The Problem with Promises (34 page)

I watched her, a hungry dog with juicy bone, feeling possessive and uncaring that Becci was semimortal, a foot taller, and crying helplessly. Cordelia, no stranger to the hunt, gave me and my prize the space I needed. She picked a point in the air above me, and stared at it, as if it held the answer to some question she’d long wanted to pose.

Casually she said, “It’s best if she’s not dead.”

I could smell the gum Becci had chewed in the morning. The glass of milk she’d drunk before that. My heart was still doing double time, but now I was starting to be aware of the fact that I was spread-eagled over someone who was very, very frightened of me.

Not the wolf in me … me.

“Do stop chewing on your toy,” Cordelia said, very evenly. “Trowbridge needs her alive.”

I reluctantly lifted my lips from the nape of my intended meal’s skin.

“That’s right,” she said.

I breathed in and out from my mouth while my inner-bitch did three circles inside me, looking for a good place to rest. When the smell of Becci’s fear struck me as defeat instead of meat, I rolled off her. She crawled away—head down, imaginary tail tucked between her toned thighs.

“Brenda.” Biggs caught her near the frostbitten geraniums. “It’s okay, it’s me.”

She stiffened in his arms. Then—and this killed me—her pretty face crumpled like a six-year-old’s. “You brought the wolves here,” she said in a Kewpie-doll voice. “You said you wouldn’t.” My wolf lifted her head in renewed interest as her voice got even squeakier. “They’re going to hurt me.”

Maybe. Maybe not.

“No.” He soothed her. “You’re safe. I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

Uh-huh.

And with that, she dissolved into another bout of chest-heaving tears. “I’m scared,” she wailed.

Biggs curved himself over her. “It’s going to be all right.”

Everybody’s lying through their teeth today.

She swiped at her tears with the back of a shaking hand. “Knox hasn’t come back. He was supposed to come and get me and he didn’t. I’m so scared.”

Biggs’s face turned to stone. “Knox is dead, Brenda.”

I’d thought she’d
already
dissolved into a sobbing wreck.

I was wrong.

*   *   *

The house was small, barely big enough to swing two fat cats. The front of it boasted an open kitchen and a living space anchored by a sagging couch and a brand-new La-Z-Boy. The back end had a bathroom and two bedrooms. The first had a king-sized mattress and smelled like Knox and Brenda. The last was locked.

“Don’t go in there!” cried Brenda.

Cordelia’s kick broke the lock and sent the door crashing into the wall. She stepped back to let me walk in. There was nothing personal in the room beyond a table strewn with paint tubes—no bed, no bureau, no chair filled with last night’s clothing. But the room was a riot of colors and faces. Canvases were propped up against the wall, in some places two or three deep.

So many faces, so many eyes. All of them staring out at the viewer. Despite their elaborate costumes, their figures seemed naked. As if, regardless of some of their formal positions, they’d been caught unawares.

Oh Goddess. Their ears.

“They’re all Fae,” I whispered in horror.

Cordelia had followed me into the room. Now she abruptly turned to me. “There’s no scent of Knox here,” she said. “Let’s check out the other bedroom.”

I’m not a fool. I’d caught the way she’d tried to swing her body so that it blocked the sight of whatever had claimed so much of her attention before her brusque suggestion.

“Step out of the way,” I told her.

She slid her hand under my elbow. “You don’t need to see this.”

I gave her an accommodating smile. “Okay.”

She fell for it. The moment she relaxed, I ducked under her arm.

The portrait was exactly the same size as all the rest, roughly twenty-four by thirty-six inches. The subject in question stood in the center of bloody carnage. At his feet, the torn body of a wolf, a rope of intestine streaming from its belly wound. Behind him, a smoking pile of corpses, some of which appeared to be human in shape. Behind that a horrific funeral pyre, silhouettes of blazing trees, and a hellfire sky.

“It’s a picture, nothing more,” said Cordelia. “Don’t let it shake you.”

The subject wore a gray shirt, suspenders, a pair of tight pants, and boots. Jammed on his head was a bowler hat.

“Lexi,” I said brokenly.

I spun to Brenda who hovered in the hallway. “Who painted these?” I cried.

Her eyes widened and she squeaked, “The fairy does.”

“What fairy!”

She cringed. “The ugly one who guards the gates.”

“The Gatekeeper comes here? To paint? Does she paint from memory? Do any of these people visit here?”

