Head Above Water (Gemini: A Black Dog #2) (19 page)

* * *

T
he knot
of fear tangling my heartstrings kept me distracted on the way home, the press of fear so tight my lungs balked at expanding as if water would rush in to fill them before my head broke the surface of the murky water.

That’s why I screamed when I tripped over the caramel-chocolate-dipped wolf pup who darted between me and the glowing lights of the caravan.

A blur of silver, and Graeson had her pinned lightly beneath his paw. The look he shot me was too self-aware for the wolf’s features. It was a man’s intellect that burned bright in his eyes, and his expression shared in my curiosity as to what the girl was doing so near our trailers, alone, so late at night.

“Camille,” Isaac panted, jogging out of the woods to join us. “Get him off her. She’s just a kid.”

“He won’t hurt her.” That much I did know. “What are you doing out here?”

“I set up surveillance like you asked. I spotted a little girl dart out of the woods and set an item on your steps. It’s late, and she was alone. I followed to make sure she got home safe. She spotted me, or maybe she smelled me, and panicked. She shifted, and here we all are.”

“Emily, is what he said true?” I cocked my head and scanned the woods for hints of her father or Aisha. Gods knew if she had blasted a distress call through the pack bond, our lifespans had just been reduced to a matter of minutes. “Are you the one who’s been leaving the gifts at my house?”

“That face says it all, doesn’t it?” Dell knelt beside Emily and tapped her nose. “She knows she’s in trouble.”

A ripple of magic stung the air, and the pup’s fur shed in clumps. As fluid as water poured from a glass into a bowl, Emily slid from one shape to another.

“Don’t tell Daddy.” Fat tears glistened on her thick eyelashes.
“Please.”

“Tell him what?” That she was out here? Alone? Or so near fae?

“He said fae are like rabid dogs.” She hiccupped, holding in a sob. “They might look okay from a distance, but they’ll bite you if you get too close.”

Isaac snorted then sobered when he realized he was the only one laughing.

It sounded exactly like something Bessemer would say. “You came to get a look at me and my family?”

“Yes.” Her bottom lip trembled. “I thought she was one of you. She was so nice, and so pretty, and pink is my favorite color.”

Dumping a bucket of ice water over my head would have shocked me less. “You saw a girl with pink hair?”

Emily’s head bobbed.

“Did you talk to her?” I grabbed her arm. “What did she say?”

“S-s-she asked me to do a favor for her. She said she was a friend of yours, and she wanted to surprise you.” Emily scuttled closer to Dell. “She gave me weird gifts to put on your steps.” She tugged against my arm. “She waited in the trees, and when I did good, she gave me a lollipop after.”

A quiver started at the base of my tailbone and rolled up through my shoulders.

Isaac and Aunt Dot were safe, Theo was too, but Mom and Dad had all but severed ties with us. Who else would know the symbolism of those otherwise-random items? What had the newest token been? The possibility the scrunchie wasn’t a plant but might be authentic chilled me to my marrow. I would get through this, and then I would suck it up and ask Aunt Dot how to contact my parents for my own peace of mind.

“A lollipop.” Dell drew back with a frown. “Was there something special about them?”

Using treats as payment explained the sucker wrappers, but committing what her father would consider seditious for candy rang false.

Emily’s chin hit her chest, and she sniffled. “They made it stop hurting. When I shift.”

“Sweetie.” Dell gathered the child in her arms and rocked her. “The pain is the price we pay for the wolf.”

She curled around Dell. “Then I don’t want to be a wolf.”

“Yes, you do.” A knowing smile skewed Dell’s mouth. “I’ve seen you hunt. You’re magic on four feet, the fastest pup in the pack.”

Emily tipped a tear-stained face up at her. “I am pretty quick. I catch a lot of meat so Dad doesn’t have to.”

Dell smoothed the hairs from Emily’s forehead. “Have you talked to your dad about this?”

“No.”
Horror rounded her eyes. “It would make his heart hurt, like when he says I remind him
so much
of Mom, and I don’t like how sad he is when he remembers her.”

