The Grimm Files Collection Boxed Set

by Selene Charles

  But the second I realized it was Crowley, I snapped my mouth shut and shook my head. “What? How?” I squeaked, more surprised than anything to see him in this wing of the castle.

  I blinked. “How the hells did you find your way toward the private section of the castle? Did they give you leave to just wander about in this manner?” I winced a little the second I heard how uppity it sounded, though I hadn’t intended it to be—he had surprised me.

  But rather than take me to task as he once would have, Crowley merely glowered, took me by the elbow, and said nothing as he guided me down a set of stairs that were usually accessed only by the wait staff. His footsteps were sure and steady as he marched us through the kitchens, past the cold storage pantries, and out of one of the castle’s many hidden doorways that headed directly and unerringly toward the start of the labyrinth.

  Someone had been learning the lay of the land on his downtime. My flesh prickled, half in wonderment, half in curiosity. He was thorough, but he was also kind of intensely single-minded, like a dog with a bone in the very literal sense.

  It made sense, considering our history. I was seeing firsthand just how obsessive Crowley truly was when on a case.

  I said nothing until we were well and truly out of earshot, but the moment we were, I ripped my arm out of his grasp and twirled on him, stabbing a finger into his chest. “You navigated my ancestral home like you’d lived there your whole life. I saw you skulking about a section off limits to all but those of noble birth. What the hells were you doing up there? How did you get through the wards of the stairwell? That should have killed you.”

  His eyes glowed red like a dog’s in the moonlight as he riffled his thick fingers through his unruly mane, causing it to poke up in all directions, reminding me even further of his shifter heritage. Any second, I half expected him to explode from his flesh and turn full into wolf mode.

  His eyes were bloodshot, his skin looked pale even in the night, and there was a tense weariness to his shoulders. “I know you have questions, Detective, and I’ll answer them all. But you’ve got to trust me.” He gestured with his hand toward the entrance of the trail.

  The meaning was clear: It is not safe here . Let’s keep walking .

  Crowley was acting cagey as all hells, but something on his face and in his eyes made me bite my tongue and decide to trust the strange and tenuous bond being forged between us.

  “I’m a bloody fool,” I muttered beneath my breath, but then I turned and began to walk.

  “Join the club,” he grunted softly behind me, which caused my lips to twitch. He sounded as put out by the prospect of being my ally as I was being his.

  The old adage, “keep your friends close but your enemies closer” suddenly took on a whole new meaning to me. We walked in strained silence for what felt like another hour, which was highly probable, considering where the sea moon rested in the underwater sky.

  By the time we’d stopped, I’d thought for sure we’d circled back toward the scene of the crime, but we hadn’t. We were in a completely different section of the garden. I frowned and took a small half step forward.

  There was a bloody house there—not a large one by any stretch, but most definitely a home, though it looked just big enough to host one of Wonderland’s anthropomorphic creatures, maybe a skink or badger. Made to look like seaweed and sea ivy, its siding of leaves swayed gently in the slowly moving current, but I could definitely see that a portion of its wall had been recently disturbed.

  I took another three or four steps until I was at its side, and then I knelt to run my hand over the damaged section that revealed the truth of what was in there. I felt the warm snapping of magick wash against my fingertips.

  I yanked my hand back, but my fingertips still tingled from its sting. “What the ruddy hells is this, Agent?” I asked, glancing back at him over my shoulder.

  His face looked grim, and his strange eyes glowed deep red wherever the moonlight bounced off of them. He was dressed in a different outfit than the one he’d been in earlier, one that looked less refined and more urban. With that black leather jacket, he looked far more imposing and more like the Crowley I was familiar with, though I had no clue where he’d found the jacket, considering that Undine was not known for tanning its animal skins, a barbarous trait my people thought to be one solely of the legger lands.

  “You wanted to speak. This is as private a place to talk as I could find in that whole godsdamned castle,” he said in his familiar gruff tone.

