Head Above Water (Gemini: A Black Dog #2) (21 page)

“I didn’t know it was this bad.” Shame flash-burned up my nape. “I should have done the research.”

“You trusted Graeson.”

“I’m not sure that’s true.” Trust wasn’t a byproduct of panic. “There’s something you ought to know about Graeson and me, something I should have told you and Aunt Dot once I got here.”

“That you’re not really a couple?”

I stumbled over my own feet. “You knew?”

“Please.” He scoffed. “You? In love? That fast? With the brother of a victim from a case you worked?”

My pace faltered as each point hammered home. “What about Aunt Dot?”

“Oh, she knows.” He ducked his head to cover his laugh. “She let me listen in on his phone call. You know she’s got a BS meter, and it shot off the charts when he started spinning his yarn.”

“Why did she go along with it?”

“She didn’t believe him.” He cut his eyes toward me. “She figured he was a liar and that you’d tear him a new one, but…you didn’t. You covered for him. You went along with his crackpot plan.” He readjusted his bag. “She thought… She hoped you might…”

Pain slid between my ribs, sharp as a knife. “She hoped pretending might make it real.”

And it had, hadn’t it? Somewhere along the way I had fallen for Graeson. He was mine now, wolf and all.

The look Isaac shot me bounced my words back at me, like he thought maybe that hope hadn’t been one-sided.

“Cammie, you lied to Mom. Me, well, it goes with the territory. But Mom?” His grin was downright wolfish. “You had your head so high in the clouds you didn’t do your homework before a move. Usually you have binders filled with everything from maps to the grocery store to planned emergency escape routes. You always call the local marshal’s office to get a heads-up on the local troublemakers.”

“I didn’t—” I spluttered. “That’s not—”

“You could have told us to turn around, go back to Three Way. You could have said to head west, to Texas, where that new friend of yours is. You didn’t. You let Cord lure you here, because you wanted to come.”

“I put us all in danger.”

He bumped my shoulder with his. “What is love if not a risk?”

I bumped back and sent him careening off to regain his balance. “No one said anything about love.”

“I did. Just now.” He mimed cleaning out his ears. “Weren’t you listening?”

A mud-brown blur darted across our path, and I skidded to a hard stop, flinging my arm out to catch Isaac across the chest.

“Can you subdue him?” He jingled links in his hand. “Pin him, and I’ll give him a new necklace.”

“Will do.”

Isaac sidestepped to the left, and the wolf took the bait. He sprung into the air, and I whirled on him, clamping my hands around his throat and jerking him back like he was a dog at the end of his leash. Jaw clenched, I hit the dirt. The weight of the struggling wolf yanked me to one side, and soon we were rolling in the dirt. “Anytime now,” I ground out at Isaac.

A twist of Isaac’s wrist and a snap of metal, and we had subdued a third warg.

The ease with which we had made it this far buoyed me with a false sense of hope. I should have known better. Bessemer was smart, and he was pissed. He didn’t waste energy sweeping the woods to end up at the pond. Like us, he had gone straight there. Dozens of wolves mingled in the grass by the time we arrived, and golden lights I knew for eyes winked in the distance.

Fisting Isaac’s shirt, I yanked him behind a pair of oaks grown together with a fat base and thick fingerlike branches arcing overhead. All those sensitive noses would sniff us out and quick. We had to act fast.

Isaac rustled his bag, wincing at the noise. “What’s our next move?”

“I have to get to the water.” I dipped my hand in Harlow’s bag and found the tin with the gill goop. The tail would be a hindrance since I had no idea how to use one, so the shorts got tucked back in the bottom. “This should give me magic gills.”

“Should?” He gripped my arm. “You haven’t tested it?”

A warg passing by swiveled his ears.

“No time like the present.” I twisted the cap, stuck my fingers in the icy slime that smelled of herbs and growing things, and smeared it down my throat. The burning started before I lowered my hand. Harlow once mentioned it took a few minutes to take effect. That’s all I needed. “Here.” I closed the tin and flung the bag into his arms. “Get home if you can, get safe if you can’t.”

“What if the magic doesn’t work?” His eyes pleaded for me to reconsider. “It might be keyed to the girl.”

Beyond our hiding spot, the warg’s nostrils twitched, perhaps scenting the pungent salve, and his gaze swung our way. He flung his head back and howled.

