Remainders: Blood & Bone Series 3.5 Read online

  “We were involved in a new age group in college.”

  “And more recently?”

  “We don’t do anything illegal.”

  “I wasn’t trying to imply that you do. I’m just trying to get a clear picture of Ms Shepherd and what kind of people she may have come into contact with.”

  “She read fortunes. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “Where? For money?”

  “For fundraisers at the school mostly. As a favor. And with other members of the group. And at parties.”

  “How accurate would you say she was?”

  Wallace barked a disbelieving laugh. “What do you mean? It’s tarot cards. Like the Zodiac, it’s just for fun. A party trick to entertain people.”

  “Did Ms Shepherd consider it a party trick?”

  The other woman shrugged. “We’re not witches, Detective.”

  “Did she ever give someone a reading they didn’t like?”

  “I don’t know. Why would she?”

  “So, you think she just made things up?”

  “I don’t know. Why are you asking me this?”

  Sabira closed her notebook. “Context. I appreciate your taking the time to meet with me.”

  “That’s it?” Wallace demanded.

  “Is there anything else you can think of that I’d find helpful?”

  “I’m not the detective.” She pushed angrily out of her seat and pitched her coffee on the way out the front door.

  Sabira sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Back in her car she sifted through the Jankowski file for a next of kin number and dialed. She had a couple of questions she hoped Mrs Jankowski’s grandchildren could answer better than Amanda Wallace had about her friend.

  Chapter 6

  Sabira Mallory

  Back at the station later that afternoon, Sabira collected her messages from the front desk including:

  “Oh, Detective Mallory, about that notice request. I found a case that might match your description,” Sergeant Kyeong said.

  “Did you pull the file?”

  “It’s not one of ours. Came out of Snoqualmie yesterday. I know you said Seattle, but…”

  “No, I’ll take anything. Got a name of the officer in charge?”

  Kyeong handed over a pink slip with a phone number, telephone extension, and two names. “The bottom one’s the detective,” he explained.

  “I owe you one.”

  “Only if it matches.”

  Sabira smiled and thanked him. She called the number and spoke to Snoqualmie Police Detective Dorsett for a couple of minutes before the other detective agreed to send along what case details she had.

  “There isn’t much,” Dorsett said. “Just a body and not a whole lot of blood.”

  “Sounds like what I’ve been investigating.”

  “I’ll email you the file before I leave tonight. Good enough?”

  “I would appreciate it.”

  Sabira rolled a white board out of the storage closet and over to her desk, positioning it behind her chair to create a little walled off area from the rest of the bullpen. Hopefully it would serve to discourage Bukowski from making anymore overtures on her time. And then she started sticking up the images from both case files, lining them up next to each other to confirm that they looked as similar in the flesh—so to speak—as they had in her memory. Except for the victims’ different ages, the bedroom scenes were nearly identical. No sign of sexual sadism or contact. No excess blood spilled. No fingerprints. No DNA evidence that didn’t match the victims or, in the case of Miriam Jankowski, her grandchildren who lived with her.

  An hour later, her phone lit up with an email alert. Sabira ran off the images on the printer and added them to her white board. The third victim was male, David Cohen, young, according to Dorsett only nineteen. He’d lived with roommates in a lower income apartment and attended the local community college where he was getting an AA. He’d died in the middle of the day, no one else had been home. One of his roommates had found his body still warm.

  “How warm can you be with all your blood drained?” she mused.

  Mallory made a couple of calls to the numbers for Cohen’s roommates, frustrated when none of them picked up, and left voicemails requesting they call her back at their earliest convenience. Just before six, she decided to call it a night and go home.

