Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Gus
MY THIGH ACHED. NO SURPRISE GIVEN the bastard rain. The long-healed break that left me with a slight limp still haunted me on nights like this, throbbing pain a constant reminder of the night I lost my kid sister.
Settling into the chair I kept by the telephone in my kitchen, I massaged my tight thigh muscle even if it wouldn’t do much good. With a forlorn sigh, I picked up the phone and placed my call.
“Russell Flanigan here, what can I help you with?”
“Russ, it’s me.”
“Kid, how’d it go?” Didn’t matter that I was thirty-four; as a friend of the family for as long as I could remember, he’d always see me as the freckle-faced boy who’d followed him around with hero worship in his eyes and dreams of being a private investigator just like him.
Especially once he’d started specializing in missing persons cases.
My mum had been pleased as punch when Russell took me on a year after I finished school.
At my hesitation, Russell heaved a sigh of his own. “That bad, huh?”
“That bad,” I agreed. An heiress in Maine, a war widow newly remarried, had contracted Flanigan Investigations to assist in the search for her missing eight-year-old daughter.
By the time I got there, Sarah had been gone for two days, and the odds of a live recovery weren’t great.
I’d held out hope, but she’d been dead before her mother had even called.
“I had to use blood magic to find the body and see what happened.”
“We talked about this, kid. Soon as the war’s over and blood magic stops being useful on the front lines, you know the moral panic will start right up again. Tell me at least no one saw you doing it.”
“No one saw me, I was alone, no witnesses and no evidence left behind. I know what I’m doing, Russ.”
“Right, yeah, your grandfather and I taught you damn well. But you know I worry about you. So who did it?”
“New stepfather.” I pushed away the image of the broken body I’d discovered and focused on the sound of the raindrops tap-tap-tapping against the kitchen window.
“The mother was heartbroken, of course. I wish to God there’d been somebody better qualified to comfort her.
I never know what to say, so I just sat there and let her cry on me. ”
“Nothing you can say, in a situation like that.”
“Yeah, well.”
“I’m serious, Gus. You did your best. This isn’t how anyone wants a case to end. Not the parents, not us.”
“No.” It wasn’t the first time I’d dealt with this outcome, but it never got easier.
I wished the good outweighed the bad, but the odds were against us every single case.
People only called a PI when the cops wouldn’t or couldn’t help.
And tonight, I felt defeated. Exhausted.
I wanted the light in the world to erase the dark, but it never, ever did.
Between the ongoing world war and doing my job, these days evil was everywhere I looked. Even the shelter of my own home was hollow and empty. Devoid of life.
Not something I wanted to contemplate. “Anything new hit your desk while I was gone?”
Russell filled me in on a short case he’d worked tracking down another deadbeat husband who’d abandoned his wife and kid. I tried not to think about how my mother had turned to him for the same reason when I was seventeen.
Or everything that came before and after. With Kit.
His voice on the radio every night I happened to be home was torture. As I listened to the familiar animation of his words through the staticky speakers, I could almost smell the Ivory soap that used to cling to his skin.
Worse, though, were the nights he wasn’t broadcasting.
When I had to worry about whether he’d finally gotten too close to the action to come back.
Between bombs, machine guns, and magic, all on an unimaginable and destructive scale, Kit was constantly at risk.
Beneath my bed, there was a tin where I kept clippings from every byline I’d ever seen his name on.
For a few minutes while I read them, it was like having my best friend back.
Sometimes Mum used to share bits of Kit’s letters to her, but she figured out fast how much it smarted to know he was writing to her when he never had to me. Even if it was my own damn fault.
She’d asked me more than once to tell her about what I’d said to Kit that last night, wondering if he thought I blamed him for what happened to Elsie, but that wasn’t it.
I never had; I’d always known Elsie dying was nobody’s fault but mine.
Kit had to know that wasn’t the problem.
But I couldn’t explain to Mum what really went wrong between us.
She might have accepted a long time ago that I wasn’t going to settle down and give her grandchildren—she might even suspect why—but I couldn’t come right out and admit it.
Much as I loved and trusted Mum, some part of me was sure knowing would disgust her.
