“She’s visiting a client,” I informed her. “Trips are so unusual for her, she warned me ahead of time.”
“Her house is empty. There’s nothing left.” She tore her fingernail to the quick. “She’s gone, Grier.”
The room spun, and I was grateful the couch caught me when my knees buckled. “How do you know?”
“I’ve been talking to her every Monday for weeks. This last time, she promised to visit, to teach me control…” She made a vague gesture that I assumed referenced Ambrose, her dybbuk shadow. “I worried when she never got back to me, so I asked Boaz to drive out to Tybee and check on her. That’s why he stopped by tonight.”
“He didn’t say a word about this to me.”
“He brought the matter to his commander’s attention and requested permission to launch an investigation into her disappearance.” She linked her hands at her navel, and her knuckles turned white. “He wasn’t going to bring this to you until he had answers, but Odette is your family. You deserved to know, so I overruled him.” She smiled to herself. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“I appreciate the heads-up.” I propped my legs under me. “I’ll go take a look around at dusk.”
“Let me know what you find?” The hope in her expression gutted me. “I’m worried about her too.”
“I’ll give you an update when I have one.” I started for the door, intending to walk right through without saying goodbye, but guilt cramped my belly. “I hope this won’t cause problems between you and Boaz.”
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking.” A self-deprecating laugh escaped her. “There’s not much else to do in here.”
The taste of old pennies flooded my mouth as I bit my tongue to keep from pointing out she wouldn’t be exiled to social Siberia if I could trust her.
“I have a chance to reinvent myself.” She dragged her gaze to mine. “I made a list of traits I think a good person should have.” Her smile went limp and sagged on her mouth. “Honesty was at the top.” She unlinked her hands, and they trembled. “This is my first step on the path to a new me.”
A new me.
Soon she would cease to exist as Amelie Pritchard—no, that version of her had already been erased. She was Amelie Madison now. The reminder left me with a ringing in my ears. She stood in front of me, an arm’s length away, but I couldn’t have crossed the yawning abyss stretching between us if I had wings.
“It’s dangerous wanting to be someone other than yourself,” was all the advice that popped into mind.
Amelie wanting the elusive more was what had gotten her into this mess.
“I’m a caterpillar these days. First Ambrose turned me into his host, and now Adelaide is turning me into her dead sister.” Her toes bunched on the hardwood. “When I burst from my cocoon this time, I’m hoping for butterfly instead of moth wings.”
“I want that for you too.” And I meant it, every word. “I want you to be happy.”
But until she loved herself, the person she was born to be, I worried misery was all she would find.
“Thanks,” she said softly. “You’ll let me know about Odette?”
“Yeah,” I promised. “I will.”
The walk across the lawn to Woolworth House was too short to grind down the edge of my panic. I strode in, jogged the stairs, and took advantage of Linus’s open-door policy. I found him propped up in bed, wearing black-framed glasses, dressed in a white tee with striped pajama bottoms. The book in his hands drooped at whatever he read in my expression.
“Odette is missing.”
He set aside his research and opened his arms to me. He didn’t have to ask me twice. I climbed up the mattress and rested my head on his shoulder.
“How do you know?” he murmured against my hair. “Who told you?”
“Amelie.” I breathed in his scent and relaxed. “She got worried when Odette wouldn’t return her calls and asked her brother to check out the house on Tybee. That’s why he came out earlier. That, and to spend some time with her.”
“How does he know she’s gone?” His fingers traced soothing lines down my arms. “You mentioned she was traveling. Does he know her well enough to tell what’s missing?”
“No, they aren’t close.” I shivered in his arms, the chill of his skin clearing my head. “That doesn’t matter in this case. The house was empty. Cleaned out, according to Amelie.”
“I’ll check it out.” He kissed the top of my head. “You go rest.”
Jitters prompted me to offer him company. “It’s not far. I could go with you before I crash.”
“Your truce with Hood is delicate.” He set me aside with gentle hands. “It’s in your best interest to remain here.”
True, Hood was still sore about me trapping him in a circle while I faced off against vampires solo, and I had given my word not to interfere with him protecting me again, within reason, but he had extended my leash a bit. He didn’t shadow me everywhere I went, so long as Linus or Cletus did the job for him.
