maddox. “That’s her name? Róta?”

  He snorted and said beneath his breath, “You’ve been here years… me, two months… and still you don’t know Róta. She’s only been working at this precinct for seven years. Let me guess. You thought her Emily or some such?”

  “Jane, actually. Janey.” I shrugged. “You know I’m shite with names.”

  He smirked. “That, I do, Detective.”

  He still wouldn’t say my name, but I didn’t sense anything other than easy banter when he’d said it. I rolled my eyes, but I grinned.

  Bo suddenly popped her head out of her office. It was as if she had a sixth sense the instant that Maddox and I showed up. Her finger was crooked, and she urged us to her silently while holding a phone on her shoulder as she spoke into the receiving end in short, angry bursts. Then she promptly disappeared.

  I turned to glance up at Maddox with my eyebrow raised. “What did you do now?”

  He snorted but said nothing more.

  We got to her door, and I tapped on the frosted glass panel. Bo, who was dressed in a white pantsuit, glanced up and ushered us in.

  She’d dyed her hair recently and had instantly looked at least a decade younger for it. It was no longer graying blond but now a striking shade of raven’s-wing black that shimmered in the sun with hints of dark green and indigo. She’d lopped most of it off, and it was an elfin length that framed her square features, giving her an androgynous look that worked for her. Her eyes were large and warm brown and bloodshot, attesting to the weeks we’d all been working like dogs to bring down the shifter syndicate.

  “Yes. I hear you. Yup. They’re going. That’s what I said, Draven.” She all but growled the last word before tersely snapping, “Later.” Then she hung up the phone with a resounding finality that made me want to clap.

  Draven, also known as Commissioner Marcel, was a hard-assed vampire who’d once upon a time been a warlord of some not so ins
ignificant standing and still thought he could lord it over us peons.

  “I take it Commissioner Hard-Arse is giving you guff again?”

  Bo, who had her forehead in her hands and was rubbing the bridge of her nose with her pinky fingers glanced up, one eyebrow lifted as she clearly debated whether to chew my arse out for my lack of respect or just let it slide.

  She rolled her eyes, and I elbowed Maddox in the side, feeling as though I’d just won a minor victory.

  “You could say that again. He’s lobbying for the royal-advisor position and is on my ass to bring down the Slasher Gang sooner rather than later. You know how political power grabs go.” She sighed and shook her head. “Anyway, we’re not here to talk about the commissioner.” She flicked her wrist then paused, eyeing me with a calculating gleam. “Like the dress, Detective.”

  Now it was Maddox’s turn to elbow me with a cocky smirk.

  I wrinkled my nose. “Don’t remind me. Damn faeries made me wear it.”

  “Well, ironically enough, the dress has come in handy today.” She leaned back in her seat, arms laid over her stomach as she tapped her thumbs together. The shepherd-staff pendant resting between the V of her breasts gleamed a dim blue. “What were you and Maddox working on again?”

  Scratching the back of my neck, I got a bad feeling. I glanced sideways at Hatter. “Oh, um— ”

  Maddox cleared his throat, stepping forward, total professionalism. “New lead on the bank of Grimm rob— ”

  “Right.” She dipped her head. “Right. Change of plans.”

  I inhaled, pretty sure I wasn’t going to like where this was going. “You do realize it took me weeks to get my CI to come out of hiding long enough to even talk with me?” I tapped my chest. “This lead is solid. I feel it in my bones. He mentioned something about sands I’d want to see.”

  “I get that, Elle. I do,” she said, mouth stern and face serious. “That’s why Crane’ll take point on it now. Good work, both of you. But there is a more pressing matter at the moment.”

  She opened a drawer in her desk and pulled out a calendar then jotted something down quickly.

  She was trying to throw me a bone, but I wasn’t happy. Yes, if there was anyone I could trust to take my Intel, it was Crane, but I’d been working five weeks on that lead, and losing out was like a kick in the nuts.

  Rumor had it there’d recently been a major shift in power players and that the syndicate wasn’t as unified as they’d once been. Lately, there’d been witnesses talking about magick, some high-level super-bad-juju kind of stuff, as in possibly the work of a dark mage, which, if true, could mean things were about to get so much worse than any of us could even imagine.

  And this was bad because dark mages weren’t technically supposed to exist anymore. There’d been a purge in the last century, and let’s just say things got really heated, as in burning-at-the-stake kind of heated. It had taken the might of many different species working together to bring them down. Grimm had suffered nearly catastrophic and irreparable damage thanks to the bloodlust of the dark ones. No one really believed what we were dealing with now could in any way be linked to a dark practitioner because they hadn’t simply been burned—all their arcane knowledge had been as well to prevent another uprising.

  But Maddox had been getting flashes lately, images of pending doom that made me feel breathless when I thought about it for too long.

  Rage stirred through my bones, my blood. This was my case, dammit, not Crane’s. Though I liked him, that wasn’t the point. I shook my head, biting down on the inside of my cheek.

  Bo lifted a dark eyebrow, staring unflinchingly at me. “You have something to say, Detective?”

  Maddox shifted on his heels, his hip just barely grazing my own, which for him was as good as yelling at me to “shut my damn mouth and dance.”

  He had such a hard-on for Bo. He was always talking about how intelligent, how fashionable she was, just like the Landians—which, technically, she was—and how wise she was. It would almost make a girl believe her partner and her boss had a secret bumping-fuzzies kind of thing going on, except for the fact that Bo didn’t swing that way and didn’t seem to notice Maddox much at all other than as one of the best minds in the precinct.

