by Lisa Edmonds
I shook my head. “Finish your conversation with Jack and Caleb. I’ll be fine. I probably picked up a stomach virus somewhere and all I need is fluids and sleep. Good night.”
“Good night.” He gave me a quick kiss on my forehead.
When I got to the top of the stairs, Ben stuck his head out of the guest room. “I’m about done in here. You need anything else?”
I shook my head and followed him back into the room. “The bed looks great. Thank you.”
“Do I even want to know how you set the bed on fire?” His eyes twinkled.
I gave him a wry smile. “Accidental magic flare earlier. Happens to the best of us.”
He grew serious. “Get some rest, okay? You look like you’re about to collapse. And I know it’s asking a lot, but trust us to keep you safe. I know you can protect yourself, but you’re one of us now and that means you don’t ever face anything alone. At some point you’ll start believing that and it will give you more strength than you can imagine.”
Sean had said something similar to me after the cuff incident, when he’d told me he loved me. My stomach cramped and I flinched.
“I’m going to take a shower and go to bed,” I told Ben, rubbing my stomach.
He frowned. “You just took a shower at Vaughan’s house, didn’t you?”
“Oh. Right.” I set my water cup on the nightstand. “Well, maybe I’ll just wash my face then. Thanks again, Ben. Say hi to Casey for me.”
“I will. Good night, Alice.”
“Good night.” I closed the door behind him.
I took off my boots, cleaned by one of Charles’s employees while I’d showered in Adri’s apartment, and left a trail of clothes on the floor on the way to the bathroom. I’d intended to put on pajamas, wash my face, and go straight to bed, but I found myself turning on the shower. A hot shower would help me sleep, I reasoned.
I stepped under the spray and adjusted the taps until the water was nearly scalding. I shampooed, scrubbed, and soaped myself several times until my skin was red, but I still didn’t feel as if I were clean.
Finally I emerged from the shower, dried myself off, and put on my pajamas. My stomach felt much better and I was suddenly so exhausted I barely made it across the room to turn off the bedroom light. I crawled under the covers and curled up.
I dozed off almost immediately, only to be awakened a few minutes later by a soft knock on the door. “Alice?” It was Sean.
My stomach began to churn again. I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head.
A long pause, then his footsteps went down the hall and into the master bedroom.
Silence.
I put a second pillow on top of my head and closed my eyes. In moments, I was asleep.
A gentle hand shook my shoulder. “Alice.”
I pulled the covers back, brushed hair back from my face, and blinked groggily, trying to focus.
Sean stood next to my bed, wearing an undershirt and khakis and holding his phone. It looked like he’d been in the middle of getting dressed when something had interrupted him. “I’m sorry to wake you up, but I wanted to let you know Ashley Brown has been found.”
It took my fuzzy brain several seconds to remember who Ashley Brown was. I pushed myself up and rubbed my eyes so I could see the clock on the nightstand. It was a little after seven. I’d gotten about five hours of sleep.
“Where is she?” I asked, sounding half asleep.
“Dead, it looks like,” he said grimly.
I tried to wake up. “It doesn’t surprise me, really. What happened to her?”
“They found her car burned early this morning, out on a service road on the west side. There’s a body in it, or what’s left of a body. It’s probably her, though I’m sure it’s going to take dental records to know for certain.”
“How’d you hear about it?”
“We always have someone listening to the police scanner up at the office. I asked them to let me know if a woman’s body was found, or if her name was mentioned. The police found her a little after six o’clock this morning.”
I threw the covers back and swung my legs over the side of the bed. “I’ll go see if I can find anything out.”
“It’s a crime scene,” he reminded me as I headed for the bathroom. “I can call people I know in the department and get some information. I didn’t want you to get out of bed. You need more sleep.”
“I can take Malcolm and have him snoop around without anyone knowing.”
He halted me with a hand on my arm. I pulled free and stepped back.
He studied me. “How are you feeling?”
“A little queasy still, and obviously tired, but okay otherwise.”
He gestured between us. “So this isn’t because of you being tired or sick. This is something else.”
I exhaled. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
His expression darkened. “What’s happened in the last twenty-four hours? In the shower yesterday morning, everything seemed fine. But the moment we got back from the party, just like that—” He snapped his fingers “—everything changed. You pushed me away and couldn’t get away from me fast enough. You haven’t wanted me to touch you since. You flinch every time I come near you. Ben said you were your usual self when you were with him, but the second my name came up or you saw me, both at Vaughan’s house and back here, you acted like you wanted nothing to do with me.”
He took a step closer, his eyes locked on mine. “When you look at me, I don’t see any of the feelings I’m used to seeing. I’m reeling because this has all happened in less than a day. Or over a weekend at the most, because Thursday night we almost broke the bed and I had to go to work on Friday looking like shit because we made love so many times that you wore me out and that has never happened once since I became a shifter. So I am asking you to tell me what’s going on, and I want the truth.”
I backed toward the bathroom. “The truth is that I need space. We’ve been together pretty much every day since before we left for the Bahamas and I feel smothered.”
