Winterstruck: an urban fantasy supernatural crime thriller

by Sara C. Walker

  She shrugged. "You know, with catching the one responsible. He's really becoming a problem for us all."

  Again, she was coming to me wanting to help with punishing her kind. It seemed unusual, but I supposed if the situation were reversed and a human was harming faeries, I would want to step in and help, too.

  I opened my mouth to answer when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a dark blur move behind the aisle next to me. A large, four-legged dark blur. Leander. Sneaking toward the doors.

  Oh crap. What was he doing?

  If he perceived Ruby as a threat and attacked her, she might not be so cooperative.

  Shit.

  I had to do something. "Let's go talk somewhere more private."

  Ruby glanced at the women at the counter. "They can't hear us."

  The women seemed to be carrying on their debate over the price of every item, oblivious to the fact I was talking to Ruby from halfway across the store. In fact, I could barely hear them talking, as if the volume on their conversation had been turned down low.

  I raised an eyebrow. How was she able to do that?

  She smiled cryptically and shrugged like it was no big deal.

  Leander crawled along next to the checkout counter, moving like he was getting ready to pounce.

  "If you know something about Hammond, I'd like to hear it," I said quickly.

  "Finish your shopping," she said, waving her mitten-clad hand. "I'll wait."

  Leander pounced, paws aimed at Ruby's chest, jaw open, canines glinting under the store's fluorescent lighting and lowering toward Ruby's throat. Caught unprepared, Ruby fell backwards into the glass door. The bells tinkled and banged against the glass as they rolled out into the street.

  Damn it, Leander.

  I rushed outside. The sun had set and streetlights cast a warm glow. Traffic moved as usual. Pedestrians hurried to and from their parked cars, heading home, picking up last minute items.

  Leander and Ruby could be anywhere. I picked a direction and ran, scanning the street, the spaces between parked cars, doorways and alleys. After two blocks I found no sign of them, so I turned and ran in the other direction. But again, I found no trace.

  I went back into the grocer, paid for my items, and loaded them in my car. In that time, neither Leander nor Ruby returned.

  I drove around the neighbourhood for nearly an hour. But after a fruitless search, I headed for home with a dark feeling in my gut. I hoped Leander was all right.

  24

  Thanks to the problems at the grocery store, I didn't have much time before Luke would be home. I set the grocery bags on the counter, hung my coat on the back of a chair, and got to work.

  I'd never attempted to make something like this on my own before—or anything more complicated than Kraft Dinner or scrambled eggs—but I knew Luke would appreciate the gesture no matter how badly it turned out. He would see how much I wanted our relationship to work. I just needed to keep him happy with me for a few more days so I could wrap up this case. And then I was all his. No more work. No more agency. No more hunting fae.

  I would be here for Luke. Every day. Yes, I could make this work. I had no intention of losing him.

  I'd even decided to accept the car. Being with Luke meant being part of his life as he wanted to live it. He wasn't all about extravagance. His impulsive indulgences happened on occasion. I could handle that.

  By the time Luke came in, I had covered most of the kitchen in flour (the bag broke, I swear) and was just finishing up frying the eggplant slices. I was up to my elbows in egg dip and soggy breadcrumbs. Flour patches tickled my face. I wouldn't be surprised if my ponytail had ended up dipped and battered too. Luke took one look at me and burst out laughing.

  "I am so happy to see you," he said.

  My heart warmed. Mission accomplished.

  He crossed the room and wrapped his arms around me. If he had been at all mad at me about last night, it was gone. Vanished.

  "Welcome home, handsome," I said. I tried to hug him back without getting my messy hands on his shirt. It was the cornflower blue button-up that brought out the colour of his eyes.

  "You did all this for me?" he said softly with a grin. His lips brushed mine.

  "Of course," I said, meeting his kiss and melting into his warm embrace.

  Shirts were washable, right?

  "I wanted to apologize," I said softly.

