CHAPTER 16
It was not the sort of revelation I could come to terms with in the rain or without something to drink.
We all crammed into Lunaris’s narrow cabin.
She brewed us tea while Emery and I cast enchantments to dry everyone’s clothes, and Kessian tapped on his phone to order us a Chinese takeaway.
It was all quietly done, with nothing but the sound of rain on the roof and teaspoons chiming as we stirred our cups.
Lunaris had conjured two generic ones for Emery and Ambrose.
The starry one she’d made Kessian had never vanished from the cabinet.
Into the silence, Emery said, “I’m sorry. I imagine that was the last thing you expected to hear.”
Not the last, but far from the first. Not much surprised me anymore in Shearwater.
I didn’t know how to parse my feelings. I supposed sadness was amongst them, but something far more familiar cloaked it.
Guilt. A sense of responsibility. I’d stayed out of Shearwater to keep my family safe from the wraith, but Grandad had fallen prey to a different sort of danger anyway.
Beside me, Kessian hunched in the booth, holding his cup like it was the only thing keeping him warm. I wasn’t the only one so affected.
“I don’t know how I’m going to tell my family,” I said. “Or if I should.”
“Have you considered whether to involve the police?” Emery said.
Practically speaking, we’d need to if we wanted to order an autopsy report, but if my grandfather’s death hadn’t aroused any suspicion, the murder weapon had most likely been magic or medicinal, something to mimic natural causes that left no visible trace behind.
In a small town like Shearwater, news of a recently buried local getting dug up for an autopsy would spread easily and make it back to the killer, giving him time to cover his tracks.
It would also make it back to my family, and I didn’t want to think of how it might darken Fae’s wedding day, or how Mum might twist it all to be my fault.
“Let’s keep it between us for now. I may have to involve someone if we need to examine the body.” Once out of my mouth, I realized how clinical that sounded. “Sorry.”
“It’s a strange situation you find yourselves in,” Emery said.
“Is there anyone you might suspect?” Ambrose asked.
I’d played over the question on our walk back to Lunaris, the cold rain reminding me of a broad hand passing me a lily for Grandpa’s grave.
Silently, I rose and went to my bedroom, coming out with the trousers I’d worn to the funeral retrieved from my laundry hamper.
I turned the pockets out and a card fluttered to the floor.
I picked it up and set it on the table between us all.
Kessian leaned over and tilted it so the light flashed across the glossy name. Something sharp flashed through his eyes, too. “Westley Warwick?”
“He approached me at the wake to give me this. Asked if I’d be staying in Shearwater long, invited me to come by and chat. He called Grandad his business partner, but at the reading of the will, my sibling told me he bought the spa outright. Maybe he’s involved. Or maybe he knows something.”
Emery hummed. “It doesn’t present him with much motive. What reason would he have to kill his partner if the business was his regardless?”
I recalled what Fae had told me. “The spa was failing at the time Warwick bought it. The magic had gone. Not long after my grandad signed it over, the strid called me and two dozen others to our deaths, and the magic returned. Very convenient for Warwick. If he had something to do with it, and Grandad found out …” I sighed.
I didn’t have any evidence Warwick was involved in all those people who drowned, let alone Grandad’s death.
“Now I say it out loud, it sounds like a long shot.”
“No,” Kessian said, surprisingly firm. “It’s a shot, but not a long one.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He’s my landlord. The garden-variety greedy sort, raising rent each year while dragging his heels on basic repairs. I didn’t have a working shower for six months. Not saying that makes him a murderer, but he lacks enough empathy that I wouldn’t put it past him.”
He looked at the card rather than meeting our eyes, and I got the sense—as I often did with Kessian—that he was only giving me part of the story.
The conversation made me recall the dream I’d had.
Or shared? It had been Kessian’s memory, and Warwick had indeed been the landlord to hand over the keys to his park home.
Kessian didn’t share much of himself easily.
He’d only divulged as much because the dream had revealed it, only told me about his recovery from Bowen’s Wane because Briar’s actions had prompted him to.
I didn’t suspect him of involvement in all this dark business, but I wondered what else he hid and why.
“That reminds me of something else,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully so they didn’t come across accusatory. “The dream I had. Or we had?”
Emery and Ambrose looked between us curiously, while Kessian kept his eyes averted.
“Right, I forgot. That’s never happened to me before.”
“Do you know how it happened, or why?”
“Maybe it was an extension of my abilities or a result of the wraith’s attack? Hard to say. It could just be a random side effect of our time in the spring.”
It hadn’t felt that way to me. The dream felt … designed. It showed me his memories, yes, but very particular ones. “I think we ought to find out. I don’t trust that it isn’t the strid messing with us somehow.”
“You could attempt a trace spell to see what magic it picks up while you sleep,” Emery suggested.
“Another sleepover?” Kessian said, sounding not at all opposed.
It was my turn to avert my eyes. “I don’t know if the dreams require close proximity, but it’s worth a shot.
” Ambrose had a knowing look on his face when I next looked up.
Clearing my throat, I changed the subject.
“Apart from that, I’ll need to call Warwick.
