Turning Tides (9 page)

I claimed the now vacant pink bed. I’d worn myself out with the trip to the mainland and back, and I fell asleep within minutes.

I woke with the sun, my thoughts already turning to the houseboat full of shifters. They’d need supplies, and I needed to check on Mac’s progress through the night.

I packed up what little we had in the cottage, at least enough for breakfast. Like most elementals, Sera and I ate no meat, so I’d need to figure out a way to sneak some tuna to Simon and Miriam. For now, at least, they wouldn’t starve. I went heavy on the fruit in a blatant attempt to win Mac over by appealing to his stomach.

Sera was still sleeping, but that changed when I opened the front door and screamed like a banshee watching a particularly scary horror movie.

It’s the natural reaction when one finds a dead body spread across the front steps.

Chapter 9

It said something about how
accustomed I’d become to fear and chaos that my shock was short-lived. Rather than stand and gape, I ran down the steps to the prone form at the bottom. It was a woman, lying facedown, and at least this time the body was in one piece. However, it was deeply burnt, covered in angry red welts. The skin was misshapen and melted, with a few patches of hair clinging to the scalp. The body had the height and slight build of a water.

Except this one had hips.

“Robin. Oh, hell. Please don’t be dead.”

I pressed two fingers to her neck, feeling for a pulse and sending a silent prayer to anything that might be listening that a spark of life still flared inside the ruined husk, something I could heal.

It was a desperate hope. I knew it, even before her silent heart confirmed it. There’s something about a dead body, an intangible absence of life and spirit, that told me Robin was gone.

“Oh, hell.” Sera stood at the top of the stairs and echoed my own words. “Who is it?” Energy pulsed from her every pore, but it was no longer manic like the night before. The Sera who stared down at Robin’s body looked focused, intense, and as horrified as I felt.

I sat back on my heels and released a humorless laugh. “Other than a blatant attempt to make you look more guilty? I can’t say for sure, because of the burns, but I think it’s Robin. She monitors the traffic on and off the island. Monitored,” I corrected.

“Can you flip her? If she isn’t burned all over, we can confirm her identity.”

“I know.” I made no effort to do so. “Let’s call my mother. We need a witness before we start disturbing evidence.”

Sera looked dubious. “You planning on getting a CSI team out here?”

She had a point. We had no law enforcement on the island, and we damn sure didn’t have our own forensics team.

I scanned the porch, looking for the camera David installed the day before. It was tucked under one of the beams and pointed at the cottage door. Unless the killer chose to run up to the porch and wave after depositing the body on the bottom step, it wouldn’t have caught a thing.

That would have been too easy.

I pulled out my phone and arranged for my mother to meet us.

While we waited, I sat on the top step, as far as I could get from the dead body.

Sera sat beside me, though she was practically vibrating me with suppressed energy. “You knew her?”

“My whole life. Robin Brook was a third cousin. Older than me, but weaker. She used to slip me her favorite romance novels after she’d read them. I’d hide them from my mother and read the dirty parts over and over again. She was kind, Sera.” A sob threatened, and I closed my eyes and took slow breaths until it passed. This wasn’t the time for grief. Sometimes, it felt like it was never going to be the time.

“Does she have anything in common with Edith Lake?”

“I don’t think they even knew each other.”

Sera was asking questions to distract me, and I welcomed it. Facts, evidence, logic. Such coldness kept pain and anger at bay and gave no fuel to my fire.

“Could she know something? Someone might have been trying to keep her from talking.” She pointed to the undisturbed ground. “I don’t see any sign the body was dragged. It looks like she was on her way to our front door and never made it.”

I struggled not to feel responsible. It was hard when Sera’s words made me think, if we weren’t here, Robin would still be alive.

Focus. One breath in, one breath out. “Maybe. I already have a list of everyone who’s landed on the island the last few weeks. I got it from her yesterday.”

“Would the killer know that?”

I let the possibilities run through my head. “I don’t think so. The only people there yesterday were a bunch of visitors, desperate to flee the crazed fire.” She waggled her eyebrows, and I breathed easier after that single moment of silliness, proof that there was still room for teasing in our lives. “We should probably study that list, huh?”

“It would be a start.”

My mother was silent in her approach, face drawn in taut lines. “Oh, Robin.” The words escaped on a sigh.

With her confirmation, the shard of hope I’d clung to since finding the body shriveled.

