Dead and Gone (Grave Talker Book 2) Page 7

  “What the fuck, Bishop? Warn a girl next time. Shit,” I groaned and nearly toppled over as the world righted itself.

  Fuck shadow walking or jumping or whatever the fuck he called it. I swallowed back bile and prayed I wouldn’t puke.

  “Aw, come on, Adler. You just walked into a vampire nest like a badass, but you can’t handle a little shade jumping?”

  Rather than answer him, I just flipped him off.

  When I could stand up without wanting to die, I quickly recognized the park he’d spirited us off to. It was the same park where we’d sort of met. Granted, it was the same park where a body had been dumped, but I was choosing not to think about that. No, I was thinking about how it was barely a mile from my house.

  Bishop had taken me home.

  The darkness of this park had nearly sent me into a tailspin last year. On a night like tonight, I would fear what was crawling around in the dark. It was almost a joke how naïve I’d been. How new. There were so many things I’d been afraid of, and now my fear had been whittled down to something smaller.

  The shimmering gray of specters flitted in and out of the trees. Last year, I’d have been afraid they’d come talk to me. Scared they could turn violent. Now, I wondered if they needed to move on. Were they attracted to me because I was a doorway to somewhere else like my father? Or was it something else?

  My gaze drifted from the ghosts that haunted the park to Bishop. He was staring at me, too.

  Shit.

  Without the threat of death or the nauseating shadow bullshit—I suddenly felt supremely awkward. Just the look on his face reminded me of his big speech in the nest.

  I hadn’t wanted Bishop to know what I’d endured. Mostly, it was because he’d think he was responsible, and he wasn’t. Sure, he’d benefitted from my incarceration, but I hadn’t really done it for him.

  Swallowing hard, I maneuvered around him and headed for my house. I wanted to call Sarina and make sure she got out of the building. I wanted to know what she knew. Then I wanted to sleep in my bed and eat leftovers, and maybe watch a little TV.

  After that, I would dive into these stupid case files before my ax-wound of a mother came calling.

  Bishop—like he’d done all night—grabbed my hand, drawing me to a stop. I didn’t want to turn back to look at him, and I wouldn’t have. Except Bishop pulled me again, spinning me just so, and then I was facing him. His black eyes were practically molten, the heat of them scalding me.

  It seemed like so long ago that we’d flirted over tacos. So long since we hinted at a possible chance of a future together. Had that only been this morning?

  But having him in my bubble, with that look on his beautiful face, was all it took for me to remember. It was all it took to bring back all my awkwardness, all my inadequacies. I took a step backward, dropping my chin to stare at my feet.

  “Please don’t walk away from me,” he murmured, moving further into my space. I’d thought he was close before, but I was way, way wrong. His front brushed mine as his fingers found my chin and tilted it up. The heat of him filtered through my clothes as his breath tickled the skin of my lips.

  How long had it been since I’d even kissed someone? Two years? Five? Did I even still know how to kiss someone?

  Then his soft lips hit mine, and it didn’t matter if I’d forgotten how because Bishop sure as hell hadn’t. His fingers found themselves threading into my ponytail as he took charge of the kiss, gently pulling my hair as he commanded my mouth. A flash fire of heat swept over me. It was all I could to cling to fistfuls of his shirt as his tongue tasted and explored my mouth, staking his claim so thoroughly it was as if every other kiss I’d had before him never happened.

  Seriously, it was as if he’d given me a kiss lobotomy because never in the history of ever had a kiss yanked me out of my own head before. Never had I contemplated defiling a nearby picnic table in the middle of a public park. Never had I been so happy that my house was merely a few blocks away.

  Breathlessly, I dragged myself back, and this time, I was the one to yank him into motion, tugging him behind me as I marched down the sidewalk toward my house.

  Bishop’s chuckle was low and dark, making goose bumps rise on my arms. We had a lot to talk about—I knew that—but right now, I wanted to see how fun making out on my couch would be.

