Remainders Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  A Note About the Text

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  REMAINDERS

  A Blood & Bone Novella

  Lia Cooper

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  REMAINDERS. Copyright © 2017 by Lia Cooper. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission.

  Cooper, Lia (2017-10-04). REMAINDERS, A BLOOD & BONE NOVELLA. The Spec Press. Second Edition.

  All rights reserved.

  This novella is a part of a wider universe incorporating The Blood & Bone Series and The Profane Series. It features characters introduced in those books and a passing familiarity with one or both series is suggested before reading this.

  The Profane Series takes place in the same fictional universe as The Blood & Bone Series and can be read as a sister series in either order. You may notice several characters from The Profane Series who were introduced in previous Blood & Bone novels and vice versa.

  In an effort to clear up any confusion, I’ve included a timeline to illustrate the chronological order of the books from both series.

  A very brief timeline of events…

  2011 - August - Adam Sloan murdered (pre-series)

  2012 - April - Patrick Clanahan meets Ethan Ellison in The Duality Paradigm

  2012 - May through June - Events of The Convergence Theory & Medium Rare

  2012 - August - Events of The Symbiotic Law

  2012 - Fall - Events of Vapor Trail followed by Remainders

  2012 - December - Blood & Bone Book Four: A Sanguin Solution (Not yet released)

  2013 - February and beyond: The Profane Series Book 3 TBA

  All published books can be purchased from Amazon.

  Chapter 1

  Late September - 2012 - Sabira Mallory

  Detective Sabira Mallory had a headache. Metaphorically, literally, and every degree in between. That headache stemmed from the existence of one Detective Patrick Clanahan, her erstwhile partner, now in the wind. As Sabira sat at her desk, the same scuffed piece of metal and plywood which had once belonged to her predecessor, the late Adam Sloan, she wondered what goddess she had angered in a past life to be saddled with the irritable Clanahan.

  She snorted at her computer monitor. These days, irritable seemed like the least of Clanahan’s faults, of which, he had proved to be in possession of many.

  Oh, it was an unkind thought that she’d feel ashamed of later, but just then the pain in Sabira’s head—and the metaphorical pain in her arse—won out over a polite or understanding inner monologue.

  A stack of paperwork overflowed from Clanahan’s desk and had begun to encroach on her own tidy workspace. Paperwork that Sabira knew she would have to see about filling out herself now that her partner had disappeared. Not a word of warning spoken to her, no clue or hint that he was planning to go on vacation. She’d wondered the first week if something had happened to the great berk; for what seemed a half second she might have even been concerned, but that was before his mother—Alpha Clanahan, her brain whispered furiously—strolled into the South Precinct to speak to the Captain about her son’s sabbatical.

  The two women were in Captain Augustas’ office still with the blinds closed. She kept her head down, eyes trained on her work email, sifting through the spam and the requisitions and the internal gossip thread for anything urgently requiring her attention. It was better than addressing the physical paperwork. And the whole time, her eyes kept straying back to the Captain’s office, though whether that were out of simple nosiness or because of the young woman sitting in the waiting chair beside the door, Sabira wasn’t entirely certain.

  The young woman was striking, not because of any overt physical beauty—though she wasn’t precisely difficult to look at—but more that her casual attitude shouted Look at me you tense mortals and despair!

  Sabira would have groaned at her thoughts if she’d been alone. As it was, she was left to stare surreptitiously at the other woman—from the top of her strawberry blonde head to the tips of her artfully distressed leather ankle boots and every appealing curve in between—while trying not to give herself away. The young woman had come in with Alpha Clanahan, indubitably a wolf, but Sabira wondered how high in the pack hierarchy she must have been to warrant accompanying the alpha. She seemed young to hold a position of authority, but then Sabira reminded herself that her useless partner was the pack beta, so there was no accounting for age equating to power in the current pack climate.

  Sabira grabbed her empty coffee mug and ducked into the stairwell, took the stairs down one floor, and slipped into the break room just for something to do that wasn’t imagining a name and personality for the pretty werewolf upstairs. The disgusting coffee helped take the edge off her headache, the physical one at least, and she returned to her desk with a sigh of relief.

  It was short lived.

  #

  Grace Clanahan

  Grace Clanahan felt as though she were back in high school and sitting outside the principal’s office, even though for once she hadn’t been the delinquent one in the family. Patty had spent so many damned years being the perfect child, the quiet, hard working, career focused, angst ridden, broody one, just enough emotional distress to dig out a soft spot in Mom’s heart without ever breaking it; so of course the moment he did something unexpected it wasn’t something normal like dying his hair blond or getting a tattoo. No, he decided to bond to a wizard and then flee the country.