  "No, you don't have to say a thing. I should be apologizing to you," he said. He pulled away just enough that I could see sincerity in his eyes. "I should have considered what such a gift would mean for you. I never stopped to consider that your job has difficulties, and I'm sorry. I should have recognized that. Moreover, I should have realized that planning our wedding might not be a happy task for you because of the difficult relationship with your mother, and not having your father to walk you down the aisle."

  "It's all right," I said. "I can deal with all of that. What I can't deal with—that is, what I'm having the most trouble with…well, I don't want to lose you. I've had enough loss in my life."

  "I'm not going anywhere, I promise." He brushed his lips to mine. "Do you smell something burning?"

  "Oh crap!" I whipped around and found smoke rising from the frying pan.

  Luke reached to grab the pan, but I brushed him off. "I got it. I got it."

  I lifted the pan off the burner, moved it aside to cool, and then switched the burner off.

  Then I took in the mess spread across the kitchen.

  "It might take me a few minutes to finish dinner," I said.

  "No problem," Luke said. "I can help."

  "That's okay. I want to do this."

  "I'll leave all the cooking to you, then, and I'll just help tidy up." He picked up empty boxes and started toward the front closet where we stashed the recycling until we carried it down to the garbage room.

  On the way by, he picked up my coat.

  "Say, this is kind of heavy," he said. "What do you have in your pockets? Rocks?"

  He reached a hand into the pocket.

  Oh shit.

  "What's this?" he said. He pulled his hand out of my coat and held up my gun. Luke's hand. Wrapped around my gun.

  Between the events at the grocery store, the problems between me and Magnusson, and wanting to make things right with Luke, I'd forgotten to stash my weapon.

  I went perfectly still, eyes wide. The air in my chest evaporated.

  "Luke—" I started.

  The muscles along his jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth. "Since when do you carry a gun?"

  I sucked in a breath.

  "You know how I feel about guns."

  I didn't know what to say. Luke never really had an opinion about guns until he was working the emergency room downtown and a kid was brought in. Accidentally shot by another kid. That experience changed Luke.

  "I think I'd like an explanation, Julia." The love and warmth he'd shown only moments ago had been replaced with cold anger.

  I didn't want to lie to him, and yet it seemed like fate was bound and determined to have me weave him an untruth for one reason or another.

  I opened my mouth to tell him the truth. To finally tell him what I really did for a living and why it was important. But then I remembered the last time I saw my partner and I shut my mouth.

  Instead, I said the first thing that came to mind.

  "I'm being stalked," I blurted. I had to turn on the scared little girl act. I would do this performance, but I wasn't happy about it. I was having to lie too much. My relationship with Luke shouldn't have to be an act. So I skirted the truth as much as I could.

  "What do you mean you're being stalked?" he asked. I could see the fear starting to take hold inside him.

  I tried to lessen the situation for him so he wouldn't panic. "Sometimes I feel like I'm being followed."

  "Did you talk to the police?"

  "Yes. Of course."

  "And?"

  "And they said there's nothing they can do."r />
  Luke made a noise of anger and frustration.

  "They can't just arrest people for walking in the same direction as me, Luke."

  "But you're carrying a gun. That says there's more to this than sharing the sidewalk. Has he ever harmed you?"

  "No."

  "Touched you? Threatened you in some way?"

  "No." I thought of Hammond and the nightmares he'd given me.

  "Seems like an awfully dangerous way to solve a problem, Jules. Do you even know how to use it?"

  "I practice." I tried not to be offended by his tone. He was going through a lot at the moment.

  It seemed like he was coming around to the idea, even if he didn't like it. I expected we would be discussing this fairly often until he had me joining his anti-violence campaign. The thing was, I was against violence—against humans. Faeries who hurt mortals deserved to get their asses kicked, and if they ended up dead in the process, that was their choice. If they'd just leave humans alone in the first place, they wouldn't end up dead.