She wasn’t vindictive; she wouldn’t get me fired or ruin my life by making it public.
It didn’t matter I was a grown man; I couldn’t take the risk she’d hate me when I needed her to love me.
Even if the me she knew wasn’t the whole truth.
Better to keep those facets of me buried in the past, just like the secret parts of my relationship with Kit Lovely.
“August? You all right?” Russell asked, concern in his tone.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired. It was a long trip home.”
“Take the weekend off. There’s nothing urgent right now. Except—no. Never mind. We’ll talk about it Monday.”
“Spit it out, Russ. Or I’ll spend tomorrow worried anyway.”
Russell’s heavy sigh told a whole story on its own. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to like it. “Hazel North called.”
I winced internally. At least he hadn’t called her my stepmother.
“Your father’s missing again.”
Of course. Of course, he was. “Well, I’m sure as hell not looking for him.” I’d rather chew off my own arm than ever set eyes on the cheating dud again. “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if things got hard and he found himself another woman to set up house with.”
The only people I felt bad for were Hazel’s three kids, Minnie, Ida, and Martin. God, Minnie had to be seventeen now. Was that the magic number for my father? The oldest turns seventeen and he takes off? Thinks he’s done raising all of them?
I guessed it didn’t matter to him that Martin was only eight. Same as it hadn’t mattered that my youngest brother, John, was only five when he disappeared on us.
Thinking of John made my breath catch. If it hadn’t been for my leg, I'd have been able to fight alongside him in France, and he might not be buried over there all alone. Another family ghost.
Russell grunted. “Didn’t think you’d want to help, but you deserved to know. I’ll take the case. You’re probably right, and Hazel will be better off with answers than waiting on him to come back someday.”
I fought to keep my blood pressure from rising—a losing battle. “Bet the asshole didn’t bother leaving them any money either. Does Hazel even work?”
“Apparently she’s been doing factory work, but she’s not sure how she’ll get by on her income alone.”
“And what? She thinks if she finds him, she can guilt him into providing? Sure as hell didn’t work for Mum.”
“Hope springs eternal.”
“For people who don’t have the brains to recognize reality, maybe.
” Hazel had made her own choices, but my father was gifted with a fortune of charm and good looks.
People always fell for it. The older Mounties I knew swore it was a big part of what made him good at his job.
I let out a ragged breath, gut sinking. “That was mean. I…”
“Don’t got to explain yourself to me. I know he’s a shit heel, and this is personal for you.”
It was, but that was a bad excuse. The idea of shouldering more of my father’s responsibilities made me want to curl up in bed for weeks, but what was I going to do?
Let kids starve? Kids I was in all conscience related to?
“You take the case, I’ll talk to Hazel and see if I can help some other way.
Take the cost of the investigation out of my pay, don’t let her waste her money.
If you find him and the mood strikes, punch him square in the nose for all of us, huh? ”
“You got it.” There was faint humour in Russell’s voice, and I pictured a lopsided smile on his perpetually suntanned and wind-chapped face, his dark blue eyes sparkling.
A feminine voice murmured something in the background. Either his wife or the adult daughter who lived with them. “I’ve been summoned, kid. You take care, all right? And visit your mother tomorrow. She called around asking after you earlier.”
She always did like to know exactly what I was up to. She’d probably never stop worrying about me, no matter how capable I was. And no wonder. With only two sons left, she couldn’t help it. “Will do. Take care.”
After hanging up the phone, the nagging quiet of my house got to me.
The steady drip of the kitchen faucet worked its way into my consciousness, and hey, there was something to do.
If I had the ability to use magic the same way as Mum, I could’ve fixed it with a touch.
Too bad I needed spellcraft to focus mine.
For something as small as a leaky tap, it was too much work to bother.
My leg wasn’t gonna like kneeling under the sink, but at least the pain would distract me.
Heaving myself out of my chair, I went in search of my toolbox.
It didn’t matter if the house was quiet. I wasn’t lonely. I was alone. There was a difference. I was content by myself. Always had been. If you didn’t count those shining seventeen years with Kit glued to my side.
And I sure didn’t.