  At a quick clip down the street, we arrived at my dark house in no time. The problem was that my house wasn’t exactly void of people. My living room curtains were wide open, the light from my house spilling onto the lawn as a mini crowd of people made themselves at home on my couch. Sarina, my father, J, and Jimmy sat on my oversized sofa while Mariana lounged on my favorite velvet accent chair.

  Groaning, I marched up the walk and through my front door, meeting this bullshit head-on. It was tough to be mad at any of them, but especially not Sarina. She’d sent Bishop to me, getting me out of the ABI building intact. If Mariana weren’t just chilling in my living room for the second time today, though, everything would be roses.

  “I thought I told you to stay away from him,” Mariana growled, her gaze not meeting mine but staring at Bishop and my interlaced fingers. Even in my haste to get in here, I hadn’t let go of his hand.

  “And I thought I told you to fuck off and die. Seems like neither of us are getting what we want.” My words were ballsy, but I was under no illusion that they wouldn’t come without consequences. Mariana had already threatened literally every single person I held dear in my life. But that was a tougher act to turn into a reality when she’d just been attacked on her home turf.

  My father snorted out a laugh and surreptitiously scratched his nose with his middle finger. It took all the decorum I possessed not to bust up laughing right on the spot.

  “Please tell me you at least saved the files you were working on,” Mariana huffed as she crossed her arms over her chest.

  Defensive much?

  I stared at her blankly. No, “I’m glad you got out okay.” No, “What took you so long to get here?” No, “This is what happened.” All she gave a shit about was the files that I miraculously managed to smuggle out of the ABI building while we were under supposed fire.

  A sinking feeling settled in my stomach, but I was thrilled I had the mother of all poker faces. Listening to ghosts day in and day out, you learned not to react to anything. I was a motherfucking pro.

  My desire to keep what I knew to myself was only increased by the pale visage of Hildy hiding in the mouth of my hallway, out of Mariana’s eye line. Hildy put a finger to his lips and shook his head.

  “Files?” I asked. “What files?”

  Mariana shot out of her seat. “You know damn well what files. The murder cases I was having you investigate. Where are they?”

  I gave her an innocent shrug. “I don’t have them.”

  It was true; I didn’t have the files. Bishop did. But she didn’t need to know that.

  Mariana’s eyes bled from blue to black, the inky color taking over the sclera. My solid wood coffee table went flying without her touching it, slamming into the wall before breaking to pieces. She walked through the newly open space, her black eyes piercing me to the spot.

  “I know you had them, Darby,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I know you took them. Where. Are. They?”

  With my hand still in Bishop’s, he yanked me behind him and faced off against my mother.

  “She doesn’t have them,” he growled, no longer the subservient agent he’d been this morning.

  Her eyebrows raised in answer before she began to laugh. “I bet you’ve been doing that all day, haven’t you? Protecting her. Don’t you know by now that she doesn’t need you to? Don’t you know by now that she could take our lives in the blink of an eye? You stupid child.”

  “She doesn’t have them,” he repeated, refusing to move. Sure, he was telling her the truth, but I didn’t want him to be on the chopping block, either.

  “Why do you need them?” I asked, threading calm i
nto my voice. De-escalation was a skill of mine, even if it likely wouldn’t work here.

  Mariana’s black gaze moved from Bishop to me. “The file room was raided in the attack. The record keeper was killed, and the case files burned. I’ve been locked out of the system. So, I’ll ask again. Where are they?”

  “Kevin?” I squeaked, a wave of despair hitting me square in the chest at the thought of the messy clerk. I didn’t look to Mariana for confirmation, either. I cast my gaze to Sarina.

  I hadn’t noticed before, but Sarina was cuddling one of my pillows, and someone had placed a whole box of Kleenex in her lap. The floor at her feet was littered with used tissues. Sarina had to have known that Kevin had a crush on her, and the poor girl was beating herself up about it.

