The Goblin King (10 page)

Today was a day for violence and the loss of life and hope. The only problem was what type? Beautiful-impossible-anime? Or brutal-bloody-slasher? He weighed the decision knowing the answer would be both. With his mind made up, Roan stood. First, he’d check out his favorite German art-house theatre, the one where Goths mingled with thugs looking for ideas.

With only a thought he was leaving Mumbai for Berlin.

***

“Welcome back, honey.”

Steve’s voice cut into her sleep. Eliza kept her eyes closed, knowing he wouldn’t be put off that easily. He was too used to getting results to back down.

The bed shifted as he sat down. “Wake up, Eliza.”

His breath on her ear was hot like a dog sniffing out dinner. She blinked a couple of times, turned, and tried to look surprised to see her fiancé visiting. He smiled and kissed her forehead, but his eyes were cold, like rain-slicked steel. She could never find her footing with him. Never be in the right place, never be safe.

Steve remained, leaning over her. “I’m so glad you decided to come back.”

“I didn’t decide—”

“Shh, I’m talking. We both know I had nothing to do with your disappearance. Regardless of what the police think.”

“I don’t know what happened.” The words tumbled out as she apologized for living once again.

He did this to her every time. And she bent to his will, but their relationship hadn’t always been like this. He’d rescued her when her world had collapsed. When her father, the last of her family, had died of a heart attack in parliament. He was dead before he’d hit the floor. Her degree had followed. A one-year deferral to deal with her grief had become five. In her family’s law firm she was a legal secretary, filing Steve’s paperwork.

Steve had been her father’s protégé, a self-made man, the poor kid made good. And he played on it, manipulating everyone around him. He’d had her fooled for three years before she’d seen the truth. By then it had been too late. She was caught.

He lowered his weight, crushing her chest. “You can’t lie to me.”

She couldn’t breathe. The tiny half-breaths he allowed her were not enough. Eliza tried to push him off. But he held firm. To a nurse passing by he was merely attentive. There would be no help coming.

“Keep still.” He pinched her earlobe where her earring should have hung. “Where have you been?”

Eliza shook her head. Her lungs burned for more than a gasp of air.

“Is this payback? Do you think anyone but you cares who I screw?” He kept the embrace tight but let her breathe.

She gasped, sucking in the air tainted with expensive aftershave. There was nothing honest or natural about Steve.

“We’re not married yet,” she choked out. When they married, everyone assumed he’d get the partnership she’d refused him two years ago. Two years ago this nightmare engagement had begun.

“Is that a threat?” His nose touched hers.

If he kissed her, she would be sick.

He drew back and laughed, patting her hand. “It’s your name on the documents.”

Nausea clawed the back of her throat. Those documents were the one thing between her and freedom. She’d seen them once. Perfect documents that looked the part and siphoned money into an account Steve had set up. The poor boy had become a rich, corrupt lawyer, and she would take the fall. The documents had her signature and her handwriting on them. She filled out paperwork like that all the time. She’d done the paperwork for Steve’s fraud without knowing. Her signature had locked the chain around her throat.

“Choose carefully, Eliza. You wouldn’t last a week in jail.” He stood and smoothed his charcoal suit. A replacement for the ones she’d ruined. “I’ve ordered new suits. You’ll settle the bill, won’t you, dear?” He turned and left without waiting for her answer. His visit left no more than a depression on the sheets. Eliza smoothed them away, wishing it would be as easy to remove him from her life.

In the afternoon, the detective assigned to investigate her disappearance stopped in to see if she could remember something she hadn’t told the uniformed police. Eliza gazed out the window. She wanted to be outside, to feel the sun and taste the fresh air. She wanted to be free of Steve and his fraud for a few moments. She’d tasted freedom for a few short seconds with Roan as their lips had met and she’d forgotten she was Eliza Coulter and should know better.

“Just a few more questions, Ms. Coulter.” Detective Griffin brought her back to the hospital room.

She nodded, sure that she’d answered the same ones last night, but she couldn’t be certain. Had she fainted before or after the questions? She couldn’t remember getting to the hospital. But she couldn’t forget where she’d been. She couldn’t forget Roan.

“What time did you leave the party?”

“I don’t know. Elevenish?” She should know that. She should remember what time she’d caught Steve with his pants down.

“Your fiancé is a lawyer, yet there were no suits in the house. Do you know where they might be?”

Eliza frowned. “No…” He’d cleaned up. The cheating bastard had removed the evidence of their fight, evidence that might have been important had she been actually missing. The bastard had only thought of his own ass. The weight of Steve’s lies became too heavy for her to carry. “They should’ve been in the bathtub.”

“The bathtub?” Detective Griffin smiled, his face an invitation to spill all. He could keep a secret. Who would he tell?

“I took them down and soaked them in hot water and wine.” She swallowed the laugh that bubbled in her throat.

“After the argument.”

“Yes.” There was no argument. Just her yelling and locking herself in the bedroom with a bottle of wine. Tearing down his suits, jumping on them as the water flowed, staining them with the red wine and cursing him. Cursing everyone. Cursing herself for being so stupid.

“That’s an expensive way to fight.” Griffin nodded as if he understood her life perfectly.

“We don’t usually fight.”
I usually give in.

There were several breaths of silence. She could take off the burden if she told the truth. She could tell Griffin everything. Her eyes flicked to his partially concealed gun. Cuffs would lurk not far behind. How would the metal feel around her wrists? Gooseflesh rose on her arms. Steve was right that she wouldn’t survive in jail, and she wouldn’t ruin her family’s good name for Steve.

“When can I go home?” She’d inherited the Coulter family residence after her father’s death. While it was home, it had never felt like it was hers.

