Lock & Key (King & Crown Book 1)

by Clara Coulson

  “Even so”—she brought her knees up to her chin—“they’ll find me eventually.”

  “Yeah, but by then, you could have a plan in place to escape from them for good, or hell, if we’re persistent enough, maybe even expose them, or take them down. When time is on your side, you have the ultimate power.” He laced his fingers together, a rush of dark nostalgia tingling at the edges of his mind. “That’s something I learned back in my police days.” Three weeks before a serial killer chooses his next victim. Forty-eight hours to find an abducted child before you find their body instead. Twenty-four before a one-time murderer flees the city and vanishes into Canada. “One of the few lessons I’ll never forget.”

  Kat chewed on this assertion for some time. “I was heading to Philadelphia, to get fake papers from a forger. I was planning to leave the country.”

  “Are you sure A9 only operates in the US?”

  She gave him a deer-in-the-headlights look, like she hadn’t considered the alternative. “If they’re international, I’ll never be safe.”

  “Don’t think like that.” He leaned forward, elbows on his thighs, and ran his tongue across his teeth, again and again, an old tic from his detective days that he thought he’d gotten rid of. “There’s always a way to defeat a criminal. Always. You just have to find their critical weakness and exploit it.”

  “So, what?” Kat cocked her head sideways. “You’re going to help me find it?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  Her expression grew even more perplexed. “But you don’t even know me. We crashed into each other in a McDonald’s parking lot. Why would you throw down your life to help me escape from a super-powerful secret organization that probably wants to take over the world? An organization that would kill you and toss your body into a shallow grave, if you gave them the chance? Why would you risk it?”

  Liam cracked a smile, a little rough around the edges from years of poor practice, but real enough. “Did you miss the part where I used to be a cop, and am now a private investigator? Helping people is my job. And yes, sometimes that job involves risking my life.”

  “This is a little different, don’t you think?” She wrapped her arms around her legs and planted her forehead against her knees, sighing. “This is a major conspiracy type of deal, not a city-level homicide case.”

  Liam shrugged, and steadfastly ignored the alarm in his brain that kept screaming she was right, and he was crazy, and they were both going to die before the week was out. “Who said I don’t like a challenge? Plus, I’d literally sign up for a field trip to hell if it meant I’d never have to work another divorce case.”

  Kat stared at him, astonished, and opened her mouth to reply, to express gratitude on a scale that Liam hadn’t experienced in three years, and…her stomach rumbled. Loudly.

  “Uh,” he said, a laugh bubbling up his throat, “didn’t get enough nuggets?”

  Her cheeks flushed. “Well, it’s just, I…when I heal from a bad injury…”

  Liam understood. Healing magic sucked up a disproportionate amount of energy compared to other disciplines, and that was human magic, channeled through mediums in predetermined amounts, easy to control. Kat’s magic was clearly nonhuman—though she herself didn’t appear to have any nonhuman ancestry—and the healing process he’d watched unfold in the parking lot had clearly been an autonomic function. She had no control over how much she healed at one time, or how much energy she expended during the process, and so she’d been left with a screaming metabolism, her body desperately trying to recoup the loss of physical energy that both assisted and fed into the magic in her soul.

  Nonhuman magic embedded in a human shell. That was ten kinds of fucked up.

  What did those A9 psychos do to her in that lab?

  Liam fished his phone from his pocket, opened the app for his favorite pizza place, and ordered his usual, twice over. “Nothing to worry about,” he assured her. “Sal’s pizza, breadsticks, and hot wings are the greatest cuisine this side of Philly. We can sit down and have a real dinner in, oh”—he checked the app for estimated delivery time—“forty-five minutes or so.”

  Kat skewed her lips to the side. “You don’t have to spend all that money on me.”

  He waved dismissively. “It’s no big deal.” Well, he was a little tight on money, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. She had bigger problems to worry about than overdraft fees.

