Wrath: The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 2 (31 page)

“He’d not want you to see that before he was ready, Maddy.”

“I understand.”

“He’d be very hurt if he thought the surprise was ruined. Please understand I’m not making demands, only asking you to respect his privacy in this one thing and be surprised when the time comes.”

My stomach felt to my ankles, which felt oddly detached from the rest of me. “Is it a ring?” I croaked.

“I’ll not answer that. All I’ll say is that it would be better to consider your answer to him than to give him the response you just gave me.” He looked disappointed in me, and my shoulders hunched in automatic response. Years of conditioning, I suppose. Much as I had loved my parents, they had a tendency toward being critical. I’d spent my childhood years always striving to be good enough, smart enough, pretty enough. Most of the stresses were probably self-imposed, but they had to have come from somewhere. Shaking my head, I stepped back into the present.

I nodded my head toward the folder Mark was holding. “Let’s get to it.”

“He has four solicitors that I’m aware of, each managing a different part of his personal and professional needs. I just don’t know which firm is Mr. Raines’s.”

“If I have to, I’ll call them all.” I took the folder Mark offered, and I logged into Hellion’s financial tracking software. I about fainted when I saw some of the other ledger balances. I’d dreamed of money like this, usually in terms of “if I ever win the lottery…six times,” but never had I imagined people actually lived with this much in their accounts. Shaking off the shock of enormous dollar signs and plentiful commas, I began searching for the tab or folder he used for solicitor services and finally found it under “Legal.”
Common sense, you abandon me.
I found the number in his electronic Rolodex and called. Navigating the secretaries, I finally made my way to Mr. Raines by weight of serious threat.

“Ben Raines,” he snapped as he answered the phone.

“Mr. Raines, please accept my apology for my rudeness but I need your help. I’m—”

“Who the hell are you to come in here bullying my people?”

“Hellion Markalon’s, um, well, his partner. Life partner.” Somehow “fuck buddy” just didn’t seem appropriate here.

“I see,” Ben said, his manner changing entirely. “What can I do for you, Ms.—?”

“Madeleine Niteclif, but please just call me Maddy.”

“Then call me Ben.”

“Thanks. Look, I’ll be nice next time. Right now I need your help. Hellion’s been taken by the police to be questioned for murder.” My voice quavered just a bit, and I forced back the emotion that was threatening to spill over into my voice. Stress and panic would have to take a number. I’d get to them when I could.

“He
what
?” Ben yelled.

“Questioned. For. Murder,” I ground out. “I need you to find out what precinct he’s being held in and get to him quickly. He’ll give you the details.”

“Kara,” Ben bellowed. “Get me the damned police commissioner on the phone
now
.”

I sagged in Hellion’s chair as the reality of Ben’s position, connections, and force of personality hit me. I had help. Finally, someone who could make things happen. “Ben?”

“One moment, Maddy.”

I could hear him talking to someone, but it sounded like his hand was over the phone receiver. I leaned back in the chair and swung it back and forth slowly, the rocking motion lulling me into a state of relaxation.

“Maddy? Sorry to keep you waiting.” Ben was typing away at a keyboard madly. “I’m going to get this sorted out, call in some favors, and I’ll get back to you. Is there a good number to reach you at?”

I thought about that. My cell phone was somewhere in all the stuff that had been moved over from the hotel. “Mark? Can we use your cell phone as our primary contact number?”

“Absolutely.” He handed me the cell phone without question and then gave me the number. I repeated it to Ben, and he promised to call as soon as he knew anything at all.

Getting off the phone, I realized I needed a shower. I thanked Mark and kissed his cheek, and he blushed and stammered that it was no trouble at all. I headed for the master bathroom, and it wasn’t lost on me the level of comfort I’d found here in Hellion’s house. It felt suspiciously like home.

