Chapter 17 #2
“Can you send me some pictures of the damage to the study?” I can hear Adrian shuffle some papers. “I’m going to drop by later tonight and go over the place, but send me pictures in the meantime.”
I put the phone on loudspeaker as I begin cataloguing the study. It’s not easy walking through this place, but I let my emotions rule me once, and the result of that is before me. I never followed the investigation properly. Now I’m going to handle this myself.
“What if it was wolfsbane?” Adrian suddenly utters, and I freeze. “The poisoning, I mean. What if that’s what happened to Daniel and your father?”
I don’t get the chance to speak.
“Think about it,” he presses. “A month ago, we’d have sworn wolfsbane was gone from the world. What if it’s been here far longer than we knew? Your father, your brother, both dosed slowly over years.”
“That’s a stretch.” I shake my head. “Wolfsbane hits fast, and it hits to kill. You can’t feed it to a man in small doses over years. It doesn’t work that way.”
“You don’t know that. We haven’t studied it. Some of the most fatal poisons for humans have been successfully used as slow-acting agents. Why not wolfsbane?”
His words make me pause.
“You could be right,” I murmur thoughtfully.
“But we have no way of checking.” He sounds agitated.
My eyes flicker over the photo frame I just put down, and my heart lurches at seeing Daniel’s grin behind the dusty glass. “There might be a way.”
“How?”
I keep my voice even. “Wolfsbane eats a wolf from the inside, down into the bone, and it doesn’t quit when the heart stops.
It keeps hollowing them out for years afterward.
The teenage couple we found in the woods, they had signs of wolfsbane poisoning.
Their bones had gone brittle in the dirt.
Now stretch that across fifteen years and think how little would be left of my brother and father. ”
The mere words make me sick to my stomach.
“You want me to dig up their graves?” Horror thickens my friend’s voice. “Marcus, that’s desecration.”
“You think I want this?” I snarl. “That’s my father in the ground, my brother beside him. They belong to me, and I’m the one who has to live with pulling them out of the earth. I’d give anything not to.”
I cover my face with one hand, my voice hoarse. “This is the only way to identify a shifter marked by wolfsbane even after death. I’ll get the fragments myself.”
“No,” Adrian says harshly. “You’re not doing that. Let me.”
“Adrian.”
He’s insistent. “That’s your father, your brother.
You shouldn’t have to go through this. I’ll do it, and I’ll do it with respect.
Besides, you start turning up at those graves, people will ask questions we can’t answer yet.
If someone did poison them, it has to be someone close, and the second word gets out, we don’t know what that person will do. ”
I close my eyes. “Do it as soon as you can then.”
“I will.”
I end the call, my heart weighing with the task I’ve had to assign my friend.
I stand in the wreck a while longer, though it’s pointless.
Whoever tore this room apart a decade ago either walked out with what they came for or didn’t find it.
Nothing’s left here for me now. Crouching again, I sift through the mess anyway, righting a fallen drawer.
My hand finds a photo album shoved beneath the toppled shelf.
It’s ours. The pages hold my father, Daniel, me as a boy, all of us caught in summers I’ve half forgotten. I tuck it under my arm.
One day I’ll come back and set this place right. When Bella’s grown, I’ll walk her through these rooms, tell her whose they were, and let her decide what becomes of it.
In the study doorway, I stop and look back. “I’ll get you your justice, Daniel,” I say softly. “Hunters or one of our own, whoever did this will pay for it. I swear that to you.”
One side of my mouth lifts before I can stop it, and my eyes are wet. “You should see her now. She’s got Hannah’s whole face, her spirit, and the rest is pure you. I’m doing my best by her, brother, but I’ll never be what you’d have been. Keep an eye on her for me anyway, would you?”
I let myself out and start the long walk home, the album heavy under my arm, my chest heavier still.
Light spills from the kitchen when I come through the back door. The hour’s a little past five, and Jessa’s at the counter with a mug in both hands, freshly showered, her hair damp at the ends. She glances up when the door opens, color rushing into her cheeks, then drops her eyes to the coffee.
I set the album on the table and cross to her. My palm comes up to her cheek, thumb moving slowly, and I keep my voice low. “How are you feeling?”
She won’t look at me. “Fine.” Her hand doesn’t lift to knock mine away, though.
“I’m sorry if I was too rough with you last night.” The tips of her ears go scarlet at that, and any other morning I’d have laughed at how easily she colors. I don’t have the strength for that right now.
“It’s fine,” she murmurs.