We had been discovered.

“Go, go, go,” I chanted at Isaac, giving him a shove.

Not waiting to see if he’d listened, I barreled into the wolf who’d tattled on us, and kept going. The leap to the basin sent dull shock waves through my knees. The slick mud nursed my sneakers, and I skated over its slimy surface. Cursing, I kicked off my shoes and grimaced as I sank in muck to the ankles.

Growls rose over my shoulder. They sounded…wrong. Distant. Fear for Isaac wobbled my ankle, but I steadied myself. A second’s hesitation, and I would collapse in a heap and tremble at the water’s edge as the wolves descended.

Don’t look back. Keep moving. Isaac can take care of himself.

Thick brown sludge squished underfoot and slurped my toes. The divot in the dried bed loomed. The murky water sat mirror-smooth and waiting. I sucked in sharp gulps of humid air, counting down the seconds until I sank or swam.

My neck itched and stung, a rash of irritation spreading down to my collarbone, but I could breathe past it. Was that right? Harlow’s tail required water to change. Was this magic the same?

There was only one way to find out. Muscles tensed, I leapt for the pond’s heart.

“Ellis.
Wait.
”

My head whipped toward the masculine voice, but it was an afterthought. I was airborne. Nothing, not even those fear-bright hazel eyes set in a face I had feared never seeing human again, could alter my trajectory now.

Impact.

My heart stuttered as the water closed over my head.

Muffled silence embraced me. Bubbles tickled my face as I expelled oxygen. The weightless, floating sensation should have brought me to the surface. It might have, had I not seen it, had not the moonlight pierced the abyss to show it to me.

A wisp of fabric. Ruffled hem. Fat moons. Grinning stars.

Lori
.

But this was Marie’s grave, not hers.

“Why are you here?” The scream flashed white before my eyes—more oxygen lost—but I kept screaming. “
Lori
. Wait.”

The material flittered away, and I dove after it as though my life—and sanity—depended on it.

I kicked and clawed. I flung my arms and scissored my legs. The blackness became absolute. Darkness devoured me, cold and hungry. My heart pounded, frantic. My chest compressed. I raked at my throat, scoring flesh with my fingernails.

No gills. The water hadn’t activated them but washed them away.

Either the magic was keyed to Harlow or to humans. I would never get the chance to tell Isaac he was right to worry.

The fist tightening around my throat gave a squeeze, and my vision went hazy.

“Wake up.” Sticky fingers peeled open my eyelids. “Come on. Let’s go.”

I swatted Lori’s hand. “What time is it?”

“Shh.” She pressed a finger to her lips. “Or you’ll wake up Mom and Dad.”

I rubbed my eyes and yawned. “Where are we going?”

“To the beach.” Her eyes sparkled. “The ghost crabs will be out. Don’t you want to see them?”

“Mom said—”

“Mom said, Mom said,” she parroted. “Fine. Be a baby. Stay here with your mommy. Maybe I’ll go ask Theo if he wants to go.”

“Stop calling me that. I’m not a baby.” I swung my legs over the edge of the bed. “I’ll go.”

Sharp pressure constricted my middle, and a few paltry bubbles tickled my eyelids on their way to the surface.

Lori stood, arms outstretched. Ghost crabs scuttled over her feet, and she laughed and flexed her toes, daring them to pinch her. I buried mine to protect them.

“Isn’t this great?” She flung an arm around my shoulders and jabbed her finger at the twinkling stars. “Look at all those. Gemini is out there somewhere. I bet it’s up there looking down at us while we’re looking up at it.” She jumped and waved her arms. “Hey. We’re down here.”

Laughing, I yanked on her arm. “You’re crazy.”

“You followed me out here.” She spun in a wild circle and kicked the surf. “What does that make you?”

The weightlessness of my body vanished. Had I hit the bottom? Was a plume of sediment rising around me, clogging my nostrils? Had I missed the entrance to the caves?

“Open your eyes, sweetheart.” Warm hands cupped my face. “That’s my girl.”

I’m not your girl
, I thought back at him on reflex, the taste of his blood in the back of my throat. Except now that I had won him, I suppose I was.

A figure carved from blinding light stepped into my field of vision, despite the fact I hadn’t opened my eyes.

