“I dated a man who decided I belonged to him.” I wandered over to Keet and stuck my fingers through the bars of his cage to scratch his earholes while he fluttered his wings in ecstasy. At least one of us was enjoying themselves. I hated lying, despised its necessity. “I broke things off, but he’s convinced we’re meant for one another. He won’t take no for an answer.”
“Fucking bastard,” she snarled with all the heat of a momma bear protecting her cub.
“Neely met him once.” As much as I wanted to keep my friend out of it, I needed an eyewitness account to sell the story. “Danill, my…boyfriend…posted guards at my house. I couldn’t leave without him knowing. He bought me clothes and sent a car around for me. He knew where I was at all times. I had no privacy.”
At the time, I saw those things as blessings. Only after he kidnapped me had I seen them as a curse.
“I have a friend who works for Savannah PD. Caitlin Russo. You two met a while back.” A brittle quality entered her voice. “I can put you in contact with her. She can help you, Grier. You can get a restraining order against him.”
“A restraining order won’t help.” Volkov might be locked in a cell, but the master was free to do as he pleased with me. “I need to cut ties with my old life.” It was the truest thing I had said to her, and it gutted me. “I want a fresh start.”
“The system isn’t perfect, but it can work.” Her tone roughened. “I had a big sister. Meredith. She ran away when she was sixteen with some meathead she was dating. Our parents were furious, told me she was throwing her life away. They never filed a missing person report. They knew who she had gone off with even if they didn’t know where, and they washed their hands of her.”
Dread tightened my skin at the pain unleashed in the retelling.
“The police came to our house three weeks later. A body had been found that matched my sister’s description. They wanted my dad to go down to the morgue and identify the body.” A ragged exhale ripped from her. “The cops told him her boyfriend was a drug dealer. He used her as a mule to smuggle product into the country. One of the baggies she swallowed ruptured, and she overdosed on her way to the hospital.”
Goddess. “I’m so sorry.”
“They told us she died within minutes, that we couldn’t have saved her, but they were wrong.” A moment passed while she pulled herself together. “Every day my parents did nothing was a step down a path my sister couldn’t follow home. If they had called the police the night she left, she might still be alive today.” Her voice grew stronger, more determined. Fierce. “I call Russo when I find girls who need help, who have no family looking out for them.”
Seeking comfort, I leaned against the nearest wall and let Woolly caress my senses. “Russo told me you reported me missing the first time I vanished on you.”
“I gave you a pass for being a no-show the first night, but Amelie was inconsolable. I heard about your mom passing, and I went to pay my respects. But your house was a crime scene, and no one would tell me what happened or where you had gone. That’s when I called in Russo.”
“Thanks.” I let my eyes close. “Knowing you cared enough to look means a lot to me.”
“Amelie told me you went to live with your aunt.” She hesitated before plowing ahead. “Living situations can be tough when you’re placed with extended family. I hope she was good to you.”
Once or twice I tried picturing how things might have gone if Maud had died of a heart attack. Clarice Lawson would have taken me in, and I would have been her responsibility for two more years. I would have been left alone in the drafty old manor Linus abandoned the instant he graduated, a ghost haunting the hallowed Lawson halls. Forget Amelie and Boaz. She would have nipped those friendships in the bud. She probably would have enrolled me in the same school she chose for Linus. I would have been too far behind to catch up, too different to fit in, and too heartbroken to try for either.
I put the acting skills I learned at her knee to good use. “I was given everything I needed there.”
Enough food and water to keep me alive. Enough exercise to keep my muscles from atrophying.
Atramentous had provided for me, in its own miserly way.
“I’m glad.” True relief swept through her. “Will your aunt help you now?”
The Grande Dame was already helping me. She had given me Linus, after all. “Yes, she will.”
“Don’t vanish this time, hon,” she all but pleaded. “Go away if space is what you need, but don’t go away for good.” Her watery laugh made my throat tighten. “I’ll save you a spot on the Halloween roster. I won’t even make you scrub toilets for it this time. Deal?”
“Deal,” I promised, hoping against hope I could take her up on the offer. “I’ll send you a check for the dress.”
