Chest of Bone (The Afterworld Chronicles Book 1) Page 2

  At which point, a detective’s ceaseless questions intruded, going on and on and on. Finally, a state trooper interrupted the man. I pivoted just a hair to eyeball the room.

  Gotcha. In a corner perfect for observing the scene, a large man in dark clothes, a shock of raven hair, bronze skinned. If he moved from the shadow, I would see him more clearly. And what was with that strange, almost unnatural vibe?

  My watcher’s eyes met mine—a flash of blue, a tongue of heat—before he pushed away from the wall, headed in my direction. I mumbled, “Be right back,” to the detective and went to meet him. Moments later, the stranger and I faced each other, mere inches separating us. He towered over me, a mountain of a man who dwarfed my petite frame.

  Everything receded, the noise, the smells, the emotional chaos. His face was a blur. All I saw, all I felt was the burn from eyes as blue as the Pacific Ocean, and as turbulent.

  He cocked his head, confusion darkening those eyes.

  An awakening inside me, where memories distant and terrible hid. My yearning reached for that, which was other in him, a harmonic resonance that sang a song I’d once intimately known, yet had long ago forgotten. Like electrons orbiting the same nucleus, we circled the source where that arcane otherness lived inside him. Inside me.

  The melodic harmony intensified, my song rising in pitch, while his lowered, dancing wisps of melody, complementing, blending, to fulfill that perfect refrain.

  The blue of his eyes became a sea as tears blurred my vision, the song’s beauty devastating.

  He gasped. Or maybe it was me.

  “Agent Reese,” a voice said.

  I raised my hand to touch, to hold that song.

  “Agent Reese!” repeated the voice.

  I staggered, reluctantly turned my head at the sharp command.

  Several feet away, the detective stared at me, frowning. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  I turned back once, just to confirm what my senses had screamed. The stranger was gone. So odd. I couldn’t even describe his face.

  “Sorry,” I said to the detective when I reached him. “Where were we again?”

  By the time the police released me, my watcher hadn’t rematerialized, but pale echoes of the song stayed with me long after I left the Feed and Seed. I headed out to find Lulu when I caught my reflection in the rearview mirror. Blood all over me, crusted and drying. Crap. I dashed home, set The Once and Future King on my dresser, washed the blood off the Mylar, then showered and changed into jeans, a turtleneck, and a vest of my own knitting. I massaged my aching wrist. Thankfully, no damage.

  Lucky me, Bernadette was at her weekly Wild Spaces meeting, and I peered out at a drab-gray afternoon sky, determined to get to Lulu fast. I collected my throwing knives, strapped them on, and slipped my small Bowie into its boot slot.

  I shrugged into my barn coat, bent on doing a quick check on the animals, my basset Grace trotting behind me.

  Frigging magic and chests? What was all Dave’s woo-woo talk about? Was he hallucinating? Except Dave knew about the panther, as if he’d sent it to delay me, to save me. And that thing with my wrist felt real, too. I rubbed it. Let go. You could just tell when something was becoming a thing.

  I stumbled—Dave Cochran, my protector, my mentor, my best friend. Truly gone. I caught myself and reached for the doorknob.

  Bernadette materialized behind me, so fast, the pearl-handled derringer holstered at her waist flapped. It might not be loaded, but it packed a nasty wallop if she hugged me the wrong way.

  “I thought you were out.” My lips moved to tell her about Dave. I smothered the words. I couldn’t give life to them. Not yet.

  Her willowy form towered over me as she thrust a cup of yogurt-and-almonds at me.

  “What?” I asked. “I don’t need—”

  “Eat.” She stood in her fighter stance, legs akimbo, hands on knobby hips. “You don’t get enough protein.”

  Gods. She was forever shoving food at me, as if being vegetarian equaled starvation. “I’m not hungry.”

  She harrumphed, slammed my yogurt onto the counter, and crossed her arms.

  I picked up the cup and spoon. And here it comes, the bada-bum. There was always a bada-bum.

  “Sit.” Her grayed unibrow caterpillared when she pointed at the scarred Windsor chair beside the equally scarred pine table.

  I remained standing, spooning the yogurt into my mouth. “I’ve gotta go, B.”

  “The captain called,” she said.

