Origins (The Grimm Cases Book 1)

by Lyla Oweds

  I blinked and stepped back. Trying to nonchalantly brush off what I had said, I grinned. “Sorry. That’s not what I meant.” I didn’t think he was fooled. Nevertheless, we weren’t going down that road. Not now, anyway.

  Besides, that had nothing to do with the current topic.

  I had promised to be honest about my feelings. “I am scared of you. But it’s not because of that.”

  Titus frowned, clearly displeased. I sensed that—by my words—I tainted something irreparable in our budding friendship. “Are you afraid of the others?” he asked. At the back-and-forth shake of my head, his frown deepened. A flicker of hurt flashed in his green eyes. “If it makes you feel better, I can leave—”

  He started to walk past me, to go up the stairs. If I didn’t stop him now, any hope of friendship between us would be shattered forever. Even if he was scary, I wanted to get know him. I couldn’t be friends with the others and reject him.

  And I also wanted to overcome this irrational fear.

  My arm shot out before I could second guess myself, and I caught his wrist.

  He was infinitely stronger than me, so he could have easily broken my hold and left me, severing our weak connection forever. However, as soon as he felt my touch, he froze. It was almost as though he didn’t want it to end this way either.

  “I’m sorry.” I stared at my hand, noticing that I couldn’t even span the circumference of his wrist. “I don’t want you to go. I’ll get over it. I don’t mind talking to you—or the touching.”

  Titus pivoted in front of me, placing his hands back on my shoulders. He lightly moved his thumbs in comforting circles on my arms. But still, he didn’t say a word.

  I glanced up, and he raised his arm until one of his fingers trailed the side of my face and reached the lobe of my ear. He was watching me with the most indescribable expression, and I didn’t understand at all.

  Then he spoke, and there was an underlying thread of hope in his voice. “What can I do to ease your fears? What are you afraid of—exactly?”

  My breath hitched. I couldn’t believe it—he was trying to understand. To be accommodating. But I couldn’t describe this irrational fear I was experiencing.

  “I really don’t know,” I admitted. “For some reason, I’m afraid you’ll hurt me. Your presence is overwhelming. I don’t know how to take it. I feel like you could easily destroy me.”

  Understanding crossed his expression—which confused me because none of this made any sense. But then his face relaxed into a smile—that same seductive grin he wore when we’d first met.

  Somehow, everything was going to be all right. That he knew what to do now. “Don’t worry, beautiful.” His finger caressed my cheek again before he stepped back. “The last thing in the world that I’d ever do would be destroy you. You’ll always be safe with me.”

  Then he turned away and returned to the pile of electronics as if nothing had happened. In fact, he seemed to be in a much better mood at that point and even started whistling.

  Meanwhile, I felt dazed. I returned to my seat at the bottom stair and watched him in confusion. Seeing him so open, so accepting, put me at ease in a way nothing else could have. In fact, his reaction sealed the fact that Titus was an inexplicably good person. Of course, my heart still pounded. I wished I understood what had just transpired.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Watch

  “Here you go, beautiful.” A half-hour later, Titus led me to the living room—his arm wrapped around my waist for support—toward one of two office chairs. Chairs that definitely had not been there before.

  A laptop and monitors had also been arranged on top of the previously empty table. Damen had been busy, but the basement had taken longer to set up than originally anticipated. However, things were now beginning to resemble how I imagined a ghost-hunting base to look.

  Titus gestured to one of the empty chairs. “Sit your pretty butt here,” he commanded.

  I obeyed.

  He pushed my chair under the table and continued speaking as he took a seat of his own. “One of your jobs will be to watch these monitors. Even though we don’t normally take on cases, we have done this before. But not with this type of advanced equipment. I’ll help you get acclimated while we go over some of the new features together.”

  He brought my attention to the monitors, which showed multiple split-screens. I noticed that each split-screen had been labeled with a different section of the basement, one for every room in the house. Right now, there was nothing on the screens.

  “We’ve installed regular and thermal cameras in each room,” Titus said as he began to type.

  The screens flickered to life, and instantly, a multitude of colors displayed within each box.

  “This is the view of the rooms using thermal technology,” Titus answered my unspoken question. “Using thermal recordings to see a spirit is not an exact technology. But if we find areas of intense cold, we can look into that location further. We also have a secondary monitoring system.” Titus typed something else, and the screens changed. This time, the rooms appeared to be tinted green. “This view is from the night-vision cameras. We can alternate and record scenes between the two views as needed.”

  I nodded along as he spoke, finding this all to be fascinating.

  “We have something even better though,” Titus said, shooting me a glance.

  “What’s that?” I whispered back, awed. I couldn’t believe they had done all of this. What could be better than all of this ridiculously expensive technology?

  “You, of course.” Titus suddenly looked shy. “You being here makes this job so much easier. A medium is always more sensitive than any type of technology. Nevertheless, we put these systems in place to enable us to record areas for physical proof. If this job is not completed before your professor returns, we will be able to provide her with evidence that there’s a haunting at this house. Then we can finish the project.”