“Mmm-mmm.” Brenda shook her head. “She comes here alone. We go to the pie place and we wait for her. And then she comes and we bring her here and she paints.” She slipped into the room and tiptoed to an old-fashioned hourglass and she upended it. Sand dribbled through the narrow neck. “When it gets here”—she pointed to a line drawn on the neck of the glass with a black sharp pen—“we have to leave. The fairy has to go home before all the sand is gone.”

“Or what happens?”

“I don’t remember. I used to know. Knox told me.” Mention of his name was enough to cause tears to well in her baby blues. “I don’t remember things like I used to. And her English is weird.”

“She speaks our language?”

“She’s the Gatekeeper. She’s supposed to be able to talk to the Weres. Knox said that’s her job. To be there to…” Confusion etched three light lines on her forehead. “She’s like one of those hostess ladies who show you where to sit at the pie place.”

“A guide?”

“That’s it!”

Again, I was struck by the same thought. Why would a portal need a gatekeeper? They were already keyed to recognize which blood could pass through their gates. As for having a guide? Wasn’t that Merry’s and Ralph’s job?

“How does she know Lexi?” I murmured to myself.

“Who’s Lexi?” asked Brenda.

I pointed to his canvas. “Him.”

Brenda studied the picture for a moment. “He’s trouble.”

“He’s in trouble,” I corrected.

“Mhhhm-mhhhm,” she murmured, with a mulish head wag. “The fairy paints the future.”

“What?”

The halfling’s eyes rounded and her voice dropped to an impressed whisper. “That’s what she paints. She says it’s the ‘truth that hasn’t been revealed.’”

“Total garbage,” muttered Cordelia, with a sideways glance in my direction.

Lexi standing in the ruins of civilization?

Not going to happen. I won’t let it.

I tore my gaze from Lexi’s painting. “We don’t have much time,” I said to Cordelia. “Let’s get what we need and get out.”

The evidence was in the master bedroom. There we discovered a plain desk, a stack of bubble envelopes, and Knox’s “book,” which turned out to be an iPad, loaded with a whole lot of bang-bang movies and a spreadsheet app. The inventory was found inside the near-empty closet’s top shelf—a cake box containing vials filled to the neck with sun potion.

Cordelia’s mouth pursed as she did a quick count. “A baker’s dozen of them.” She rotated the bottle she’d picked up, watching the liquid lap against the glass. “Looks like water.”

“You’re touching it!” Brenda cried. “You’re breaking the rules!”

On prodding, Knox’s girl revealed that only she could touch the bottles.
After she’d washed her hands.
Because Knox said his scent shouldn’t be on anything they send to someone else. That—merely the mention of her deceased beau’s name—caused her to burst into loud hiccupping tears again.

And once again, Biggs had looked at me as if he wanted to do violence.

I could see why his protective instincts were stirred. She was about my age, but that’s where any useful comparison ended because she was very, very beautiful. Big blue eyes, heart-shaped face surrounded by a nimbus of white-blond hair. But her gaze was vacant and an air of helplessness wove around her. She’d been alone for two days. She’d shown us her empty fridge with an air of bewilderment.

“Has she always been like this?” I asked Biggs.

“No,” he said fiercely. “She used to be really smart but she’s been taking the potion for more than two years. It’s—”

“Turned her into a dimwit?” drawled Cordelia.

“Caused some deterioration,” he retorted. “You saw Hedi’s brother. The stuff’s addictive. It messes you up but good.”

Lexi. Be strong. Hold on.

We moved into the kitchen, bringing the iPad with us.

“See if you can find anything we can use to incriminate Whitlock on it.” Over Biggs’s head, I caught Cordelia’s gaze and she nodded, moving into place by his right elbow. A precaution, in case he decided to delete something. I couldn’t trust Biggs anymore.

“It’s password protected.” Biggs’s hands hovered over the illuminated keyboard. He threw a tight glance toward Brenda. “Do you know it?”

“It’s ‘K loves B.’” Brenda sat cross-legged on the sagging couch. She made another knot in the pillow fringe. “He said I should choose something I’d never forget.”

Frozen. That’s what I’d call Biggs’s expression. “Any spaces between the words?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

Her murmurs were irritating.

Biggs flexed his knuckles before he tapped in the password. Two minutes later he said, “Here’s something interesting. It’s a spreadsheet listing the name and last location of every halfling born to a Were in North America.” He scrolled sideways with a swipe of his finger. “It’s got everything. Date of birth, sire, mother’s name, addresses for both parents.” He indicated the fifth column. “Even one for date of death.”