“It was never about the damn money,” she groused, sounding more like herself. “I wanted to teach you there are consequences for your actions.”
“You did that and then some.” Each time I fell from grace, she made me work to earn my wings back.
A prickle at my nape drew my attention to where Linus hovered on the threshold with a sketch pad in his hand. He must have come downstairs and been passing through the living room on his way to the kitchen. Aside from the Vitamin L smoothies, I had noticed enough containers marked with ambiguous labels to curb my daylight fridge-raiding tendencies.
“I have to go.” I pushed off the wall and started in his direction. “See you at Halloween?”
“I better not have to come looking for you. You know how much I hate cancelling tours when guides flake.”
Nostalgia warmed me, a bittersweet longing for such simple problems. “I’ll be there.”
With a huff of sound close to her usual bluster, she disconnected, killing the conversation and the illusion I could be the girl she had tried so hard to save ever again.
Seven
“I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Linus nodded toward the phone in my hand. “I wanted to show you something, but it can wait.”
“I’m all done.” I pocketed my cell. “I called Cricket to formally resign.”
A shadow passed over his face. “I can imagine how much that cost you.”
“I had a shelf life as a Haint. I couldn’t have worked there forever. Eventually, one of the girls would have noticed I wasn’t aging and started asking questions about my skin care regimen.” I considered how that would go. “I’m not sure what would horrify them more—learning I was a necromancer or that I still use a bar of dollar soap to wash my face.”
“I pour my own soap.”
“You do what now?” I fell neatly into the trap he set to cheer me. “That’s a thing guys do?”
“Doctors scrub in before surgery.” The tips of his ears pinkened. “I thought soap made with a blend of white sage and lavender might improve a practitioner’s success rate by cleansing the skin the way we smudge a space prior to performing a ritual.”
Jack of all trades. Master of…them all, apparently. “And did it?”
“Fractionally, yes.”
“Even with a low success rate, you kept going?” That didn’t sound like him.
“Not exactly,” he admitted. “I have a box full of unused bars under the kitchen sink in my loft.”
The urge to snicker almost overwhelmed me. “You got overly ambitious, huh?”
“It is a failing of mine,” he agreed with a tiny smile.
“You could have passed them out to students to unload your stock.” I mimed tossing them into a crowd. “They would have eaten up hand-poured soap from the dreamy Professor Lawson with a spoon then begged for more.”
A stillness swept through him. “You think I’m dreamy?”
Whoever was in control of my mouth was not doing their job monitoring that whole filter thing.
Oh, wait.
That would be me.
“I implied your students think you’re dreamy,” I countered, patting myself on the back for the save.
“You’re one of my students,” he pointed out, his grin widening.
Dang it.
I cleared my throat. “You wanted to show me something?”
“I printed off a map of the graveyard.” He spun the sketchbook on his palm and lifted the cover. “I’ve marked all the sites where samples were taken.” Small icons adorned the onion-skin paper he layered over the blueprint. “Do you see a pattern?”
“Hecate’s wheel.” I traced a circle around the affected area then connected the inner dots to form the three-prong symbol in the middle that represented her triple aspect: Mother, Maiden and Crone. The phallic angel mausoleum acted as the centermost point, and I tapped it once. “Or, as it’s more commonly known, a strophalos.”
The university where Linus worked took its name from the spoke design.
“This was intentional,” he said in absent agreement with our earlier assumptions. “I’m not sure what it signifies except whoever dug the holes meant to invoke the goddess.”
“Invoke her, not necessarily her blessing.” I studied the design, noticing how the practitioner had blended the old cemetery plots with the new to create the pattern. “We found no sacrifices, no tithes, no offerings. Who expects a goddess to give if she hasn’t first received?” Pride glinted in his eyes that caused my stupid heart to swell. “You don’t have to look so shocked. I do read my homework assignments. I’m not a total block of wood.”
“Of all the poor choices Maud embraced, I resent she made you doubt yourself the most.”
“I was an easy mark.”
Pleasing her had meant everything to me. Living up to her expectations had been my life goal. Proving to her that I was worthy of her time, her attention, her love.
A chilling thought blasted gooseflesh up my arms.