Dead in the Water (Gemini: A Black Dog Series Book 1) (9 page)

His silence told me he had witnessed the entire production.

“What do you want from me?” A mirthless laugh died in my throat. “What do you expect me to say?”

“Does it get better?” His voice scraped up his throat. “Does it ever…?”

“No.” The unshed tears in my eyes fell. “The hole in your chest is always gaping. Nothing else will fill it. No one who didn’t know the one you lost will understand.” I took a slow breath. “People will tell you how to grieve, what to feel, and how long you’re allowed to hurt. A few weeks, a couple of months, and that’s it. The empathy runs dry. Your grief becomes the elephant in the room that tramples anyone who tries to take that pain away.” Harsh laughter burned my chest. “Then you move on, or you do such a damn fine acting job others think you have, and then they sigh with relief. Tears get packed away, the hurt gets hidden.” I cut my finger on the drink’s lid then pressed it against the cardboard until it stopped bleeding. “Everyone supports your loss until they’re tired of how lost you really are.”

A warm thumb swiped across my cheek, smudging the wet streaks. “You can’t heal until you let yourself grieve.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. I hadn’t seen him move. “I can’t go back to that place.” My lungs forgot how to expand until he lowered his hand. “I might never climb out again.”

Shadows darkened his eyes, but he nodded. He understood. His pain was fresh enough for him to feel the same ragged scars on his heart as those decorating mine. Though he did a better job of concealing them than I had at this stage.

“What happened to Lori?” He braced a hand on the back of my chair, close enough his heat radiated through my spine. “How did she die?”

The raw ache in his voice, a mirror to my own, caused me to come undone for the first time since I sobbed on my mother’s lap, salt burning the cut on my foot, blood smearing her bare knee, and I found myself talking without making the conscious decision to confide in him.

“The ocean…” I rubbed my throat like it might loosen it. “Every summer my extended family gathered, ditched the RVs and hiked through the Great Smoky Mountains. It was tradition. Lori and I—we loved it.” The weight of him at my back made speaking easier. “One summer Mom got a wild hair to see the ocean. It had been so long, she said, and everyone ought to see the Gulf at least once.”

“What happened?” A soft question with rounded edges that still managed to slice through me.

“We sneaked out of our parents’ trailer and ran down to the beach. It was late. Past midnight. We were alone.” My voice trembled. “I cut my foot on a shell. Lori was running ahead of me. I couldn’t catch up to her. She was always faster than me.” I had to try a few times before the rest came rushing out. “She splashed into the surf. I told her not to, but she waded out into the water. I didn’t go in after her because I didn’t want my foot to burn.” Fresh tears welled. “She was standing there. Right there. In front of me. And then she was gone.” I wiped my hands over my cheeks. “I couldn’t see her, but the screams…”

“Ellis...” His hands curved around my shoulders. “That’s enough. You don’t have to share any more.”

Too late. It was too late to stop the torrent of memory from spilling between us. The story wanted to be told, like spitting out the words would somehow absolve me for my part in Lori’s death. “I ran to find my parents.” I stared at the empty seat in front of me, picturing Lori sitting there bundled up and safe instead of Elizabeth. “I left her alone. I didn’t even try to help her. I just…ran.” Her screams had chased me back to the campsite. “Mom had already noticed us missing. She always checked in on us during the night, like she was afraid we might vanish if she didn’t make sure we were tucked safely into bed each time she passed our room. They saw me and heard Lori. They ran to the beach, but she was gone.” I wiped my nose. “We never recovered her body.”

A hard note entered his voice, and it sounded dangerously close to a reprimand. “That’s why you’re working these cases.”

Admitting it made me sound even more broken, even more screwed up, because I refused to let go of the past. Rationally, I knew no matter how many faces I stared into none of them would be Lori’s. She was gone, her body claimed by the sea. Nothing would change that. I wasn’t sure which was worse. Living with the memory of her corpse or living with the lack of resolution. Inventing her face became easier as time went on, as I saw more dead bodies claimed by unforgiving waters. Greater familiarity with her method of death meant cobbling together her final moments and the end result became as routine as signing my name on paperwork.

“Goddamn it, Ellis.” He pulled a hand through his thick hair. “What I said to you in Wink—I had no right.”

“Survive a loss of that magnitude and then we can talk about acting rationally.”

“It’s fine.” A pleading note entered my voice. “I’ll forgive you if you get me out of here.”