“I never once sensed you felt smothered,” he argued. “Not while we were on vacation or since we got back. You had Arkady drop you off at my house yesterday morning instead of going back to your place because you wanted to be here with me, right? I even asked you if you wanted to go home first and you said no.”
I frowned. I had wanted to come to Sean’s house. I’d missed him so much over the weekend that the thought of not seeing him as soon as I got back, especially after the terrible night I’d had running through the woods, had been nearly unbearable. I’d wanted the comfort of his arms and his bed more than anything—I remembered that. Had it only been twenty-four hours ago? And yet at this moment the sight of him made my stomach churn like I’d swallowed a bunch of eels.
What the hell had happened? And why hadn’t it occurred to me to wonder until now?
Sean flexed his hands. “Ben also said you looked relieved when he told you he was going to drive you to Vaughan’s house instead of me.”
“Is that why you had Ben take me?” I asked slowly. “To see how I’d react to you not going with me?”
He nodded. “The Alice I know would have been angry, or at least confused that I wasn’t coming with you and instead went to go run some errand without telling you in person. You definitely wouldn’t have been relieved that it was Ben driving instead, or glad I’d already left when you got out of the shower in Adri Smith’s apartment.”
I scowled. I didn’t blame Ben for telling Sean all that—it was the truth, after all, and Sean was Ben’s alpha—but damn it, none of it made sense to me, especially in the context of how I’d longed for Sean’s comfort just yesterday morning.
“I need to take Malcolm out to the crime scene,” I said finally. “Time is ticking. The longer I wait, the less chance there is of finding anything that might help us figure out how Ashley was involved and who killed her. This, whatever this is, will have to wait.”
“I have a meeting at wo
rk, but I can probably get my partner Ron to sit in for me so I can go with you.”
I shook my head. “I’ll be fine. Bell won’t make a move against me, knowing I’m in Valas’s inner circle and I’m your consort.” My stomach twisted and I sighed. “I’ll call for backup if I need it.”
“I do have some questions about how you became Valas’s personal favorite.”
I opened my mouth to tell him I didn’t know, then closed it. Despite everything, I couldn’t lie to him. Not volunteering the information was one thing. Lying was something else, something I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do, because I cared about him and he loved me.
I did care, didn’t I? No, I didn’t. But didn’t I?
I rubbed my temples. None of my thoughts made sense. “Let’s put a bookmark there for now, okay? Go to work. I’ll go out to the scene if you’ll give me the address and we’ll see what we can find out.”
“And then I’ll come home and we’ll figure out what’s going on with us.” He frowned. “What’s wrong with your arms?”
I realized I’d been scratching while I slept. Both of my forearms were red and some of the scratches were bloody.
“Oh, no,” I groaned. “Did I get poison ivy or something out there in the woods?”
“I don’t see any rash,” he said. “It just looks like you’ve been scratching. Do they itch?”
“Yes.” I sighed. “I guess I’ll stop by a pharmacy on the way. Damn it, I wish I’d never agreed to go out there with Arkady.”
“Given what’s happened since then, I’m starting to think that too,” Sean said grimly.
I went into the bathroom. Just as I was about to shut the door, he spoke. “Be safe, Alice. I love you.”
My stomach cramped. I was glad my back was to him so he didn’t see the moment I came close to bursting into tears. What the hell was wrong with me?
“Have a good day at work,” I said and closed the door.
10
On the way to the west side, I stopped at a pharmacy for anti-itch cream and sat in the parking lot to apply it to my arms. I’d been tempted to pick up some antihistamines to help with the itching, but I figured they’d make me sleepy and since I was already running on very little sleep, making myself more tired wasn’t really an option.
While I was stopped, I tried both of Aden’s phone numbers and Ashley’s number to confirm they were still all going straight to voice mail, and they were. If those phones were off, it would be difficult or nearly impossible to locate any of them, but if they were just set to go straight to voice mail, there was a good chance one or more would be trackable. Either way, it was worth trying.
My usual resource for such things, black-hat hacker Cyro, had been MIA for almost a month. Before she’d vanished without a trace, she showed up in person during our trip to the Bahamas to warn me that Catherine Murphy Atwood, my aunt, had survived being struck by the bolt of lightning I’d smited her with. Cyro had also revealed, in the form of a note, that she knew my real identity, and then disappeared.
The only number I had for her had been disconnected and she hadn’t made any contact with me since. I was left to wonder how much she knew and what she intended to do with the information she had. Her warning indicated she was at least marginally on my side, but the silence was unnerving.
I’d had many sleepless nights worrying about what might have happened to her, including whether she’d been caught by the feds and what information she might give up to them in exchange for leniency.
I couldn’t tell anyone about my fears, since no one else knew my real identity. Sean knew Cyro had gone dark and he was concerned about it, but not in the same way I was, because he didn’t know the real reason her disappearance had me on edge.
Cyro wasn’t my only hacker acquaintance—just the best and fastest. Before Sean introduced me to Cyro, my go-to guy for this sort of thing was a college kid who called himself Flyboy. I got my burner phone from the glove compartment and turned it on. I sent a text containing Aden and Ashley’s cell numbers to a number listed in my Contacts as OB/GYN.