“Help me turn her?” I asked.

It wasn’t easy. My mother and I tried to be gentle and respectful, but in the end I gripped the hips while my mother took the shoulders, and we rolled her until gray eyes stared, unseeing, at the cloudless summer sky. I didn’t want to touch the body, but I couldn’t leave her like that. With hesitant fingers, I drew her lids closed.

We stood for a long time, lost in our own thoughts as we looked at the body of a woman we’d known for decades.

My mother broke the silence first. “In all the time our family has lived here, we’ve had one murder. It was over three hundred years ago, and it was a crime of passion. Jealousy. That scared some people so much they left the island permanently. This… I can’t even imagine what this will do to our community.”

She was right. The enclave was our haven, the one place where the pain and trauma of the outside world was never supposed to find us. Those who chose to live here did so partly to avoid the crime and stress found in the human world. This death, only days after the murder of Edith Lake at my trial, would challenge the residents’ understanding of their own world.

“We could hide her death,” I suggested, though I hated the idea. Robin deserved better, and the true killer didn’t deserve to get away with it.

“And say she left despite the embargo? That wouldn’t be inconceivable, particularly given her job. We’d need to fake a plane or boat leaving the island, but that shouldn’t be too difficult with Josiah’s help.”

I’d offered the possibility because I thought it needed to be said—and then rejected. I was appalled my mother was actually considering it.

“No.” Sera’s voice wasn’t just firm. It was immoveable, her certainty in that single word as inflexible as steel. “I will not lie, and I will not deny this woman an honest burial in an attempt to save myself. I’m innocent. That’s going to have to be good enough.”

I agreed. “Plus, we need to keep Josiah out of this, as much as possible. We know he’ll do whatever is necessary to save Sera, but his methods are questionable.”

“Batshit crazy,” Sera corrected.

My mother sighed, the heavy and world-weary sigh that belongs only to a mother whose offspring refuses to fall into line.

“Your choice complicates matters and further implicates Sera, but I agree it is the moral path.”

My mother might acknowledge that honesty was the moral choice, but she didn’t sound convinced it was the best one. It wasn’t that she was unmoved by Robin’s death. It was more that the old ones had lived for centuries and seen the world’s beliefs shift and change too many times to believe there was one true set of values that should guide our actions. It gave them a moral flexibility Sera and I had yet to acquire.

My mother pulled out her phone. “Then I will inform the council, and they will arrive shortly. Perhaps you should brush your hair, Aidan. Appearance does matter, you know.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled, heading up the stairs. As I left, I called over my shoulder. “Oh, also? There might be a houseboat full of shifters about half a mile to the west, so if you can make sure no one studies the horizon too closely or notices there’s a boat missing, that would be awesome.”

If possible, her second sigh was even heavier than the first one.

An hour later,
I was barely holding panic at bay. I hadn’t been able to slip out to the houseboat, and the texts I’d sent we
nt unanswered. Images of Mac writhing in pain played over and over in my mind. It didn’t matter how many times I assured myself they’d call if he grew worse. I wouldn’t truly believe it until I saw him again.

However, as the cottage was now crammed with my mother, my aunts, and the remaining members of the council, a quick escape seemed unlikely.

“Aidan, darling, where’d you put the wine opener?”

I gaped at Georgina. “It’s eight in the morning.”

“Yes, but I understand drinking is expected at a wake, and we want to honor Robin properly.” She held up a bottle of Malbec. “This will do, right?”

I opened my mouth several times, trying to explain that this death should be handled no differently than one of the island’s natural passings, then gave up and pointed to the dish drainer.

In truth, the deaths were completely different, and no one knew how to cope with Robin’s unexpected and violent end. I supposed we needed to create new rituals, and I couldn’t imagine any ritual on this island that didn’t involve vast amounts of wine.

While my aunts sat on the steps with their glasses, fighting back tears as they steadfastly avoided looking at Robin’s body, Sera and I perched on the living room sofa, surrounded by four council members.

I decided my aunts might have the right of it after all. Facing down a councilwoman convinced Sera was guilty might be easier with a big glass of wine. I’d thought Edith had been overly focused on the whole justice and punishment thing, but Rachel Strait made her look like an amateur. While Michael, Deborah, and Lydia seemed more concerned with Robin’s horrific death than with convicting Sera, they weren’t in charge. Rachel was.

“It proves nothing,” my mother insisted.