  Shit. “He’s a special agent.” A hell of an FBI agent, in fact, and aware Bernadette would answer the landline. Why had he called her? I slumped into the Windsor. “I’m returning to the Bureau on Monday, Bernadette. The doc signed off on me.” I had to tell her about Dave. At some point.

  She shook her head. “You’re still fragile.”

  My ass. I smiled, projected comfort and reassurance. “I’m fine. And I’ll be there on Monday, B. I need to work, to use my gifts. You’ve always told me that. I feel—”

  “Too much, cookie. I know.” She sat across from me and took my hand. “The captain’s worried about you. Said so.”

  “Well, what the hell is he calling you for?” I stared into those knowing hazel eyes. “His worry… I don’t like it. Look, I’m twenty-eight, not twelve. I’m plenty strong enough to swim those waters. I’ve done it for years.”

  She squeezed my shoulder. “Last interrogation, cookie, those waters drowned you.”

  “A one-off. It won’t happen again.” I glanced at my phone. Dammit. I had to get to Lulu. Now or never. “Dave’s dead.”

  She closed those wise eyes, dropped her arms to her sides. Her hands fisted. “I know.”

  I enfolded her in a hug, and she hugged me back. A quick squeeze, gone in an instant. She stepped away, but I leaned in, kissed her parchment cheek. I turned and twisted the doorknob.

  “Zut! There’s more!” She followed me out the door.

  “It can wait,” I hollered back, my words watery with tears, as I strode to my car.

  Effusive swearing in French tracked me.

  A “something” pinged my mind. No, not a something. Someone. Bob. Bob? Nearby?

  Was that what Dave meant by magic? No way. While Dave had honed my sensory abilities, I’d just been given a double dose of what everyone else had.

  The crunch and whir of tires lacking purchase on our ice-coated drive broke the winter silence, inciting the birds to flight and my basset to howling. I scraped snow across my face, unwilling to let him see I’d been crying. Didn’t want Bob knowing what a hot mess I was.

  “Told you there was more, cookie!” Bernadette said. “Now buck it up.”

  Bob at the wheel. Another, too, in the car, an unfamiliar psychic scent. Feminine and strange.

  An SUV crested the drive and skittered into the dooryard.

  I so didn’t need this right now.

  The driver’s door opened and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Bob Balfour emerged, his blue suit polished and immaculate, per usual. “Hey, Young Pup.” His warm smile added wrinkles to his fifty-something face.

  I walked over for a hug. “Hey, Old Man.”

  He puffed out his cheeks.

  “What the hell are you doing here in New Hampshire?”

  He adjusted his FBI lapel pin, grinned. “Couldn’t stay away.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, like I’m buying that. You hate the country.”

  His brown eyes sparked with laughter. “Old dog, new tricks?”

  “Waterfront in Arizona?”

  A door slammed, and a whip-thin woman in a stylish parka minced around the SUV in three-inch heels. Heels? Really? She moved to Bob’s left, all bangs-and-bunned hair and steel spine, except for her slightly askew black glasses, which annoyed me for no good reason.

  She bobbed her head. “Sorry to interrupt, sir.”

  Bob gestured toward me. “Not at all. Clea, this is Special Agent Katie Taka, from Washington.”


  She held out her hand.

  I tried to sense her, slammed against shields tighter than Bob’s, artfully slithered around them, tasted. Ouch. She’d shoved me out, but I’d felt enough. Oily vibes.

  “Nice to meet you,” I said as we shook, wondering why Bob had brought her to the boonies to meet me. “Bob, I—”

  A door slammed, and my foster mother stood on the porch, one hand on her hip, the other resting on the butt of her holstered derringer. No coat, no boots, she shook like an aspen.

  “Clea!” Bernadette said. “Zut! Where are your manners? Bring them inside. I’ve got tea, coffee, and scones.”

  Oh, swellsies.

  I took a step toward the house. Paused. A third presence? Over by the side of the barn, in shadow. Yes, a shadow, who waited and watched. I shuttered my lids and unfurled my mind.

  The wash of hatred made me stumble back. But not at me, no. Directed at Taka and Bob. Vicious.

  The shadow turned, lasered on me.

  Concern, pursuit, determination encased in a shell of fierce protectiveness.