“The doctor said you can leave today. Your house is still being processed. Have you got somewhere else to stay?”

Eliza’s eyebrows pulled together. She wanted to get out, get some real clothes, and sleep in her bed. “I’m no longer missing.”

“You have no recollection of where you were for seventy-two hours.” Disbelief flashed in Griffin’s eyes before being hidden behind the warm mask of concern.

She knew that look. She may never have finished her law degree, but he was keeping something from her. Something that made him doubt her amnesia. Had Roan left something behind?

“Is there a problem, Detective?”

“Why did you argue?”

Steve wanted payback. Well here it was with interest. Let the police make up their own minds about him. “I caught him cheating.”

“He said you overreacted, that you had been drinking heavily. Do you normally drink?”

Eliza forced a breath out between her teeth. Her fingers twisted the bedsheets. “I was drinking because I caught him screwing some skank in
my
house.”

Griffin nodded, his face showing nothing. “Where do you keep your handbag?”

“Was it stolen?” Spending a day canceling cards and replacing her keys, phone, and purse was not what she wanted to do.

“No. Where did you leave your handbag?”

“In the bedroom.”

“You didn’t leave it in the cloakroom by accident on Saturday night?”

No personal belongings ever went in the cloakroom. Raincoats, umbrellas, sun hats, never her handbag. “No, that’s generally for guests.”

“Your bag was in the cloakroom. The suits haven’t been found. Do you know why Mr. Slade would move things before the police arrived?”

Because he didn’t want them looking into his affairs. The police might find the documents she’d signed, and maybe more. Something that she’d missed in her hunt for the paperwork and a way out.

The words that would reveal the fraud rested on the tip of her tongue, but before she spoke they twisted and reformed. “I don’t know.”

The detective leaned back in his seat. Without saying a word Eliza knew that he didn’t believe the lie. She held her breath waiting for him to ask again and force the truth out of her.

“I’ll make sure you get your handbag back before you leave hospital. Have you got somewhere else to stay until your house is released?”

She knew where she was going to stay—in a hotel far away from Steve. “Yes. Thank you.”

Detective Griffin reached into his pocket and withdrew a business card. “You’ve had a rough couple of days. Have a think about things. Give me a call if you remember anything.”

***

Roan appeared in Dai’s library and sat opposite his brother. A twenty-four-hour movie marathon chasing the night around the world had coated his tongue in salt and made his fingers greasy but accomplished little else. It was a poor substitute for an all-night bender, drinking until he couldn’t walk. These days even that small release was out of his reach. If he let control slide for just a moment, the curse would gobble him up without a burp.

He set the almost empty bucket of popcorn down on the ivory map inlaid in the desk, where Australia should have been, where Eliza was. The ancient map, while beautiful, was incorrect and obsolete. Like every other map in the library, it belonged to a different time.

Dai looked up from the shiny black tablet he was reading. Or translating? The two were almost one and the same when time wasn’t a factor. Between the two of them there wasn’t a language that had existed over the past two thousand years that they didn’t know. Most were dead, remembered only by cursed men. So much knowledge would be lost when they died. Such a waste of time, life, and learning.

Dai didn’t take his eyes off the tablet. “That stuff will give a heart attack. All that butter and salt.”

“How many buckets would that take?” Roan held up his hand as he reconsidered. “No, don’t tempt me.” It probably wouldn’t work anyway. He didn’t have a heart to stop.

Dai set down his pencil and held out his hand. Roan reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag. He tossed Dai the multi-colored jelly snakes. There was no escaping where he’d been and he never hid it. There was no point. The candy was a small bribe for peace.

“That your latest find?”

His brother had never gathered gold the way a goblin should. Dai collected books and scrolls and tablets, anything that might refer to goblins, curses, or magic. The shelves were littered with relics. When they got full, Dai simply acquired another set of shelves. When the room got full, he had Roan enlarge the cavern. He wouldn’t be doing that again. He didn’t have enough soul to waste on renovations. If he’d known what damage the magic did, he would’ve been more restrained with its use.

“Mmm. Where’s yours?” Dai said as the tail of a red snake disappeared into his mouth.

“I took her back.” Roan licked his fingers and started worrying a dread, rolling it between his fingers. His fingers skipped over the beads; some of the gold and amber had been there for centuries. The first one he’d placed in his hair now adorned Eliza’s wrist. Sacrificed because he’d responded to a summons and granted her wish. His lips thinned. Now he owed her a second bead.

“So you’ve been skulking around Delhi, or was it Mumbai?” Dai flicked the bag of snakes with his pencil.

“
Tumse matleb
.” Roan squashed the popcorn bucket into dust. The dark magic of the Shadowlands was always calling to be used. It was easier to give in than to ignore it these days. Would it hurt when it took him?

“I care because I’m your brother.”

“Because your fate is tied to mine.” Today he resented Dai. If not for his brother, he would’ve given in already. Holding on to his humanity hurt like a rusted knife lodged in his back. Eliza had eased the wound before twisting the blade. Now he couldn’t get the itch out of his skin.

They glared at each other. How many times could they have the same argument? Did it matter how he whiled away eternity? He preferred movies to books. Living people to dead trees. Life instead of legends.

“I thought Eliza was keeping you human.”

Roan shook his head. He wished that were true, that he could make it true. Make her agree to be his, but no woman wanted to be a goblin’s queen, banished to the land of nightmares—it’s why the Hoard resorted to kidnapping on the night of solstice. He wasn’t quite that close.

His brother frowned and bit through a snake. He waved the green head at Roan. “You’ve lost ground?”

Somewhere over the centuries his younger brother had become the guardian of his soul. Self-preservation or brotherly love, the result was the same. Dai would never let him fade. He might be king, but he answered to his advisor.