Unhappy to be rousted from my spot, I frowned. “Are you telling me to stay put?”
“No.” He stood and selected an outfit from his closet. “I’m making an observation.”
“Hmph.”
“Come with me,” he offered. “I won’t stop you.”
“This is a trap,” I grumbled. “You’re using logic against me.”
“I will support whatever decision you make,” he said on his way into the bathroom to change.
The old house groaned through her floorboards until I worried they might snap.
“I’m not going with him,” I assured her. “I respect Hood too much to sneak out without him.”
Plus, the guy had really sharp teeth, and he knew how to use them.
When Linus reemerged, dressed and ready, I let him reach the door before clearing my throat and pulling out my pen. “Where do you want your sigil?”
When he glanced back, his eyes were warm. “I thought you might have forgotten.”
“You’re going to examine the scene of a possible crime. Alone.”
“I’ve done it many times over the years.”
“Yes, well, you didn’t have me then. You’re going to have to suck it up and learn to live with it.”
“Somehow,” he said, his fingers working over the buttons on his shirt, “I think I’ll survive.”
“You better,” I growled, then set to work on the sigil that would keep him safe when I couldn’t.
Three
The dream swirled into my head before I understood that I had fallen asleep waiting on Linus.
He has a new girlfriend. His third one this week. Just as mundane as all the rest.
Why not me? Why won’t he ask me? I would say yes. He knows I would say yes. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe I should play hard to get. Maybe then he would see we were meant to…
The carpet squishes under my feet, and cold slime seeps between my toes. I shiver, confused, my anger at Boaz forgotten. The smell hits me then, copper and rose water and thyme.
Maud.
I collapse to my knees beside her and scoop the icy blood back into the gaping hole in her chest.
“Maud?”
The sobs start, and I can’t stop them. I’m working as fast as I can, but her heart—her heart—it’s missing.
“Wake up. Please wake up. Please, Maud. Wake up. Please.”
Shivers dapple my arms, and my teeth chatter, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters if she won’t open her eyes. I’ll be alone again. All alone. Maud is all I have, and she’s…
She’s gone.
She’s dead.
Dead.
Using her blood for my ink, I start drawing a sigil, one I’ve never seen in any textbooks.
“No, Grier,” a voice pleads behind me. “Stop before it’s too late.”
“I’m not losing her too. I won’t.” I keep going, slipping and sliding, covering her head to toe in the foreign sigils. “Come on, Maud. Try. For me.”
“You have to let her go.” Footsteps pound closer. “You don’t want her back. Not like this.”
“You’re wrong.” I scream so loud my voice shreds to ribbons. “I want her back any way I can get her.”
“You don’t mean that. Please, Grier. Think.”
Snot clogs my throat as I close the sigil with a defiant swoop of my finger.
Magic explodes into the room, knocks me backward, and my head cracks against a wall.
“Grier.”
Darkness swirls around me, and I embrace it, grateful when it blinds me to the corpse at my feet.
Cold seeped into my bones, frigid as the grave, and I turned away from the source, still half-asleep.
“I’m here,” Linus murmured from some great distance. “Sleep.”
I sank deeper into the blackness, and this time I dreamed of nothing at all.
I woke with shooting pain in my tailbone. I was ready for a spine-ectomy. Mine was faulty. It hurt all the time. I’m sure sleeping upright on floors and getting knocked on my butt daily had nothing to do with it.
“You’re awake.”
Eyes still heavy with sleep, I mumbled, “I am?”
“Your stomach is growling.”
“I swallowed a tiger.”
Linus laughed, really laughed, and the sound was so bright I had to open my eyes to see for myself.
“Breakfast is ready whenever you are,” he said, and he handed me a chill tumbler that smelled like herbs and copper, like him, like fresh-cut mint rubbed between a thumb and finger and the tang of old pennies. I sipped, and my appetite dialed down from a roar to a purr. “Do you want to eat first or shower?”
“I’ll shower.” Setting the smoothie aside, I groped behind me, intending to push myself upright using the vee made by the corner where I slept, but there was only one wall supporting my back. “What in the…?”