  I was stunned. They had never planned on leaving this uncompleted. They were going to see it through. I had been worried for nothing. “What do we do once we’ve seen the spirits?”

  Titus frowned. “It depends.”

  “Depends on what?”

  “What kind of spirit it is,” Damen said as he strolled into the room, holding two cups of coffee.

  He handed me one. The contents were light in color. I hadn’t told him how I took my coffee… I glanced at Titus—was this his?

  “I don’t drink coffee,” Titus said.

  “It’s light and sweet,” Damen replied as he sat on the couch with a smirk on his face. “I assumed since you were drinking that fake coffee earlier in the library, and from the way that you prepared your tea, that you took your coffee the same way.”

  “A mocha latte isn’t fake coffee…” My heart thundered as I argued my—admittedly weak—point. I sipped at the proffered mug, wondering why Damen would have paid that much attention to my drink when we’d went out. He wasn’t interested in me. But then again, Damen seemed to want to know everything and never be wrong. It was probably a part of his nature. “Thank you.”

  Damen grinned, then a more serious expression took over. “To answer your question, if the spirits are ‘evil,’ which we know they are, and if we can locate them again, I might have to perform an exorcism. The other girl spirit? I am not sure. We need more answers. The most we might be able to do would be to make her more comfortable in her resting place. She might be having difficulties with more negative spirits around.”

  “But I thought you said that exorcisms were bad?”

  “They are.” Damen set his coffee aside and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Only the truly evil deserve to be exorcised—and human souls are different than most. Humans, they can live forever in some manner or other. But to be exorcised removes all traces of their existence from both the natural and the spiritual realms. There are some debates on whether or not it’s ethical to exorcise a human, or whether those who have bec
ome evil are redeemable or not.”

  “Oh…I didn’t know that.” Now I was glad that I hadn’t looked up how to exorcise the spirit girl. I could have done something irreparable.

  “Don’t worry.” Damen met my eyes. “That’s why we’re here. To help.”

  I started to speak, to thank him, when my phone vibrated, startling the three of us.

  Both of my phones were at the other end of the table—Damen must have brought them in from the kitchen. The alert had come from one of them.

  A surge of panic momentarily blinded me—was Finn calling me again? I was not ready to deal with him tonight, even though I knew things were far from over. But then I recalled that my first phone was rarely set on vibrate.

  I reached out for the pink device, but Titus beat me to it—sliding it to me with a wink. Was it obvious my blood was rushing excitedly through me? But I couldn’t help myself—which of my new friends had texted me, and why?

  Julian: What kind of Chinese food do you like?

  I tilted my head to the side curiously—bemused. How fitting that my first conversation on my new phone would be about food. Food was life, after all. However, in answer to that particular question…

  Me: I don’t know. I’ve only ever had lo mein. But I don’t want noodles. What do you recommend?

  He didn’t respond. Not a minute went by before Titus and Damen reached for their phones at the same time. A sense of foreboding began to grow within me as I watched the two of them, embarrassed.

  Surely, Julian did not—

  “How could you not have had sweet and sour chicken before?” Titus glanced over his phone at me, his tone incredulous. “That’s a staple.”

  “That is not a staple.” Damen lowered his glasses and appeared to be deep in thought. “The pork dish is more popular than the chicken. As well as the ma po tofu.”

  “Nobody wants to eat tofu.” Titus narrowed his eyes at Damen, as if the suggestion offended him on a personal level. “Besides, Bianca ate meat at lunch. You don’t need to suggest that crap.”

  “Julian likes tofu,” Damen pointed out. “And so do a lot of other people. Vegans, vegetarians…or even those who eat it because it tastes good.”

  “It doesn’t ever taste good,” Titus grumbled, turning toward me. I wasn’t sure what to expect from him as he held one of my hands in his own larger one and gave me a very serious look. “Don’t be like Julian. Please eat meat.”

  My brow raised as I processed his very strange request. “Julian is a vegan?”

  I was surprised. Not anything against vegans in particular, only that I had never met one before. This was fascinating. I wondered if they were like the rest of us.

  “Vegetarian,” Damen corrected. “Julian would be a terrible vegan—he has an extreme fondness of cheese.” He continued to watch Titus over his glasses. “And she can be whatever she wants to be.” Then he frowned, considering, before adding to his previous statement. “Except a brain-eating cannibal. That would be very bad. We would be forced to report you to some kind of authority in that case; we would have a moral obligation.” His mouth quirked. “Sorry, baby girl, but a line has to be drawn somewhere. Don’t worry, the same rules apply to all of us.”

  I couldn’t hold back my laughter at the absurdity, but I covered my mouth in an attempt to stifle it. Damen and Titus, who seemed about ready to argue, froze and stared at me. Their faces twin expressions of something unfamiliar, and the heat rose in my face.

  Slowly, both of them blinked simultaneously and glanced at each other. I wasn’t certain what kind of eye-speech was going on, but apparently, they reached some sort of mutual agreement. Titus crossed his arms and glanced to the side, and Damen pulled out his phone again.

  He spoke out loud, for my benefit. “I’ll tell them to get all of the popular dishes, including the sweet and sour chicken.”