While I waited for a reply, I headed for the southwest side of the city and the address Sean had given me. That part of town had a lot of industrial parks and factories, most of which were closed on the weekend. It would be a good place to get rid of a car and a body without being seen.
I realized I was scratching my arms again and gripped the steering wheel with both hands. If we didn’t find anything out from the crime scene and I didn’t get any other tips I could follow, maybe I should try to drop into a minor emergency center and see if a nurse could figure out why I was itching so badly.
The crime scene was a dead-end service road behind a factory that made extreme sports protective gear. Despite the maze of streets in the area, I found the scene without any trouble, thanks to the yellow police tape, a dozen emergency vehicles, and uniformed officers and detectives in suits combing the area for evidence.
I didn’t want to attract attention, so I turned into a lot about a block away and parked in a visitor spot in front of a different manufacturer. I couldn’t get into the scene to get a look at the car and find out what the cops knew, but luckily I had the perfect invisible spy who could.
I touched Malcolm’s crystal on my bracelet. “Release.”
“Hey, Alice,” Malcolm greeted me from the passenger seat area. He looked around. “Good morning, I guess. Where the heck are we?”
I told him about the burned car and the body. He whistled. “I hope she was dead before they set the car on fire.”
“Yeah, me too. I would appreciate it if you’d go over there and see what you can find out.”
“I’m on it. Back in a jiff.” He went invisible and zipped away.
As I waited for him to get back, my burner phone buzzed with a text response from Flyboy. Phones are currently not trackable. Number you referenced as AB last tower ping yesterday 1100 hours near Argex Road and Forty-Third West. Try again later?
My heart sank. That tower was about three blocks away; I could see it from where I was parked. “Not trackable” meant the phone wasn’t just off; it was probably toast.
I sent back a text: Not at this time. Thank you. I turned the phone off and stuck it back in my glove compartment.
About five minutes later, Malcolm returned. “It’s a mess over there,” he said heavily.
I blew out a breath. “Yeah, I figured. What do the cops know?”
“There’s not much left of the car and whoever torched it took the plates, but they were able to find a VIN they could read and ID the owner. It’s registered to Ashley Brown. The body is in the driver’s seat, but there’s high-velocity blood splatter and skull and brain matter on the pavement. They think she was killed outside the car and then put in the seat before they set it on fire. The ME said it looks like she was shot in the forehead with something big, like a .45, judging by the size of the wound, but he won’t know for sure until they do the autopsy.”
“Well, shit. Did they find anything else besides the car, the body, and the brains?” I asked.
“Two cell phones in the car. One of them might be Aden’s, but they’re just blobs of melted metal, glass, and plastic. The cops don’t think they’ll be of any use.”
“The kid had two cell phones,” I pointed out. “I wonder if Aden managed to hang onto one, or if they took it thinking they could use it somehow.”
I got my burner phone out again and asked Flyboy to try tracking Aden’s phones later, just in case someone had one and turned it on.
“Did you hear that?” Malcolm asked suddenly.
I put down my phone and listened intently. “What am I listening for?”
“I heard a scream. At least, I think that’s what it was.”
My eyebrows rose. “A scream?”
“Yeah. Hang on, I’m going to go check it out.” He left the car.
My phone buzzed with an incoming message. Wolf: What did you find out?
I texted back a brief summ
ary of what Malcolm had seen and overheard at the scene.
Wolf: Shot in the forehead sounds like an execution.
Me: I know. So much for finding out what she knew about Aden.
Wolf: What’s your next move?
Me: Not sure.
Wolf: Keep me posted.
Malcolm popped back into the car. “Alice, you’ll never guess what I just found,” he said excitedly.
“I give up. What?”
“Ashley Brown.”
I blinked. “I’m not following you.”
“That scream I heard? It was her.”
“But I thought she was—” I stopped. “You found her ghost.”
“Yup.”
I went from despair to hope in an instant. “Where is she? Did you ask her what happened?”
“Well, that’s the thing…she’s kind of a mess. She’s over by her car, just kind of hovering and shrieking. I can’t get anything coherent from her yet.”
Ghosts who’d died suddenly or traumatically often manifested in the way he described, trapped in the moment of their death, reliving the terror and pain in an endless loop.
“Will you stay and see if you can get through to her? I don’t know how much she’ll be able to remember, but she might be our best source of information right now. Jump to me if and when you have something for us to go on.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to see if I can get a meeting with Ezekiel Monroe. He and Darius Bell are allies these days, apparently.”
“What?”
I explained how Bell had shown up at my house the previous afternoon only to be met by Monroe and his Vamp Court entourage. “The Court is backing Bell against Moses Murphy because Bell is the devil they know, according to Monroe. Bell has lost quite a few assets trying to keep Moses out of the city, so he needs the Court’s support. That being the case, I’m hoping to talk Monroe into asking Bell to let Aden and Jana go.”
“He might know why Bell’s been collecting nulls, seeing’s as how they’re friends now.” Malcolm’s voice was bitter.