“Now you’re just being stubborn.”
His mental laugh throbbed with relief.
“I thought I’d lost you.”

If he said more, I didn’t hear it. Even the bright burn of him behind my eyes wasn’t enough to anchor me anymore.

Alone in the dark, I drifted.

“
T
here you are
.”

Shifting onto my side, I groaned and coughed up the taste of pond water. My chest ached deep like the time I had contracted pneumonia, and I tasted blood from where I’d bitten my tongue. I opened my eyes and found Graeson, mostly dry, leaning over me.

The stark relief on his face transmuted to a radiant kind of joy that warmed me from the inside out.

“Thank God,” he breathed. “I was getting worried.”

“You weren’t the only one.” I rubbed my thumb over the leather bracelet on his wrist, which seemed to have survived his ordeal without so much as a single hair out of place. “I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”

“I’ll never leave you, Ellis.” He hooked a smile on his lips. “You’re stuck with me now.” He leaned down, cheek brushing mine.
“Mate.”

“Your wolf talks too much.” The answer to “
how much does the man know of the wolf’s dealings”
had been answered definitively for me. “He really needs to learn to keep his muzzle shut.”

The mention of muzzle sent his gaze dipping to the calf he’d shredded, and regret filled his eyes.

“He and I have an understanding now.” I sounded braver than I felt. He had decided there at the last minute not to eat me.

He grunted. “I noticed. He fought like hell to stay with you.”

A filament of warmth whispered through me. “He did?”

The mystery of the wargs’ nature was unraveling, and yet there were still so many layers to peel back I wondered if I would ever reach the heart of them. Of him.

“You’re ours, Ellis.” Heat flickered in his gaze.
“Mine.”

The single word, rumbled in his guttural and possessive voice, threatened to liquefy me where I lay. Forcing myself to remember he was no longer a wolf I could pet when the mood struck me, I shoved upright on wobbly arms and blinked at our surroundings. “Where are we?”

“The caves beneath the pond.” He glanced around too, as if he hadn’t dared peel his eyes away from me to examine the oddly civilized space where we found ourselves. This had been the sprite’s home, and it still looked the part. There were sconces mounted to the walls, but no fire, and the walls glowed with bioluminescence. “We’ve been down here the better part of an hour, and I haven’t heard a peep. I can smell her. It’s Harlow, but it’s Charybdis too. His scent is overlaying hers. His imprint is stronger, because the kelpie nested here too.”

“So she might still be down here.” With the pack in the forest, she hadn’t had many places to run or much time to make her escape before we disturbed her. I pushed to my feet, and Graeson caught me before I stumbled. “How did you know to find me at the lake?”

“I went to the Garzas after you hatched your brilliant scheme.” Sarcasm thickened his voice. “I wanted to quiz them about the magic you planned to use.”

“Oh.” I rubbed my throat. No gills. No goo. Just smooth skin and scabs from where I had clawed myself. “The magic didn’t work for me. It washed off in the water.”

“I had a little better luck.” His gaze went serious. “We almost didn’t make it.”

“You don’t have gills either.” That I would have noticed. “What went wrong? Why didn’t it work? What did the Garzas tell you?”

“Enzo said without a sample he couldn’t be certain, that he’d bet the magic was keyed to humans. To have it keyed to Harlow specifically would require DNA samples, fresh ones, constantly, in order to keep up with minute changes in her biology.” Graeson shrugged. “He figured there was a fifty-fifty shot it would work on me, but on you…” His eyes narrowed with admonition. “There was no chance of it working with fae biology, not when it was meant to allow a human to mimic a fae.”

“I should have tested it beforehand.” I suppressed the urge to fidget. “There wasn’t time.”

“You would have had plenty of time if you had died,” he scolded. “All of eternity.”

I dipped my head and let the words come. “Thank you for saving me.”

His lips hitched as the weight of those first two words registered, but he didn’t emphasize them, which helped ease my knotted gut. Thanks were favors owed, and I had just granted him a boon.

“You’re welcome.” An odd softening I had never heard in his voice lifted my head in time to capture his gaze as he added, “No thanks necessary.”

Eager as I was to start exploring, right now a wall of bare man-chest blocked my line of sight.

The view didn’t offend me as much as it might have once.