  I was still a bit in shock about how differently he acted with me. He was surly—I could see it in the tension of his shoulders and the stiffness of his movements—but somehow, I’d broken through a barrier I never thought could be possible to crack.

  He wasn’t the same male I’d known for the past several decades. It was discombobulating, to say the least, and made it difficult for me to focus on anything other than the fact that I seemed to be his ally all of a sudden—of a sort, anyhow.

  “Bench,” Crowley spoke, and suddenly, the wall of seaweed and sea ivy began to roll like a wave crashing onto a beach. The vines crept along like tentacles and began to form a bench.

  My jaw dropped. I must have looked like a stupefied baboon—I was stumped by the sudden turn of events.

  Crowley sat on the edge of the bench that looked big and sturdy enough to sit three full grown adults easily.

  “How did you— ”

  He shrugged. “I know things. It’s what I do. What I’m best at. Solving the unsolvable.”

  I was impressed, but I was also hella uneasy about it. Yes, Crowley was a shifter, but the way he was learning my birth home and the hidden accesses of the place made him far more dangerous than I’d ever credited him with being before.

  His lips thinned.

  “What?” I asked when he still didn’t say anything, continuing to press me with that unnerving look of his.

  He shook his head and sighed. “Well, you’ve answered one of my questions just now. Because if you knew, you’d be badgering me relentlessly about it.”

  “What the hells are you jabbering on about?” I grumped, crossing my arms, ready to roll my eyes as I felt that familiar ire start to rise up in me.

  “You do not scent the trace of your sister here, do you?” he asked softly.

  The gentleness of his response obliterated my bluster. I frowned. “My sister?”

  There was no jeering leer, no snarl or arrogant hubris painted upon his face. Crowley, the big bad wolf who’d dogged my steps for so long, was nothing more than a man. My shoulders slumped a little.

  “Aquata,” he said. “It’s faint, but she’s been here. Many times.”

  “How can you tell all this?”

  He tapped the side of his nose. “I’m a shifter, Detective. Surely, you already know this about me.”

  I recalled the image of him with the Sea Witch, how he’d fought and battled against her impressive will, even beginning to shift as he’d fought to escape her. The blackness of his fur, the magma-like red of his eyes, the length of his muzzle, and those terribly sharp fangs felt indelible in my mind. I rubbed my upper arms, smoothing down the goose pimples that had suddenly sprouted. “Of course, I know who you are.”

  His lips stretched up at one corner into a halfway familiar smirk, but there was no heat behind it. “You’ve never seen me shift, though. I don’t like to do it often. Hurts when I do,” he said, snapping a leaf off of the bench and idly playing with the edge of it as though he had nervous energy.

  We were entering foreign territory, one neither he nor I had likely ever imagined to be possible.

  I decided then that trusting him hadn’t come back to bite me on the arse just yet. And considering he was my only true ally down here, well… I took the steps that led me to my corner of the bench and lightly sat upon it, eyeing him warily.

  We sat in tense silence for several seconds before he gave a deep and hearty chuckle and shook his head. “Godsdamn, this is awkward.”

/>   Hearing him say exactly what I’d been thinking had me snorting, which quickly turned into a chuckle and then a laugh that he shared in too.

  Laughter was magick, in its own way. The moment we’d finished and stared at each other, I knew in my gut that our paths had been irrevocably changed. I looked back at the little shape of the house. “Did you look inside it?”

  He answered instantly, “Couldn’t. You felt that pulse of magick yourself. Something’s warding the door.”

  “What a strange little thing to find here in the middle of nothing. But it might not even be a house. I mean, it could just be a mirage. Right?” I turned, looking toward him only to find that he’d already been looking at me. I swallowed hard at the intensity of is stare.

  He shrugged. “It’s a house.”

  I thinned my lips. “How can you be certain?”

  “Because I smell death inside there.”

