A blush crawled up my throat, snaked over my jaw. “I’m nineteen. Marriage is the furthest thing from my mind. Besides, maybe I’ll never get married.”
Unlike him…
Ace would marry soon. I wasn’t sure when. I didn’t want to know. Already the idea of him having a wife—albeit one he disliked—made my stomach roll. “Can we talk about something else? Anything else?”
“I don’t love her.”
I pressed my cheek against his shoulder. Even though I knew he didn’t love Angelina, even though I had no reason to feel jealous, I did, and that terrified me more than almost everything else.
And the Great Spirit only knew what a feat that was, considering the actual dangers in my life.
1
The Niece
While Dad read the paper, I squeezed a lemon into his mug of Earl Grey. Ever since Lily told me acidic food repelled Unseelie spirits, I’d been filling my father’s stomach with vinegar and citrus juice. Not that there were any Unseelie spirits roaming though Rowan.
Apparently, on the Night of Mist—which is the only night Unseelies can exit the Hareni, their underground home—none had made their way to a faerie portal. But there were hundreds of portals in Neverra. What if the faeries keeping watch over the magical doors had missed an Unseelie escaping?
Dad snorted, then shook his head.
I tipped one of my eyebrows up. “What?”
“This story in the paper. A Home Depot employee claims he was taking inventory and noticed a huge amount of missing stock, so he checked the security footage and saw himself tug crates out into the parking lot. He has no memory of doing this.” Dad closed the newspaper, crinkling the Bible-thin sheets.
“Was he fired?”
“On the spot. That’s why he went to the paper. To plead his case.” Dad folded and refolded the broadsheets, then tossed them into the bin beneath the sink. “The lengths people will go to.” He tunneled his hand through his pillow-mussed hair. “All that for iron rope and chains.”
Lemon juice dripped between my fingers and onto my socks. “That’s…that’s what he stole?”
“Yes. Strange, huh?”
The crushed lemon rind slid through my fingers and landed with a wet plop on the tiled floor.
Iron.
Memory loss.
I’d bet anything hunters had influenced him to hand them iron chains before making the memory vanish from his mind.
“You okay, honey? You look a little pale.”
“Fine.” The word came out like a hiss.
Dad frowned.
I bent over to pick up the fallen lemon, which I tossed atop the newspaper way too hard.
“You sure?”
I nodded. “I should get going. I promised to meet Kajika at Bee’s this morning.”
Dad’s blue eyes dimmed at the mention of the hunter’s name. He wasn’t a fan of Kajika. Dad thought him unstable and strange. The fact that he was covered in tattoos and muscles didn’t help.
I rubbed my own marking. How would Dad react if he saw it?
Even though I’d begged Ace to reclaim his dust—dust to a faerie was the equivalent of a gun to a soldier—he’d refused to remove it from my neck, where it concealed Stella’s dust from human eyes.
Dad watched my fingers.
I froze.
Could he see? Had Ace finally listened to me and withdrawn his dust?
“I don’t like the looks of all those people who moved in with them.”
My neck felt wooden. I managed a stiff nod. “I’m not a fan of that crowd either, but Kajika was Holly’s nephew.” He wasn’t, but Dad still believed this.
Fact: Holly had descended from the Gottwa tribe, which had adopted Kajika and his brother a couple years before the massacre—the “Darkest Day”—that led the hunters to entomb themselves for two centuries in rowan wood caskets filled with spelled rose petals.
Out of the twelve graves, two were empty—Gwen’s and Kajika’s—and one held an actual dead body—Gwen’s mother. Dad and Aylen had dug up her grave, but before my aunt had had time to read the inscription, which would’ve brought the huntress back to life by stealing a human soul, Kajika and I had stopped the ritual. Exposed, the pink petals around the hibernating huntress’s body had grayed and desiccated, releasing the magic that had preserved her.
