I laughed even harder, feeling an uncontrollable urge to slap his face. But thankfully, recognizing how out of line that would be, I instead drove my clawlike nails into my palms until I felt them pierce my flesh. The pain cleared my head a little, just enough to know I was losing my head. The moment I did, I felt the fight leave me, and I suddenly had very little strength left. I felt my body sway and my knees grow weak, and my back suddenly pressed up against the wall behind me.
“Whoa, there,” he said gently, but still with an edge of the beast in his tone. Then his hands were on me, and he was helping me walk the rest of the way back to my room as I fought not to cry, not to show him how messed up I was feeling. That anger had been nothing more than a mask hiding the fact that I’d screwed up royally. And because of it, I had to say the last goodbye to the gentlest heart I’d ever known.
I didn’t know when we’d entered my room or even how we’d ended up sitting on my bed, but when I blinked again, we were there, he was looking at me, and I needed someone to confide in. I couldn’t stop. “I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m a stranger in this place.” I sucked in a trembly breath as the tears started to fall in waves.
I poured out my soul, and Crowley just listened, saying nothing and not touching me. But he was there, fully present, and for once, I was grateful that it was him and not anyone else. I knew he would not give me hopeless platitudes, like Hook would or Hatter might. Crowley was as practical as I was. And when I’d finally unburdened myself and had no more tears to shed, I looked down at the mattress and shuddered.
His warm hand found mine just a few seconds later, grounding me in the present and making me feel tethered and weirdly safe. “Look at me,” he said softly.
I did.
His handsome face was stoic, but his eyes roamed mine with a heavy sincerity in them. “I know Hook lives.”
I nodded, knowing he was right. Because even after all this time, my bond to Hook was as strong as ever. If he’d died again, I’d have known it, just as I had the first time.
“And we will get him out of here.” He gestured between us.
I shook my head. “You maybe, but I screwed up b— ”
He growled deeply in his chest and I clamped my lips shut.
“You had your chance to speak. Now, it’s my turn,” he said in a no-nonsense tone. “Do you think I lose, Detective? At anything?” He didn’t give me a chance to answer, because he answered himself. “I don’t lose. I never do. It’s not why I got into this business. I’m good at what I do. The fucking best. And so are you. You hear me?”
I nodded, and he responded in kind.
“That’s right. What we did, we did because we had to. That Sea Witch was a monster who needed stopping, and if we had to do it again, we would. I’m not letting this tribunal do shit to you, Elle, and I need you to believe and trust in me. Just as you would your own partner.”
So rare was it for him to call me by my gods-given name that it stuck out like a sore thumb to me when he did. And a strange warmth rolled through me at the sound of it.
His thumb scraped repeatedly over the top of my hand in a soothing back-and-forth motion. “And until that tribunal convenes for us, we have work to do. We’re the only ones who know that your sister in all likelihood was murdered. Now, I don’t know much about the Undine world, but I know what the song ritual is, and I know that Aquata will return one last time.”
I shook my head. “She is only a spirit, Crowley. She cannot speak to tell me what was done to her.”
The corner of his lip twitched.
I was struck all over again by how strangely fascinating his facial dimensions were. He was really quite interesting to look at.
“Maybe not,” he said, “but I’ve been around enough murdered spirits to know that they all act the same, no matter their species. Everyone will look for her appearance tomorrow in the gardens, where she was killed. But you and I both know that it is to the place that they felt safest at in life that they return to in death.”
“The house in the hedgerow.”
He nodded. “We could sneak off and wait for her. No one will think to look for her there, which means we’ll have a few minutes with her, and who knows what secrets we could learn then?”
My stomach felt jittery, as though razor-tipped butterfly wings flapped inside it. I was scared to hope, scared to believe that something positive could actually come out of the pain I would feel when I confronted her loss, but I did hope. Damn him. I burned with hope, which was dangerous. I bit my top lip before saying, “You think she’ll show us something?”