  I smiled, showing nothing but teeth, fingers flexing tight by my side. “Nope, course not, boss.”

  She didn’t look the slightest bit convinced by my half-hearted attempt at docility.

  “What do you need from us, Captain?” my freaking perky partner chimed in. I swallowed a growl.

  “Tonight, King Midas is hosting a gala.”

  “Oh, for fecks sake,” I groaned and she shot me a dirty look, but I shook my head. “Please, don’t tell me we’ve just been yanked off our lead for some babysitting bullshite.”

  Her nostrils flared. “I don’t think I need to remind you, Detective ,” she said crisply, quickly putting me in my place, “that so long as I wear this badge”—she tapped the captain emblem pinned to her lapel—“you do what I say. The days of you running off and doing whatever the hells you please are long gone.”

  “The hells?” I growled. “I’ve never done that.”

  She lifted her chin. “I had a very enlightening chat with the bureau yesterday. You’re skating a very fine line here, Elle.”

  She didn’t say she was only trying to help me, but I heard the words loud and clear.

  I shouldn’t say anything, but that was bullshite, and she knew it. “Oh yeah. Let me guess—Crowley, right?”

  Maddox glared down at me, but I refused to look up at him. I knew what he was thinking. So yeah, maybe I shouldn’t have let the street rat Aladdin go when I’d clearly been told by the department that BS was on their way to interrogate him, but he’d only been a boy. A homeless, dirty child desperate to get food to his family, and in no way was he connected to the Slashers. It was just unfortunate that he’d decided to wear a vest threaded through with their black feathers. Everyone was so jumpy about the Slashers that even a child came under extreme scrutiny for having a momentary lapse in judgment. So yeah, I’d released him, and I still wasn’t sorry about it.

  Crowley, of course, had blustered and raged at me for it, but I’d just feigned ignorance that he’d wanted the kid thrown in solitary. No way in the twin hells was I going to let that arsehole detain a child, and he might have been pissed about it and even known I was lying, but that in and of itself wasn’t a crime. I’d broken no laws, and that was the part that, no doubt, chaffed Crowley’s hide. The arrogant prick. He would tattle on me like a little bitch.

  “You know I can’t tell you that, Elle. You’re a damn fine detective. You and your partner.”

  I opened my mouth, but suddenly, Maddox’s foot was on mine, and he was pressing down just shy of bruising my toes. Whipping my head around, I glowered at him and yanked my foot back. He looked less than impressed by my show of temper.

  “I daresay one of the best we’ve ever seen.”

  “You mean the best,” I muttered, and Maddox lifted his foot to try again. I whipped my finger up and tensed, letting him know in no uncertain terms that things would end badly if he stomped on me again.

  Smart man that he was, he didn’t make another attempt at it.

  “Look, here is the truth, if you want it. Yeah, this is babysitting bullshit, but no, it can’t be helped. We know the Slasher Gang is targeting high-profile locales—banks, high-end exhibits, galas such as the one King Midas is hosting this evening. It only makes sense that we will need eyes and ears that I can trust on scene. Rumors are floating on the streets about some big heist getting ready to go down. Our analysts are sure this is where it’ll happen.”

  Some of the fire went out of me. It did make a certain kind of sense. The type of event where jewels, gold, and unimaginable wealth were out on full display would be like ringing the dinner bell to hellhounds. Yet… I glanced over at Maddox. He was looking straight ahead at the wall over Bo’s shoulder, his one hunter-green eye blazing like
sun-stroked emeralds.

  He was witnessing something yet to come. I frowned, questioning how much I could really afford to believe his premonitions. Hook was impossible, and if even one of Maddox’s premonitions was false, it brought into question all his other ones. Just how much of what he thought was right actually was? What if he’d just been extraordinarily lucky?

  Yet the odds of having that kind of luck were next to impossible, which put me right back to square one. Just what was going on with Hatter’s ability?

  It only just dawned on me that the captain had stopped speaking. I glanced down at her, but she was looking at Hatter, consternation pinching her eyebrows.

  Maddox had already outed his strange abilities long ago around here, almost from the very first day. So everyone in the precinct was well aware of his proclivity toward “spacing out,” but I knew it made most of them uncomfortable.

  “He’ll be done soon. I’m sure of it,” I said in a low voice, then without skipping a beat, I placed my hand upon the uncovered sliver of his wrist, as though I were trying to gently pull him out of the visions, when in truth, I was doing anything but.

  Maddox had tattoos on his body, one on each arm, and a few others in certain other lovely parts, none of which were pertinent at the moment.

  But the arms in particular were also “special.” They were images of a female devil on one and an angelic being on the other, both of them wearing the face of his one-time partner Alice.

  He’d never explained the reason for the tattoos or why both figures wore her face. All I knew was those tattoos were just as magical as his eyes. No one in the precinct knew about that little secret. Hatter hadn’t shared it, and I wouldn’t betray his confidence in that way. It was because of the markings—which could literally glow at the drop of a dime—that Hatter always wore his long jacket at work.

  But when I moved my thumb, I scraped against the heated image upon his flesh, and I saw what he saw. There was darkness, the howling of winds, and fear—fear so thick, so cloying that it felt like being coated in heated tar. My heart rate kicked up, my pulse sped so hard I grew dizzy, and I felt myself sinking into the darkness of waves that were not actually waves. They were other, but I didn’t know what.