by A. L. Knorr
“Of course.” He got smoothly to his feet, leaving a dent in my pillow which should have been much deeper. He moved silently, elegantly, like a cat.
“You didn’t come because of Jasher.” I had been right, and now I felt dumb.
Laec nodded and the sympathetic look was back, his lower lip pooched out further.
“But he can see faeries.”
Laec cocked his head, not taking his gaze from my face. It was unnerving because I hadn’t yet seen him blink. I felt vulnerable, like he could see right through me.
“You mean the wee ones. There are a few without who can.”
“As much as I’d like to continue this conversation, would you mind giving me a moment of privacy?” I hadn’t moved from the bathroom door. “To dress.”
“I do mind,” Laec replied, coolly. “First, because you look delightfully ridiculous in that fuzzy thing. And second, I don’t like waiting. Not for anyone. Not even a lost little Wise like you. I only came because I felt sorry for you.”
I glared at him. “You’re quite annoying.”
I immediately regretted saying it. What was I doing being rude to this man? He had all the power because I didn’t know what he was capable of. I wasn’t sure what I was even capable of while this far off the ground.
To my surprise, Laec gave a low laugh and took a few steps toward me, his eyes still on my face. “You sound like Fyfa.”
“Who is Fyfa?”
“A friend.” He took another step closer, now he was at the foot of my bed. If we’d both reached out, we could have touched.
“Stay where you are, please.” I swallowed, uncomfortably aware of the solid wood of the bathroom door at my back. My hands tingled.
There was a scratching sound at the window, followed by the squeak of hinges. Laec looked behind him to see tendrils of ivy––ivy responding to my command––curling around the edges of the open window frame, pushing the window open farther and crawling into the room like tentacles.
Laec looked at me again, this time with respect. “The little Wise makes a threat?”
“How do you know what I am?”
Surprise widened his eyes and for a moment he reminded me of an owl. “Is that an honest question?”
“Of course,” I snapped back.
Those fae eyes roamed the terrain of my face and he didn’t answer right away. He took another step closer.
I stiffened and the ivy tendrils crawled farther into the room, making the mortar between the stones crumble in places. There came the sound of dust sifting to the dresser. I really hoped he didn’t make me ruin the castle walls. It would be tough to explain to the laird and lady.
His expression lost some of its flirtatious arrogance. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
He closed the gap between us, moving so smoothly it was as if he was on wheels. He stopped and looked down at me, his face less than a foot from my own.
“Why were you looking for me today?” he asked, his gaze dropped from my eyes to my lips and back up again. His expression was like a curious animal.
“I…I.” my words caught in my throat and I tried to swallow but my mouth was dry. “I was hoping you could help me help my friend, the girl who was missing. We found her, but she’s in a coma.”
He leaned an inch closer, nostrils flaring. I couldn’t tell if he wanted to kiss me, bite me, or just smell my fear.
My fingers were clenching my bathrobe so tightly that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to let go of the fabric.
“Evelyn,” I added hoarsely.
My knees quivered as his scent swept over me: morning dew, leaves, tree oils, pine cones.
“Something immortal did this to her,” I went on.
His eyes darkened and he cocked his head.
“I saw it in the residual. It’s like a ghost, only not a ghost. It looked like it was made of black flames.”
His lips parted and eyes widened a fraction. “Na sheasamh gu hìosal.”
“Excuse me?”
His gaze sharpened. “You are distracted by what is happening in front of you.”
My mouth dropped open in confusion.
Swiftly, he lifted his hand between us. Pinched between his fingers was a rolled-up piece of newsprint.
When I took it, he stepped away. “Don’t miss what is happening behind your back.”
I looked down at the rolled-up paper. There was a puff of air against my face, no more than an exhale. When I looked up, Laec was gone. I let out a long, frustrated groan.
“I wish you’d stop doing that,” I said loudly into my empty room.