  “Who gives a shit about a lowly record keeper?” Mariana growled. “Where are the fucking files?”

  A flicker of spectral gray caught my eye before I heard a welcomed Irish accent.

  “I think that’s about enough.”

  11

  The burr of Hildy’s words hit the whole room like a slap. Cane in hand, his solid form glided through my living room quicker than lightning.

  Mariana’s spine went straight, her entire body practically frozen before she slowly turned to the sound of her father’s voice. “Well, look who decided to show up. I’ve been calling you all day.”

  Hildy’s face seemed to solidify even further as his expression went from irritation to something akin to rage. “I don’t answer to you, daughter. I never have.”

  Mariana scoffed. “You made that quite clear, haven’t you?”

  While the pair of them faced off, Bishop and I moved farther into the room, circling the back of the couch before my living room turned into a grave talker fight night.

  “Oh, because I didn’t make her like you and your siblings? Because I didn’t turn her into a ruthless fecking harpy like you?” Hildy shot back, the rage in his voice seeming to make his presence on this plane more and more real. “I prepared her for a different world, Mariana. One with just a little bit of compassion and thoughtfulness. If you wanted her to be a copy of you, maybe you should have raised Darby yourself rather than grasping for power.”

  Hildy’s skull cane, with its glowing eyes, grew brighter, his rage or maybe his pull of the power in it, shining bright for all the world to see.

  Mariana scoffed, a derisive snort as she gestured to his cane. “Grasping for power. That’s real rich coming from you. You know they still whisper about you in the halls when they think I can’t hear. About how my father commanded the armies that decimated the ghoul invasion of Ireland. About how the French shifters cower to this day when they hear your name. About how you urged armies of dead soldiers into rages, winning even after their death. And you shame me for wanting a name for my own?”

  “I do when you can’t see what you’re doing to the world around you,” Hildy protested, shaking his head. “You put your own daughter in prison for an act that you yourself should have prevented. You punished her for a death she was owed. You threaten her family and friends, her allies, not because you worry she’ll level a city or kill hundreds of people, but because she needs to learn her place in your eyes. You may have birthed her, but you’re no mother, Mariana. I thought you were spoiled before, but it wasn’t until today that I have been ashamed to call you my daughter.”

  The laugh that escaped Mariana’s mouth was a thing of nightmares. “Do you honestly believe I give a shit what you think of me? Do you think I give a shit what anyone thinks of me? You might not realize this, but I’m trying to keep me and mine breathing. Anything after that is merely a bonus.”

  I wondered who her people were because she sure as hell didn’t care about the agent who lost his life today. All she cared about were the records that Bishop had in his backpack.

  “Tell me why you want them,” I interjected, their familial standoff less important than people actually fucking dying. “You obviously think the people who broke in were after what you sent me to find, so why don’t you come clean? You gave me a bullshit timeline and nothing to go on. Cough up some answers, or so help me, you will come to understand what I can actually do when I’m no longer amused.”

  Because something told me she didn’t have the base she might have had this morning. She didn’t have backup. And without a whole fucking agency at her back, Mariana didn’t have shit, and she sure as hell didn’t have leverage.

  Not over me.

  Mariana’s red lips curled into a snarl, and Sarina smartly snagged the arm of both my father and Jimmy, hauling them off the couch and out of harm's way. J was already up and away, years of being on the force training enough. Then there wasn’t a couch in between her and me anymore, the oversized sofa sliding into the wall, so Mariana had a clear path to me.

  I didn’t let Bishop pull me clear this time, either. No, I pushed him out of the way, my palms lighting up like Christmas. “If you want to do this, we can. Or you can get your shit together, stop destroying my stuff, and start talking. Either way, you aren’t throwing your weight around. Not in my house. Not without consequences.”

  Facing off against my mother, I hadn’t realized that even with heels, she wasn’t nearly as tall as I was. It probably shouldn’t have made me smile, but it did.