  “No, really.” She shook a few pieces of parking lot filth from her hair. “You’re doing so much for me. I feel like I’m taking advantage of your generosity. I don’t have any money to give you—I lost it all when I got ambushed tonight—but if there’s some way I can pay you back…”

  Liam considered trying to dismiss her concerns again, but he could tell she was genuinely upset about not having anything to give him in return. And it wasn’t hard to see why. She’d been on the run for six weeks, had been attacked by A9 every step of the way, had watched bystanders she didn’t know get hurt, or worse, by the people who’d locked her up in a cell and performed experiments on her, and the whole time, she hadn’t found a single person to take her in, to help her. No friends. No family. Nothing. Liam was the first to nudge his way through the door she was holding shut in fear, and offer her some genuine help despite the risk.

  They were no more than acquaintances brought together by chance, but still, he was all she had. That thought made Liam profoundly sad, because it reminded him of the situation he himself had been in since…since the accident.

  He thought about her request for a minute, and finally said, “You know, I’ve been meaning to clean up the shop downstairs. It’s open four days a week, whenever I’m not doing PI work, but I’ve been so busy with the divorce cases for the past couple months that I’ve really neglected the place, and I feel kind of bad about it. It originally belonged to my dad. So, if you honestly want to pay me back for the food and shelter, maybe you could help me tidy up tomorrow?”

  Kat’s face brightened a lot more than he’d anticipated. “Really? That sounds so…normal.”

  Ouch. That was a gut punch. She was excited about cleaning because it was the most mundane thing she’d been asked to do since her escape.

  Liam swept the mountain of pity he felt for Kat into a back closet of his brain, and replied, “So it’s a deal then?”

  She nodded. “It’s cool with me. Although…” She lifted her tangled mess of hair, then scanned her torn, bloody, dirt-streaked clothing. “If it’s all right with you, could I take a shower before dinner gets here?”

  “Absolutely.” Liam rose from the couch and motioned for her to follow. “Guest bedroom has its own bathroom. It’s a little cramped, I admit, but it was renovated just a few years ago, and I rarely have guests overnight, so it’s pretty nice.” He ducked into the hallway bathroom, sank to his knees, and raided the cabinet under the sink for some soap and shampoo, then crossed over to the linen closet and grabbed a few towels and washcloths.

  Kat accepted the bundle of goods and stared longingly at the brand-name shampoo and equally expensive moisturizing soap. If she wondered why he had a store of bath products marketed toward women, she either didn’t think it was important or she just assumed they belonged to an ex-girlfriend. In reality, they had been Julia’s favorites, and he still didn’t have the will to throw them away. Pathetic, he chided himself. You have to move on someday, Crown.

  “Come on,” he said, forcing his tone to remain even, “guest bedroom’s right this way.”

  6

  Kat

  The shower felt like heaven.

  Kat stood under the spray for almost thirty minutes, washing away the blood and grime from the parking lot fight, scrubbing her hair until every last piece of debris disappeared down the drain. When she finished, she snatched the fluffy towel from the rack beside the shower stall, wrapped herself in it, and stepped out in front of the bathroom mirror. It was steamed up around the edges, but the middle was clear, so she examined her face for a long while
, same as she’d done every other time she had a moment to look at herself without prying eyes. Just like before, the person staring back didn’t look familiar. The first time she remembered seeing this face was shortly after she escaped from the Georgia compound.

  Over a month had passed since her breakout, and Kat still didn’t have a single memory of her previous life. Which meant whatever the scientists had done to her brain was likely permanent.

  Sighing, she toweled off, then cracked the door to peek out into the guest bedroom. Liam had knocked a little while ago and said he was leaving her some clothes, since hers had been practically destroyed by Marta’s attack. Sure enough, there was a set of pajamas folded on the bed; they were wrinkled but didn’t look dirty. They were also women’s pajamas, which may have explained why they were wrinkled. Perhaps they’d been in storage, left behind by a previous girlfriend or something.

  Kat crossed to the bed and pulled on the pajamas, enjoying the soft, thick fabric. She’d been wearing jeans and T-shirts to bed, because she was always concerned that A9 would catch up to her in the middle of the night and she’d have to flee on short notice. But inside Liam’s warded house, Marta and the other A9 magicians could not find her. She eyed the charmed bracelet she’d left on the nightstand; she’d have to wear it whenever she left the house. It was a huge relief, that. Finally, she could take a break and not have to worry, at least for one night, about men in white vans abducting her and tossing her into another cage.