  "Do you have a permit to carry concealed—oh, wait. That must be what this is." Luke held up the leather bi-fold that held my badge and identification.

  I went cold. My breath caught in my throat.

  "Wait—" I tried to get it from him, but it was too late.

  He opened it.

  I swallowed, waiting for his response, watching carefully as he tucked away his emotions, my stomach a nervous flutter.

  "It's not what you think," I said. I didn't have the first clue as to what he was thinking but it couldn't be the truth.

  "It's not? So you're not living a double life?"

  Okay. So it was exactly what he was thinking.

  "This is government identification in your name...You're not an insurance agent, are you?" His mouth became a thin line. "It's a cover story. That means you're an undercover agent for the government."

  I panicked. If Magnusson found out about this, he'd have Luke on a plane with his memory wiped—gone from my life—before midnight.

  I couldn't lie to Luke about this anymore. He would know. He would never feel like he could trust me again. And then we'd be over.

  Before I could explain, Luke started jumping to his own conclusions based on the panic I was sure was on my face. "Oh, God. Are they going to kill me now that I know?"

  "No. Luke. Stop." My mind was whirling too fast for me to form a viable plan. I grabbed Luke by the arm, dragged him into the living room, and directed him into a chair. I took my weapon and badge from him and laid them on the coffee table. I threw my coat onto the chesterfield. I went to the bar and poured two shot glasses of whiskey. I gave one to Luke, but he didn't drink it.

  Still chilled from the weather (and from the conversation), I cranked up the gas fireplace and sat on the stone ledge directly in front of the glass. My hands were like ice.

  "They're not going to kill you because you found out," I said. I didn't know where to start, but keeping him from freaking out seemed important. "At least not the people I work for. But if they find out you know the truth about me, they will wipe your memory and make it so we never see each other again."

  "Wipe my memory?" He half-laughed. "They can't do that."

  "These people can." I can. My eyes flicked onto my coat. The spray.

  Shock had frozen Luke's face. "Who are these people?"

  I put down the glass and made my way to my coat, explaining as I went. "I work for a black ops operation for the government."

  "Black ops. What does that mean exactly?"

  I picked up my coat and fished the spray bottle out of my pocket. "It means there are very few who know about us. If, for some reason, someone finds out about us, we have to wipe their memory. Only a couple people in the government know what we do, and if something goes wrong, they have total deniability."

  "Wrong. What could go wrong? What exactly do you do? How much danger are you in? Am I in?"

  "Luke, you know too much already," I said, moving to sit on the coffee table so I could face him. I rotated the spray in my hand, putting my finger on the pump. Could I really do this? Could I really spray my fiancé and wipe his memory?

  "Julia, please."

  I knew in that moment that our entire relationship hinged on my answer. But I couldn't tell him the truth.

  "Luke, I can't tell you and please don't ask me to. Your safety is already at risk. And not just from my team."

  "You mean whoever you're fighting—terrorists or whatever. You think they might come after me?"

  I nodded. "Yeah, I do."

  I held up the spray and pushed down on the pump. Nothing happened. I shook the bottle. Empty.

  Shit.

  I forgot I emptied it on Stuart. I should have refilled it when I was at the office, but I’d been so focused on find Hammond. Did I have a spare bottle in the house? I didn’t think so.

  Could I get Luke to just accept this was my job and keep it a secret?

  Luke shifted his position on the chair and put his glass on the table. He shook his head with disbelief. "I still don't understand. Why would they come after me? Oh," he said with sudden clarity. "You weren't lying about the stalker. Has one of these bad guys followed you home?"

  His question increased in pitch and volume at the end, indicating his stress level might be about to blow through the roof.

  Okay. Time for some more crisis intervention. New plan: come up with an excuse, go to work, refill the bottle, then make Luke forget this night existed.

  "Luke, no. I'm very careful before I enter our building." Simon was the only one to ever get close and he was gone before I went inside. He knew the building where I lived, but I didn't think he knew precisely which unit.