“Vause will be pissed if she comes looking and can’t find you.” Mischief glimmered in Graeson’s eyes, and I glimpsed the man he had been before losing his sister, who he might be again one day if he fought hard enough. “Come on. Let’s go. It’s not like she can’t find you if she needs to.” He traced the bruised skin under my eyes with his finger. “You can catch up on your sleep.”

“That sounds…really good.” Even better than chai.

“We’re having dinner.” He helped me stand. “I want you to be awake for it.”

“D-dinner,” I spluttered. “I didn’t agree to—”

“I mentioned you, me and dinner in the same sentence this morning.” He took my elbow, and warmth spread from that small contact. “You didn’t refuse, which is the same as accepting.”

“Why are you doing this?” I tugged against him. “Why do you care?”

“You aren’t taking care of yourself,” he rumbled. “These girls need you—
I
need you—at your best. If that means force-feeding you and rocking you to sleep at night, I’ll do it.”

“That won’t be necessary.” Heat roasted my cheeks until they would have scalded his hands if he touched them again. “I can take care of myself.”

“We’ll see,” he said so dismissively I knew he had already made up his mind to be my keeper for the duration of the case…whether I wanted him to or not.

W
ith two statements due
, one on the boy in Wink and one on the interrogation of the girl from Falco, I had spent the last hour curled up in a club chair in my hotel room typing up my mental notes so I could send them to Vause and hopefully avoid another face-to-face meeting with her. The shift into Lori earlier, the sensation of being in her skin, had me avoiding eye contact with myself in reflections. I was too afraid I might glimpse her again, which was the fresh wave of guilt talking, but there you go. Until the old wounds had time to scab, the last thing I wanted was to face the magistrate responsible for picking at them in the first place.

Graeson had been MIA since dropping me off at the hotel. Something about visiting the local wargs. Not that I’d had a lot of time to examine how I felt about his absence since I had tumbled face-first into my bed as soon as I cleared the threshold into my room. Thanks to the power breakfast he fed me, I was upright again four hours later with hangover-like symptoms, but it was a huge improvement over my utter incapacitation in Wink. The big problem now was that my stomach had also woken up, and my dinner date was nowhere to be found. Not that it was a date. I just meant we had plans for dinner. Not plans, but a mutual understanding we would dine together. That sounded official. Like it was business. Like he was hanging around for non-personal reasons, which he was. Right?

Sliding the laptop onto the low coffee table, I stood and stretched my arms over my head. A stack of accordion menus crammed a container by the phone, and I walked over, picking up the two I had skimmed earlier. I didn’t have Graeson’s cell number, if he carried one, and the phone in his room rang without answer. Harlow wasn’t in her room when I checked either, but I got the feeling she was working or else she would have visited. I wasn’t worried she might have knocked and I slept through it. She had already proven she had no trouble convincing people to assist her with breaking and entering into places she shouldn’t be.

I was deciding between a charbroiled hamburger and pit barbeque when a knock sounded on the door.
Graeson
. A bubble of anticipation rose in my chest. I didn’t bother checking the peephole before tugging on the latch. “What sounds better to you? A piggy potato or a fully involved All-American stacker?”

“I’m vegan, actually.”

The menu fluttered to the floor. “Oh. Magistrate Vause. Hi.”

“May I?” Her gaze tagged the micro seating area opposite my rumpled bed. “We didn’t get a chance to speak before you left.”

“Sure.” Feeling contrite, I nudged the door wider. “Come on in.”

One of her guards barged past me and performed a sweep of the area. He reappeared in seconds and all but snapped his heels together. “It’s clear.”

Magistrate Vause wrinkled her nose but crossed the threshold. The second guard closed the door behind her and, I assume, took point guarding the room from the hall.

“This will have to do.” She flicked her wrist toward the pleather sofa. “Fionn?”

The guard swept his fingers through the air and withdrew a packet of moist towelettes from nowhere. Under her watchful eyes, he wiped down the seat, the back and arm. Then he used the same trick to summon a dry cloth to finish the job. Once done he tossed them in the tiny waste bin next to the desk with a wobbly leg. The others were stuffed back into the same invisible seam where he had retrieved them.

“What brings you by so late?” She struck me as the sort to be in her silk pajamas by eight p.m. sharp. I rushed to add, “Not that I mind the visit.”

Fake leather creaked when she sat. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.” She must have read my doubt. “I also have not received your report on the incident in Wink.”

“I’m working on it now.” I scooped up the menu before I could step on it and slip. “The day got away from me. I’m on my dinner break.”

“Were you expecting someone?”