  Dressed, Kat dried her hair as best she could, then crept out into the hall, locating the laundry room on her third try. She tossed her towel into the hamper and was closing the door when she heard the doorbell downstairs ring. The sound was followed by Liam’s footsteps as he hurried to meet the pizza delivery man. Kat used his short absence as an opportunity to do a bit of snooping.

  It wasn’t that she thought Liam was a creep. Not at all. It was just that she hardly knew anything about him. He’d shared his plight as a magic user who’d been left in the dust by some asshole magician, and that he’d been a cop, but those facets of his life only told her so much. The cluttered house strewn with beer bottles told her much more, and she wanted to know what kind of man she was dealing with, deep down. Was he really as valiant as he appeared to be, an honest goody-two-shoes? Or was there more to this story?

  She’d stumbled upon his bedroom while looking for the laundry room, so she backtracked and slipped inside, then quickly examined everything in plain sight. Most of his décor was bland, a few landscape paintings hung on the walls, cheap wooden furniture, a king-size bed. But a row of framed photos on the nightstand caught her eye. She drew closer and scanned the pictures, finding they were all centered on the same two people, a pretty blonde and a young boy with Liam’s blue eyes.

  A wife and child? Must’ve been. The pictures looked too modern to be his childhood.

  So he was divorced then, and his ex had custody of their son? The pajamas must’ve been among the belongings she’d ditched when she moved out—maybe stuff that didn’t fit her anymore—and the general unkemptness of the house was due to the fact that he’d been living with a wife who shared (or did most of) the cleaning duties. Now he struggled to do it all on his own, while simultaneously running his bookshop and his PI business.

  Yeah, that narrative made sense. He’d had a failed marriage, and this was the aftermath.

  Although, she had to wonder why he’d quit his old cop job. Was that a different story, or was it part of the same plot? Maybe he’d been injured in the line of duty, and that had sparked the marital problems, and…

  And now she was pointlessly speculating.

  Kat shook her head and shuffled back into the hall, as she heard Liam charging up the stairs. She left his bedroom door the way it had been before she entered and walked into the living room at the same moment he entered the kitchen with a mountain of food. A lot more food than she’d been expecting.

  Wow, that’s enough to feed a cow.

  Her stomach rumbled again.

  Or one really hungry Kat.

  Liam sat the food on the kitchen table, then cleared off all the scattered papers and dropped them on the counter. As he was rummaging in the cabinets for plates, he spotted her in the living room entryway and said, “Hey, I’ve got some Cokes in the fridge, if you want to grab one. There’s some sweet tea too, I think. Cups are in the cabinet next to the fridge.”

  Kat swung over to the fridge and pulled the door open, spying not only the promised drinks but also several six packs of beer. So, yeah, he liked to drink. Maybe a little too much. But he seemed sober enough right now, and he had saved her life tonight—there was no reason to hold one character flaw against him. If he started acting like a drunken fool, that was another thing. For now though, she grabbed two Cokes and carried them out into the living room, depositing them on the coffee table while Liam took care of loading the plates with food.

  Liam picked out a Disney movie to watch on Netflix, a recent release, and Kat was mesmerized by the animation because she couldn’t remember the last time she’d watched anything other than the news. Her life before A9 was a blank, all the way down to the music she’d liked and the movies she’d seen and the books she’d read. And in the weeks she’d been on the run, she hadn’t had time to sit down, relax, and catch up on missed TV. She turned all televisions to the local news, in case they revealed a disturbance that could be A9 catching up to her, and any boredom she felt was overridden by fear.

  Tonight was the first time Kat could remember feeling comfortable. So she ate an entire pizza by herself, plus half a box of hot wings and eight breadsticks, and enjoyed a good movie. After, when the food was cleared away and the credits were rolling, Kat let the comfort lull her out of the constant state of alertness she’d been trapped in since breakfast. She yawned, spent from the night’s “excitement,” and told Liam she wanted to turn in for bed. He wished her goodnight, she replied in kind, and then they went their separate ways for the evening.

