Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
Goldie sat on the back bumper of an ambulance, a scratchy emergency blanket draped over her shoulders. Her shoes were off—why were her shoes off?—and there was dirt smudged all over her knees, ground into her palms, caught in the seams of her rings.
Why do they always have an ambulance when the person’s already dead? she thought nonsensically.
She wasn’t bleeding. She wasn’t in cardiac arrest. Marlow Truckenham had been the one who needed help, and he was…
She didn’t want to finish that thought.
Her fingers kept picking at the edge of the blanket. She couldn’t stop. It was fraying. Or she was.
The police and medics had arrived with startling speed. One moment, she’d been crouched over the body, too stunned to move; the next, the clearing had flooded with uniforms, latex gloves, and clipped voices asking if she could stand, if she was hurt, if she could please just sit down.
It was either a testament to Bellwether’s efficiency or proof that murder here was still novel enough to stir urgency.
Across the clearing, two uniformed officers were stretching yellow caution tape across the Grove Core’s entrance, the sacred veil now marked off like a crime scene on a procedural. Which, she supposed, it was.
A murder scene.
Gods and goddesses.
To one side, the Assistant stood perfectly straight, speaking in low tones to a sharp-eyed, no-nonsense Asian woman whose gaze flicked thoughtfully between the cryptid and the entrance to the Grove Core. Her nods were serious and measured as she paused to take notes every now and again.
Goldie watched them, trying to connect the pieces of her brain that had scattered like dropped beads.
She was shaking, though not in the dramatic way people always seemed to in movies.
More like a subtle tremor, like her blood had lost its sense of rhythm and was now practicing syncopation under her skin.
Her teeth didn’t chatter. That would’ve at least felt cinematic.
“Vitals are solid,” came a voice beside her.
She turned. The dryad EMT crouching at her side had skin the soft gray of river clay, curls of ivy twining through her earth-dark hair. Pale freckles dusted her cheeks in green constellations. The badge read C. Tarrow.
Goldie managed a crooked half-smile. “So what you’re telling me is that my obituary can wait?”
The attempt at humor hit a jagged edge inside her. She winced, the image of Marlow’s body flashing hot behind her eyes.
C. Tarrow’s cheeks creased with sympathy. “You’ve got plenty of shelf life left, never fear.”
“Fabulous,” Goldie murmured, smoothing the blanket across her lap like it was couture. “I’ve got a haircut on the books next week, and I’d hate to reschedule.”
A nearby officer snorted in amusement.
Keep them laughing, Goldie reminded herself. Glitter is armor. She lifted her scratched arm. “Are you sure this isn’t fatal? I can’t face police questioning without a sparkly bandage.”
C. Tarrow huffed a leaf-dry laugh and produced a slim roll of moss-green gauze. “No sequins, I’m afraid, but this holds healing enchantments better.” She wrapped Goldie’s arm with gentle pressure, smoothing the edge, then winked. “Need me to kiss it better?”
“Oh, yes, please,” snickered a male voice.
Goldie didn’t turn to look. She caught C. Tarrow’s eye instead, and both of them smirked in a slow, conspiratorial way. Tarrow pressed a theatrical kiss to her fingers and tapped it against the bandage. Goldie chose to ignore the disappointed groan from whomever had spoken.
“There. Hex-proof and couture-adjacent.” Tarrow tucked the gauze away and stood with willow-smooth grace. “If bravery runs low, wave dramatically, and I’ll come running with reinforcements.”
Goldie waggled her fingers. “I’ll be waiting.”
C. Tarrow winked cheekily and vanished toward the rising hum of emergency responders.
Goldie held the smile a beat longer. Then her mouth wilted, and her hand dropped to clutch the blanket at her chest. A wave of heat pulsed from the ground beneath the ambulance, and she winced as it thrummed through her—a hot, hungry rhythm that tried to overwrite her own heartbeat.
What the hells was going on?
Probably a shock reaction. That was normal. Cortisol and adrenaline and proximity to death.
And Beltane. Right. Beltane. Things always got weird and wonky and liminal around this time of year.
And it wasn’t like she was standing in the middle of a magically significant bonfire mound that had appeared out of nowhere while she’d been placing charm sachets designed to thin the veil. Of course not.
Any witch would have felt the thrum beneath her skin, the faint tug at the base of her spine like the land itself had a pulse and it was syncing with hers. It was just ambient magic, just the Grove Core being theatrical.
Yes. That was the obvious answer.
“Goldie?”
A voice cut through her musings. Her head jerked up, and when she saw the speaker, a true smile split her face.
“Sam? Is that you?”
Officer Sam Mathers stood a few feet away, his badge glinting and a self-writing notebook at the ready. His uniform slacks were pressed with precision, and his strong jawline was as smooth as if he had just shaved five minutes ago.
Knowing Sam’s penchant for order, Goldie wouldn’t be surprised if he’d already catalogued the entire scene in his head. That relentless neatness was why their almost-thing never took off—two dates, three years ago—but she’d always liked Sam’s calm. His cop focus. And the kissing.
Her pulse stuttered as the memory rose unbidden: his hand warm at the nape of her neck, thumb brushing just beneath her jaw as he angled her mouth to his.
The way his lips pressed with controlled force, then opened, coaxing hers apart until she was shivering.