That day, for the first and only time, I’d pitied Gwenelda. Even though she’d stolen my mother’s soul—granted not on purpose—I never wished heartache on her. I wasn’t vengeful, but I was resentful. I resented Gwenelda for creating new hunters with her blood. Those untrained savages believed I was their enemy and had attacked me with rowan wood arrows in my own backyard.
My chest burned at the memory. And then my brand lit up with Ace’s W. I tried to even out my heart rate before he barreled into the house to check up on me.
Dad assumed we were friends—and he was okay with that. He liked Ace. He found him charming and thoughtful and generous. And like the rest of the world, he believed Ace was engaged and that his fiancée was pregnant with their child.
Angelina was pregnant, but not with Ace’s child.
My phone vibrated in the back pocket of my jeans. I fished it out.
Ace: R u OK?
Yes.
Were you thinking about me?
I smiled, a feat considering how unsettled I felt about the news Dad had just read in the morning paper. I never stop.
Don’t think about me too hard as I have a meeting with the council this morning. Gregor and Cruz’s lovely mother have something important to tell us apparently.
Really?
Yeah. What are you up to?
Even though I didn’t want to lie, I knew telling him I was going to call a meeting with Kajika would incense him. Doing my nails. Curling my hair. Full body wax. The usual.
Three dots lit up. I was expecting a smart-aleck comeback, but all I got was, What are you actually doing?
Nothing exciting. Don’t worry.
I’m always worried.
Gotta go. Dad’s looking at me funny.
“You want me to come with you to meet Kajika?” Concern contorted Dad’s features. In the time since Mom died, tiny wrinkles had exploded over his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes and mouth. Grief and extreme weight loss had been rough on my father. “I was heading over to Bee’s anyway. I wanted to check up on her, and then I have a meeting with Mr. Hamilton’s niece.”
“Mr. Hamilton has a niece?”
“’Parently he does.”
Rowan was a small town where everyone knew everyone’s business, and yet I had never once heard old Mr. Hamilton talk about family. And boy, could the man talk.
“Why are you meeting her?”
“She’s a medical examiner.”
My eyes widened. “Really?”
“She just moved here.” Dad’s gaze lowered to the tiled floor. “She—” He shoved a hand through his blond hair that seemed to have gotten lighter, bleached by grief. “She bought Blake’s old place.”
I gasped. “What?”
“Bee said she needed to put it on the market, and then Mr. Hamilton mentioned his newly-divorced niece was looking for a place to live, and well…”
A chill enveloped me. “I suppose it was a matter of time before someone took over his house.”
Dad enfolded me in his arms. “Still hurts, huh?”
“So damn much.”
I didn’t think anything could hurt me after losing my mother, but losing my best friend… There were no words for what that had done to me.
2
Long Time
When Dad left the kitchen to get dressed, I called Kajika.
“Hi, Catori.”
I hadn’t heard his voice since before Stella attacked me. It sounded unfamiliar, brittle. Kajika was rough around the edges, but not his voice. His voice had always been smooth.
“Catori?” he repeated, softer this time.
I splayed my fingers on the wooden kitchen island, gaze
fixed to the door that led down to the morgue. It used to be buttercup-yellow—Mom believed the cheery hue would tone down the creepiness of its destination—but I’d painted it white after her death. I’d tried to erase Mom, because every tiny trace of her cleaved my heart open wider.
“We need to talk,” I finally said. “Can you meet me at Bee’s in a half hour?”
“Come to the compound.”
“And be ambushed by your friends? No thank you.”
“They are not my friends. Besides, I have spoken to them, and they have sworn to never again hurt you.”
Like I’d believe a bunch of crazed, dust-thirsty hunters. “Meet me at Bee’s in thirty minutes. Alone.”
“All right.”
After hanging up, I finished tidying up the kitchen, put a load of laundry in the wash, and wrapped a scarf around my neck—the common mortal couldn’t see the navy whorls printed on my skin, but Kajika wasn’t a common mortal…he could see through faerie dust.