“Fiona, I understand you wish to protect your daughter’s friend, but the evidence is undeniable.”

I stood so I was at Rachel’s eye level. “Oh, I can deny it. There were no witnesses. The camera didn’t capture anything from that angle. All we know is the body of a woman Sera doesn’t even freaking know and has no reason to want dead was found on our steps.”

Rachel raised one perfectly plucked eyebrows. She had the same regal bearing as my mother, lacking the ease most waters displayed. Unfortunately, she had none of my mother’s maternal warmth to go with it. “She was found dead, covered in burns, well within the radius of Ms. Blais’s magic. It is not difficult to connect the dots. She came to visit Aidan, perhaps to offer her support, and she was killed by a fire elemental. The facts are all that matter.”

The councilwoman turned to me with the same superior expression she’d worn the day of my trial. I was unused to seeing a permanent sneer on the face of a water, but she managed it.

I wouldn’t give up. “And the fact is, Josiah Blais is on the island. He could have done it.” Josiah would never do anything that would cast further suspicion on Sera, and if he did kill, he’d leave no evidence he didn’t want found.

Though I was certain he hadn’t committed this particular murder, I felt so compunction whatsoever about throwing him under the bus.

Rachel smiled. I doubted that was a good sign. “Indeed. I spent much of last night with Mr. Blais. He hoped to sway me to his way of thinking, to convince me his daughter is innocent. It was a valiant effort. It seems unlikely that, a day later, he’d choose to frame her for Robin’s murder.”

Damn.

Sera stared at the woman, her face unreadable. “Why, exactly, did I kill this woman? I know my motive for the first one was to spare Aidan her sentence, but for the life of me, I can’t remember why I chose to kill Robin.”

The councilwoman refused to be drawn in. “I have little interest in guessing your inner thoughts. What does matter is that since you arrived, two people have died in ways only a fire could manage.”

Lydia Pond opened her mouth to speak, but whatever she’d planned to say died on her tongue. Rachel’s glare likely had something to do with that. Michael stared at me, as if hoping answers would appear if he just waited long enough, and Deborah stared out the window, eyes fixed on the burnt corpse.

Lydia’s brief interruption quelled, Rachel continued. “We have run string around the cabin, a line no one else should cross. That includes your relatives, Ms. Brook. We will move the camera to capture more of the house. Sera Blais’s trial is scheduled for tomorrow evening. I suggest you prepare yourself.”

One more day. I had less than thirty-six hours to figure out why people were dying and find the actual murderer, and I still had no idea where to begin.

I’d solved cases before, but I’d always done so with Sera at my side, with Mac and Simon and Vivian offering support. This time, Sera was trapped, Mac and Simon would never be welcome on the island, and Vivian was refusing to answer her phone.

I was on my own, and while I was clueless, confused, and borderline incompetent, I was also Sera’s best hope. If I didn’t start figuring things out, her life would change forever—and mine along with it.

“Get out.” Perhaps I could have phrased that more politely, but I doubted Rachel would have appreciated the effort. I looked her in the eye. “Sera and I would like some privacy to discuss why, exactly, she is being framed for these murders.”

To my surprise, the other woman didn’t fight me. If anything, she seemed in a hurry to leave, and she insisted everyone on the steps move outside the border she’d created. It was just string, hung in a one hundred foot radius around the cottage, but it sent the message clearly enough. Those who crossed the line forfeited their safety.

Though the council remained outside, making arrangements to remove the body, at least Sera and I were alone in the cottage. I studied my friend, wondering why the actual killer had chosen her. She might just be a convenient person to pin these murders on, but I was beginning to fear it was personal. “I think it’s safe to say someone doesn’t like you.”

Free from Strait’s scrutiny, Sera dropped the impassive face and began to pace. The living room was small, and she could only take three steps before she needed to spin and trace the path in the other direction. The carpet would likely need to be replaced once we left.

“Can I light a fire?”

I swallowed. She was asking if I could be around her while she accessed her magic. I was so agitated, I wasn’t certain I could handle it, but neither could I deny her the comfort of her element. I nodded once, then sat on the other side of the room, as far from the flames as I could manage.

The distance didn’t matter. I still felt my magic stir, wanting to answer the call of the flames. No, that was a lie.
I
wanted to answer the call, to feel the hungry energy of the flames. For a moment, I imagined letting my gentle water magic be consumed by the fire’s strength.