Chapter 23 #2
The words dropped into the air between them like an enchantment gone sideways. Splice’s cheeks flushed a startling green, and he looked away, jaw tight with a mortification that seemed alien and agonizing on his features.
“In the Grove Core,” he added, his voice lower now, strained. “When you found the body. Something happened, and I know you felt it, too.”
Her gaze slid instinctively to the faint red line curving across her forearm.
For a dizzying moment, she swore it throbbed, a phantom pulse humming a drumbeat just beneath her skin.
Her eyes flicked to the vine creeping across her windowsill.
A tendril slowly uncoiled, stretching toward her with a deliberate, hungry intent.
Heat coiled in her belly, but an icy chill ran just as deep down her spine as the thoughts began to line up, sharp and merciless.
The Grove Core tasted me. I’m sleepwalking into it. The Thornfather woke, and is shackled to the Holdings, and it’s killing him. The building all but admitted it wants me to walk. And Splice… Splice can feel me.
Her breath hitched. “Oh, gods and goddesses,” she whispered, the words barely audible. “It’s all connected.”
If he’d heard her whisper, he gave no sign. He was pacing again, one hand raking through his dark hair. Vines ghosted along the column of his throat, twitching with each breath, coiling and uncoiling as if they couldn’t decide whether to strangle or soothe.
“Okay,” Goldie said flatly, before her brain could explode. She jabbed a finger towards one of her wingback chairs. “Sit down.”
He didn’t.
Fine. She spun on her heel, opened the fridge and grabbed a water bottle, and returned in two strides. Without ceremony, she lobbed it underhand at his chest.
“You’re a plant. Hydrate.”
He caught it on instinct, blinking at her like she’d just hexed him with common sense.
Before he could form a reply, she was already stalking toward the bedroom. “And don’t touch anything,” she called over her shoulder. “The cats will know, and they’ll throw up on your shoes.”
In her room, she yanked on leggings, a bralette, and the least-wrinkled shirt from the pile on her floor, her thoughts shuffling like tarot cards dealt too fast to read.
Something was wrong with the Grove Core. Something was wrong with her. Something was very right about Splice’s body, but that was not helpful right now.
She didn’t want to think about the murder. But the harder she shoved the memory away, the more it leaked back in: Marlow Truckenham, sprawled and broken, blood black beneath him. The stink of iron and moss. Her own hands, trembling as they’d reached out… hadn’t she taken something from the ground?
Her stomach flipped. Yes. She had.
She dropped to a crouch, rifling through the clothes on the floor until she found the leggings from that night. Her fingers dove into the pocket and closed around something small and cool. She pulled it free.
A bead. No bigger than a marble, faintly luminous, as if lit from within. The surface shimmered, wet and slick, like something just plucked from a tidepool.
She hadn’t meant to take it, not in the moment. She’d pocketed it in shock, a magpie brain tucking away a shiny object, and then completely forgotten about it in the chaos that followed.
Rolling it between her fingers, she felt its weight settle in her palm. What had it been doing in the Grove Core? Why had she taken it? More importantly, why hadn’t she given it to the police?
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
She’d seen enough TV procedurals to know you weren’t supposed to pocket things from a crime scene. Even by accident. Even if it had just sort of rolled over to you and ended up in your hand because your brain was short-circuiting over the very dead municipal bigwig nearby.
And what was she supposed to do with it now? Waltz into the station? Hello, Officer, here’s this strange item I found by Truckenham’s corpse and then misplaced in my laundry for a week. Please, don’t arrest me.
Her stomach clenched. Maybe she could just leave it somewhere obvious and let fate do the rest? Except her fingerprints were all over it. And what if this shiny little nightmare became the thing that introduced her to Bellwether PD’s criminal database?
Fantastic. Truly, ten out of ten for problem-solving.
Swearing under her breath, Goldie dropped the bead into her pocket, took a deep, steadying breath, and stalked back into the living room.
Splice was exactly where she’d left him, still clutching the water bottle like it contained the answers to the universe. The cats hadn’t budged.
“Are you part catnip?” Goldie asked dryly, sweeping past him toward the window seat. “Because Maeve only purrs like that for sardines or a Churu.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She plunked herself down and snagged the nearest tarot deck, the cards snapping against each other as she shuffled, a sharp, purposeful sound in the tense quiet.
“What are you doing?” Splice asked.
