Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Kit
TILLIE’S TABLE WAS CROWDED, EVERYONE CHATTERING away over the supper she’d prepared. We’d all been summoned here at Tillie’s request, including Marion and Agnes. She wanted to meet my friends, and apparently feed everyone. No surprise there.
During a pause in conversation, Tillie put in, “You know, Kit. Gus has plenty of room at his house.” She smiled brightly. “If you need lodging once Ted and Mary-Alice are home, he could rent you a room. After all, the cost of rent in Halifax is extortion. You’d help Kit out, wouldn’t you, Gus?”
Gus’ eyes went huge. “I… could do that.” His tone was doubtful. Which shouldn’t have bugged me when I didn’t even plan to stay.
“Oh,” Marion exclaimed, delighted. “Are you planning to move here then, Kit? Agnes and I have been noticing how scenic Halifax is. We could relocate too, and then we’d be back together again.”
Agnes was watching my face thoughtfully. “It’s too soon for Kit to know whether or not he’ll stay, so do try not to make plans, Marion.”
Marion’s pout was adorable. At least someone wanted me around. But I was grateful for Agnes’ pragmatism coming to my rescue.
“I’m afraid I’ll be here longer than I expected, but once I find Ted and Mary-Alice? I haven’t allowed myself to think that far into the future.” If I did, I’d have to consider exactly what I would do if they didn’t come home alive.
“How’s the search going?” Tillie asked, glancing between me and Gus.
He hadn’t wanted to involve her for good reason, given the attempts on our lives. And I selfishly agreed. I’d already lost one mother. I didn’t want to risk Tillie too.
“We’re at an impasse,” I said, and tried not to show how much it alarmed me that I wasn’t lying.
“They’re letting it drop for now,” George muttered, shoveling casserole onto his fork. “It’s too dangerous for everyone to keep looking.”
Tillie rubbed George’s arm, jostling him out of the stare he’d fixed on his plate. “If you’ve hit a dead end, it can’t hurt to let me in. In fact, just today I spoke with—”
“Mum,” Gus warned. “You can’t go digging into this. There’s a lot you don’t understand.”
“August,” she returned with a level stare.
“I might not know everything that’s happened, but I do have information that can help.
One of the nurses I’ve been profiling at the hospital, Vera Redmond?
She’s a war widow who spends most of her time there.
But she mentioned one of the volunteers and her husband had become her closest friends this year.
She let slip their names: Mary-Alice and Ted.
And when I gently pressed for more information on them, she clammed right up and look spooked.
So I spoke to the charge nurse about volunteers, said I wanted to spotlight them next, and wouldn’t you know it, Mary-Alice Lovely has been volunteering there for months.
I didn’t know she’d been doing it, so I figure you might not either. Have you spoken to Vera?”
“I don’t—” I rifled through the people I’d spoken to on the phone the very first day we’d started looking. “She wasn’t in their address book.”
“And her name didn’t come up when we spoke to Meggie O’Shea,” Gus defended, shoulders stiffening. “Wouldn’t she know her own daughter’s friends?”
Tillie shook her head. “Vera isn’t from that world, and Mary-Alice doesn’t want to be either. She’s kept her distance from the O’Shea’s since she married Ted.”
The need to leap up from the table and go see this woman beat inside my skull to the pulse of my heart, but I’d said I would let the case lie for now.
“We’ll talk to her after supper,” Gus announced, his hand moving under the table to squeeze my knee in a clear effort to soothe me.
“Why don’t we give it a few days to cool down?” I suggested. If I couldn’t control the impulse to seek Vera out, I’d do it on my own, keeping Gus out of it.
Gus’ head tilted, probably trying to fathom my change of heart, but it ought to be obvious I didn’t want him hurt again. “The only way we’re going to stop the attacks is to figure out what’s going on. And Ted’s got pieces of the puzzle we don’t.”
“We’ll come too,” Marion exclaimed, half support, half excitement.
“No, we won’t,” Agnes countered, and Marion’s pout resurfaced. “Too many unknown people will spook the girl.”
“What’ll help,” Tillie put in with a sly grin, “is she’s keen on Kit Daring.
Mentioned how your broadcasts kept her going while she was waiting on letters from her husband.
I'm sure starry-eyed she’ll be a lot more likely to answer you truthfully.
And between the two of you, you've got a nose for lies.”
Swallowing at that, I tried not to think about the questions I’d been relentlessly asking myself.
The ones about what being half-fae meant.
