by Jenn Burke
My breath caught. “Yeah?” I said, my voice shaky.
“Yeah.” He paused. “I’m retiring.”
“You’re what?” I jerked back, not enough to break his embrace, but enough I could look him in the eyes. They were still glassy, but the pupils had retracted a bit.
“Retiring,” he repeated. “It’s time.”
Cold slithered through my gut. “Hud—not for me, right? Please tell me you’re not—”
“No, no.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead, and I had to help straighten him out again when he overbalanced. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Not in any sort of real ‘let’s make the plans’ way, but it’s been there. At the back of my mind.”
“But why? The physical side of things isn’t a problem—”
“Except it is. According to the calendar, I’m fifty-eight. And yeah, it’s nothing more than a number at this point, but no one else knows that.” He cupped my cheek. “I was planning on retiring at sixty, but when I was watching you lie so still—”
“You said it wasn’t because of me.”
“It isn’t. But you highlighted some things for me.” His thumb swept across my cheekbone.
I closed my eyes, reveling in the roughness of his callused fingers, and whispered, “Like what?”
“Like the fact that all I’ve got in my life is my job. Until you called me last week, all I had was work. If I went out, it was to hunt, which I hate doing, by the way. But now...now I’ve got you. And Evan—and yeah, I regret what happened there, but not the fact that it brought him into my life. He’s a good kid.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“And I like Lexi too. She doesn’t take any shit, does she?”
“No, she does not.”
“See? It’s only been two weeks and you’ve enriched my life so much.”
I dropped my eyes as warmth cascaded through my cheeks. “That might be overstating it.”
“Se—seman—” The skin around his eyes grew tight as he sought the right pronunciation. “Details.”
I chuckled. “You’re very cute under the influence, Detective Rojas.”
Hudson puffed up. “Cute is good. Irresistible is better.”
“That too.” I pushed up on my tiptoes and brushed my lips softly over his. “Come to bed with me?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
We stretched out on the bed in the guest room and made out. Our kisses were slow, unrushed, as we took the time to learn each other again. I remembered most of Hudson’s hot spots—behind his ear, along his jaw, and the inside of his thighs—but there were more to be learned. Two big ones were the juncture of his neck and shoulder and along the column of his throat. He’d enjoyed attention there before, but now? Now nibbles in those two places made him melt.
“Vampire thing?” I asked breathlessly.
“Fuck, yeah.” His entire body shuddered, and I smiled in triumph. I felt as though I’d cracked an uncrackable safe. Undoing Hudson might become my new favorite pastime.
Slowly we undressed. His shirt disappeared. There was no striptease, no titillation—it wasn’t needed tonight. I wanted him and he wanted me, but I think we both knew sex wasn’t happening before we fell asleep. I fucking loved sex with Hudson—when we’d been dating, we did it every way I knew how to do it. Fast and hard, slow and dirty, slow and loving, explosive, gentle...all of them were amazing rushes, because it was Hudson.
But I wanted to savor the steps here. Hudson had been out of my life—permanently, I thought. A regret I had never truly gotten over. I never dreamed we would reconnect. Now that we had—now that we had kinda-sorta discussed that we might maybe be a thing—I wanted to linger on every phase of our relationship.
And maybe this time, if we took it slow and talked—imagine that—maybe we could make this work.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“So Marcello wasn’t bullshitting you. This is definitely a part of the Crown of Osiris.” Lexi reached for another handful of ketchup-flavored chips and carefully munched on her bounty one by one as we all stared at the fragment of the artifact in the middle of the coffee table.
Hudson needed to head into work very soon, so we were having a quick update meeting before he did. I was trying to ignore how much the piece of old tarnished metal wanted me to look at it. It was the weirdest sensation, and not one I wanted to share with the rest of the class.
Evan bypassed the chips for some M&M’s. “So what’s the Crown of Osiris?”
“Beyond being a rare magical artifact? Haven’t a fucking clue,” Lexi admitted.
“Something that shouldn’t have been taken from Salvay’s house, that’s what,” Hudson grumbled.
I huffed out a breath, because I thought I’d dealt with this particular protest. “It’s our only clue. If I’d left it at Marcello’s, it probably would’ve been gone before you got people to inventory it or guard it or whatever.”
“And now you’ve made yourself a target.”
Yeah, there was that. “It was still a good idea.”
Hudson snorted derisively.
“What? It’s not like they can hurt me.”
He stiffened. “Can’t—” Without another word, he rose and marched into the kitchen. A moment later, there was a cacophony of pots and pans banging around. Which was ridiculous, because the man needed to leave in like fifteen minutes. This was not a time for baking.
Lexi arched her brows. “Damn. You fucked up there. Can’t hurt you? Really? Then how the hell did they manage to take you out of action for two days?”
“But—” Shit. “I’m still here,” I pointed out weakly.
“Uh-huh.” She sighed. “You didn’t die, yeah, but you were hurt, and we have no idea what your limit is. If Hudson hadn’t got you breathing again, would you have survived?”
“She’s got a point,” Evan said quietly. “You didn’t see yourself.”