“I’m doing a spread.” The cards whispered in her hands. “What does it look like?”
“What good will that—”
She held up a single finger. “You barge into a witch’s apartment, you get a witch’s take. House rules.”
Splice went silent.
She cut the deck with a final, decisive snap. As if on cue, Maeve hopped to her left side, Oberon to her right, both curling into place like they were born to be dramatic stage props.
Splice hesitated, then sat gingerly at the far end of the cushion, careful not to disturb the feline royalty. Maeve issued a curt mmrph of acknowledgment.
The silence that settled was thick and expectant.
“You… smell of sex,” Splice blurted suddenly.
Goldie’s head snapped up and she glared at him. “Wow. Really?”
His jaw twitched. “You—”
“Oh, let me save you the moral holier-than-thou,” she hissed. “Yes, I had sex last night. Yes, it was good. No, I don’t care if you’re offended. And why are you offended, exactly? You’re a literal cultivar of a fertility god. Do you even hear yourself?”
Her voice climbed before she could halt it.
“Let me remind you, we were well on our way to doing the horizontal tango before you decided to slam the brakes. And, yes!” Her hands flew up in exasperation.
“Yes, I told you to tell me if you wanted to stop! I meant it, I’m not mad at you for that, I would never be mad at someone for that—”
Her throat tightened, the rage cracking, and the real words, the wounded words, ripped out of her. “But gods and goddesses, Splice, why? What did I do wrong? You shoved me away like… like you couldn’t stand the touch of me. Like you were disgusted by me. Do you have any idea what that felt like?”
Silence.
Goldie froze, her breath caught as all the things she hadn’t meant to say echoed loudly between them.
Splice just stared at her, stunned into absolute stillness. The vines along his collar, which had been twitching with agitation, went slack, their movement ceasing as if a current had been cut.
“Gaaah,” Goldie blurted, whirling back to the table before her like she could physically wrestle the conversation into submission. Her throat closed tight, and, horrifyingly, hot tears began to prick the corners of her eyes.
Great. Just great. A perfect way to top off the morning.
Maeve licked her elbow comfortingly, then turned her round head and hissed softly at Splice.
He flinched.
Goldie looked down at the deck in her hand and steeled herself. This she could do. She straightened her shoulders, drew a deep breath, and pulled her sparkle back around herself like a well-tailored cloak. The raw hurt shimmered, shifted, and refracted into something theatrical and manageable.
“Right,” she muttered, waving one hand through the air dramatically, like a conductor cueing the Goldie Flynn Theme Song.
Then, she leaned into her cards, into her rhythm, into her dance. One by one, she flipped them over. A soft slap of card on wood, another, then another, steady as a heartbeat, until three lay spread across the coffee table.
Goldie exhaled slowly, spreading her hands over the cards, her fingertips brushing the worn edges as if she could draw steadiness from the card stock itself.
Her gaze traced the spread once, twice, a third time.
Anything to keep from looking at him. Anything to drown out the echo of the words she hadn’t meant to say.
Splice’s voice hesitantly broke through. “What do you see?” he asked carefully.
Goldie huffed a sharp laugh, shaking her head without looking up. “I see a mess. That’s what I see.”
She tapped the first card, nail clicking against the inked surface. “The High Priestess. Secrets at the heart of it all. Something hidden.”
Another sharp tap. “The Tower. A collapse waiting to happen. Sudden ruin.”
Her fingers hovered over the last card, almost reluctant. “The Devil. Chains, obsession, corruption.”
For a long moment, Splice didn’t move. She could feel the weight of what he wasn’t saying, the air heavy with it—an apology, maybe, or some mythic pronouncement to match the gravity in her voice. He drew a strangled breath beside her.
“That sounds… rather vague.”
Goldie glared at him. “Welcome to tarot, sweetheart. Wow!” She gave his shoulder a light slap. “You are really going for the gold in saying things you absolutely should not say to me right now.”
Splice’s head jerked toward her. His voice came rough, too loud, like it had splintered on the way out.
“I am sorry, Marigold.”
The frustration in it made him seem painfully human. Against her will, that did something strange and aching in Goldie’s chest.
He dragged in a breath, jaw tight. “This isn’t anything I know.”
She started to roll her eyes. “Well, yeah, me either.”
“No.” The word cracked like a whip. “You don’t understand. When we—when we were… performing the ritual—”