  “It’s your call,” I taunted, practically begging her to do one more stupid thing so I could knock her dumb ass into next week. Or the next life. I hadn’t decided.

  Mariana blinked once, twice, then a third time before her eyes faded from black back to their standard blue. It didn’t matter the color change, the expression on her face could have lit a dumpster on fire. “You want to know what I’ve been trying to keep under wraps? You want all the details? Fine.”

  That “fine” was more gritted teeth than anything else.

  But it would do.

  “You have got to be shitting me,” I muttered, rubbing my temples for the fifth time. My mother had to be full of shit or yanking my chain or the absolute dumbest dumb bitch to ever grace the planet. “In all your vast intelligence and covert knowledge, you had me dig in the goddamn archives when you knew someone was watching these specific files?”

  I asked for clarification because Jesus, Lord in heaven she was practically begging me to kill her. Either that, or she wanted me dead for real. Given her current attitude, it was really dealer’s choice.

  “I told you already,” she said for the third time, “I didn’t know if they were watching me or the files themselves.”

  “So, you used your daughter as bait?” Jimmy—who had been silent up until now—piped up.

  Jimmy, J, and my father had been in the middle of planning a little welcome home party when Sarina arrived at my house with Mariana in tow. I could tell Sarina hadn’t wanted my mother to follow her, but she really couldn’t do a thing about it.

  “Is that why you also left her to rot in prison for nine months? To throw them off your scent?” my father accused, spearing Mariana with a glare that had made better people than her wet themselves.

  Mariana was in deep shit—and not just from the people in this room. She’d been working behind the scenes to try and figure out the connection between Tabitha and the Angel of Death. A link that hadn’t seemed to be there at all until she'd started digging. Before I’d taken Tabitha’s life, she might have had an easier time finding out what she wanted to know, but since Tabitha’s soul was toast, that lead was dead and buried.

  It was hard to feel bad about Tabitha—especially since I would also love to know who she was and why she wanted to raise my real father from his prison—but her life hadn’t been more important than the man who raised me.

  “Sounds more like penance if you ask me,” I grumbled before I got up from my perch at the island. Stalking across the room, I snatched Bishop’s abandoned backpack and brought it back to the group at large. “Here are your stupid files, but don’t get your hopes up. It’s the shittiest police work I’ve ever seen. The holes in the medic
al examiner’s report alone are fucking suspect, but the lack of investigation makes me want to scream. The only thing I have to go on is a vague comment from a vamp about how arcaners stay out of Haunted Peak. Which tells me exactly dick.”

  I slapped the files, one by one, on the granite as the threads swirled like a tornado in my brain. This had to be an inside job, right? I mean, even if the cases weren’t conducted by the same agents, there had to be something tying these deaths together.

  I mean, why else would there be an attack on the ABI building just hours after I’d gotten access? Why else would someone set fire to the records room? And why wasn’t there a digital back up? What was this, the ’80s?

  Mariana smiled at me, a genuine one this time and not the snide curl to the lips that made me want to punch her right in her face. “Haunted Peak was built on the bones of arcaners. It’s why I chose it for us to live in the first place. And it’s not about what’s here,” she said. “It’s about what’s missing. Mr. Hanson? Care to see if you can show us?”

  We all turned to Jimmy as a blush rose to his hairline. Self-consciously, he tucked a strand of hair behind his ear to reveal the lone visible feature that identified him as an elf. It was common knowledge—at least to me—that the Fae could see through glamours and around obfuscation spells. But J was out of the Jimmy loop, his eyes going wide at the sight of Jimmy’s pointed ears.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he mumbled, his embarrassment at being outed as an elf nearly killing me. I could practically taste it on my tongue, and it made me want to punch my mother even more than I had before, and I hadn’t thought that was possible.

  I shot her a glare, but she was focused on Jimmy, my gentle giant of a friend, who in no way should be pulled into this mess.