When I walked into Rowan’s one and only inn ten minutes later, I made a beeline for Cass, who was frothing up milk behind the varnished wooden bar.
I took off my puffer vest and draped it over a barstool, then seated myself on top another. April had pushed away March days ago, warming the frozen earth. Buds had broken over branches like goosebumps and daffodils had pierced the ground and shot upward, splashing color over our monochrome town. Even the sky seemed bluer in the spring, but the air was still brisk.
Cassidy filled a mug with black coffee and set it in front of me before I could even ask.
Blue eyes darting through her dark brown bangs, Cass tipped her chin toward the back of the room. In a low voice, she whispered, “Check out the booth next to the window.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.” Nursing my mug of coffee, I swiveled on my stool.
Sheriff Jones sat in a corner booth with his dime-sized eyes on his breakfast date, a black-haired woman with high cheekbones and dark eyes who looked to be around his age. I spun back around.
“I think he’s cheating on his wife. He keeps laughing at everything she says.” She rolled her eyes. “Middle-aged people flirting are so gross.”
“Says the girl with a penchant for middle-aged men.” I folded my legs, then blew the steam off my coffee and dipped my lips inside.
“What are you talking about?”
“The guy back in Detroit.”
“He was thirty-six.”
“That’s seventeen years older than you.”
She smiled as she poured the warm milk into clear mugs, topped them with espresso, then plated two golden muffins from the white porcelain cake stand.
“Speaking of middle-aged people, how’s the new cook doing?”
The woman was from Mullegon, the next town down the coast. Like Rowan, it was a small harbor town. Unlike Rowan, it had more than one main street, which wasn’t to say it was busier, because it wasn’t really. It just offered a bit more choice.
“She’s handling the rushes pretty well. You should try her corn muffins.” She heaved in a shaky breath. “They’re almost as good as Blake’s.”
Blake’s death had been as hard on her as it had been on me. After he’d been honorably discharged from the army, he’d come home and worked as a short-order cook in his grandmother’s inn alongside Cass, who’d traded community college for a waitressing job. Her goal was to become a professional bartender once she turned twenty-one.
Which reminded me… “You’re turning twenty in a month!”
Her eyes twinkled. “I know! I’m planning a kickass party. You think Ace and Lily would come?”
Cass was in awe of the Wood siblings. Although they gave few interviews and steered clear of paparazzi, their wealth and faces were no secret.
“I bet they’d come if you asked them,” I told her.
She walked around the bar and seized her platter. “Can you ask them? Since you and Ace are—”
I widened my eyes. Cass was the only person who knew Ace and I were dating. She’d been so excited and not at all surprised. When I explained the bit about his fiancée carrying Linus’s child, her jaw had gaped as wide as the papier maché mask we’d fashioned back in middle school for a class play.
She blew on her bangs and grimaced. “Sorry. I forget.”
“Try not to. Small town. Big mouths.”
She grinned, then scampered toward the sheriff’s table just as the door jingled. It was my father. He wore jeans and a woolen navy sweater that made him look bulkier than he was. He’d started gaining back some weight, which wasn’t saying much. At 6’4”, filling out was a feat.
“Hey, Cat, did you see Mr. Hamilton?”
“Nope.”
“Derek!” Sheriff Jones bellowed, gesturing Dad over.
Dad turned toward his high school friend. When he noticed the woman sitting with him, he frowned. “Hey, George.”
“I’ve been keeping this lovely lady company until you arrived. Milly, meet Derek Price, greatest coroner in the state of Michigan and greatest guy in the tristate area.”
Dad smiled. “Don’t believe a word this guy says.”
The brunette smiled, lifting her hand toward Dad, who shook it. “Pleasure to meet you, Derek.”
Dad dragged a chair to the booth and sat.
After asking him if he wanted something to drink, Cass returned to me. “Okay. Now I’m confused. If she’s not Jones’s not-so-secret lover, who the heck is she?”