The ivy tendrils began to withdraw, pulling the window closed behind them.
Hurriedly, I changed out of my wet robe and into my warmest pajamas. Crawling under the coverlet with the newsprint in my hand, I leaned my back against the pillow and unrolled it. It was an article. I gasped and bolted upright. It was dated for the day after tomorrow and the headline screamed:
Recently Discovered Medieval Mummy Missing from Morgue!
A thin tendril of smoke curled upward from the article and I squeaked and dropped it. With a fizzle of sparks sweeping across its surface, the article burned up and vanished with not so much a whiff of ash left behind.
Chapter 16
“Looking good, guys,” I said as I emerged to where Will, Lachlan, and Jasher stood near the now framed up cottage, looking at a blueprint spread out on the table and talking about whatever was coming next.
“Morning, Georjie.” Lachlan sent me a grin that warmed my entire body. “Nice to see you. We were beginning to think you weren’t interested in the goings-on now that there wasn’t a dead body in the walls.” He winked.
I shot him a grin. “Yeah, you know me. Only interested in the morbid.”
As much as I would have loved to hang around and flirt with Lachlan, I didn’t have time for it. There was only one thing on my mind. I had to fight not to dance impatiently in place like a child wanting candy while standing in line at the grocery store.
As casually as possible, I said, “Jasher, could I speak to you for a minute?”
Jasher handed the plans to Will and looked up with interest. He had dark smudges under his eyes. My guess was that he’d lain awake all night thinking about Evelyn.
“Of course,” he said.
I felt Lachlan’s eyes on me as Jasher joined me on the path and we went back toward the garden maze.
“What’s up?” he asked.
I turned him to face me, gripping his arms with both hands. I practically hissed the words. “He was in my room last night.”
Jasher’s brows shot up. “Laec? Are you serious?”
I nodded furiously. “I got out of the bathtub and he was sitting right there on my pillow!”
Jasher let out a huff and put his hands on his hips like an angry teacher. I was still nodding, thinking he was indignant about the fact that Laec had invaded my privacy, but he said, “After we spent all day looking for him? What a wanker.”
I sent him a withering look. “Thanks for being concerned about my well-being. There was a topless fae man in my room last night—aren’t you even a little concerned?”
Jasher made a sound in the back of his throat. “You’re standing here in one piece in front of me, Georjie, so no. Besides, of all the girls––sorry, women—I’ve met in the world, you’re the one I worry about the least. You’re a badass Wise.”
“Whatever.” But I couldn’t help but smile.
“What did he want?” One dark eyebrow ratcheted up lasciviously. “A midnight tryst?”
“Don’t be absurd. He said there was stuff going on behind our backs, gave me a newspaper article that said the body we found in the wall was stolen from the morgue.”
Jasher put a hand up under his hat and scratched his forehead. “I’m confused. Someone stole the body?”
“Not yet.” I shot him a meaningful look. “The newspaper was dated for tomorrow.”
“Whoa, a prognostipaper?”
&nb
sp; I stared at him. “You think you’re clever, don’t you?”
“I know I am.”
“Okay, Mr. Clever, explain how the paper then spontaneously combusted. One moment I was holding it and reading it, the next it went up in sparks.”
“You’re unknowingly the main character in a Mission: Impossible film.”
“Jasher, this is serious. What should we do?”
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Do you think Laec is for real? If you think he’s real and you trust that he wants to help us, then maybe this is an authentic look into the future. If you think he’s somehow a fake, or that he’s just messing with you, then wait and see what happens. Another twenty-four hours and you’ll know if that paper he gave you was for real or not.”
There was no question to me that Laec was real. There was no way anyone could vanish or do magic like that and not be real. “He’s the real deal, Jasher. He helped me find Evelyn, so why would he toy with me now?”
Jasher spread his hands. “In that case, he probably gave you that information so you could stop it from happening.”