  I drifted back toward the barn, as if I needed to check that the doors were closed tight. A pulse within the shadow, warm, inviting—it radiated sympathy and comfort and warmth. My mind stuttered. Was this the man with the song?

  Adamantium shields slammed me backward, alerted by my clumsiness. Dammit. I raced to the barn, and found empty space and churned up snow. Not even a footprint.

  “Clea?” Bob’s hand on my elbow. “You all right?”

  I hated when people asked me that. “Fine,” I said.

  The other. He’d stood there. That instant before he’d hardened his shields, I’d sensed fury, and that he’d come for me.

  I should be alarmed.

  Instead, I felt kinship.

  We took over the living room. Me, in my worn red-leather chair, Grace curled at my feet, Bob and Taka across from me on the hideous plaid sofa that backed against the partition to the kitchen where Bernadette bustled.

  I shoved Dave’s death and finding Lulu aside, shored it up, at least until the grief breached those walls.

  A relaxed Bob unbuttoned his jacket, smoothed his silver-and-brown hair, and I mentally searched for where I’d put the sticky dog brush to lift Grace’s hair from his suit. The closet, maybe? The bath? Crap.

  Taka scooched forward on the sofa. “I’m fascinated that you knit while you interrogate.”

  “Really,” I deadpanned. Her insincerity was blatant. Maybe, I’d put the dog brush in kitchen tool drawer. Maybe, I won’t offer it to her.

  “Yes. So cozy.”

  I smirked. “That’s me, cozy as Madame Defarge.”

  “Who?” she asked.

  Gods. “My knitting’s proven an effective tool.”

  “Your name is Clea,” she said. “And yet your nickname? Another oddity. Do you like being called Sticks?”

  For reals? “Years ago, my coworkers at counterintelligence thought it apt. I knit when I interrogated then, too. They didn’t find it cozy in the least. It’s spelled S-t-y-x, by the way. Like the river to Hades and death and, of course, like the knitting needles so useful as tools to disconcert perpetrators when I interrogate them. But I prefer Clea.”

  “Ah.”

  Her clueless act was bullshit. And her chilly demeanor would cripple her interrogation skills. She was a bad fit for that position. So why bring her to see me? Had to be one of Bob’s frickin’ arcane agendas. My warm smile countered hers. “You’ll see it in action come Monday.”

  Bob cleared his throat.

  I turned to him. “What?”

  “How goes life on the farm?” he asked.

  “Okay, Bob, fess up. Not that I’m not glad to see you, but what’s the real deal, huh? Bernadette told me you’d called.”

  A soft chuckle. “Can’t I even make pleasant chitchat first?”

  “Sorry, Old Man. Of course, you can. It’s just I’ve got stuff to take care of.”

  “I’m afraid you won’t be back at the Bureau on Monday.”

  ook me a sec to get it. “What the—”

  Bernadette waltzed in with the tea tray, and I lanced her with a pissed-off glance while she served Taka and Balfour. On her way upstairs, she mouthed, tamp it down.

  Yeah, right.

  A low sound from Balfour’s throat startled me. “I’m sorry, Clea. Our SAC says it’s a no go.”

  My gut tightened. “It’s a go.”

  He shook his head.

  My fists clenched, and I burrowed them beneath my butt so Bob and Taka wouldn’t see. Sure, those slivers of damaged lives had changed me. Killers, pedophiles, terrorists, torturers. But my empathy for their victims trumped all that. That I could help the innocent, the missing, and the dead meant everything to me.

  How could he keep me from that interrogation room?

  “You have no one better,” I said.

  “That’s true.”

  “I’ll talk to—”

  “It won’t change a thing.”

  I caged my emotions so I could think. I was so good, the FBI had placed me in the Special Assignments Division. All I did was interrogate. But not originally. “Okay. Put me back on the roster as a plain ol’ special agent.”

  Big sigh. “Can’t, Young Pup.”

  “The doc cleared me.”

  “The Special Agent in Charge did not.”

  Screw this. “I need some air.”

  Outside, the dooryard was empty of life, except for the chickadees swarming feeders crowned with caps of snow. I was so pissed. So frustrated.

  I caught that shadow again. Those vibes. Out there, somewhere. “Hello? Who are you? What do you want?”