To lie or tell the truth?
“I wanted to touch base with Harlow about her findings.”

Vause didn’t call me on the lie, but her glossy façade lost a smidgen of its shine. “You’ve had a very trying day.” She picked a speck of lint from her tan pantsuit. “I thought perhaps if we held a discussion here, tonight, that would suffice.”

I lowered myself into the chair opposite her as the implication hit me. Vause didn’t want a paper trail. Linking me to Wink? Or me to her and her to Wink? Did this have something to do with the Unseelie Magistrate’s absence? “All right.”

She crossed her legs at the ankles. “Did you manage to complete a classification on the victim?”

“Yes.” Remembering the condition of the boy’s remains crushed my appetite, making it easier to tuck the menu into the fold between the arm and seat of my chair. “The cause of death was presumed to be drowning, but that’s where the similarities ended. The victim’s gender and the condition in which the remains were found breaks the pattern.” The implication was clear: there had been no reason for me to visit Wink. None at all. “I did manage to inspect the body prior to the attack, and I can confirm he was not one of ours.”

“Marshal Thackeray’s report mentioned that a man was killed at the scene.”

The hallway confrontation between Harlow and Letitia, the marshal’s widow, loomed in my mind. “That’s what I heard.”

Vause resumed her lint-picking with gusto. “What else did you hear?”

A pulse of spellwork set my lips tingling as if I had been sucking on a habanero chili, a reminder to be careful how much I divulged. “Thierry and I mostly talked about our families and how we came to be employed by the conclave.”

Vause shifted her weight and crossed her legs, then uncrossed them as though unable to get comfortable on the hard seat. “Thierry could be a valuable asset to you in the future.” She caught me watching her squirm and froze. “The circumstances of your meeting were unfortunate, but perhaps the connection will prove fortuitous in time.”

Vause was being squirrelier than usual. When magistrates began acting peculiar, bad things happened. Usually to the person who noticed the odd behavior.

Without fanfare, Vause stood, signaling the meeting’s end. “I should return to my hotel.” Her nose crinkled at the state of my room. “I prefer not to be so…exposed…after dark.”

Magistrate sightings were rare outside their respective regions. If someone recognized her, then her Unseelie counterpart would start asking questions I got the feeling Vause didn’t want answered. Not yet. Not until she had finished leading me around by the nose.

I gripped the arms of my chair, ready to lever myself to my feet, but she lifted a hand. “I can show myself out.” Her gaze lingered on the crumpled menu by my hip. “I understand you left the safe house with the warg today.”

“We drove into Falco together.”

“Keep an eye on him.” She straightened her blouse. “Wargs run hot. We can’t risk him damaging this case in the heat of the moment.”

Her guard had escorted her into the hallway before I formulated a response. The door shut behind them, and I slumped in my chair, grateful to have avoided butting heads with her over fae law versus native species law for the second time in one day.

My phone rang, but I was out of energy for conversation. I ignored it until the twentieth chime, and yes, I counted, then I accepted the person wasn’t giving up until they spoke with me.

“Ellis.”

“My, aren’t we formal?” Throaty laughter spilled over the line.

“Aunt Dot. Hi.” A surge of homesickness swept me upright. “I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner.”

When I had tried her this morning, I got her answering machine and left a quick message.

“It’s all right, pumpkin. I know how you get caught up in your work. Just next time don’t leave an old woman waiting on the porch in her jammies. Send one of those email things to Isaac or something.”

“I will.” I drew my legs into the chair, tucked my knees to my chest and braced to tell her the truth. She would find out eventually—I was a bad liar—and I didn’t want to end up with a bar of her homemade soap in my mouth when I fumbled my story. “I overextended on a case. I used too much magic, and it knocked me out for a full day. That’s why I missed my flight. It was too late to call when I woke up, so I waited until morning.”

Salty curse words peppered her end of the conversation. “Do you need me?”

The question made hot tears burn the backs of my eyes. If I said yes, she would hook her trailer up to her truck, or make Isaac do it, and she would drive straight here without sleeping. For a woman in her early sixties, with no love for technology, she had fully embraced the millennial caffeine culture. I had to pat her down at the grocery store for canned energy drinks and those little bottled shots before we got in the car.

“I’m fine.”

“Camille Annalise Ellis, you are never too old for me to bend over my knee. You better be telling me the whole story.”

“I am. I promise.” I jiggled my wrist so the bracelet Harlow had given me glinted in the low light. “I met someone and—”

“Is he handsome?” she asked coyly.