His tongue had tasted of mint and bourbon, sliding against hers with a patience that nearly undid her.
And when he’d pulled back to murmur her name—low, rough, like he wanted to devour her—it had felt like her knees would give way right there on his spotless front step.
Heat coiled low in her belly, sudden and feral, and her breath caught.
What the fuck?
There was a dead body not fifty feet away, and she was getting wet over a three-year-old memory of a kiss?
Goldie’s eyes dropped to Sam’s hand and caught the plain gold band gleaming on his ring finger. “Congrats,” she blurted, trying to drown out whatever the hell was pumping molten through her veins.
Sam followed her glance and gave a crooked smile. “Thanks. First anniversary last week. Baby due in October.”
Her heart gave one hollow thump. “That’s wonderful, Sam.”
“Thanks,” he said, flicking open the notebook. “You’re looking good. In spite of…” He gestured vaguely toward the ambulance, the cops, the chaos.
“I’m told I’m glowing,” she said, tossing in a reckless wink. “Might be the trauma.”
He chuckled. “May I sit?”
“Sure,” she said, shifting her knees on the bumper. “You’re here to ask the scary questions, huh?”
Sam settled beside her, all pressed lines and calm composure. “Yeah. But we can take it slow.”
A hot, liquid tremor swept down her spine, pooling low, flooding her with heat so sharp it made her shiver. It wasn’t Sam. Gods, it wasn’t Sam. It was the phrase, the suggestion, the slow, steady pulse underneath it that seemed to hum in time with her own body.
She nodded too quickly, throat tight, while a deep, traitorous thrum gathered between her thighs, steady as a drumbeat.
“So,” Sam began. “You were the one who found the body?”
“Unfortunately.” She exhaled, crossing her legs hard and forcing herself to focus. “I was placing the charm sachets for Beltane. I got to the back side, and…”
Her voice faltered. “He looked like he was just sleeping. I thought maybe he’d passed out or… I don’t know.” Her throat cinched shut on the words.
Sam glanced up, searching her face. “Okay. Thanks, Goldie. You’re doing great.”
She gave a shaky laugh. “You’re making it sound like I’m a preschooler at the dentist.”
“You’re doing great, and you’re not crying,” Sam said. “That’s more than most people could say.”
The stretcher appeared then, gliding from the Grove Core’s veil like a specter. Two municipal healers carried it, a charm-woven privacy shroud whispering around the frame. Even beneath the sheet, Marlow Truckenham’s silhouette looked perfectly polished, right down to the angle of his shoes.
Goldie shuddered. Her fingers clenched the blanket around her shoulders, then slackened. Her breath came shallow, stuck in her throat.
One of the EMTs approached with an apologetic look, glancing between her and Sam. “I’m so sorry,” she said gently. “You’ll need to move. We have to… we need to place him here.”
Every witty defense she’d packed for moments like this scattered, vanishing like startled birds into the dusk. Her breath hitched in a strangled sound, her hands flying to her face as the sob fractured free and shattered her carefully built composure like a pane of fragile, sugar-thin glass.
Her thoughts weren’t coherent; just a chaotic litany of wrongness.
Marlow’s lifeless outline. The sick, coiling heat that had pulsed through her moments before.
The soil itself humming against the soles of her shoes.
All of it crashed together, a cocktail of grief, shame, and some terrifying, exhilarating power that was not her own.
She was coming apart at the seams, the glitter and gloss of her persona flaking away to reveal the raw, terrified woman beneath. Untethered. Spinning out into silence that felt like it could swallow her whole.
And then, suddenly, she felt a pair of arms go around her. Tentative at first, cool and awkward, like vines hesitantly curling around a fence post.
She became painfully aware of the Thornfather’s Assistant beside her, drawing her against him with a hesitant grace. It should not have helped. It had no right to. But his scent—loam and green and petrichor—flooded her senses, and the solid, living coolness of his body was an anchor in the storm.
A wracking sob broke loose, boneless and raw, and she sagged against him. “I just—” she gasped, words fracturing with her breath. “I just want to go home.”
The Assistant’s hand stilled on her back, then pressed between her shoulder blades with a steady, grounding pressure. “Then I will take you.”
Before she could protest, he moved, rising with an unnerving, liquid grace and lifting her from the ambulance bumper. Goldie’s arms curled instinctively around his neck and she buried her face in the cool collar of his coat.
“Wait, hold on—” Sam sputtered. “You can’t just leave—”
“We can,” the Assistant said. The words weren’t loud, but the air vibrated around them like a struck tuning fork, deep and undeniable. “We have given our account.”
“It’s all right, Officer.” The voice was clipped, calm, and cut clean through the rising noise.
Goldie blinked up through wet lashes as an Asian woman stepped forward—the one the Assistant had been speaking to. She wore a severe topknot, a dark suit that didn’t try to flatter, and a presence like a whetted blade. She wasn’t tall, but she didn’t need to be. Her nametag read: DETECTIVE OSEKI.
“Ms. Flynn. Assistant. We have your information. If we need more, we’ll call. You’re free to go.”
The Assistant inclined his head once. Then, without another word, he carried Goldie past the perimeter. Behind them, murmurs rose like stirred ash, and the trees of the Green Holdings bent its branches in a hush that felt—for one breathless, awful moment—reverent.