Next thing I knew, I felt the heat of him waft upon me. My lashes fluttered open, and I stared into his hard face, knowing that he was not my friend, yet so desperate for one that I looked to him for any crumb of wisdom.
“Hold your shit together, Elle. You hear me? That’s an order.”
I wet my lips, feeling the fluttering of nerves and fear in the pit of my stomach. Thousands of questions rose within me, and I felt assaulted by emotion. Why am I here? Why is he here? I nodded, recognizing the sage counsel for what it was.
He sighed deeply and glanced over his shoulder. Even from behind, I could tell he was tense and cagey. He flexed and relaxed his fists in what appeared to be an involuntary motion of obvious restlessness.
When he looked back at me, his thick brows were pinched. “I’ve reached out to the Bureau. Your sister might not like it, but I’ve got full access to investigate the murder of Princess Aquata.” He’d softened his tone. There was no gruffness there anymore, and I was almost sure that I heard something gentle, as though he were silently communicating his condolences to me.
My nostrils flared. I was sure that what I was seeing and feeling was wrong. I was in a bad dream, a terrible nightmare in which Crowley might actually have been a decent being for once.
I glanced to the side, blinking back the heat gathering in the corners of my eyes as the full weight of my sister’s death began to settle over me like a shroud.
He cleared his throat. “You’re here because I need you to be my partner on this case. You’re the only one with any actual Grimm training, so for better or worse, we’re just going to have to learn to get along. For now.”
I looked back at him, my ire rising to the surface like an angrily whistling teakettle. “You shouldn’t even be awake. I saw her curse you. You were stone. What the hells is going on here?”
He flashed that cocky smirk that set my teeth on edge, reminding me once again that no matter how many glimpses into his humanity I had gotten, at the end of the day, he was nothing but a rotten bastard, and that’s all he would ever be.
“Get your ass up and be ready to work in five, Detective.” Then he stood, turned, and walked into the bathroom, leaving the door slightly ajar.
I had so many questions, but I knew he wouldn’t answer any of them. Where is Hook? If Crowley is awake, shouldn’t Hook be too? Had Jacamoe done this? And what about the tribunal? When am I to meet up with them?
Also, why in the hells is Crowley acting like I’m the only one who can assist him in the investigation? Undine literally had their own police, and any one of them could have been conscripted, which meant he had other reasons for seeking me out this way.
Other than telling me I looked like shite, he hadn’t even mentioned my new appearance. There had been such an obvious change in me, and he would have pounced on the chance to rub it in in Grimm. It was proof, he would have said, of my inner dark self coming to the fore. The more I thought about it, the more I began to wonder if he wasn’t putting on an act.
I glanced around the room.
Nothing happened at royal compounds that the royals wouldn’t eventually find out about. As a BS agent, Crowley knew this.
He was keeping something from them. I looked back at the door he’d left slightly ajar, wondering whether it was possible that he’d given me time to figure this out on my own, believing I was intelligent enough. If so, that meant there was a level of trust being built between us. But that felt impossible. After everything we’d gone through, I found it difficult to believe that a man as hard as Crowley was actually capable of changing his ways.
My opinion of him was morphing, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. More times than I could count, I was being confronted with the same hard truth: I might not know as much about the world as I’d once thought. In fact, I was beginning to question everything about myself and those around me.
Protocol said that all royal deaths had to be investigated, even the open-and-shut cases, as an agent of BS Crowley outranked even royal police. It was his case now, and he wanted me as his partner.
Was he, like Anahita, keeping the reaper at bay by whatever means necessary, even by hook or crook? I knew without a doubt that I had enemies on the tribunal who would want nothing more than to see me hang, and if Father died, I had no doubt that’s exactly what I would do. But even his living didn’t guarantee much. I walked a very delicate line here, and I knew it.
My best bet at getting out of Undine alive might very well have been to trust Agent Crowley. An ironic laugh spilled up the back of my tongue. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” I whispered.
I was many things, but purposefully stupid wasn’t one of them. I knew what I had to do.
I stood and dusted myself off. They’d given him new clothes. My ridiculous cocktail dress the faes had gifted me with was shredded to hells, I’d lost my combat boots in the flooding, and my leather jacket was water logged.
We were in one of the hundreds of bedrooms Father had placed in the castle to entertain travelling dignitaries. I marched over to the massive black-pearl armoire that took up half the wall and opened the doors.
Inside, I found a treasure trove of clothing from all parts of the hundred realms. My people were a bright and colorful bunch—like underwater peacocks, they looked to stand out, which meant that if I wanted to blend in, I would have to be as ostentatious as I’d once been.
I chose a stunning ivory-pearl couture mermaid gown and slipped it on. It would give me the illusion of a tail, so no one who didn’t already know would realize I’d lost mine. The bodice was cinched tightly at the waist, and threads of glittering gold and silver ran like eels around my tiny waist and down my legs.
My hair was black as the night instead of the electric blue it’d once been, and I didn’t look exactly like a typical siren with my black eyes, but I did still have royal markings upon my forehead. Running my fingers through my hair, I fluffed it out as best I could, making sure to highlight the mark so that anyone who saw me would know I was a siren of not-so-insignificant rank.