“I should go to the funeral home and warn them.” I turned away, rubbing at my forehead where a dull ache had been since I’d woken up this morning.
Jasher pulled me back. “Think that through for a second, Georjie. You said that Inspector Hamilton suspects you of something.”
I rolled my eyes. “He totally acted like it.”
“If you show up at the morgue, warn them that someone might want to steal that mummy,” he blinked as if finally hearing his own words out loud. “Why on earth anyone would want to do that is beyond me, but let’s go with it…”
I picked up Jasher’s train of thought. “They’ll know who I am, they might even call the police, and Inspector Hamilton will be wondering how I came by the information in the first place.”
Jasher nodded. “It should be enough to call and just give them an anonymous tip. They’ll put their guard up, make sure their cameras are rolling, give their security a little extra caffeine, and bish, bash, bosh. You’ve done a good deed for the week.”
Sounded reasonable enough.
Will called Jasher from the clearing.
“Sorry, Georjie, I need to actually get something done since I missed time yesterday, and I want to see Evelyn before visiting hours are over.”
I watched him go, noting the droop of his usually straight shoulders. Jasher was putting up a brave face, but he was hurting. I couldn’t explain why my powers weren’t enough to rouse Evelyn; I’d done a lot for other sick and injured people so easily, but Evelyn was out of my reach.
Blackmouth Castle had a small office down the hall from the kitchens where I was able to make free local phone calls. I sat at the wooden desk piled high with tourist pamphlets and aerial photographs of Blackmouth and looked up the number for the mortuary in Inverness. It rang for so long I wondered if it was closed, but eventually a man answered.
“Yes, hello,” I said, giving a Scottish accent a try. My heart decided this would be a good time to start the pump running double time. I cleared my throat. How did people make anonymous tips? “I’d like to make an anonymous tip.”
I pinched my eyes shut, feeling like an idiot.
“Oh.” The man paused. “That’s rather unusual. Go ahead, please.”
So polite. “I understand you have a body there that was recovered from Blackmouth Castle.”
“Ah. Yes. Our medieval Jane Doe. Remarkable find.” He sounded cheerful.
“Is it?”
“I should say so, yes. It’s not every day we get a four-hundred-year-old corpse to prepare for burial.” I opened my mouth to continue when he hit me with, “Especially one for which the cause of death is the subject of some…conjecture.”
My head came up. “They still haven’t figured that out?”
“They can’t seem to agree on it, at any rate. A number of causes have been put into the forms, but that’s highly unusual. There could be many contributing factors toward a death, but there’s always one that pulls the pin, shall we say. Not that I’m qualified to say, but I’ve never seen a team so divided over the fate of a victim.”
Interesting. “What do they think it was?” I winced as I heard myself. When had I lost the fake Scottish accent?
He laughed. “Her documents read like a murder mystery. Poisoning, dehydration, suffocation, strangulation.”
I pulled the hood of my sweater up over my head with one hand as a chill swept over me.
“But I’m getting carried away. You have a tip for us?”
“Yes, but I was first wondering when she was set to be buried. The story is a sad one. Whoever she was, she was taken from her family far too soon and in such an awful way. I wouldn’t mind paying my respects.” I sent a silent thought of gratitude to Jasher for suggesting this anonymous call, but my face was still red. I sounded like a total weirdo. Thankfully, the man on the other end of the phone didn’t seem to notice or care.
“Oh, well you’re in luck,” he replied as though there was nothing strange at all about being attached to a three-hundred-year-old dead body. “She’s not yet left the mortuary, but she’s set to be transported to Blackmouth Cemetery tomorrow. I’m afraid I don’t know the precise time. I’m not going to be here; I also work the home in the next town over.”
“I see.”
“As interesting as our Jane Doe is, I do have rather a lot of work to do, Miss…” he paused, waiting for my name.
“You should increase your security tonight,” I blurted and then put a hand over my eyes and grimaced. I would have made a terrible spy. Mission: Impossible my arse. I tried to put the Scottish accent back on but knew it didn’t sound right.
