“I don’t know if I should share intimate details with a part-timer,” he began. “This is real agent work.”
The low-key bullying to return to active duty never ended with Clay. He wouldn’t be happy until we were partners again. But, as I liked to remind him, he already had a partner. He didn’t need another. Our team dynamic worked well for us. Plus, it allowed me to live a somewhat normal life between cases.
Colby deserved to enjoy her endless childhood without the constant reminders of how she came to exist thrown in her face with each new case. I wanted to give her time to forget the darkness. Just for a little while.
“Keep your secrets.” I cut him a smug grin. “Colby will tell me after you leave.”
Clay, to make Colby feel like a valued member of the team while keeping her out of the field as much as possible, decided to teach her how to access the Black Hat Bureau database under my accounts.
She could contact the Kellies. She could download case files. She could make work-related charges to my shiny new black card.
Colby could do anything at my security clearance level. As me. But, for a curious moth, that hadn’t been enough. She dug and dug and dug until she hacked the system. She learned paranoia at my knee, and she had become vigilant when it came to skimming for any blips that mentioned either of us.
I was proud of her. So proud. But hers was a dangerous undertaking for anyone, let alone a kid.
Knowledge was power, and too much power was poison.
“That girl.” He shook his head. “How did you get so lucky?”
“What happened to her was as unlucky as it gets.” I leaned against the truck. “But she…saved me.”
“Don’t give her all the credit.” Clay ruffled my hair. “You had to already be standing on the cliff for her to tip you over the edge.”
For whatever reason, Clay had always believed the best in me. I still didn’t understand it. I was grateful for it, but it confused me then, and it baffled me now. How was he so sure of me? What did he see that I didn’t? And was it real? That was what concerned me the most. If I hadn’t known him pre-Colby, I would have worried he saw me following my Good Person Guide and bought into the act.
“Anyway.” I forced my thoughts back to what mattered. “The case?”
“A kelpie.” He watched the pups snoozing in a pile. “Three towns over.”
Kelpies were ethereal horses, truly gorgeous fae beasts, who lived in bodies of water. They walked the roads near the waterways, tempting the unwary onto their backs. Once they had a rider, they galloped back to their home and drowned their victim before devouring them whole.
They targeted humans. Specifically. Most fae were too smart to fall for their tricks.
“What?” I glared at his phone like it might tell me different. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
Two aquatic fae breeds reported in the same area? Alabama wasn’t exactly a hotbed of fae activity.
“No,” he agreed. “It can’t be.” He frowned. “You understand Samford might get pulled in by proximity?”
Better to be crime scene adjacent than crime scene central. “Do your best to keep our problems quiet?”
“You really have to ask?” He thinned his lips. “You know how kelpies are, though.”
“Spook it in the wrong direction, and we’ll have a kelpie.”
“Exactly.”
Angling toward the daemon, careful to keep stroking his hair, I asked, “Can I see Asa before you go?”
“You smell mad at him.” He snuffled me. “You never mad at me.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said dryly. “Please?”
“Fine,” he huffed but gave himself over to Asa for my sake.
Influence over a daemon of his stature was terrifying for a person raised to hunger for power.
Asa, and his daemon, were temptations in more ways than one.