“She’s Mr. Hamilton’s niece.”
The woman looked nothing like her uncle.
“Come again? Old Mr. Hamilton has family?”
“I know, right? I found out this morning.”
“What’s she doing in Rowan?”
“She just got divorced and decided to move to Rowan. She’s a medical examiner.”
“No way!”
“Yeah. Way.”
“That’s cray cray.”
“Tell me about it.”
Cass wrinkled her nose. “You think she lives with him?”
“No, she bought”—I swallowed, but it didn’t take the bitter edge off what I was about to share—“Blake’s old place.”
With shaky fingers, Cass repositioned a corn muffin on the cake stand, slotted another in its place, and then piled another on top. Then she fixed the other side of the golden tower, which didn’t need fixing. When she was done, she knuckled a tear out of her eye. “It’s not like he’s ever coming back.”
No, Blake wasn’t coming back.
Cass sniffled loudly. “Let’s hope she leaves better tips than Mr. Hamilton.”
“He leaves tips?”
“I got ten cents once.”
A bark of laughter escaped me. I pressed my palm against my mouth to stifle the sound that had Dad turning around. “Cass. Joke,” I croaked, between bursts of laughter.
Cass broke into a grin.
Tears dripped out of the corners of my eyes and traveled down my cheeks. I wiped them away, but more came. Cass handed me a paper napkin and grabbed one for herself. Each time our eyes would meet, we’d crack up all over again. Our nerves must’ve been severely shot if we were laughing this hard over a dime.
It wasn’t until the door jingled that I sobered up.
Kajika had arrived.
3
The Confession
Kajika looked from me to Cass to my father then back to me. His expression was somber. Then again, his expression was always somber. The cadavers in our basement seemed downright cheerful compared to him.
“Catori, all is well?”
That almost got me laughing hysterically again. His speech sounded so olden. Kajika belonged to an era that no longer existed, an era when women wore petticoats and corsets, and Natives still lived in wigwams and traded pelts for black powder.
“Everything’s fine,” I finally said, shoving my hair off my face. It was as black as his, a black that looked almost blue in direct sunlight.
Cass stared at the hunter, then f
rowned at me. At least Dad was so absorbed by his conversation that he paid me no mind.
“What did you want to discuss?”
I gestured to the most isolated booth in the inn, then grabbed my vest and coffee and walked over. After we sat, Cass came by to take his order.
“Water, please.”
Before leaving, Cass whispered excitedly, “Do you have any new fights coming up? I really enjoyed last week’s.”
My sip of coffee went down the wrong hole. I sputtered. “You’re still fighting?” I wheezed out.
“I need the money. And fighting eases my temper.” Eyes firmly planted on mine, he cocked his face to the side, and his slippery black hair fell across his forehead. “Better I fight in a ring than in real life.”
“Yeah.”
“To answer your question, Cassidy, I fight this Thursday. You are both welcome to come.”
I cleared my throat. If he knew I was seeing Ace, he would most definitely rescind his invitation.
“I’ll be there.” Cass returned to the bar, filled a tall glass with ice cubes and water, then returned to our table to deposit it before Kajika. For a second, I thought she might take off her black waist apron and plop down on the wine-colored banquette next to me, but the sheriff beckoned her over.
Once she was gone, I said, “There was a perplexing article in the paper this morning.”
“Perplexing?”
“Disturbing. Distressing.”
His vocabulary—although padded by Blake’s memory—dated back two hundred years, so some words eluded him.
“I know what perplexing means, Catori.” He placed his forearms on the table. “Why did it perplex you so?”
“Home Depot. Iron chains. Ring a bell?”
He pulled his arms off the table and knotted them in front of him. “You know I do not steal.”
“The employee who carried out the crates of iron had no memory of doing it. Perhaps it wasn’t you, but only hunters”—I lowered my voice—“possess influence.”
Kajika’s eyes gleamed sharply. “I was not aware of this. Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”
Rising Silver Mist Page 2