After we found Ted, I needed to pay Meggie O’Shea another visit.
I’d written Ted at least a dozen more times, and only gotten two clipped replies.
He’d said the other fae in Halifax was bad news, but curiosity was burning me alive, almost as bad as my magic.
What if he could help me learn to use it?
If I had control of my own magic, maybe I wouldn’t be in this predicament. Maybe I could have found Ted by now.
Maybe I’d have been able to save Elsie.
George heaved a sigh. “If Gus is hell-bent on pursuing this, we won’t be able to stop him.
And I can see you’re barely holding onto your restraint, Kit.
So I’ll make you a deal. This is it. One last avenue of investigation, and then it's over. If this is another meaningless goose chase, you pack it in and give Ted a chance to come back on his own.”
Even with George’s blessing, I hesitated at the memory of washing Gus’ blood from my face.
“And one more thing,” George added. “You don’t go without me. I'll wait out in the car, but I want to be nearby in case you need help in a hurry.”
“Deal,” Gus agreed.
And I begged a God I couldn’t bring myself to really believe in that this would lead us to Ted and Mary-Alice. My heart couldn’t take another setback.
“Finish up the food I worked hard on making you before you go,” Tillie insisted, her stern expression belied by the warmth in her eyes.
Gus
THE CAR RUMBLED ALONG NEARLY DESERTED streets.
It was after dusk, and the shops were closed for the day, most people tucked away at home.
May was too cold and wet to do much outside at night.
Our headlamps cut through the encroaching blackness, giving us a tad more vision than the light of the moon and stars alone.
My muscles were tight and tense, and my stomach ached like I’d swallowed something heavy and barbed.
I’d been distracted all day after hearing through the grapevine that Kit had put out feelers for another blood mage to hire, and then his reaction when Mum had suggested he rent a room from me…
Everything was slipping beyond my control.
If Kit was looking for someone to replace me because he was worried I’d get hurt on the case, I couldn’t let him.
He was normally smarter than this, and maybe he hadn’t been here to know, but there wasn’t any other blood mage on this coast I’d trust with a spell like that. Not with Kit.
It might not matter anyway. Not if this was the break we’d been waiting for.
If we found Ted and Mary-Alice, Kit wouldn’t need another mage.
And he wouldn’t stick around long, either.
He’d have no reason, would he? Not unless I told him how much I wanted him to.
Though, hell, I wasn’t sure me wanting him here was a reason for him to stay.
I hadn’t thought so last time. But the idea of Kit Lovely walking out of my life again was enough to stab a fire poker in my chest and fill the wound with hot coals.
Was I strong enough, unselfish enough to tell him to walk away twice? To give him up to the world for his own good twice?
“How should we approach this?” Kit asked nervously from the seat beside me.
My fingers clenched on the wheel as I weighed the options. “You heard what Mum had to say, charm her. Do that thing you do where people spill their secrets.”
“Can he even still do that?” George teased.
“Can and does,” I said, my gaze darting to George in the mirror. “It’s something to watch.”
Kit shifted in his seat, and when I glanced over, he looked pleased. It only lasted a second before worry took over again. “What if she won’t tell us anything?”
“Then you send Gus out and bring me in,” George said, resting his arms along the seat back behind him. “I play the bad guy and get her to sing.”
“You hate playing the bad guy,” I pointed out, a fact from our childhood games that hadn’t changed when George became a real officer. His moral compass was too strong.
“So do you, and Kit sure can’t.”
“Hey,” Kit complained, but it was half-hearted.
It didn’t take us long to get to Vera’s. She lived alone in a modest split-level flat with chipped paint siding. When she answered the knock on her door with wide eyes that instantly focused on Kit and she proceeded to blush, I figured we were walking out of there with a location.
The sitting room was homey and clean, pictures in frames standing along a modest fireplace mantle. One I guessed was the husband she’d lost in the war, looking proud in his uniform. Another of the two of them together where they were real young, a few of their wedding day.
Once she’d settled cups of coffee in front of us at the kitchen table, she finally got around to saying what she must’ve been thinking since we’d shown up. “You’re here about Ted and Mary-Alice, aren’t you?”
Kit nodded, and he looked so painfully earnest that in Vera’s position, I wouldn’t have been able to turn down anything he asked me either. “I know they trusted you to keep their secret, but Ted left a letter for me saying to find you if I urgently needed to get in contact.”
The lie slid off his tongue so effortlessly, so believably.