I stared at the table beside the dresser, which was laden with pots of face paint, and curled my nose. It’d been so long since I’d dressed that way, and I hated it, but I suspected that if I had any hope of getting out of the tribunal with my head still intact, conformity couldn’t hurt.
I quickly painted my face, accentuating my sharp cheekbones and naturally pouty lips. When Crowley stepped out, I looked every inch the arrogant royal he no doubt thought me to be.
His face was a cold, stoic mask as he glared at me, but I saw a glimmer, a spark in his eyes. Whether he hated my guts or not, I was still one of the deadliest and most beautiful creatures in all of Grimm.
“Come,” he said simply before shrugging on his black double-breasted jacket. He opened the door, waiting for me to go through first. I felt tension wafting off of him, no doubt matching my own, but we both knew how to play our parts well. I tipped my head and murmured a soft “thank you.”
He closed the door behind him. “Where is the garden?”
“This way, Agent Crowley,” I said, slipping back into the role I’d once intimately known. When I walked down the long and winding halls, no one paid us any mind. I was a royal—I was feared and respected in these halls, and whoever my suited partner was, he must have been equally important to be so closely associated with me.
In ten minutes, we were outside, under the canvas of black sea stars, walking the quiet gardens lined with yellow crime-scene tape.
I’d felt nothing as we’d made our way here, but the tape reminded me why we were here, why we were investigating anything at all. My beautiful, kind, and gentle sister had died because I’d released the darkest evil upon them all.
I sniffed.
“We will find the bitch that did this, Detective. I swear to you, we will find her.”
I gasped, looking over at Crowley. I couldn’t possibly have heard him say those words to me. He was stoic and would not look at me, but I saw the muscle
in his jaw clench, and I knew that he’d said it.
My heart ached.
But then we arrived, and he was Agent Hardass once more. “Check the perimeter. Look for any traces of the witches’ dark magick. Any clues, anything you find. Call me.”
That was all he said before turning, lifting the crime-scene tape, and entering. I glanced down, noting the chalk outline of my sister’s body still stained into the sea grass beneath. She was cold and dead now, resting in a morgue somewhere. She was nothing but a sack of bones and flesh with no soul to give her life, to give her verve. She was already becoming what we sirens would all return to one day: sea foam. All our deeds, our smiles, and our kindnesses would be forgotten in time by all. All that would remain would be a vague legacy that might not actually resemble the true person at all.
I could feel the heat rising in my belly and blinked away the sting in my eyes. I couldn’t do it, break down, lose my shite. I was a royal, trained not to feel such things, at least not in the way that others might have.
So I took a deep breath and reminded myself of my training. If I’d been the one who’d died, they would all be doing the same thing. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Just be.
I smoothed my sweaty palms down the front of my gown as I finally felt my nerves began to settle.
I might not know what was going on or how Crowley had awakened as he had, but I had a job to do, and by damn, I was going to do it right. There would be no more mistakes, no matter what.
Turning on a heel, I walked that perimeter, looking for any signs or clues that the royal police might have missed. An hour later, I found one.
“Crowley, come. Come here,” I cried from behind a grove of trees.
When he appeared not even five minutes later, I held up my find, a single grain of dark-blue sand.
“It was her. It was the witch that did this.” I squeezed my eyelids together, confronted by the evidence of my own wrongs.
He wrapped his hand around mine, and I felt a pulse of warmth race through me. When he released it and I looked down at my palm, there was nothing there anymore. Somehow, he’d taken the evidence.
“It’s been sent to the Bureau for further analysis.”
“That’s a nifty trick,” I said, somewhat awed by how much more impressive the Bureau was than even Grimm PD.
He snorted, and for a brief moment, I saw a glimmer of a smile ghost over his lips before his face was once more a stoic, dispassionate mask. Then he sighed. “I’ve found something else, Detective. Come with me.”
CHAPTER 38
ELLE
I FOLLOWED him as he led me deeper into the gardens, toward the very heart of the giant labyrinth that Aquata had learned as a child long ago. She’d been able to maneuver easily through the twists and turns, never getting lost, often helping my sisters and me find our way out.
Aquata had never been like the rest of us. She’d never wanted the spotlight. In fact, she’d actively shunned it, often refusing to show up to state functions, much to Father’s everlasting ire.
Not the prettiest or the cleverest, Aquata had always felt that she lacked in everything, but what she’d never fully grasped or understood was that she’d been the favorite of us all.
There’d never been a need to hide who we really were with her. We’d all told her our deepest, darkest secrets, knowing she would never betray our trust. I was sure even Father had fallen prey to her sweet innocence in the same manner and shared matters of state with no one but her.
She’d learned of my desire for Hook before all the rest of them and of Anahita’s desperate love for our house’s greatest rival, Ebonia of the House Narina. I wasn’t sure if Father even knew that Anahita would never take on a consort. She would never give her hand to any male.
Love between male and male or female and female wasn’t forbidden in Undine, save for the royals, whose marriages were more about politics than the heart. We were all to have wed males of Father’s choosing so that we might create heirs to strengthen our hold and right to the crown, but only two of us had thus far.