  A part of Grace hadn’t stopped screaming in delight since she’d heard the news. It was also the only thing that could have led her to sitting here, feeling sixteen again while her mother talked to Pat’s police captain: sheer delight at her brother’s absurd display and the overwhelming desire to watch it play out from the front row.

  That and Teagan had offered to drive her over to the car dealership when she was done talking to Pat’s boss.

  She slouched in the uncomfortable chair she’d been given and surreptitiously watched the only female officer in Major Crimes get up and walk out of the room. Grace stretched out her cramping legs, reached over her head to crack her spine and then settled back. It took no effort at all to train her supernatural hearing on the conversation going on in the office. Drawn blinds did nothing to muffle the sound, a fact that surprised her. Seemed careless not to put more soundproofing inside a police station, but as she was currently the beneficiary of this lack in human foresight, Grace was more interested in exploiting it than pointing the issue out to anyone. She tuned back in just in time to hear the reserved Captain Jordan Augustus swear and call her brother and his not-partner, Ethan Ellison, by a few choice, unprofessional names.

  Grace bit her lip to keep her glee inside. She’d call Patty a few choice, unprofessional names herself if she had to deal with his bullshit on a professional level. Which brought her thoughts around once more to the lad
y detective, now making her way back across the bull pen while balancing a steaming cup of coffee in one hand.

  On a good day, Grace couldn’t be bothered to follow the intricacies of Pat’s job, and that was assuming he ever felt the need to share more than what she dug out of him in her moments of sisterly concern. Ever since Adam’s murder, the thrill of having a detective cop for an older brother just hadn’t held quite the same…well, thrill as it used to for her.

  She’d never met Ethan Ellison, and she wasn’t entirely clear on whether he and Patty were supposed to be working together or not, but she did know that he got under her brother’s skin like no one she’d ever seen before—though, to be clear, she’d technically only seen the aftereffects of the guy’s influence. Grace suspected that their in person sparkage might be seriously dangerous.

  But after a half hour listening in as her mother and the police Captain discussed the two men, she’d worked out enough to realize that they weren’t official partners anymore. Augustus kept referring to a Detective Mallory, a name Grace had never heard Pat mention before, but whose desk was easy enough to find—all she had to do was look for the tidy island next to the whirlwind mess covering her brother’s work area—it seemed his house wasn’t the only thing Pat had forgotten to keep clean over the last couple of months.

  Now, she watched this Mallory chick sit back down in her chair with a suppressed sigh, staring disconsolately at her computer. From across the room, Grace could just make out the bold black print across her mug:

  “There’s coffee in that nebula.”

  And it made a smile steal across her face.

  Another check on the conversation going on behind her confirmed that the two women had moved onto negotiations about how to spin her brother’s situation so that he’d still have a job to come back to whenever he decided to, well, come back. Boring.

  Grace slid out of her chair and wandered over to Pat’s desk. She sat in his chair, spun it around, and waited for Detective—Sabira, that’s what her nameplate said, now that Grace could read the whole thing—Mallory to acknowledge her.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  Grace felt a little taken aback as the moment when Sabira Mallory should have looked up, smiled, and acknowledged her stretched into something that left an awkward kernel developing in the pit of her stomach. It was not that Grace often felt the need to demand the attention of a room, not as the younger sibling in a house full of werewolves, more that she rarely found it difficult to grab the eyes of any humans in her vicinity. Privately, she liked to call it animal magnetism, with tongue firmly in cheek. But whatever else could be said for her, Detective Mallory appeared oblivious to Grace’s attention.

  Unacceptable. Though she might have stopped to consider why exactly that was so unacceptable to her, Grace rolled the computer chair around the desk until she could catch Sabira Mallory’s eye and said with a sly grin, “Well, Kirk or Picard?”

  And that’s when she got a close look at the police woman, as she looked up with wide dark eyes that blinked once or twice at Grace. She had medium colored skin and dark, glossy hair that looked nearly black, pulled away from her face in a high sleek ponytail that a younger Grace would have felt envious of. It was true that in her teens she’d been prone to gingery frizziness that had only calmed down in the last couple of years. But Sabira Mallory’s hair practically gleamed under the harsh fluorescent lights, like black gold that just begged for you to run your fingers through it.

  Of course, anyone with such severe brows and a delightful frown would never have submitted to allowing a stranger to touch their hair.

  “It’s Janeway,” the police woman replied with a tone full of scorn that Grace could have sworn actually stung.

  Now it was her turn to sit up straight, to blink, to process what she meant and then to blush, suddenly, from forehead to neck, in horrific embarrassment as her gaff hit her. Oh, Grace had thought she was being clever there for a whole half a second, when in fact—

  “Right, right, Janeway,” she mumbled, unable to meet Sabira Mallory’s sharp gaze.

  And then to add insult to fuck-up, the other woman said, “Picard drank tea.”