  Silence. Utter. Absolute.

  I leaned against the porch’s post. A crack in his shields, slight, yet again that harmonic song touched me. Beautiful. Then bitter cold. Burning cold. I gasped.

  Emptiness. Yet it was still there, his nimbus of energy.

  I focused, and blew out a breath, misting the air. Caught nothing. The afternoon sky had brightened to a painful blue, promising a starry night, the crisp, dry kind that accompanied February’s weather. Whoever, whatever was here, had the incomparable ability to totally mask himself from my senses.

  And my anger at Bob cascaded back.

  What if he handed me Dave’s investigation? Given the horrific nature of the crime, he could massage it to fall into the FBI’s purview. Sure. I’d work a deal with Bob and go full throttle for Dave’s killer.

  Back in the living room, I raised my go-mug and sipped, eyes glued to the pair on the sofa.

  “So why’d you bring Special Agent Taka, Bob?”

  “She’ll be primary on the interrogations until your return.”

  Nuclear didn’t describe my fury. Taka was about as empathetic as a tick. Not only did it bug me that he’d brought her, but the “why” of it was driving me batso.

  “Now, Clea,” he said in that placating tone of his.

  “What, Bob? I’m sure Ms. Taka will do swell. Speaking of swell, I have another idea.”

  I filled Bob in on Dave’s death, at least, the non-promised part, kept my emotions out of it, kept it light, like Dave was just a friendly neighbor, played up the murder-in-my-backyard type of thing. “So, since I’m still on leave, I thought you could put me on the Cochran homicide.”

  He set his coffee mug on the table with his usual precision, and his warm brown eyes softened. “I can’t do that, either.”

  I gave him my fake smile, and he knew it, winced. But I wasn’t going to explode with Taka in the room. “And why is that?”

  “You know the Bureau’s been tightened, leaned up. I give you that the crime sounds pretty grim, but we can’t just go charging in. You are well aware it’s within local and state law enforcement’s purview.”

  I leaned back in the chair. Something was going down here. Something other than what Bob was telling me. Something hinky. I cooled it. “All right, I concede.” As if I’d pay any attention to that.


  He slapped his thighs and got to his feet. “You remain on leave, kid, until the SAC gives the go ahead.”

  As Taka stood, she poked her glasses straight. They tilted again almost immediately. I walked them to the mudroom door, Bob brushing the hairs off his suit. “Thanks for coming all the way out here to tell me. It’s good to see you, Bob.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder, squeezed. “Good to see you, too. You’ll be back, Young Pup. Soon.”

  “Thanks, Old Man. Soon.”

  I turned away as he reached for the doorknob.

  “One more thing,” he said.

  A high-pitched titter startled me. Taka’s. She had the faintest lift to her lips and I saw…

  I shook my head.

  Affection kindled Bob’s eyes. “Perhaps you’ll give Agent Taka some time at headquarters next week. Talk to her about your work, your interrogation skills. Help her out.”

  He simmered with expectation.

  More fake smiling. “Of course.” When hell froze over.

  Dave’s death ambushed me when I closed the door. I needed to see that Lulu was okay. I scooted out.

  As I drove, I swiped at my burning eyes and made an effort to leash my reckless emotions.

  Fat chance. I slammed the wheel. “Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!”

  Damn Bob for not putting me back on the roster. I didn’t buy that shit about the Special Agent in Charge. The doc clearing me—that was golden. Yet Bob hadn’t budged. Not a weence. Unlike him. He was all about compromise. Strange. Stranger still was what I’d seen when Taka laughed. That was right up there with weird city.

  I’d seen her morph. Yeah, morph. Like a three-D movie without the glasses. Into two overlapping Takas, one the bun-wearing, snarky agent, the other, a lab-coated, black-lipsticked twin. I hadn’t imagined it. This had happened before. Rarely, but it was part of my empath skill set, according to Dave. He termed it a Spidey sense. The scientific term was scientific. My lips curved, salty with tears.

  Okay, focus, Clea. Why today, of all days? Because that was the oddest conversation I’d ever had with Bob Balfour? Or because a subterranean thread had run beneath their words, a dissonant one that produced a corresponding dread? Or because some shadow had watched the house?