The idea of Bessemer nursing an old wound might have delighted me hours earlier, but it seemed to signal the end of the world when seen through Emily’s eyes. Graeson told me once there were dynamics within the pack I didn’t understand. Bessemer’s gentleness with Emily and her adoration of him sat like lead in my gut. What was he like when fae weren’t on his lands? How were things when beta and alpha were in harmony? Would my leaving gentle the punishments? Would Graeson bowing down heal the wounds his presence inflicted or tear the pack wide open?

“What about Aisha?” Dell asked gently. “Have you talked to her?”

“She’s
not
my mom,” Emily growled. “I don’t have to tell her anything I don’t want to. Dad said so.”

Another mystery solved. Aisha was the evil stepmother. How long had she held that position that Emily resented her? Would she feel differently if Imogen took her place?
I thought wargs mated for life
was on the tip of my tongue, but one glimpse of Emily’s moist cheeks wired my jaw shut.

Now that the seed had been planted, it was all too easy to cast Bessemer in the role of the widower made bitter by grief. He was alpha, strong enough to survive the loss of a mate, especially when they had a child, but at what cost had he endured? And did he realize his attempts to mother Emily by surrogate were poisoning his pack by spawning avarice among the women to be the one who warmed his bed, who thawed his cold heart?

And I thought Graeson was complicated.

Blindly hating Bessemer was so much easier yesterday. Today…right now…I was being shown a different perspective, and I didn’t like what I saw. That maybe—as helpful as Graeson tried to be—he was part of the problem. A big part.

“Cammie,” Isaac began, an edge of temper sharpening the nickname.

Holding up my hand to silence him, I returned my focus to Emily. This was a one-shot deal. Once her father caught wind of her involvement, I would never see the girl again. Of that I was certain.

“Emily.” I squatted to put us almost at eye level. “When do you meet the pink-haired lady again?”

“When the sun comes up.” She blinked up at me. “Dad goes for a run every morning before anyone else is up to check in with the sentries, and I come down here.”

Sentries would be guarding the borders, meaning she was safe to steal away without fear of him catching her. As hostile as her relationship with Aisha sounded, the alpha female must have no idea or else she would have turned the girl in to her father.

Night sounds filled the silence while I picked at why that felt wrong. “Why did you switch things up and come down here tonight?”

“I have a doctor’s appointment in the morning.” She dashed her hand beneath her nose. “I forgot about it, so I didn’t tell the pink lady. I sneaked out of my room to come down here. I went to your house first, and I was going to leave her a note in our secret place, but then he—” she jerked her chin toward Isaac, “—started chasing me, and I got scared and ran.”

“Where do you meet?” I nodded toward the blind Graeson and I had discovered. “There? Or somewhere else?”

“Cammie,” Isaac threatened. “I don’t trust that look on your face. It’s the same expression you got when you were thinking of doing something that would get us both in trouble.”

“There.” Hushing Isaac with a flick of my fingers, I watched as Emily’s gaze tagged the same spot. “I run the thing from the day before to your porch then go to her for the candy and a new item for the next day. Then I crunch the sucker on the way home so I don’t have to lie to Dad when he asks who gave it to me.” She wet her lips. “I don’t want to get anyone else in trouble.”

“She’s a kid.” Dell, still tuned in to Isaac’s worry, clutched the girl tighter. “She’s the
alpha’s
kid.”

Wondering where that righteous indignation had been while Graeson schemed to use me as bait, I snorted. “You act like I’m going to tie her up in the woods and sacrifice her to Charybdis.”

Emily’s forehead puckered. “Who’s Charybdis?”

I shook my head. “No one.”

“What the hell are you all talking about? Charybdis is part of that case you and Graeson were working together, right? That’s how you two met.” Tired of being ignored, Isaac grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me on my heels to face him. “What exactly followed you here? How long have you been hiding it from us?” He slapped a hand over my mouth and arched an eyebrow, only removing the gag when Graeson took exception to how Isaac was treating me. “So help me, Camille, if you tell me to shush one more time, I’m going to tell Mom the truth about what happened to your Precious Moments figurines collection.”

Gods I hated those things, and she bought me a new one every year for my birthday. Their teardrop eyes, so full of sorrow, had kept watch over me all night while I slept when I was a kid. As an adult, I couldn’t move into my own place and secure them in an out-of-state lockbox fast enough.

“I found out today, all right?” I shoved him off me. “When I visited the witches, they told me—”

“What witches?” His glare transferred to Dell as though she were to blame for my bad behavior. “When?”