“Security? Uh.” Bless his heart, he sounded like he was taking me seriously. “Well, we have very good locks on the doors. We’ve never had a break in before, at least not that I’m aware of. And this facility has been run by my family for thirty-two years.”
“That’s good,” I replied, shifting uncomfortably in the chair.
“Why?”
“I’d rather not say how I know, but I have reason to believe someone might try to break in and steal the Jane Doe.”
Silence stretched out for a full five seconds, then he said, “Gosh. I don’t suppose you’d care to elaborate?”
“I can’t, I’m sorry. Just notify your local police station and step up your security.” My hand was still over my eyes and my cheeks burned with the heat of shame. Who says you can’t embarrass yourself with no one else in the room?
“Well, I suppose I can turn on the CCTV,” he said doubtfully. “We don’t usually use it. If you could tell me a bit more about the threat? I understand you don’t want to tell me much, but perhaps you could tell me who you’re afraid of and…why they might want to steal an old corpse?”
I opened my mouth, but didn’t know what else to say. The mortician was actually taking me seriously, which completely endeared him to me, which made me feel horrible that I was doing this anonymously. “Sorry, just, thanks for listening and keep an eye out,” I mumbled one last time and hung up the phone.
I sat there staring at the phone for a full minute before thumping my forehead down on the pile of pamphlets in front of me.
Just before Jasher left for lunch, I caught him in the front parking lot as he was putting away the generator he’d rented for the job.
“It’s done.”
He nodded as he heaved the generator into the back of Gavin’s work truck and threw a tarp over it. “Good.”
“Just—” I grabbed the strings of my hood and began to twist them into knots.
Jasher eyed my hands. “What?”
“Should we…”
He got there without me having to finish. “What, stand watch? No, way, Georjie. You’ve just given an anonymous tip. What would you do if you were the mortician?”
“Call the police.”
“Exactly. And who seems to have a probl
em with you lately?”
“Inspector Hamilton.”
Jasher nodded. “Points for Georjie. Don’t go making things worse for yourself than they already are.” He slammed the tailgate up and fished the keys out of his pocket. “I don’t even know what the inspector could possibly think you had to do with Evelyn’s coma.”
“He thinks it’s weird that I knew exactly where to look.”
“Well, it is weird.” He hooked his fingers under the door handle. “But even if you were the one to find her, there’s no reason for him to think you had anything to do with it. You’re friends.”
“He knows you and Evelyn are dating,” I said.
“So, he knows Evie and I are dating, why should that implicate you?”
“He thinks that you and I dated also,” I explained. “He suggested that I was jealous.”
“That’s…” Jasher blinked and took a moment before finishing his sentence. “…Insane.”
“Tell me about it.”
“We never even dated,” Jasher sputtered, “and why would he think that we did?”
“Maybe Lachlan said something,” I suggested, weakly.
“Lachlan? Why would he …” a look of understanding dawned on his features, and he slid me a sideways look. “Ohhhhh. So you talked to Lachlan about me, and Lachlan mentioned it to his dad.”
My cheeks were burning. I covered my eyes with my hands. “This is so humiliating.”
“Don’t worry, Georjie.” Jasher’s words took on a teasing tone. “Most women can’t control themselves when they get close to these charms.” He gestured to his face, his muscled torso.
I gaped at him with amused exasperation. “Who are you?”
The cocky smile drained from his face and I could see the scared little boy behind the bravado. “I’m not sure.” He flashed me a smile but as quickly as it was there, it was gone again. “I felt like myself around Evie, I always have, since the moment I first met her.”
“Really?” I leaned against the truck, hoping he’d go on. Jasher did not open up easily. This felt like the first time he’d done so since I’d gotten here.
“She’s done something to my heart, Georjie.” Jasher’s eyes misted up and he covered them with his hand.