Though I can’t ask him directly whether he’s a murderer or happens to know any, so I suppose I should …
go chat with him and see if I can’t find more information in a sneaky fashion? ”
Kessian made a face. “I don’t mean this as a dig, but you’ve said yourself that subtlety isn’t your strong suit.”
“Arrange to see him at his home,” Ambrose suggested. “While Tal speaks to Warwick, Kessian could sneak in and search for evidence.”
“I don’t know what sort of impression I’ve given, but I’m not a cat burglar,” Kessian said.
“No need,” Ambrose said, a note of affection hidden in his voice. “Emery is quite good with invisibility spells …”
While the three of them watched attentively, I called the number on Warwick’s card.
I fed him a stilted lie about my hopes of coming back to Shearwater permanently and whether he could help.
Luckily, all conversations with me were stilted, so he didn’t sound the least bit suspicious.
He set aside an hour the following afternoon and provided his address.
His interest in me didn’t fill me with confidence. Whether he had anything to do with the deaths in Shearwater had yet to be proven, but whatever he wanted, I could guess it was selfishly motivated.
We all agreed it wouldn’t hurt to investigate Grandad’s office for any traces of his research as well. He’d left me his clocks and the house. Though legal transfer thereof would probably take a year, bureaucracy being what it was, I didn’t imagine my family would object.
With the meeting arranged and night falling, all that remained was to cast the trace spell, get some sleep, and hope we had answers about the strange dreams by morning.
Emery provided the tithes for the spell and told me how to cast it.
He would come help me extract the results in the morning.
While I offered him the guest room, he insisted he could simply teleport home, and it would be more comfortable for them all to sleep in their own beds.
“Except Kessian, of course. But I’m sure he’ll be more than comfortable in yours,” Emery said.
I tried to hide my flush. I was still determined not to complicate my relationship with Kessian.
The wraith might have trapped me in Shearwater for now, and I was committed to cleansing the strid to keep everyone safe, but I didn’t know yet whether—given the option—I’d return to Shearwater permanently.
There were more ghosts than Grandad’s between my family and I, more years of my adulthood spent apart than together.
I didn’t know whether an exorcism would be worthwhile, or if we’d all grown up too different.
Or maybe I was simply running away again.
I prepared the spell, which involved tithing a plaited vine of willow branches and drawing a rune on Kessian’s temple while I tried to ignore how soft the fall of his fringe was against my knuckles, or how sharp the angle of his upper lip was in profile.
He seemed to sense the tension in my silence.
“Stop fretting. I do understand the meaning of the word no. Aside from the flirting, which unfortunately is how I am with everyone, I won’t ask about round two again.
” That sharp upper lip of his twitched into a smirk.
“If you want me, you’ll have to come get me. ”
And I wanted him. Especially then, with the mischief sparking in his eyes.
But wanting him and having him were two separate things.
I didn’t get to keep people, and if I could, it had been so long I’d forgotten the steps.
Dating, fucking, how much time needed to elapse before falling in love.
I would trip and fall and skip all the steps on the way down.
So I cleared my throat, said “I’ll keep that in mind,” cast the trace spell with my fingerprint betraying my pulse as it drummed against Kessian’s temple, then got ready for bed.
But I couldn’t sleep. I lay there, head filled with my grandfather’s ghost, the wraith’s claws, the forest’s cryptic words, but not dreams. I wasn’t the only one who was restless. Kessian turned over, the mattress springing. Then a few minutes later, he turned over again.
“Can’t get comfortable?” I whispered into the dark.
“Sorry. Am I keeping you up?”
“Not you. Can’t seem to shut my brain off.”
“Ah. Well, I’m a side sleeper and my hips and legs aren’t happy right now unless I’m on my back. I can’t imagine the trace spell will work if we don’t get at least a couple hours.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“It doesn’t seem the right time to get up and do stretches, and I can’t ask for a massage without going back on my word before, but if you have paracetamol handy, I wouldn’t say no.”
I went to fetch some and a glass of water, along with something extra, returning to Kessian sat on the edge of the bed, shaking out his legs.
Something about the domesticity of finding him like that and placing the pills in his open palms made my heart trip.
It seemed like the everyday, mundane occurrence of a couple co-habitating.
I’d never had a boyfriend, let alone moved in with one.
The image made it hard not to think of what he’d said before.
If you want me, you’ll have to come and get me.
It got me asking dangerous questions like: What if this worked out?
What if I found a way to live a normal life?
Could I have this? Could I have him? Not for a night, but for as long as our hearts were in it.
A fearful part of me recoiled, not given easily to trust a notion of hope after nine years alone. Particularly not when Kessian could be so cagey about himself, hiding anything vulnerable behind a laughing, gregarious exterior.
He didn’t owe me all his secrets, but I wanted something real. I didn’t think I could handle it if the first time I opened myself up, it was to find myself in armored arms, cold and a different kind of lonely.
I placed a potion bottle on the nightstand next to him, the contents blue as his eyes. “This might help, too. It’s a sleep draft. It’ll knock you out for eight hours.”
“You’re an angel.”
As he downed the pills, and I got into bed, the hope crowded out the fear a little.
Come and get me, he’d said.
Take off your armor first, I thought.