“Earlier.” Tired of his manhandling, I swung my arm outside his reach then sliced my hand through the air and struck his throat in the space below his jaw. He released me with a shocked gasp, and I leapt backward. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t keep you in the loop. It was stupid and dangerous, but I didn’t know about this. Not until I saw the witches. I don’t know how or why the killer followed me, but he did, and he selected a new avatar to help him.”

“This Harlow girl,” he wheezed. “Isn’t that your friend?”

“Yes.” I shook a hand through my hair. “She was abducted at the last crime scene, and we have reason to believe she’s under his control now.” I tugged on the strands. “We call her his avatar, but we don’t know what it means, really.” The kelpie was a killer before Charybdis. How much of what it did went against instinct? Not much I’d bet. For all we knew Charybdis had only encouraged its natural inclinations. “We don’t know how he infected her, how she’s being controlled, or why he chose her. We don’t know anything.” I amended the last to, “All I know is I have to save her.”

“Tell me what you need.” Simple. Straightforward. Typical Isaac.

I took his hand and squeezed it in thanks. “It’s easier if I show you.”

Arms loosening, Dell smiled at the girl to reassure her. “If you’re not using Emily, then who…?”

I shut my eyes, exhaled and opened them. “Me.”

Emily and Lori shared a similar height, build and hair color. The illusion would work at a distance.

“You,” Dell groaned, hating the idea already. That made two of us.

Dell had never properly met Lori, or the shade of her that remained. That was about to change.

“Sunrise in the woods gives us shadows to play with. All we have to do is fool Harlow—Charybdis—for a few minutes.” The more I spoke the more I convinced myself this had to work. It was this or the water, and I voted for this. “Between you, Graeson and Isaac, we can cover the area. That way if she runs, we’ll have a head start catching her.”

“Catching her could be dangerous.” Dell worried her bottom lip. “We don’t know what magic she has access to through him. We don’t know how much control he has over her.” She winced as she drew blood. “There’s too damn much we don’t know.”

“This is getting confusing.” Isaac rubbed his forehead, following along as best he could with his limited information. “Let’s stick with calling Charybdis Harlow. That’s the physical body we’re looking for, right? We just assume the lights are on and no one’s home.”

“That works for me,” Dell said with a slight flutter in her lashes.

“Confronting Harlow is a big risk, but I can’t leave her out there. As long as she’s under Charybdis’s influence, she’s dangerous.” Another thought hit me, and it should have occurred to me sooner. I turned to Emily. “Did the girl tell you why she didn’t deliver the gifts to me herself?”

“She said you liked to play tricks, but they only worked on fae.” Emily eyed me as if expecting me to do something sneaky to prove her right. “She wanted to give you the presents herself, but one of your fairy spells made her feel like ants were stinging her.”

“The wards,” I murmured. “She couldn’t get past the wards.”

The wards blocked only malicious entities or those who wished me or mine harm. That Harlow couldn’t cross them meant Charybdis’s evil had tainted her psyche in a tangible way, proof positive she was his avatar. She had to find a loophole. To beat the wards, she enlisted the help of a child. A girl. There was symbolism there, the continuance of a twisted theme. Gods only knew what she planned for Emily when the last token had been delivered.

“That’s why she enlisted Emily.” Dell pieced it together. “Emily didn’t wish you harm, so she could pass through. Harlow…” Her lips mashed together before blurting out in front of the girl that her new fae friend wasn’t one of the good guys. “That’s bad.”

I rubbed my tired eyes, but they kept settling on Emily. “You need to get her home before her dad misses her.”

Dell stood and wisely kept a hand cuffed on the girl’s arm. “What do you want me to tell him?”

As much as I dreaded the fallout and the anti-fae propaganda, Bessemer—and the pack—were entitled to know what prowled the woods alongside their children. “The truth.” I massaged the base of my neck and scowled at the silver wolf. “Now would be a great time for you to ditch the fur suit. This is beta business.
You
should be the one marching Emily home, and
you
should be the one talking to Bessemer. Not Dell.”

The wolf hung his head, and a low groan issued from his chest. Paws heavy, he loped into the trees and out of sight.

“Graeson,” I called. “I didn’t mean…”