“No. Well,” I amended, “she’s pretty, but it’s not like that.”

“You got me excited there for a minute.” Aunt Dot sighed. “I was seeing grandbabies.” A considering note entered her voice. “How pretty is this girl you mentioned…?”

“She’s a kid, a teenager,” I said, exasperated. “She’s, I don’t know, a friend. I guess.”

“You made a friend?” She clapped in the background. “That’s wonderful news.”

Her wholehearted endorsement of Harlow based on nothing more than the fact she was a warm body willing to befriend me spoke volumes about my social life. Or the sad lack thereof. I’d always had trouble making friends. We traveled so much there wasn’t much point in trying. It had been pretty much just me and Isaac growing up, and he got in more fights than I could count once kids realized who I was, what I was. There were no lone Geminis. None. Except me. That made me a freak, and my other cousin, Isaac’s twin brother, Theo, was a twerp. Nine times out of ten he was the reason I was outed before the other kids could pinpoint exactly what was wrong about me.

“She kept an eye on me while I recovered.” I kicked off my shoes. “Thanks to her—” and the warg I was most definitely not mentioning, “—I’m back at one hundred percent.”

“I’m so proud of you,” she gushed. “You ought to invite her to come home with you for a visit.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, grateful she couldn’t see me. “She’s busy with that case I’ve been working.”

“Well, when you two figure out who done it, she’ll be ready for a vacation.” Aunt Dot was already party-planning in her head. I could tell. “At least ask her, all right?”

“I will,” I promised, knowing I would wiggle out of it later with a flimsy excuse.

“When should I expect you home?” The sound of a screen door slamming would have told me she had taken the call outside even if the burst of katydid song hadn’t filled the line. “There’s no rush, mind you. I’m keeping an eye on your place and keeping your plants watered. I just like to know where my girl is when she isn’t home where I can watch after her.”

Being called her girl made my chest tighten. She was more of a mother to me than my own had been in the years since Lori died. I didn’t know where Mom and Dad were, and I wasn’t going to ask. I hadn’t seen them in five years and hadn’t gotten a card from them in three. Aunt Dot blamed the postal service and us being on the road so often, but we had lived in Three Way for a whole year. I knew the truth, even if she didn’t want to accept it or for me to have to face it.

“I should probably let you go.” I eyed the clock, and my stomach gurgled. “I’m about to order a late dinner and head to bed.”

“You should have eaten hours ago,” she chastised. “Maybe you should give me the number for that friend of yours, so I can tell her to keep a closer eye on you.”

What Aunt Dot meant was she wanted Harlow’s contact information so
she
could keep a closer eye on me.

I crossed my fingers, glad she couldn’t see. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good girl.”

I didn’t have to fake a yawn to sell how tired I still was. “Night-night.”

“Sleep tight,” she sang. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

I ended the call in a much better place than when it started. I even shot off a quick text to Isaac, letting him know I had finally spoken to his mom and that I would update him with my travel itinerary once I had flight times nailed down for my trip home. I didn’t wait for a response. He wasn’t a text-you-back kind of guy.

I was right back to debating the merits of a late-night burger over a slow-roasted pork sandwich when staccato knocks had me tossing the menu aside for a second time. More cautious now, I approached the door and peeked through the hole. The quick uptick in my pulse at the sight of Graeson drew his attention to the fisheye lens. Coincidence. Had to be. His hearing wasn’t that acute. Was it? There was no going back now. I opened the door.

“Graeson.” Determination not to be the first one who mentioned food had my fingers tightening on the doorknob. “Did you forget your room number?”

“No.” He traced the long groove in the doorframe until he tapped the brassy strike plate with a fingertip. “I remembered yours.”

“Nice line.” I braced my palm against the doorframe, barring him from entering the room until I decided whether to let him in. “Catch many fish with that one?”

He feigned a wince while rotating his shoulder. “Sorry, old reeling injury. It acts up from time to time.”

“You sure are corny for a warg.” I peered at him through narrowed eyes. “Are you sure you’re not a deer shifter or something? I don’t have a salt lick, but I’ve got a packet of salt in the bottom of my purse. I think. Maybe that was silica.”

For a second I thought he would laugh at my weak joke and that maybe I might join in, because I was proud of having made one, but I saw the moment guilt wiped the budding grin from his mouth.

“She would want you to smile.” How many times had Aunt Dot used that line on me? Too many. I heard its echo every time I wanted to laugh but didn’t. “She wouldn’t want you to feel guilty for moving on with your life.”