I put myself together following a long, hot shower then crawled into bed just to smell the scent of Hellion on the sheets. I lay there thinking about how it seemed that the solitary wish I’d made for an altered reality had set a multitude of things into motion that I’d never, ever fathomed as possible. I didn’t intend to doze, but it happened, and Tyr took the opportunity to visit.

I felt him sit on the edge of the bed and I whipped my head around, hoping to find that Hellion had somehow made it home. But it was only the god. I snorted.
Only
.

“What’s so funny, child?” he asked gently, reaching out to stroke my hair.

“I was thinking about you as just a god. It struck me as funny. Sorry.”

He smiled indulgently. “Forgiven. You’ve had a very hard day. Hellion isn’t holding it together too well. He’ll need you when he gets out of there.”

“Is he getting close?”

“His legal advisor, no, what do you call them now? Praetors? No, that was the Romans. Solicitation? No, that’s not quite right. Ah! Solicitor. That’s it. His solicitor is down at the gaol now and is serving them with papers to release him. He’ll be home within the next two hours.

“How goes it with the investigation?”

I shrugged, uncomfortable at being questioned by someone who
knew
the outcome of things already. “Can’t you just divine the future and find out whether I succeed or fail?”

“In all things but you, yes. Odin has taken away my gift of sight when it comes to you. Doesn’t trust me, I imagine,” he chuckled.

“Oh. Well, I’ve got some solid clues, but I need to figure out the thing with the hair. Hellion’s second, Amaly, was found with the blond hair all over her. Why would the killer cover her in blond hair?”

Tyr rolled his eyes and scrubbed his face with his hands. Turning so he better faced me he said, “Maddy, you’ve got to learn to really assess clues, not just take them at face value. What I want you to consider is that Amaly wasn’t ‘covered’ in hair, but rather there was blond hair at the scene. Ask Hellion where it was, then think about it. You’ve got to stop jumping to the first conclusion you come to.”

I bristled at the criticism. “And who the hell do I have helping me with this? I know it’s
my
job, but my on-the-job training has totally
sucked
, Tyr! My familiar’s abandoned me, I can only reach you randomly, and my, my, well
whatever
Hellion is, he’s in jail for a murder he didn’t commit.” I bounded out of bed and stood facing him, my chest heaving with righteous indignation, my hands bunched in the fabric of my pants as I did my best not to wave my arms around like a mad woman. “I need help. I don’t like to admit it. In fact, I hate to ask for help. But I’m not getting this done fast enough, and women are dying because I’m too damn slow to figure this out on my own!” Tears trailed down my cheeks, and I swiped at them angrily. I hate that I cry when I get really mad, but there you go. “Who am I supposed to ask? You tell me and I’ll do it, because I don’t want any more women dying.” The fight went out of me and I sank to the floor, leaning back against the bed and putting Tyr at my back. I felt the bed shift and heard Tyr walking around the foot of the bed. He sat down next to me and gathered me in his arms. I was stiff for a moment before relaxing into my many times great-grandfather’s arms.

“I’m sorry, child. Truly. What you’re suffering is enough to try the nerves of a seasoned justice dealer. I wish desperately that I could just give you what you need, but I cannot.”

“Can you answer questions for me?”

“Some. Ask, and if I can answer, I will.” He stroked my hair, and I relaxed a bit more.

“Where was the blond hair found?”

“Next.”

“I’ve discerned, with the help of some outside information, that the killer is right-handed and is using a non-serrated blade. Can you confirm this for me?”

“Very good. I can confirm that your deductions are correct.”

“Hm. All right. Is the blond hair related to the blue dragon weyr?”

He scrunched his eyes up in thought and then said, “Not exactly.”

“Can’t you give me any more than that?” I asked in exasperation.

“No. Not without saying too much, and you clearly know I can’t do that.” Tyr met my eyes. “Ask more careful questions. Working within the rules, I’ll tell you everything I can.”

So I thought about how to phrase the next question to get the most out of Tyr. “How about this—was Amaly’s killing the same as all the other girls’?”