“I’ve got a hunch, Detective. That’s all. But I’m rarely wrong about them—or have you forgotten who was always there to thwart your ass?”
I laughed, but the sound was choked. “Aye, I’ve not forgotten. Damn bastard.”
It was his turn to chuckle, and his thumb scraped more slowly, more gently, almost tenderly across the soft flesh of my wrist.
As if suddenly aware that I knew just how intimate a touch that had been, he stilled and looked down at where we were joined hand in hand. He released me slowly, gently, almost like prey backing away from a predator. Then he sniffed and cleared his throat. “You need sleep. You look like shit.”
I barked with laughter, needing his tough brand of whatever the hell he was doing more than he could possibly know. Any bit of tenderness from him would likely have had me sobbing again, but all I felt was weary and surprisingly ready for bed. “Likewise,” I sassed him back, and his full lips twitched.
Standing, he rolled his thick neck from side to side until even I could hear its crack. I cringed, but he didn’t seem fazed by it at all. “I’ve still a few things left to do,” he said.
I cocked my head. “What in the devil are you doing skulking about this castle as you are? You do understand that if you get caught, you’re likely to wind up in clamps, just like me.” I held up my wrists, jiggling them at him.
He smirked. “I never get caught, Detective. I thought we’d already established that.” With a wink, he turned and crept from my room so stealthily that even though I saw him doing it with my own eyes, I didn’t hear his movements at all.
I stared at the empty room, which seemed much smaller without him in it, wondering why it was that I suddenly felt the way I did. But it was also a feeling I had no desire to explore any further.
I was still in my gown. I should change. I should strip. I should do something, wash my face, at least. I forgot everything until the sun rose bright and early the next day.
CHAPTER 44
MADDOX
I WAS LED to a back room. Everything about Bârân was meant to entice. Much like Alice’s crown and thorns, it was just another den of sexual pleasures, but with a decidedly Eastern theme.
A contemplation pool was at the center of the room with lotus flowers floating upon it and brightly colored koi fish swimming within it. Lush and exotic smells, oils and perfumes from far-off lands, were everywhere.
The room itself was a wonderous mixture of indoors and out, with walls covered in crawling vines bursting with flowers and chitinous beetles that flew colorfully through the air like wheeling fairyflies.
Pressed against one wall was a pile of brightly textured sitting pillows. As far as traps went, it wasn’t exactly pinging my radar. Wherever Crowley had sent me, it didn’t seem to be a snare, yet it made no sense to me, either.
But maybe as an agent of Grimm rather than a mere detective, he had access to places and people I could barely even dream of.
Taking a seat on a mound of surprisingly comfortable pillows, I picked up a meditation stone and rubbed its smooth surface for several seconds. But as the seconds ticked by and still no one else joined me, I grew worried that maybe I had stepped into an elaborate scheme of some sort, or worse yet, a terrible prank. It seemed entirely out of character for Crowley’s serious nature, but I couldn’t explain why he’d sent me here any other way.
Twisting my lips, wondering how I’d e
xplain it to Bo, I tossed the stone into the pool. It landed with a soft plop before slowly sinking from sight. Counting the ripples of the pool preoccupied my time as I waited and waited and waited.
Finally, when I was sure I would have to actually fight my way out, the door opened.
I looked up and frowned.
I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, but an elderly woman with wheels for legs and metallic pincers for hands wasn’t it. I cocked my head even as I instantly jumped to my feet.
I’d not expected to find a cyborg—it was the only way I could describe her—meeting me, but good breeding was good breeding. I bowed deeply toward the matron, who had unusually kind and expressive eyes.
She chortled, a sound that seemed to come easily and often to her. She held up one pincered hand. “It’s been many a moon since I’ve been bowed to, son, though you’ve made this old woman’s heart glad for it.” She tipped her head gracefully back to me.
I couldn’t help but wonder how it was that she’d been turned into an amalgam of woman and metal, but whatever had caused the transformation must have been violent.