  “And enough tofu for one person.” Titus sighed, defeated. “I can’t go through that again.”

  “No one is going to make you eat it this time,” Damen consoled, but Titus only groaned in response.

  Chapter Twenty

  Reprise

  “What do you think?” Miles asked, elbowing me. “Isn’t the beef and broccoli better than the sweet and sour chicken?”

  Titus, who had been sitting at my other side, leaned forward and frowned at Miles. “Don’t influence her!”

  “I’m doing nothing more than what you’ve already done,” Miles retorted, grinning. “Besides, this poor child needs exposure to different types of foods. Not only the things you like. You have no sense of taste.”

  Julian and Damen, who sat across from the three of us, ignored the conversation. They elegantly ate their own meals while Miles and Titus bickered.

  I had a feeling that this type of interaction might be a frequent occurrence.

  I was stuffed. And we had so many leftovers. The amount of food they bought seemed excessive, but who was I to judge?

  It did bring up one question in particular—why we were eating in the dining room instead of near the monitors? I thought we were supposed to be actively working on a case. Sure, there was me, but weren’t we supposed to be watching the screens every second?

  When I brought up my concerns, Damen waved me off with the assurance that it was under control. It made no sense at all, so I wasn’t convinced.

  Nevertheless, I was thankful for the break. We had only been working for a short while, but my eyes already were strained.

  I had expected to see something—anything—show up. But there had been no indication of any kind of paranormal activity. And that was frustrating.

  Ever since I first arrived at this house, there had been a steady stream of activity. Yet nothing new had happened since Damen’s spiritual battle. The place was still haunted, I could feel the telltale signs in the air. But outside of that knowing, there was only silence.

  “Hey.” Damen pushed my foot with his, and I raised an eyebrow at him. He grinned. “Since we’re having a slumber party, what do you want to do first?”

  Titus, who had been drinking from a water bottle, choked and began to cough profusely.

  “Titus!” I ignored Damen’s question—even though it caused my heart to beat excitedly. Titus could possibly die. I reached over and weakly pounded on his back. “Are you all right?”

  After a few heaving breaths, he waved off my concern and stared at Damen with watery eyes. “What are you—”

  “Haven’t you realized this yet? We are having a slumber party,” Damen replied, his voice stern. “Like we do every time we get together.”

  Titus’s confused expression morphed into something else. He grinned, turning toward me. “Of course we are! What do you want to do at this slumber party?”

  Was this not a regular activity for them? I narrowed my eyes at his glowing face. “Haven’t you all ever been to a slumber party before? All teenagers have slumber parties.”

  Titus nodded slowly. “I’m an old man, though. It’s been a while, so I forgot.”

  “I’ve never been to one!” Miles replied. “I was out of the country during those years of my life.”

  Titus scoffed but returned to eating as he watched us. Julian and Damen observed as well.

  Interesting. Perhaps there were things that I could teach them after all. And how sad was that?

  “All right.” I returned to my seat and pushed away my half-eaten plate of food. There was no time to waste. “It’s decided then. Time withstanding, we are going to have the best slumber party ever.” I glanced around the room—ignoring the bemused expressions they wore—until my gaze landed on Damen’s clipboard.

  “Can I use that?” I pointed. “I need to make a list.”

  Damen smiled as he reached toward the object, removed some papers, and handed the clipboard to me without argument. Meanwhile, the others stared at him, shocked, as he responded, “Here you go, baby girl. Knock yourself out.”

  I hesitated, somewhat alarmed at their weird behavior. Something od
d was going on here, and it was beginning to annoy me.

  But whatever.

  I decided to put that in the back of my mind—I had a mission. I reached for the board and pen and contemplated where to begin...

  It was so much easier to visualize things with lists. And considering this was our first slumber party together, I didn’t want to forget a thing. I had to stay organized. Especially for poor Miles’s sake—he had been deprived of an essential adolescent experience.

  And how very strange it was that French teenagers didn’t have slumber parties. In any event, I needed to rectify this terrible oversight.

  There were some items that wouldn’t make the list, of course. Such as manicures. I didn’t have any polish with me; and, unless Titus was carrying some, we were out of luck. A shame, but there was always next time.

  Then, since this house did not belong to any of us, we couldn’t bake cookies. After all, the obligatory flour party and food fight might destroy the kitchen. It would be rude to make such a mess in someone else’s home.

  Then another thought crossed my mind. We had a job to do here.

  I paused, glancing at Damen. “How do we have time for this? Who is going to watch the monitors?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Damen shrugged. “The cameras are only there for recording. Even so, we have people on it—just in case.”

  This wasn’t the first time he had made such a statement. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you want to do at the slumber party?” Damen changed the subject, his gray eyes pointedly looking at the clipboard. “It’s all about what you want.”

  Right…

  I was less enthused now, but trudged forward for Miles’s sake. After all, he was radiating delight as he read everything over my shoulder. He was probably so excited—I couldn’t let him down now.

  I wanted to keep it a surprise, but Miles was relentless in trying to peek. Still, I was able to get most of my list completed without him spoiling the fun.