Tyr hugged me tighter. “Yes, it was. Unfortunately, her killing was due to her relationship with Hellion.”

“By relationship I assume you mean her position in the coven?” I asked. Despite my attempt at a nonchalant tone of voice, my stiff back, rigid muscles and the tic in my jaw gave the truth away.

He rubbed my back with long, gentle strokes. “Ease down, sweetheart. I did indeed mean her relationship with him in relation to the coven. Do you doubt him so soon?”

And there was the other rub. Maybe I did doubt him already. Maybe I wasn’t as confident with him as I wanted to be. Maybe I was uncomfortable with the thought that I’d had wild and crazy circus sex with someone I wasn’t confident I could trust. And maybe, instead, I needed to figure out why I had such issues with trust, because though I blamed Bahlin’s recent behavior, it went back a lot farther than him. He was just the most recent wound.

I rubbed my stomach, the ache making me slightly nauseous, even in the astral plane. I really needed to figure this out if I was going to attempt a serious relationship with Hellion. It wasn’t fair that I was admitting my developing feelings for him if I wasn’t going to follow through. “I’m no better than Bahlin,” I mumbled, shaking my head back and forth in general disgust. I pulled away from Tyr and scooted to sit independent of his touch.

“Maddy?” he asked, reaching over and running his hand down the back of my head until it rested on my shoulder and cradled my neck. “There are differences in who you and Bahlin are and the different ways you’ve behaved. The biggest difference is that you haven’t hurt Hellion yet.”

“Yet?” I latched onto that one word. “What do you mean yet?”

“I mean that you have choices to make in how you comport yourself, just as Bahlin did. You will continue to learn things about yourself and your duties as Niteclif that will challenge you, at times pushing you to the point of breaking. How you respond to the challenges is on you, no one else, just as how Bahlin responded is on him, and no one else. You are not responsible for his choices.”

“Then he chose not to love me.” There it was, one of my darkest fears related to my time with Bahlin. And now it was out there and I couldn’t take it back. I sighed and dropped my head into my hands, willing the nausea back down. In my sleep, my physical body shifted and I held my stomach. Great—nauseous on two different planes. At times life could really suck.

“Explain.” Not a question but a command.

“No.”

“Don’t make me force it out of your mind. If you think you’re sick now, you won’t like the aftereffects of me—”

“What? Pillaging about in my thoughts? You’re right. Fine, you want to know? I think I’m most afraid that I did something that
made
Bahlin stop loving me. Because he turned it off awfully fast. Engaged one minute, abandoned the next. How could he ever have really loved me if he could turn it off that fast? Unless…”

“You may as well finish the thought.”

I shot him the dirtiest look I could muster, but he just looked at me blandly. “Unless he was playing me the whole time like his family seemed to think, and he was only after the power.”

“And if he was? If that’s true, and Bahlin wanted to secure his power base, what does that mean Hellion wants from you?” He stared at me hard, and his eyes flashed in the dim light.

“I don’t know, and that’s part of what scares me.” I leapt up from the floor to prowl around the room. I pulled on my hair and groaned in frustration. “I don’t know. What do I have left to give?”

“I think that’s a question that’s easier for me to answer than it is for you to accept.”

I turned and looked at Tyr. He rose to his substantial height and looked down at me. “You stand to lose the most you’ve ever lost, Madeleine: your heart. And you’re too much a coward yet to face the reality that in losing the most you’ve ever lost, you stand to gain more than can be measured and weighed.”

“I’m not a coward!” I slapped my hand over my thundering heart and turned my back on him so he wouldn’t see how close to home the blow had struck.

“What has Hellion ever done to you, Maddy, that wasn’t fair or just?”

“He tried to kill me.”

“He came to you to tell you he’d discovered that Gretta was having an affair and to find out if it changed your version of events. Wouldn’t you expect to be avenged by him if Bahlin killed you?” Tyr asked.

As the Voice of Reason he was really pissing me off. My back still to him, I shrugged.