Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Awoman possessed. That’s what Goldie felt like as she tore through her apartment. She skittered from the kitchen junk drawer to her overflowing craft basket, gathering supplies with the frantic energy of a squirrel preparing for a very weird, very morbid winter.
Index cards. A rainbow of sticky notes. A fistful of multicolored retractable Sharpies, each one clicking open with a little burst of promise.
She scurried past the living room in search of her notebook and peeked in.Splice sat, crosslegged and ramrod straight, on her floral rug that sparkled with faerie lights.
Maeve was draped across one of his knees, while Oberon was attempting to burrow his entire body into the crook of Splice’s elbow, purring loud enough to vibrate the floorboards.
Splice, for his part, was trying to pet them, his face a mixture of gentle terror and resignation. His long, elegant fingers moved in stiff, uncertain strokes. It wasn’t a caress so much as a series of formal, awkward blessings bestowed upon a very enthusiastic, fluffy congregation.
Something warm bloomed in Goldie’s chest at the sight. Not just the throb of lust, anyway, though that was very much still there, but something softer, more treacherous.
Splice shifted, murmuring something low and soft to Oberon. The cat responded by headbutting his chin. Splice’s lips quirked in a fleeting smile, and Goldie’s body helpfully lit up like a pinball machine, every nerve ending screaming, yes, he’s adorable, let’s make a plant baby right now.
She abandoned the hunt for her notebook with a decisive huff. Who needed it anyway? She gathered her supplies to her chest and marched into the living room with all the authority of a general leading a charge. She surveyed the wall beside her bookshelf, then glanced up hopefully.
"I don't suppose you could grow me a whiteboard right now?" she asked the building sweetly.
The walls gave a gentle, undulating shimmer that somehow managed to convey polite regret.
"Okay, fine." Goldie sighed dramatically. "Guess we're doing this old school."
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to turn away from the deeply distracting sight of Splice being accosted by her cats. Focus, Flynn. Murder first, lusting after the cryptid later.
“Okay. Here’s what we know. One: Marlow Truckenham was killed.”
She slapped a bright yellow note in the center of the wall and wrote: MARLOW TRUCKENHAM.
“Two: he was a resident of Greymarket Towers about thirty years ago.” A second sticky note joined the first: GREYMARKET – 30 YEARS AGO.
“And the building didn’t like him,” Splice added dryly from the couch, settling in as if for a long lecture.
“Mr. Lyle said something about his ‘trajectory’ being the reason he left. So yesterday, I dug into when Truckenham really started climbing in Bellwether politics.” She tapped the note for emphasis. “Guess when? Approximately thirty years ago.”
“Right when he was ejected,” Splice said, nodding as Goldie scrawled RISE TO POWER and stuck it under the Greymarket note.
Soon the wall bloomed with more color: MNEMONIC BEAD. GREEN HOLDINGS. ASHENVALE VENTURES.
Goldie paused, tapping her Sharpie against her teeth. “Mycor.” She grabbed another sticky note and wrote THORNFATHER. “He wakes seven months ago, right around the same time Truckenham amends his will. But why? Being written into somebody’s will doesn’t seem like enough to rouse a sleeping god.”
She tapped the pen against her lip, muttering, “I mean, should we test it? Are there any other gods around here napping? I could update my will. Or, you know, actually write one—”
“Goldie.” Splice’s voice was low, a warning.
She glanced back at him with a quick, sparkly smile. “Sorry, got excited.”
Turning back to the wall, her gaze lingered on the clustered notes. “Here’s the thing: when I cross-referenced dates, I noticed the Grove Core’s destabilization really ramped up seven months ago too. Right after Samhain. And it’s only gotten worse since.”
Splice’s eyes narrowed. “So the destabilization could be related to Truckenham’s will, or to Mycor’s waking. Or both.”
“It’s a hypothesis,” Goldie said quickly. “Could also just be a coincidence.”
“Do they know the exact time of Truckenham’s death?”
“I don’t,” Goldie admitted. “Just that it was before I found him. That was around seven-thirty in the morning, I think.”
Something hard flickered behind Splice’s expression. “The night before you found him, Mycor doubled over in pain. Something hit him, and me, with enough force to knock us out for hours. I didn’t wake until shortly before I found you in the Grove Core.”
Goldie’s Sharpie hovered in mid-air. “The time of death might have been right then. Which means the clause in his will wasn’t just legal paperwork. It was magical.”