Shame at my ill-thought words ran through me—and I felt the artifact reaching for it. As though it wanted to claim the negative emotion, claim a connection to me. I shuddered. “Lex? Can you cover it?”
“Huh?”
“The crown thing.”
“Why?” She grinned crookedly. “Is it looking at you? Those two spots do kind of look like eyes.”
“Can’t you feel it?”
Her amused expression dropped away. “Feel what?”
“It’s...hungry.”
Before Lexi could act, Hudson walked back into the room and flipped my shirt back over the innocuous-looking piece of metal. Now covered, its presence was diminished to almost nothing, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks. And I’m sorry.”
He grunted. So gracious. But I knew I was forgiven.
“You said it felt hungry?” Lexi said. “I never felt anything like that when I was handling it.”
“I felt something,” Evan volunteered. He shrugged when we all turned to look at him. “I mean, I didn’t know what it was until Wes said something, but yeah, there was this little niggle.”
“So weird,” Lexi breathed. “Hudson?”
“Nothing. But I was a little distracted.” He gave me a look as he perched on the arm of the chair he’d vacated, and I revised my assumption I was forgiven.
“I’ve gotta write this down.” Lexi brushed the ketchup powder residue off her fingers and dug out her witchy notebook. She called it her grimoire, but let’s be real—it was a freaking Five Star spiral-bound notebook, the type advertised during every back-to-school season.
“Marcello will have noticed his piece of the crown was gone when he woke up, and I have no doubt that info will make the rounds to whoever wants or needs to hear it,” I said. “Assuming that our vampire buddy is indeed retrieving the pieces of the crown, and that’s the motivation for the murders, he’ll come to us instead of us chasing
him.”
Hudson held my gaze for a moment before giving the slightest of nods. “I think operating on the assumption that this is what the murderer wanted all along—a completed Crown of Osiris—is valid.”
“But then why the murders?” Evan asked. “Why not sneak in and steal it?”
“So they couldn’t hunt him down and steal it back?” I shrugged.
“That’s a good theory,” Hudson said. “He might have decided to go above and beyond. Maybe there was a bonus for silencing witnesses. Maybe he needed them alive to show him where the rooms were, and then they were a loose end he couldn’t let live.”
There had to be admiration in my eyes when I looked at him. “It’s almost like you do this for a living.”
Oh my god, was that a blush? Adorable.
“Did you recognize the leader of the vampires who attacked you?” Lexi asked.
“No,” Hudson admitted, his voice dark. “But I haven’t been in those circles for twenty years. He could be new in town. Or maybe I never encountered him when I was with Pike.”
I heard what he didn’t say—he might have met the guy during those months when his memory was Swiss cheese. “What about checking out mugshots to see if you can find him?”
“Worth a shot. I doubt our friendly neighborhood vampire has kept his nose totally clean.”
“So let’s assume the killer comes after me and gets the last piece.” At Hudson’s can’t react don’t react noise, I added, “It’s not going to happen. I just want to know what the hell the guy’s going to do with all the parts.”
Lexi flipped backward in her grimoire. “The accounts I could find were vague. No one is sure what it does. Its existence is first noted in—” her finger slipped down the lines of neat handwriting “—1923, during the Tutmania phase of interest in Egypt. There’s another arcane reference to it in 1924 that says it was used in a ritual—which isn’t described. At some point during or after the ritual, it broke into four pieces and they separated them.”
“All in the same town?” Evan asked.
“Originally they weren’t all in Toronto. It’s only been in the last year-ish they were acquired by the members of Salvay’s Timbits group.” She bit her lip and looked up. “If this one piece feels hungry...”
“God knows what the whole crown would do,” I said with a shudder. “Suck up all the magic around it?”
“That would be bad, right?” Evan looked from me to Lexi. “Like, apocalyptic bad?”
Lexi wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know if I’d go that far, but it could fuck things up, yeah. Magic is all around us, and to lose it...” She paused, considering. “The fact they separated the pieces concerns me. People who use powerful artifacts aren’t generally known for their cautious natures, so that tells me whatever happened in that ritual was terrifying.”
“So they brought them all to Toronto but kept them separate? Why?” Evan asked.
I shared a look with Hudson. We were coming at this scenario from opposite sides, him from law enforcement and me from, uh, anti-law enforcement, but I knew we were both arriving at the same conclusion. “Someone was making it easier for them to be stolen,” I said.
Hudson nodded. “Let’s go with the assumption that one person is behind the pieces moving into Toronto recently. They know something about what the crown is supposed to do—more than we do, probably—and they want all of the pieces because they’re willing to risk whatever they need to risk to get access to its power. But there are barriers. The artifact was separated for a reason. If one person tries to buy all of the pieces, that’s going to raise flags with people who know about it. There’s the monetary factor too—maybe that one person didn’t have enough money to purchase all of the pieces. So they get their rich friends to chip in, maybe by promising that they’ll work together to do the ritual and share in the profits or whatnot equally.”