Graeson wrapped his wide palm around my neck and anchored me a scant inch from him. He didn’t put his other arm around me, but he did dip his head and inhale the scent of my skin. I saw when chill bumps raised hairs down his arms and heard the low sound he made in the back of his throat.

For a second I had forgotten what this stolen moment forced me to remember. The rush of waking in a strange place had stunned me, but it was coming back to me how Graeson and I hadn’t parted on good terms. The last I saw of him he was still a wolf, and I had snapped at him. This Graeson was all warm skin and…naked man.

“Are you okay?” I whispered, unsure why I was being quiet except it felt right.

“I am now.” He pressed his lips against my temple, and my eyes closed. “I was…lost…there for a while.”

I nodded, a jerky motion that tipped me forward. I dared to press my hands against his hard chest to steady myself. No. That was a lie. My palms itched with the need to smooth his contours and reassure myself he was here, whole. This place…it had been a home, but it had been the lair of a monster too, and it might have been the last place his sister was alive.

If I could have bound his head in bubble wrap to preserve his fragile mental state, I would have.

“We have to find Harlow.” I stepped back, severing that timid physical connection. “I can go alone if…” If it was too much to risk what he might find.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight.” He clasped my hand and speared his fingers between mine. “You tend to almost drown when I’m not around, and I’d prefer to be the only one giving you mouth-to-mouth.”

A flush stole up my neck that sizzled in my cheeks. “Okay,” I croaked, unsure what to do with my hand now that he held it. My elbow locked, my arm as foreign as a wooden plank sticking out of the sleeve of my shirt.

Comfortable with touch the way all wargs were, Graeson squeezed his fist and sent reassurance flooding through me until I seemed made of flesh and bone after all.

His keen nose led us to an arched doorway with ornaments cast from clay. “She’s down there.”

“You’re sure?” The nervous, hopeful question popped out. “I— Sorry. I trust you. I just…”

The silence weighed on us. I wasn’t sure what we’d find down there, but I sensed it would be nothing good.

Another comforting squeeze of his hand. “I know.”

Together we walked the gently sloped path until it opened wide into a cavern that appeared to once serve as a sitting room. Couches and tables were organized in the same way you’d expect to find them in a house but…off…just a bit. The deeper we went into the room, the more odds and ends I spotted.

“This is all debris from the pond.” Graeson voiced what had been itching the back of my mind.

“She used everything.” Old Christmas ornaments hung from the ceiling on fishing line. Tires stacked two high made the tables I’d noticed. One wall’s archway was framed by license plates. “This is amazing.”

To think the sprite had lost all this—a home she had poured so much of her heart into creating.

We kept exploring, and I almost wished we hadn’t. I was the one who found it, a time capsule sure to cast more fractures in Graeson’s already shattered soul. I waffled on the threshold. In the end, I didn’t have to speak a word. Drawn by my presence or by some faint scent, he arrived a heartbeat behind me.

The cramped room had been emptied of its furnishings. All that remained were a pair of couch cushions shoved together like a mattress with a thin sheet crumpled at one end and a bowl that might have once held water or food.

The wooden stiffness from my arm seemed to have infected Graeson’s legs. He crossed the room, gait uneven, and squatted by the messy pallet. His hand hovered over the sheet for a full minute, maybe longer, before he fisted it and brought the fabric to his nose. His back muscles shifted as his lungs expanded. The wobble of his exhale, as though it snagged in his throat, fractured my heart.

Slowly, I crossed to him and rested my hand on his shoulder.

“He kept her here.” His knuckles whitened on the pitiful sheet that had been Marie’s only source of comfort in this cold place. “All that time she was right here.” He punched the floor, and the scent of copper hit the air as his knuckles burst. “Right
here
.”

“You couldn’t have known.” I toyed with the ends of his hair. “There’s no way you could have guessed what we’re dealing with now, then.”

“What is…?” He shoved apart the cushions he’d disturbed and lifted a ring of some sort. “Her ring. She wore it every day. I thought it must have been lost when…” Raw and ruined, his voice scraped. “I bought this for her.” He polished it with the sheet then held it up to me. “She spotted it in a rinky-dink shop in Atlanta when I took her to the aquarium.”