  Otherwise, Simon might have chosen to meet me on the balcony.

  "You mean the other night," he said. "When you went back to the car. After I proposed."

  Damn, he was smart.

  Luke went quiet, fixing his gaze on the catastrophe cluttering the coffee table. I hoped he was taking me seriously. If he started to freak out about this…Magnusson would decide to put him in a coma to forget me. I really, really didn't want to see his memory wiped. I didn't know how far the wiping would go. He could lose his career, and for Luke, that would be like losing his entire life.

  As the silence went on, the weight of it began to be too much to bear.

  I felt sick.

  "Luke," I said. "Say something. Please."

  "I don't know what to say. I don't even know who you are. Not really. Has our whole relationship been a lie?"

  Oh, God. Anything but this.

  "What? No. Of course not. I love you, Luke." It wasn't difficult to show hurt, shock, or frustration. Love was the hard one right now. Not because I didn't love him, I truly did, but because I had a feeling he was about to break my heart.

  He stood up. So I did, too. Wherever he was going, I was going with him.

  "I need some time," he said.

  Panic squeezed my chest. "Okay. How—How about I go for a walk? Give you some time alone? Or—Or, we could drive over to the building where I work. I can show you around?"

  He shook his head. "I—"

  His phone rang. He looked at it. "My mother," he said.

  He answered it, and although he wasn't on speaker, I could still hear Marjorie's panicked voice.

  "Luke, it's your father," she said. "We're at the hospital."

  This conversation would have to wait.

  25

  One thing I really admired about Luke, which also perplexed me, was his ability to work in a hospital. I hated everything about hospitals and avoided them as much as possible, which was a lot harder to do after I met Luke.

  After the call from Luke's mother, we drove straight there. Emile had collapsed. Marjorie had called an ambulance. After arriving at the hospital, she called her son.

  Luke moved with precision through the hallways. When we reached the emergency department, I hung back at the waiting room while he made a beeline to his fa
ther's bedside.

  Did he notice I was no longer beside him? He didn't look back. He didn't come to find me. It didn't feel right for me to go with him into that room. This was a family moment.

  Sitting and waiting in this horrible building was about to drive me crazy, so I got up and wandered down to the coffee shop we’d passed, bought a cup of coffee, and slowly made my way back. I still had to figure out what to do about Luke's discovery tonight.

  I considered Ruby's offer again. She was right about one thing: the bullets we used weren't enough. They slowed the fae down long enough that we could cuff them and lock them in a salt cell. The salt dampened their powers. I had no idea what the long-term effect of being lowered into the salt mines would be, but by the sounds of it, it wasn't fatal.

  We needed to get the fae back to Faerie. It was the only way we could get life back to normal. And I really wanted normal.

  I mulled these things over as I wandered the hallways. I thought I was retracing my steps back to the waiting room down the hall from Luke's father, but every hallway looked the same and none of them were right.

  I was headed for the nurse's station when something caught my eye. I can't say for sure what made me turn; I didn't detect any faeries present. But I turned and walked into a patient's room.

  He was lying on the bed with tubes coming out of his mouth and nose, wires from his chest and arm, and all of it running back to machines. I could hardly see his face, but I knew it was him. The name scrawled on the whiteboard next to his bed confirmed it: Harry Riordan. My first partner.

  My partner that was supposed to be in Alaska. Retired.

  My partner that I hadn't heard from in years.

  My partner that Magnusson had said he sent a message to.

  Harry.

  What in the hell was he doing here?

  A nurse gave me directions back to the proper waiting room. I paced in the small space, my mind replaying everything Magnusson had ever said about Harry. Could I have misunderstood? Did he tell me and I forgot? No. No. This didn't make sense. When I asked about getting a message to Harry, why didn't he tell me then? For that matter, why was Harry in the hospital hooked up to machines at all?