  “No, I knew that.”

  “Sure.”

  Grace darted a look towards the Captain’s office, but her werewolf hearing was good enough to confirm her mother was no where near ready to leave yet, so she was stuck here with her embarrassment. She decided to ride it out, there was no way of recovering.

  “I’m Grace,” she said, offering her hand. “Patrick’s my brother.”

  And finally, that got the other woman’s attention.

  #

  Sabira Mallory

  Sabira shook the pretty blonde’s hand and silently debated whether to curse her partner for being a flake or thank him for being related to someone who looked that cute when she was flustered. Flustered because she’d recognized a Star Trek quote when she saw one, but not well enough to place it in the correct series. Still, Sabira gave her mental props for the first part, and then felt a little ridiculous for being charmed. Just because a girl can pick out a Star Trek quote and smile at you doesn’t mean she’s a lesbian too.

  She pulled her hand back and asked, because she was dying from the curiosity and not a small amount of lingering irritation, “So, what brings you and Alpha Clanahan to the station?”

  Grace’s smile returned in a flash of soft pink lips and the hint of a dimple near the corner of her mouth. “Oh, I’m just here for the free entertainment.”

  “Excuse me?” Sabira asked, freezing.

  “Patty’s made a real mess everything.”

  “You think so?” Sabira asked faintly. The pleasure of a pretty face to look at dimmed somewhat compared to the stack of work overflowing from Patrick’s desk to her own.

  Grace shrugged. “I mean, it’s not every day my stick-up-his-ass brother soulbonds to a wizard. I’m telling you, Pat’s taken this drama to a whole new level.”

  Sabira struggled to find words. Her entire mind felt as though it had been wiped clean, like a car windshield that Grace had just run a squeegee across. She spluttered, and she knew it wasn’t an attractive look, but there was no better word for it. She spluttered and repeated, “Excuse me?” like some kind of broken record.

  That damned dimple deepened, followed by a flash of pink tongue running across Grace Clanahan’s bottom lip.

  “And now the two of them are taking some ridiculous world tour honeymoon.”

  Sabira felt that irritation with her partner surge back up into her throat, hot and tasting like iron. But that might have just been her lip after she bit it.

  Grace blinked, her smile dimming. “Are you okay?” she asked, leaning across Sabira’s desk.

  She pressed her fingers against the sting in her flesh and shook her head. “He’s on honeymoon,” she muttered.

  “Yeah. Mom’s trying to keep him from getting fired.”

  “He’s fortunate to have someone to do that for him.”

  “Well, in Patty’s defense, this is the first time he’s done anything like this in his entire life.”

  Sabira snorted. “You mean he’s not always a raging asshole?” and then bit her lip again. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud, let alone to the man’s sister. She winced, but Grace looked delighted more than offended.

  “I shouldn’t laugh,” Grace murmured, darting a look at Sabira from beneath tawny lashes.

  “Only if it isn’t true,” she offered in return.

  Grace’s eyes crinkled at the corners when she grinned. Again, Sabira gave herself a mental slap.

  “He’s been a beast all summer,” Grace said.

  Sabira covered her amusement by taking a sip of coffee.

  “I was worried he just didn’t like working with me,” she demurred.

  Grace sat forward. “No, not just you. I’ve wanted to knock his teeth in a couple times myself. Do you know the wizard? None of us have met him. Well, except Mom.”
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  Sabira shook her head. “I’m not sure who you mean.”

  “Ethan Ellison? He’s supposedly a cop too.”

  “He’s not in Major Crimes.”

  “So, you don’t.”

  “Sorry.”

  Grace sighed. “Did he tell you he was leaving?”

  “Not a word.”

  Sabira watched the blonde sit up with a start and glance over at the Captain’s office. She cocked her head like she was listening to something, and Sabira realized all at once that she probably was listening in. That “entertainment” she’d mentioned.

  “How is it going in there?” she asked without looking over herself.

  “Does ‘the Walker case’ mean anything to you?”

  Sabira frowned and shook her head.

  Grace threw up her hands. “Then I don’t know.” She tipped her chin at Sabira’s desk. “So, what are you working on?”

  “Paperwork.”

  “I can see that.”

  Grace grabbed her mug out of the blonde’s hands before she could bring it up to her mouth. “Trust me, you don’t want to drink that.”

  “Darling, we’re done here,” a slim, dark haired woman appeared at Grace’s shoulder. She had a carefully blank expression in place.

  Grace leapt out of her chair, threw a lopsided smile at Sabira over her shoulder, and strolled out of the station behind Alpha Clanahan without another word. She left Sabira staring after her, torn between the pleasure she felt at watching Grace’s thighs move in tight worn jeans and a wave of disappointment that rolled over her as the elevator doors closed on the two werewolves.