“This spreadsheet is their kill list?” I said, surprised. I’d envisioned something more gothic and less mundane.

“So it appears.” Cordelia shook her head with disgust. “It’s bloody obscene. All those randy bucks had to do was keep their pants zipped. Then none of these children would suffer.”

How many times had Cordelia wished she could conceive?
It was a new thought. One that caused me to reach under my hair to find the peak of my ear.

Biggs’s expression hardened. “Hedi’s on the list.”

“I am?” I leaned in to see.

He rolled the page down to the particulars of birth for one Helen Stronghold. In my death date was the word “Pending.”

Huh. I rolled my thumb along my ear’s crease, wishing I had a Kit Kat. There’s something undeniably off-putting about seeing your name on a kill list.

Cordelia lifted her penciled brows. “Darling, you’re probably on a dozen kill lists.” Then she smiled as
my
brows lifted. “Even I—as well humored as I am—have frequently wanted to strangle you. Despair not. I can report that the feeling always disappears after a glass of Beaujolais or two.” She nudged Biggs aside and changed the entry from “Pending” to “Particularly Difficult to Kill.”

I snorted. “You are truly irreverent.”

“One hopes. The alternative is being ‘well-meaning.’” She produced a convincing shudder. “God spare me from do-gooders.”

The sudden flash of humor that had warmed me died as I stared at the entry above mine in the ledger. Lexi Stronghold was listed as “Deceased.”

Hold, Lexi. I’ll get there, I truly will.

Scowling, Biggs hit page end, and suddenly the spreadsheet sprouted colors. Rows were highlighted. Some blue, some gray, some green. He rolled his head, kneading his neck. “The green are the active clients.” He pointed to the column filled with dates and numbers. “Those are charge card numbers and expiration dates.”

“He has a good business.” Cordelia tallied the numbers. “Twenty-eight clients in all.”

“They were raking it in,” I said. “Each bottle went for a thousand? That’s $28,000, and…”
My kingdom for a calculator.

“Three hundred sixty-six thousand dollars a year,” Biggs supplied.

“Okay, then,” I said. “We’ll take everything. The bottles, the shipping labels, and the laptop.”

Biggs stood. “And Brenda?”

I gave her a glance. She was doing woeful, woefully well. “Any luck resuscitating her phone?”

We’d found that abused device, in three parts, sitting on a bench in the garage beside a hammer. Brenda, having belatedly remembered Knox’s suggestion to “ditch the thing if anyone comes sniffing,” had used brute force.

She might have wanted to remember that nugget of advice before she’d started answering everyone’s texts. Apparently, she’d spent the day holding her phone, trying to decide which man would best champion her—Whitlock or her old beau, Biggs.

Whitlock had wanted her location. Biggs had wanted to meet her. Dumb instinct had told her the second offer was a better one. Thus, when I’d rung the doorbell, she’d been getting ready to fly from her roost. Her side of the bed was littered with discarded clothing choices, and her gym bag was sitting inside the old Subaru parked in the double garage.

“No, darling,” said Cordelia. “Her phone is Humpty Dumpty.”

I rubbed my head. “But that thing can record stuff, right?” I asked, gesturing to the iPad.

Cordelia picked it up. “Yes.”

“Okay, we’ll do an interview and tape her confession just like Trowbridge did with Newland. If she answers everything honestly, then…” My voice trailed away.

Biggs’s swallow was audible. “You’ll keep your end.”

“Yup,” I said, feeling bleak.

He dug his hands deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched. “Let me be the one to interview her. Not you. Me.”

I rested my shoulder against the wall, pretending to think about it. “I won’t let you give her an easy ride, Biggs. She’ll either tell you the truth or she’ll—”

“I’m not asking for one.”

Brenda/Becci made a pretense of ignoring us, but I could tell by the quiver of her eyelashes that her ears were tuned to the conversation. Just as I could guess by the way her body was slightly angled toward Biggs’s that she’d answer his questions before she’d reply to any of mine. “All right,” I said, feigning reluctance.

Taking the iPad from Cordelia, Biggs walked into the living area. Grimly, he placed the tablet on the small table beside Brenda, then angled it so that the video screen captured her face. She offered him a hesitant smile. Stone-faced, he dragged a chair closer to the couch.