She wheeled over toward a cabinet. “Drink?” Her manner seemed easygoing, and it instantly put me at ease.
“Fire water, if you have it,” I automatically said.
“Ah, a Landian. You aren’t very common here in Grimm Central, though I should have known by the fine cut of your coat. You all do tend toward the peacock, don’t you?” she lightly teased.
Taken off guard by the woman, I gave her a sheepish grin. Why had Crowley sent me to find her in particular? What was she to him? She seemed harmless and far too pure to be tangled up in his web. But then… I knew better than most how often appearances could be deceiving.
I cleared my throat as I accepted the crystal tumbler full of green fluid. Fire water was thick and stripped the flesh going down, leaving a trace of burnt cherries behind. I’d always had a taste for the foul stuff, much to Elle’s chagrin. She’d likened it to cough syrup and “the bad kind at that,” she’d often teased. I slammed it back then handed the Tinkerer the empty tumbler, refusing a refill.
She took a shot of something clear before finally looking back to me. “Now,” she said, and instantly I sensed the shift in her. She went from matronly grandmother to a shrewd businesswoman in a blink.
That’s when I knew that Crowley hadn’t been lying to me. Whoever this women was, she was interesting, to say the least.
“—who sent you? Not just anyone knows my true name.”
“I was sent by Agent Crowley.”
“Who?” She asked instantly, and her shoulders tensed. Her openness of just seconds earlier had vanished, replaced by an implacable curiosity, and I suddenly had the sense that this was not a woman to be trifled with.
I cleared my throat, trying to remember how the agent had worded his directive. Many times, when we in law enforcement were talking to our informants, we spoke in code, so that if our communiqué were intercepted, they couldn’t be decrypted.
“Ah”—I cleared my throat—“he referred to himself as ‘agent.’ That’s it.”
The distrustful gleam in her dark eyes hadn’t relented, but she slowly cocked her head to the side. “I heard you the first time. And I assumed that was who you’d meant. Why has he sent you to me? Why did he not come himself?”
I thought about how I’d seen Crowley, and to be honest, I still couldn’t make sense of it. I couldn’t figure out how had the agent had chanced upon such powerful magick. Shifters were not inherently practitioners. Their magick rested within their very nature, but it was instinctual and not something that could grow to be more, not in the way a witch or a mage could.
My brows lowered. “He is currently being kept in the under. The case is classified, but I can assure you that I was sent on his behalf.” Reaching into my coat pocket, I extracted my badge, flashing it at her.
“Detective Maddox Hatter,” she said softly, raising a gentle brow before shaking her head and her pincers. “Put that away. I believe you, though I fear you do not know what you’ve stepped into or just what your agent friend truly is.” She snorted. “No matter. The sooner I give you what you need, the sooner you can get on your way.”
Hearing the soft whirring of a metallic panel pulling apart, I glanced over my shoulder, expecting to see the door opening. But instead it wasn’t the door behind me that had opened—rather, the Tinkerer herself had reached inside of her own chest cavity with one of her pincered hands and withdrew a small and very unusual looking timepiece.
It had no hands, and its face was nothing but metallic gears and cranks. Gently, she handed the trinket to me. “Do not, for any reason drop this. It is the only one of its kind and can never be replicated again. It can only be used once.”
“What is it?” I asked, curling my hands over the cool glass surface.
“It is called a wave amplifier noise device, or WAND for short.”
I snorted. “Of course it is.”
She shrugged. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I didn’t name it.”
“What does it do?”
“Exactly as the name implies, it disrupts sound waves by shifting the normal pattern into a higher frequency that can scramble even the most unbreakable bonds.”
“He’s planning to break them out of there,” I muttered under my breath.
“What was that?” she asked.