Crowley slowed before stepping to the side.
I felt his curious look upon my face when I glanced down.
It was just a patch of sea grass. The ground looked as though it had been slightly disturbed, but otherwise, I couldn’t make sense of what he’d led me there for.
I looked a moment longer, not wanting to admit defeat, until finally I had no choice but to. I turned to him. “What am I looking at here?”
“You don’t smell it?”
My heart almost stopped beating when he asked me that. I was a siren, or I had been. I’d helped solve the Charming case by using my affinity to water, sensing the disturbance inside the pond behind their massive estate.
Have I lost my ability to feel change in water too? I blinked, my mouth dry as I asked, “smell what?” I took a long sniff, but I smelled nothing.
In fact, I smelled an absolute absence of anything. Smells were everywhere Even as rudimentary as the human olfactory sense was they could pick up scent, which were the weakest noses of any species in Grimm. But humans could detect the scent of flowers, dirt, freshly shorn grass, and the petrichor upon the land after a good hard rain.
But there was nothing. An absolute blank, in fact. My nostrils flared, and I deepened my frown, sniffing harder and wondering if I’d not only lost my ability to smell as a human but the ability to smell at all. I wet my lips.
“You do smell it.” His voice was a rough burr.
“What?” I looked up at him. “I smell nothing.”
“Exactly.”
I cocked my head, my racing heart beginning to settle down as I once again looked back down at the empty patch. An idea came to me, and I moved two paces to the left and sniffed.
Water. The tang of sea grass. The floral scents of underwater flowers in bloom. Even a thread of tea cakes from the kitchens hundreds of yards behind us. Pulling my bottom lip between my teeth, I stepped two paces back to the left, to the same spot I’d just left.
Nothing. I lifted my wrist to my nose, knowing I should smell of exotic oils from far off lands. But again, nothing.
Ichabod would have told me to go farther to my left, to zone out the perimeter of just where the smells stopped. So I moved two steps in the opposite direction next and sniffed again.
Nothing. So I took another two steps and smelled everything I had from before: cakes, sea grass, and water.
I took my time walking the circle, but it wasn’t a perfect circle, and at one point, the path seemed to pull out toward a wall of water ivy before disappearing completely. With each step I took, if I smelled something, I dragged the toe of my foot inside the sand to create a visible barrier.
When I was done, I stepped to the side. Crowley came up beside me. On the floor of the garden, we saw a perfect circle with a small trail that vanished into the wall of greenery behind.
I glanced at him. His jaw worked from side to side for half a moment before he finally turned to look at me. “So?” He lifted a brow, and I knew what he was really asking. He wanted to know my thoughts.
I wet my lips and stared back at my marking, trying to imagine what could have happened here. “Maybe the witch waited there, inside the circle”—I pointed—“likely for father.”
“Maybe,” he said, but I heard his doubt.
I turned fully toward him, planting a hand on my hip. “You don’t think so?” I knew he wasn’t buying my theory.
He shrugged. “I felt that bitch’s claws on me, Detective, felt myself get lifted half off the ground. The strength in her body, what she did to you—” He paused. His voice had grown thick and full of grit.
I felt trapped in his predatory gaze, which burned with fire and fury as he obviously recalled our time with the Sea Witch.
But then he blinked, and his eyes no longer burned the red of flame but faded back to their normal brown with mere flecks of red within. He released a deep breath. “That bitch didn’t need to hide in that way.
She’s far more powerful than anything down here—that much is certain. No, she wasn’t the one who left the nothingness. I’d bet my soul on it.”
“Then who did?”
“Who down here can wield magick?”
“Most if not all of us, especially the royal lineage. You’re speaking of sirens. We’re very adept at keeping to the shadows to lure our prey away.”
“What about the male who brought you to me?”
My lips pressed into a thin line. “Jacamoe? No.” I shook my head with absolute certainty.
“You’ve been gone a long time, Princess. Times change.”
I chuckled. “Yes, but there is the not-so-insignificant matter of his golden cuffs. His magick is almost fully suppressed. He can only perform what he’s been given leave to perform and no more. My sister owns his mark now. If he used his powers, she’d have known it.”
His gaze instantly strayed to my own cuffs.
I smoothed my fingers over my left wrist, pulling my sleeve down as far as it could go to cover the telltale peek of gold.
“So that’s what that is?” his voice was grave as his eyes searched mine.
I sniffed even as my cheeks burned and I hid my hands behind my back. “Gonna gloat about it?” I asked him accusingly, waiting for his damnable smirk and the glint of victory in his dark eyes.
Leaning in and invading my space, he quietly growled, “If you must know what I think, I think it’s barbaric, Princess .” He snapped my title as though it was an insult.
I lifted my chin. My spine had gone ramrod straight, but just like before, he confounded me by not pressing his advantage.
“I don’t keep with neutering,” he said. “If you’re gonna kill something, then just kill it. There’s no honor in torture.”
What does that mean exactly? Does he view me as a wild beast who should be shot and put down for the sake of myself and those around me? Or… is there more that I’m simply not piecing together.
The Grimm Files Collection Boxed Set Page 55