  That wasn’t at all what I’d been imagining he might say. Turning on my behind, I looked back at the wall and tilted roof and frowned, trying as hard as I could to peer through the leaves and twigs to what had to have lain beneath. If it was a house, there should be windows and an obvious door, signs of… well, something. But none of that existed. It looked mostly like a lean-to. A wall and roof covered in thick waves of magick, my inner voice reminded me. But when I’d first seen it, I’d thought of it as a house, which was strange because I’d had no cause to think of it like that. “Great magick rests upon it. Thick bars of it. Like someone or something— ”

  “—is trying to keep it hidden,” he said, finishing what I was thinking.

  I looked back at him over my shoulder, catching his eye once again, this time more prepared for the heavy intensity of his gaze.

  “Mmm ,” he mumbled in agreement.

  “You don’t cover something unless you’re trying to hide it.” I frowned and looked back at the mysterious section of wall and roof. “And you say you smell death in there? Aquata may— ”

  “No,” he said softly. “No. It is other. Unique. Mammalian, I believe.”

  Again, I studied him curiously, surprised that he was still talking to me as a peer. I remembered the hells he’d given me when I’d been solving Alice’s case… Or even the bloody fit he’d thrown when I’d dared to release Aladdin from holding.

  Crowley and I were not friends. We never had been, and I doubted we ever would be. We’d simply been thrown into a situation so far outside the realm of normal for us that neither of us seemed sure how to navigate these strange waters, though I applauded the fact that he was obviously trying.

  He kicked out a long leg and leaned his elbow upon his knee, moving into the thinker’s pose as he rested his strong chin on his fist and stared straight ahead without blinking. His stance looked at ease, even easy. But I’d been on the wrong side of the man for many years and knew that he could wind tighter than a spring coil in an instant.

  “I…” he said softly, his word trailing off as he stared unblinkingly out at the night full of drifting sea stars and the lighted blue phosphorous of dancing krill. Blowing out a heavy breath, he continued. “I know you have questions, hundreds of them, no doubt. But I have questions too, and I won’t answer a damned one until you answer mine.”

  “There’s the arsehole I know and love,” I snipped, but there was an edge of rough humor to it too.

  He chuckled and snorted. “You’re such a royal bitch. You drive me fucking mad, Fish,” he snipped right back, and though his words rolled with a growl, I could also hear the relief coursing through them. It wasn’t easy for him, and hearing that relieved me greatly.

  Not overthinking things, I finally extended the olive branch and shoulder bumped him.

  He inhaled sharply before relaxing just a second later and scrubbing at his jaw with his long, blunt fingers. “Fucking hells,” he muttered softly. “You saved me,” he said more loudly. “Or tried to, anyhow.”

  I frowned. “Tried? What do you mean?”

  The muscles in his cheeks were tense and rigid, and I could tell he was biting down on his molars as he looked over at me, his nostrils flared and he began scenting the air—scenting me.

  I shivered beneath his heavy-lidded gaze.

  “I”—he licked his teeth—“I… did… die.” His large rib cage flexed and, it was as though a great burden had been taken off his shoulders with those words. Groaning, he squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed at his eyes with long, slow strokes.

  “Wait. What? No, you didn’t. You’re right here.” I rolled my wrist, gesturing at him though he couldn’t see because he still had his eyes closed.

  Finally, after several more seconds of rubbing, he opened them. The whites were bloodshot, and his irises were nearly pure black. “I did die, Detective. But I remember what you did for me. What you tried to do, anyway. Ah, fucking hells.” He sat up and leaned back, staring straight ahead with a hard glare at nothing in particular, as though he was looking not at the present but at the past, recalling all he’d seen and heard. “That sea hag turned me to stone. I did die. Fucking hurt like all hells too. Why in the twin hells did you give her your godsdamned soul? I told you not to!”