I shook my head before quickly pocketing the piece. “Nothing.” My pulse rocketed in my chest. Elle might soon be free of her cage, at least. I still wasn’t sure how Crowley planned to escape the undersea world, but I was glad to see that he had a plan. One thing was certain: I would have to alert the captain. We had to figure out a way through the proper channels down there. Surely, Undine would have to recognize our authority on the matter if we had a warrant in hand.
“Thank you, Madam Tinkerer,” I said with sincerity, moving to stand before I could bow a farewell to her. “You do not know how much I— ”
There was an uneasiness around her eyes before she quickly hissed, “Do not be deceived, Detective. You do not know the agent as I do. He is not a good man, though he plays the game well. For all our sakes, I beg you not to release him. Let him rot down there.”
My skin shivered with ice, and I stared at her intensely. “If he rots, so does she. And I can’t allow that. I won’t allow that.”
“I won’t ask you who you mean. I doubt you’d share, anyway.” Her words sounded so defeated. She twisted her lips. “It was he who turned me into this thing I am today. He who banished me from my lands to this stinking cesspool of rot and decay. He is a monster, Detective. And if your friend’s life depends on retrieving this, then may the gods have mercy on her soul.”
Elle
“COME.”
I glanced up from my studies. I’d not been able to bring my baby otter back for longer than even a second that day, and my thoughts were scattered, my concentration absolute shite. I was in desperate need of a break that I had no wish to actually take. I clutched at the desk with nerveless fingers, feeling stretched thin and nearing my breaking point.
“Detective, come,” Crowley said again softly, more gently.
I sniffed and wiped at my nose with my sleeved arm. I was dressed in the gaudiest, stupidest gown of all time, black silk taffeta that in the light shifted from purple to blue, encrusted with gems. My black hair was pulled up and pinned in place with golden hermit crabs. My face was painted like a harlot’s, and I wore false eyelashes that were so damn long I couldn’t stop blinking—it felt as if I had bugs trying to crawl into my eyeballs.
“You’ll smear your face, Elle,” he whispered slowly, taking my wrists in his and massaging gently, his thumbs scraping my tender flesh and making me shiver despite myself.
I shuddered. “I can’t do this.”
“Forget about magick for now, Detective,” he whispered, rubbing at my jaw with his thumbs, which I could assume was because I’d badly smeared the pancake face paint. �
��I promise that you’ll want to see what I’ve found.” He dropped his hand to his side.
I frowned at his cryptic comment. “What?”
Shaking his head, he placed a finger over his mouth, the universal sign of shut the hells up already. I almost laughed at his growly and frustrated look, but his eyes were glowing red, and I thought that maybe he was in as good a mood as I was.
Sighing, I tried to withdraw my hands from his, but he jerked with his chin toward Jacamoe’s workbench. “Your cuffs. I’ll be fucking pissed if you blow yourself up by walking out of this room without them.”
I snorted. “You’d only be pissed because you’d die with me.”
“You’re damn right,” he growled before clamping my locks back into place with a finality that stole my breath.
I was getting better at adjusting to the sudden dampening of my powers, but I still swayed, and my stomach still roiled for a second. “Gods, I hate how much you must be enjoying this,” I said between gritted teeth.
Once the dizziness had passed I opened my eyes, only to note an odd shape lying beneath a pile of scattered sheaves. Frowning, I reached for it. I wasn’t sure what made me do it, but when I shoved the sheaves aside I frowned. Hard. As I stared down at the looking glass I’d seen Jacamoe taking to my sister days ago.
I picked it up.
“What are you doing, Detective? I’ve something to show you.”
I shook my head and tipped the looking glass toward him. “Don’t you know what this is?”
“It’s a looking glass, obviously. Why are you playing with it?”
I rolled my eyes and snorted. “I’m not playing, idiot. And this is much more than a mere looking glass, it’s actually a spy glass. It’s quite powerful really, it can see for miles in any direction, in fact there is no limit to how far you can look through it. And nothing is hidden from you, you can look through walls, rock, metal.”
The Grimm Files Collection Boxed Set Page 63