“That is what the lawyers said,” Splice reminded her, voice flat.
“Right, but they didn’t know when it would hit. The land started shifting as soon as he signed it, but it was waiting for him to die before it fully activated.”
She scribbled DEAD MAN’S SWITCH on a bright pink note and underlined it. Twice. Then a third time, because it felt that important.
“Now,” she muttered, writing again. “The mnemonic bead.”
Her gaze flicked toward Splice. “You said it stores ritual memory. Does that mean there was literally a ritual?”
“Not always,” Splice said slowly. “But the images we saw—the salt, the blade, the screaming—it certainly looked like one.”
Goldie pursed her lips. “There was blood. And Mycor kept talking about a wound. Okay, let’s chase that. Let’s assume there was a ritual, and that bead is a record of it. Which brings us to the real question: why was it in the Grove Core?”
She clicked the retractable Sharpie several times, eyes unfocused as the memory replayed. “It rolled over to me while I was looking at the body. I picked it up and shoved it in my pocket without thinking.”
Splice’s brow furrowed. “So the Grove Core… gave it to you?”
“I guess?” Goldie rocked back on her heels. “I mean, it could’ve just been there. Coincidence. Maybe it had nothing to do with the murder at all.”
Splice’s straightened, leaning forward slightly. The air between them seemed to sharpen. “The coincidence is too coincidental,” he said quietly. “Why would the Grove single you out? Why would it push the bead toward you at all, unless it wanted you to see it?”
He shook his head once, firm. “No. The simplest path is that it arrived with someone.”
Goldie’s grip tightened around the marker. “So either Truckenham must have had it,” she said slowly, “or the killer had it.”
Splice nodded, the motion small but certain. “Which would mean that at least one of them was involved in the ritual itself.”
Goldie’s eyes lit up. “Okay. Talk me through that, plant-man.”
A small smile touched Splice’s lips. “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
Splice tilted his head, patient as a professor with a difficult pupil.
“Marigold. A mnemonic bead is an artifact of participation. Its magic is contingent on presence. To possess the bead is to possess the memory of the event it recorded. Therefore, if either the killer or Marlow Truckenham had it, one of them was present at the ritual. Like saying: if a man is wet, it has likely rained upon him.”
Goldie blinked at him. “Thank you for mansplaining magic to me,” she said sweetly.
His expression didn’t change, but one brow twitched. “You asked.”
She stuck her tongue out at him, a flash of playful defiance before her expression turned serious again. He was right, damn it. She grabbed another sticky note and scribbled SLEEPWALKING.
“And then there’s this,” she said, slapping the note onto the wall with decisive force. “I’m sleepwalking to the scene of the crime. And according to the police surveillance footage, it looks like I’m performing some kind of ritual.”
She stepped back, tapping the Sharpie against her lips as memory rose. The hedge. The scratch. The rush of hot blood soaking into green wood. She could almost feel the vine dragging over her skin again, that flash of contact that felt more like intention than accident.
Her fingers drifted to her forearm. “I think… something happened when it scratched me.” The words came out slowly, as if she were hearing them for the first time as she spoke them. “It felt like it was… tasting me. And now maybe it’s attuned to me? Maybe it’s calling me back because of the bead?”
Splice’s eyes narrowed, assessing. “And you say Greymarket is allowing this to happen?”
“I asked it to stop me, but it said it wanted me to go back.”
Splice tilted his head. “The building spoke to you?”
She made a helpless gesture. “It’s a whole door-based communication system. Takes forever to explain. Anyway, I asked if finding the body in the Grove Core mattered. It said yes. Asked if it wanted me to go back, same answer. Which means…”
Goldie jabbed the marker toward the wall, her energy reigniting. “All of this is connected! And sure, maybe that’s a thin thread, but come on. Coincidences, especially where murder’s involved, almost never are.”
Her lips quirked. “Picked that up from watching British detective procedurals with Mr. Caracas. PBS is basically continuing education if you pay attention.”
"But you can’t go back there," Splice said, his voice low and serious. "It’s an active crime scene, under police surveillance and magical wards. If you’re sleepwalking past those protections… Goldie, it’s not safe. You could get hurt."
"Don't you see?" she protested, gesturing emphatically at the wall of clues as if it were a masterpiece. "That’s why I have to go! It’s so important that the building is willing to let me walk right into a police investigation to find it."