“Or they could be keeping them all in the dark,” I said. That would explain why Marcello had grown pale at the news Shawn had a piece of the crown. “They don’t want to share. Maybe the crown’s ritual—whatever the hell it is—doesn’t need more than one person. So they don’t tell their patsies that their other patsies have pieces of the crown too. That way they don’t risk the patsies rising up and joining forces against them.”
“Patsies.” Lexi chuckled. “How very fifties of you.”
“What, should I call them homies instead? Minions?”
“So...is the vampire behind all this?” Evan ventured.
Hudson hesitated before shaking his head. “My gut says no. What use does a vampire have for magical artifacts?”
“Sell them to the highest bidder?”
“Eh, maybe.” But Hudson didn’t sound convinced.
“Nope,” Lexi said. “It wouldn’t work. Vampires and witches don’t mix, remember? No witch is going to do business with him.”
“But if this vamp isn’t working for himself, doesn’t that mean he’s working for witches?” I asked.
Evan groaned. “My head hurts.”
“Not necessarily,” Lexi said. “He could be working with someone who does have a good relationship with witches, or the means to somehow use the artifact, even if they’re not a witch themselves.”
Hudson had his cop face on. “Too much speculation. We don’t know enough about this vamp.”
“Better get to work on reviewing mugshots then,” I said with a smirk.
“Marcello could be behind it,” Lexi mused.
“Nope,” I said. “He had no clue Shawn had a piece of the crown.”
“So this unknown vamp is the key to the whole thing,” she said.
I shook my head. “No, I think it’s the creature that grabbed me. But since we don’t know anything about it, hunting down this vamp will have to do.”
Hudson rose. “I’m going to work. I’ll see if I can pull some mugshots subtly, and I need to start digging into who might have been behind moving these artifacts into Toronto.”
I sat up straight. “What about Meredith’s ex-wife?”
“What about her?”
“She lived with Meredith. She might know about Meredith’s, uh, hobbies.” But even if he interviewed her again, he might not be able to steer her in any direction that might disparage Meredith’s memory. Julia had displayed a surprising amount of loyalty to a woman who had belittled her frequently—but then, love made you stupid.
I knew that for a fact.
Hudson tilted his head to the side. “I could try it.”
“As for me...” I turned to Lexi. “Is Iskander out of ICU?”
“I think the second day you were out cold, yeah.”
That was great news. “The vampire we’re looking for was the guy who taunted me on the phone—maybe Iskander knows something we don’t.”
“You go,” Lexi said. “I want to do more digging into the crown. We need to find out what it does for sure.”
I cast a glance toward the object on the coffee table. If I concentrated, I could feel its vibrations, so I decided not to concentrate on it. “Be careful, okay? That—it scares the shit out of me.”
“Don’t worry.”
“I can go to one of the vampire bars and ask some questions,” Evan announced.
Everyone froze.
“Fuck that!” Hudson thundered.
Evan narrowed his eyes. “I don’t need to be coddled. I told you that.”
“I know, and that’s not my intention, but kid—Evan—I don’t even go into vampire bars. They’re nasty business.”
“I’m not afraid.”
From anyone else, I would have called that statement in this context nothing more than bravado. But from Evan I believed it. He really wasn’t afraid. Not of us, not of his new life, not of any of the new challenges he faced. Considering where he’d been ten days ago—ready to end his existence—it w
as amazing. Also a little troubling, because I knew depression didn’t just go away. A tiny part of me wondered if Evan still thought of himself as expendable and unnecessary.
I leaned over, grabbed Evan’s hand, and gave it a squeeze. “You don’t need to prove anything. Come with me, okay? Come meet my friend.”
“I thought he was a contact,” Hudson said.
“No, man. You shed blood in front of me, you become family.” I gave Evan a smile, and he seemed to get what I was saying. Family of freaks. He relaxed and dropped the idea of running into a vampire bar all on his lonesome.
Because, as Hudson had so eloquently put it, fuck that. Sideways.
With a cactus.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I hated hospitals. I mean, I tolerated setting foot in one on a regular basis because I wasn’t willing to give up coffee and lunch breaks with Lexi. But to actually venture into the depths of the corridors filled with sick, injured, or dying people? I could do without that. Maybe it was the smell, that antiseptic sting in your nose that I would forever associate with visiting friends who were dying while I was perfectly healthy and unchanging. Maybe it was the memory of those dying friends asking me for insight on what awaited them, and the lies I’d told to calm their fears.
Because I didn’t know what came next. Whatever I’d experienced or witnessed after I died was a mystery, one I’d realized decades ago would not be solved. But when April looked at me with worry in her old, watery gaze, or when her daughter Vera had, I’d said whatever I needed to, because I loved them and I hadn’t wanted them to be afraid.
Evan bumped his shoulder against mine, a gentle nudge. “You okay?”
Except for feeling every one of my nearly 110 years? “Yeah. Not a fan of hospitals.”
“The air’s burning my nostrils.” He wrinkled his nose, which was beyond cute and made me smile. I was glad he was here with me.
Iskander had a private room. I stepped up to the partially open door and tapped on it while sticking my head inside. “Iskander?”
