Inked Magic (33 page)

He didn’t know nearly enough about her gift or her magic. It wasn’t required to be afraid for her. She was a changeling and that was always a dangerous time in this world, more so for her because she hadn’t been raised among her own kind.

Cupping her cheek, touching his mouth to hers, he strengthened her with one last magic-laden kiss before saying, “Be careful, Etaín. I believe it’s the nature of your gift to want to see everything, to know
everything about whoever you touch. You control your abilities now, either by luck or instinct, but eventually you’ll need more than either of those things. You’ll need me. And perhaps even Cathal.”

“We’ll see,” she said, and he hid his smile until she’d left him, wary of alerting her to just how much progress he’d made with her.

E
taín let herself into Stylin’ Ink. The light streaming out of Bryce’s office told her the shop wasn’t empty despite the locked front door and darkened interior.

She set the bike helmet on the counter as she passed it, anticipating the teasing she would have to endure when Bryce and Derrick got together. Tonight she was sleeping at her own place, or at least planning ahead well enough to have a change of clothes with her instead of having to swap them out somewhere else.

“Hey,” she said, stepping into Bryce’s office. “Where is everyone?”

He looked up from his sketchpad. “Starting late today, including yours truly. Lot of lunchtime appointments, then some after hours. What are you doing here?”

Not much point in trying to hide the reason, given what she needed was in his office closet. “Changing clothes.”

He whistled. “Got laid two nights in a row? Cathal?”

She just smiled and crossed over to the closet, knowing it’d drive him crazy. He cursed while she went through the small stack of choices, picking out what she wanted.

As she closed the closet door he finally ended his rant. “If you’re not going to share, then at least tell me the magic words you used on Derrick so I can use them the next time he crashes and burns. He
showed up for work yesterday afternoon with a smile on his face and an ‘I live to serve’ attitude. Burst out and started singing at one point. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he’s back in love.”

“Oh shit,” Etaín said, borrowing Bryce’s favorite word.

“What was that?”

She crossed to lean against his desk. “I introduced him to someone. Casual. A one-nighter I thought.” Though if Quinn was serious about taking a job as a PI . . .

“Who’d you introduce him to?”

“A law-enforcement type.”

“Sweet.”

“We’ll see.”

She pulled the copy of the Harlequin Rapist’s tat out of a pocket, unfolded it before handing it to Bryce. “You know who might have done this artwork? Or seen anyone wearing it?”

He studied it for a long moment, then refolded it and gave it back to her. “No. Does this have anything to do with your asshole brother stopping by the shop a couple of days ago?”

That was the trouble with Bryce, he was too perceptive, which was one of the reasons she hadn’t made more of an effort to show him the drawing before now. “Can’t say it does,” she answered. Like the importance of keeping a promise, the importance of avoiding a lie was another of her mother’s often repeated mantras.

“Cute, Etaín. In other words, ‘Yes, Bryce, it does, but I’m not allowed to tell anyone what I’m doing for the Feds.’”

Deflection seemed the best way to deal with him. “So when will Jamaal be in?”

“Won’t. Not today. He’s spending the day with DaWanda. They’re going to a funeral. Scheduled to start at three, at DaWanda’s church. It’s being held for someone who goes there and was in Narc Anon with DaWanda’s sister. Tyra Nelson, ring any bells with you?”

Etaín froze inside, an instinctive reaction against opening the floodgates of memory. “I know who she is. Was.”

“Tell me the truth, Etaín. Is your brother using you as bait for the Harlequin Rapist?”

“Not that I know of.”

“So it’s possible.”

Would Parker go that far? Her stomach twisted but the conversations she’d had with Trent about the Harlequin Rapist’s likely behavior kept it from knotting. “It’s possible, but I don’t think he is.”

“Be careful.”

“You’re the second person who’s told me that today.”

“Cathal the first?”

She smiled and turned away from the desk. A colored pencil bounced off the wall next to the doorway as she stepped through it. “Goddamn tease,” Bryce yelled.

She changed in the bathroom and returned to her bike. Straddling it, she thought of her promise to Cathal. Technically she wasn’t done, so a call wasn’t owed, but she wanted to hear his voice, wanted to feel the warm hum of electric desire she’d come to associate with him. A warding against facing Brianna’s memories.

“I’m not finished yet,” she told him when he answered.

“When will you be?”

If ice had a voice, it would sound like Cathal’s. Her stomach cramped at the curtness of his response and the way it was delivered.

She’d planned on telling him she was heading to his uncle’s house for another session with Brianna. Instead she said, “Soon. You’ll know when I am,” and ended the call, pocketing the phone.

It rang as she was putting her helmet on. She hesitated then started the Harley. She wanted to get this done.

P
anic seized Cathal. “Fuck!” He was out of control.

He’d thought he’d come to terms with knowing she was with Eamon. But when she’d said she wasn’t finished drawing, he’d imagined
her naked, in Eamon’s arms, playing instead of following through on her promise to help Brianna.

He’d reacted without thought. Given her cold to offset the heat of the emotions festering inside him because he was trapped in his own subterfuge.

Three more attempts, going straight to voicemail, and he dialed Sean instead.

“Didn’t we just talk?” Sean asked. “Fair warning, I’m going to start charging you three times the usual rate. The first bump to keep you out of the pain-in-the-ass category of client, the second for not walking away from this woman if you can’t handle the idea of sharing her.”

“Where is she?”