  He sounded legitimately angry, and I leaned back a little, feeling my own ire rise in challenge to his. “You stupid prick!” I snapped without thinking. “I did it to save your sorry arse. Had I known you were impossible to kill, believe me, I’d have let you suffer. You insufferable bast— ”

  At first, he’d looked furious with me, but after a second, I began to see his lips twitch and his nostrils widen, and then he tipped his head back and barked with laughter. “Godsdamn, it’s good to see you again, Detective. Thought for a second we were about to have a fucking heart-to-heart.” He curled his lip with disdain, but I heard the impossible humor behind it, and I was so damned confused that all I could do was clamp my lips shut and stare at him as though he’d suddenly sprouted a second head.

  He slapped his hand onto the bench between us, sat up, and rolled his neck from side to side again, not saying anything. But oddly, after our spat, the mood weirdly seemed more mellow than it had before.

  “You hate me?” I asked before I thought better of it, mostly out of curiosity and because I was terribly confused everything that was happening.

  He didn’t answer me for half a beat, long enough that I thought maybe he hadn’t heard me. But he was part shifter, so of course he’d heard me. He shook his head. “I should, but I can’t. Not anymore.”

  “Because I saved you?” I laughed lightly, feeling too high-strung and weirdly emotional all of sudden. “I’d have done the same for anyone else.” I lashed out because that’s what I did when I felt things going weird on me.

  He turned to look at me with a dark brow raised and a hard set to his jaw. “Maybe.” He shrugged. “Or maybe not.”

  I wet my lips, turning to look straight ahead and shifting my knees just a little.

  He snorted. “Nine lives, Detective.” He said the words so softly that they were almost a whisper.

  I barely heard him. “Huh?” I was forced to look at him, cringing at the vulnerability so clearly exposed on his face.

  “I’ve got nine lives.”

  My brows gathered into a tight V. “That’s a feline thing, not a canine one,” I corrected, sure that he was playing a prank on me for some reason. Playing jokes didn’t fit with Crowley’s normally taciturn character, but I was still feeling edgy and prickly.

  He sniffed, and it was his turn to stare straight ahead. “You know very little about me, Detective, but you know more about me now than almost anyone else in my life.”

  “That can’t be true,” I said with a light laugh, but when he didn’t join in, continuing to stare unblinkingly ahead, I had a sinking feeling that he wasn’t actually pulling my string.

  I shook my head. “Are you serious?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “How many have you used?”

  Licking his canines, he gave me a bold and assessing lo
ok. “That was unlucky number seven.”

  I softly gasped. “How… old are you?”

  He chuckled, and the sound reminded me of rolling gravel. “One hundred and fifty three godsdamned years young.” He sounded angry about it.

  I didn’t know Crowley well enough to understand it all, but I thought that maybe he wasn’t altogether happy about whatever had been done to him. Shifters were not as long-lived as other Grimm species. They didn’t age as quickly as their nonshifter mammal counterparts, but their years were more accelerated than an average human’s. The lifespan of a typical shifter was anywhere between forty-five to fifty years.

  “How?” I asked.

  Leaning back on his hands, he crossed his long legs in front of himself, still staring straight ahead with hard look.

  “I grew up in a time where the government wasn’t quite as regulated as it is today. Human experiments were the norm then, and those who met a certain genetic disposition for a trait the government wished to exploit were packed up and shipped off, no questions asked.” He glanced at me.

  Crowley was much older—even older than me, and my species was long-lived— than I’d ever imagined. Though, to be fair, I’d never actually given him much thought. Other than the fact that he’d been a giant pain in my arse, I’d never cared enough for the man to take the time to learn anything of value about him. “Seven lives… So you’ve only got one left? Or do you have full use of the ninth life as well?”

  He shook his head. “From all I know, I’ve got full use of the ninth.”

  “And after that?”

  “It’s an eternal dirt nap for me.” He chuckled bitterly.

  I didn’t have a clue what to say. It wasn’t as though Crowley and I were good enough friends that I could offer him sympathy that he might actually accept. I shivered.

  A second later I, felt the ghostly press of a finger over mine, but when I looked up, his hand was already gone. “Just two more lives, Princess, and I’ll be out of your hair forever.” He said it as though I should be happy about it.