  A picture of domesticity.

  If only it could last, Kat thought. But the morning would undoubtedly ruin it.

  Kat closed the door to the guest room and locked it by habit, then remembered she wasn’t in a place where A9 could come barging in any second. So she unlocked it. Just to be contrary to her instincts, which always urged her to shut herself in the equivalent of a bank vault lined with lead. Then she turned off the ceiling light and slipped into bed.

  It was a comfortable bed, unlike the motel numbers Kat was used to. It smelled faintly of fabric softener and perhaps a whiff of old perfume, as opposed to the sterile, industrial scent used by cleaning crews. It felt, well, lived in, like a place one would actually stay in for a long time, make a home around, build a life out from. And that feeling provided a strange sense of security, calming the vexed animal that lived beneath Kat’s skin, demanding that she stay awake all the time, critical eyes on every tiny thing that moved, ready to pounce.

  Instead of the insomnia she was familiar with, Kat found sleep easily tonight. She drifted off after only ten, maybe fifteen minutes.

  Unfortunately, the dreams caught up to her.

  They were flickering shadows in her mind at first, tremors in the corner of her eye, but eventually, they coalesced into scenes of torture and terror. The countless experiment sessions the A9 scientists had put her through, all the heinous tests they’d conducted, the deaths of the other lab rats, Sarah included, and ultimately, the endless days of loneliness, Kat sitting silently in her prison, the only subject left alive in her cellblock, nothing to do but wait for her cruel murder, and slowly going insane in the process.

  One particular vision stuck out: the day they’d electrocuted her. Buzz. She remembered the blinding pain, her muscles seizing. Buzz. She remembered screaming until her vocal cords tore. Buzz. She remembered the doctors laughing at her when her mouth flapped noiselessly, nothing but a rasp emerging. Buzz. She remembered when her heart stopped, the moment of death, only for the sci
entists to bring her back from the brink, sentence her to more suffering. Buzz!

  Kat jolted awake and sat straight up, breathing heavily. She felt a scream in her throat, but she didn’t know if it had come out or not, if Liam had heard her. She didn’t want him to hear her, didn’t want him to know how broken she was, didn’t want anyone to see this twisted, warped little thing beneath the slip of her body, playacting a normal human being. Panic seized her, and all rational thoughts flew out the window. She had to get up and do something. Walk. Run. Beat her hands and fists against the wall. Something. It didn’t matter what. Move!

  She grabbed the bracelet with the anti-scrying charm and slipped it onto her wrist, then tiptoed out of the bedroom. The house was quiet. Liam had gone to sleep hours ago. So Kat had no trouble sneaking out the door, heading down the stairs, and weaving around the bookshelves in the shop until she came to the exit. Her hand hovered over the doorknob. Liam undoubtedly had some sort of spells—wards?—in place to alert him if someone opened his shop door in the middle of the night, but she didn’t care. If he caught her, she’d make up an excuse. Say she needed some air.

  Wait. Was that the truth?

  Kat didn’t know. She just needed…

  She unlocked the door, hauled it open, and stepped out into the cold night. Five minutes later, she found herself wandering aimlessly through the streets of Salem’s Gate. Liam had warned her that things got nasty in this place at night sometimes, supernatural forces bickering, but Kat couldn’t get her feet to make a U-turn and swing her back toward Liam’s place. She kept on going, farther and farther away from her haven, driven by a fear of something she couldn’t quite explain. Fear for Liam’s well-being? Fear of getting too cozy in his cute but messy home and then having it all ripped away? Fear of something far, far worse, a concept she couldn’t fathom, an outcome she couldn’t grasp?

  Kat was no psychic—to her knowledge—but those nightmares of the past had stirred this primordial premonition within her, as if the power churning in her soul that did not belong there knew more than she did about the oncoming future. As if it could sense a great storm on the horizon, electricity crackling faintly in the air. Her power was animalistic. Maybe it could sense danger the way that animals could sense cataclysms in advance. The way birds took flight and dogs barked before devastating quakes.