“Give me a second, why don’t you.”

There was a muffled thud, as if Sean had jumped from the dock to the deck of his boat.

Time seemed to crawl. He heard the click of a mouse and keys typed.

“She’s on the move. Looks like she just left Stylin’ Ink.”

He cursed his own lack of control, hand tightening on the phone. He didn’t hang up. Neither did Sean.

Long moments passed. Agony ended by Sean saying, “At a guess, I’d say she’s heading to Pacific Heights. Your call whether it’s to Eamon’s estate or your uncle’s.”

I’m not finished
yet.

He felt a jolt of fear. Fierce anger directed at himself.

“She’s going to see Brianna again.” It was the only thing that made sense to him.

“You’re at home?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t beat her there, but you might make it on her heels.”

“I’m gone,” he said, shoving the phone into his pocket.

*     *     *

D
enis sat next to the bed, the nurse hovering behind him. “Have you seen any change in her, Clara?”

“No, sir.”

He hadn’t either and he’d desperately wanted to after Cathal passed on what Etaín had told him. He wanted Brianna to forget, to have what had happened erased from her mind. But maybe he was going to have to settle for erasing the ones responsible.

A knock on the open door had him looking up at one of the men he used for protection work. “There’s a woman at the gate, name’s Etaín.”

“Cathal’s not with her?”

“No.”

Denis didn’t like it. It told him Cathal wasn’t in control of the situation. It told him Cathal probably couldn’t guarantee she hadn’t talked and hadn’t shown whatever pictures she came up with to someone.
If
she’d been able to come up with anything at all. And that was a big if in his mind.

Rushing out of the room and puking her guts out in the hallway bathroom could have been an act put on for their benefit—which would make things a whole lot worse for her down the road. Clara didn’t believe there was any way Brianna had beat the drugs long enough to talk to Etaín.

“Let her in, Matt,” he said, rising from his chair, pausing to lean down and kiss his daughter’s forehead. She was lightly sedated but she still whimpered and jerked away from the contact, curling into a ball at his touch.

Even though it had happened before, it felt like a fist plunging into his chest and trying to rip his heart out. He straightened and left the room.

Etaín had better deliver results. He wasn’t a man to jerk around.

*     *     *

E
taín was met in the driveway by a guy who looked like a bodyguard instead of a personal assistant. His eyes were emotionless and everything about him screamed
lethal
despite the suit he wore.

She followed him into the house and found Denis waiting in the foyer. He didn’t offer either a smile or a handshake.

The first didn’t matter to her. The second she was grateful for.

“I want to know what you know,” he said after the bodyguard had made himself scarce. Rage and pain simmered in Denis’s voice despite the external show of containment.

“I don’t have the full story. I need to visit with Brianna again, alone, if I’m going to get the rest of it.”

“I want what you do have.”

He was a dark lion at the gate. She wouldn’t get past him, wouldn’t get this finished and behind her if she didn’t give him the drawings she’d already done.

She crouched and opened the sketchpad, carefully tearing out pages without looking at what was on them. It made her appreciate how Parker or the captain served as a buffer between her and a victim’s family, slipping her in under one pretext or another and always making it clear the success of her work depended on her being left alone to do it.

She’d never had to decide whether family members were better off with the horror they imagined or the reality captured on paper. She wasn’t going to decide this time, either. Denis wasn’t going to give her the choice.

Standing, she passed the sheaf of papers to him. He rolled them up, expression grim as he escorted her to Brianna’s bedroom.

“Clara,” he said, and it was enough for the nurse to exit the room.

“I’ll see you out when you’re ready to leave,” Denis said, before closing the door to his daughter’s room.

He found Matt. “Wait outside Brianna’s room. After Etaín’s gone, we sweep for bugs from there to the front gate, and anywhere else she’s been.”

“Yes, sir.” Matt straightened, touching his earpiece. “Cathal’s at the gate.”

Denis frowned. Etaín hadn’t mentioned Cathal following her.

His suspicion Cathal didn’t have control of the situation, or Etaín, deepened, though the rolled drawings were proof Cathal was getting results. The jury was still out about what to do with Etaín when this was over.

“Open the gate for him. Tell him where she is. He can wait for her. But she doesn’t leave until I say so. Pass that word on to Cathal.”

“Yes, sir.”

In his office Denis slowly sank into his chair. His heart pounded in his chest like he’d run a four-minute mile. It drowned out the background noise coming from the small TV at the corner of his desk.

He put the rolled-up sketches on his desk. The paper flattened on its own, revealing a picture of Caitlyn with a boy on top of her. Close up, the perspective making it seem as though he was lying on the bed not far away, seeing it through his daughter’s eyes.

His guts burned looking at it, sickness joining his fury as he turned the page over, and then the next and the next. Rifling through them as the hair rose on his arms and the back of his neck.

A chill settled deep inside him with the last picture, Brianna returning to consciousness that first time in the hospital.
Creepy
. The guy who’d passed on Etaín’s name wasn’t kidding.

Denis picked up a burner phone and called the one Niall was carrying, though he still decided to play it safe and cautious when his brother answered.

“Cathal’s girlfriend showed up a little while ago wanting to visit with Brianna. I let her in. Brianna’s still got me closed out, but she’s opening up to her.”

“Cathal’s not there?”

“He is now. Came in a few minutes behind her.”

“I’ll stop by later.”

Denis glanced down at the small stack of drawings. “That’d be good.”