The tiny gold band looked impossibly small balanced on the tip of his finger. A stylized wolf’s head adorned the center, and diamond chips glinted in its eyes.

“It’s beautiful.” I kept my fingers tunneled in his hair. “I’m glad you have it.”

“I don’t have anywhere to put it.” He reached for my hand. “My fingers are too thick to wear it.”

Honored at the task he’d given me, I spread my fingers. “It might fit my pinky.”

The ring slid on, chill and damp, as though the heat from Graeson’s touch failed to permeate the metal.

Twisting the ring to situate the wolf, he shook out the cushions and sheet before rising. No other treasures were discovered, and we resumed our search for Harlow. Not until I found myself spinning the slight ring around my finger did it hit me that Graeson had put it on the same side as I wore Harlow’s bracelet. I rolled my shoulder, the extra weight on that arm imagined, but I still felt tipped to that side.

I retreated to the doorway and turned my back on Graeson, keeping an eye on the hall. He deserved a moment alone in the room with the specter of his sister, so I guarded us from ambush while he grieved.

I whirled toward him when his palm landed on my shoulder and searched his carefully blank face for signs he was ready to go.

“This will be the last time we get the chance to explore this place,” he said, voice grinding like crushed boulders. “We should clear the cavern as we go.”

Nodding silent agreement, I followed him into the hall. The musty odors told my heightened senses the rooms we passed were empty and had been for a long time, but we stopped in every one to be certain we left no evidence behind. Erasure spells were Charybdis’s trademark, after all.

I swept the last room on my side before Graeson finished his and waited in the passageway. A forked tunnel loomed ahead. I inhaled in each direction, frowning at the heavy scents overlaying the hallways. Knowing Harlow was so close made my heart pound. If we rescued her physical body from Charybdis, she could detox somewhere like Edelweiss, where the staff could apply what they’d learned treating Ayer to her.

Graeson joined me and gestured ahead, leaving the choice of direction up to me. Even his sensitive nose must have trouble parsing the fresher path due to the dankness and moldy smells. I chose right, and we walked straight into a dead end.

The wall curved, like a bubble, and inside of the circular alcove, a rusty nail protruded. Hanging from the nail a wad of fabric
drip, drip, dripped
a rivulet that diverged around me. The pattern… It wasn’t possible.

Fat moons.

Grinning stars.

Lori
.

A crack rang out when my knees buckled, and I crashed to the floor, a supplicant before my own version of a holy relic. I smelled blood, but I didn’t feel the pain. I felt…nothing. Less than numb. Anesthetized.

“Ellis.”

Hazel eyes flecked with gold filled my vision as Graeson squatted in front of me. His arms threaded under mine and held me upright until my head stopped spinning.

“What’s wrong?” He raked his gaze over me, searching for wounds. “What happened?”

Trembling lips pressed together, I shook my head and pushed him back to give me breathing room. It took a few tries before I could stand, and a few tries more than that to get my legs to swing one in front of the other. Slowly, painfully, I approached the alcove. Reading my shock, Graeson flanked me, giving me a moment to absorb what I was seeing while watching our backs.

I gathered the tattered nightgown in my fist and searched for the tag. I flipped it up with my thumb, and there they were, initials written in the strong block letters of my mother’s hand with a black permanent marker.

LGE

Lori Grace Ellis.

I crushed the gown to my chest. I was already soaked through. More water wasn’t going to hurt me. Holding this—this hurt. It was impossible. Lori was
gone
. Taken by the sea. Her body was never recovered. That meant this gown, the one she wore that terrible night we explored the beach, should have been as lost as she was. Yet here it was, in my arms, as my sister never would be again.

The pattern was over a decade old. The fabric should have been out of print. The gown couldn’t be an original. Was this meant to be yet another taunt? Another token that would have showed up on my steps one day? Where had Charybdis found it to give Harlow? A thrift store? Did killer fae shop on eBay? How had he known the significance? How had he copied Mom’s handwriting? How had he known to?

“My sister—” my voice broke, “—wore this the night she…” A sob attempted to break through, almost snapping my sternum in the process. Arms folded around me, I held the gown plastered to me, a hug that would never reach the tiny body that had once worn it. “This… It can’t be hers. It’s not possible.”

Understanding dawned, and his forehead wrinkled. “Are you sure it’s the same one?”