  At a stoplight about a mile from her apartment, her eyes caught on the glowing tip of a cigarette from a pedestrian smoking. Her thoughts flicked to Roberto Ramirez, and she gave a brief thought to whether he might know any of her victims since both of the women had been involved in the occult, before dismissing the idea. What the hell would a dark side vapor magician have to do with a middle age tarot reader or a polish grandmother who read palms at a farmer’s market on the weekends? She was tired and thinking in circles, so desperate for a connection that she was willing to go looking in ridiculous places to find it. Sabira knew that kind of thinking was dangerous. The second a detective lost sight of their perspective, they lost their objectivity.

  It almost wasn’t a surprise to find Grace already at her apartment, perched on the kitchen counter reading something on her phone with the oven hood whirring softly.

  “Hey,” she said, leaping to her feed and setting down her phone.

  Sabira might have appreciated the way the werewolf always seemed ready to give her her full attention if she hadn’t had a headache from the case and more confusion about what game Grace thought she was playing with the two of them. She shrugged out of her coat and threw it over the edge of the counter, turned and met Grace who had slipped right up into her personal space with a wide grin, showing just a hint of teeth that felt dangerous to Sabira.

  “Hi,” Grace said again, fidgeting with her hands until she reached out without warning and squeezed Sabira’s arm, her hand lingering for a second before she let go. “How goes the detecting?”

  “Slowly. You let yourself in.”

  “Sorry. I still have your spare key, I figured you wouldn’t mind if I came with food in the oven.”

  Sabira gave her a long look. “You’re hungry after that lunch?”

  Grace barked a laugh. She’d feel stupid thinking of it like that, a bark, like she were a dog, except that’s what it sounded like to Sabira as she watched Grace bustle around the kitchen, pulling out plates and glasses and little foil covered dishes from the hot oven, cursing and blowing on her fingertips as they blistered and glowed red and then began to heal all in the span of a couple heartbeats. Sabira felt the blood rush in her ears.

  “You want to wash your hands? Change into something more comfortable?”

  “Sure,” she said quietly, going through the motions of taking off her work clothes and trying to shake that image of the werewolf in her kitchen like she belonged there, like she lived in the apartment too, like she had always been a part of Sabira’s space. Her stomach felt sort of swoopy as she left her bedroom and joined Grace on the sofa. The blonde scooted over until their thighs were pressed together and handed her a plate piled high with baked ziti and garlic bread, roasted broccoli and cauliflower in a colorful mountain next to the noodles.

  “Looks good. Did you make it?”

  Grace shook her head, already digging in. “Stole it from my parents. Dad always cooks before a full moon run.”

  “Should you be here?”

  “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “That’s not what I meant. The packs run together, don’t they?”

  “I’ll go over later. When we’ve eaten.”

  Sabira glanced out the balcony door where it was nearly full dark already. She wondered what time the moon would rise.

  “You didn’t want to eat with your pack?”

  “We hardly got any time at lunch.”

  Sabira ate mechanically, her thoughts drifting away from the episode of DS9—a result of Grace bowing to her tastes or had she converted the wolf to the show? Sabira couldn’t decide—playing and focused distress
ingly on the where the other woman’s body heat soaked through jeans and cotton pajama bottoms and seemed to lodge itself in Sabira’s throat until she had to work to choke down her vegetables.

  “What are we doing?” she asked, setting her half-empty plate down on the table with a clatter. Sabira reached for a glass of water and drained half of it before she turned to meet Grace’s worried look. “What is this? I thought I knew, but then you thought Colin Farrell was hot so I assumed you were straight, but this… This is way more than friends. I don’t have a whole of them, but I know that much.”

  Grace’s mouth dropped open, fingers clenched around the edge of her own plate until it creaked ominously. She set it down, her shoulders rising and falling fast with her breath. “He is hot… Do you want me to go?”

  Sabira bit back an incredulous laugh. “I wouldn’t have said you could come over in the first place if I hadn’t meant it.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Grace demanded, turning to her.

  Her bottom lip looked full and damp from where she’d worried at it and Sabira couldn’t stop herself before she reached out with both hands, cupping either side of Grace’s face, tilting it up until their lips brushed together. Her eyes fell closed as she pressed into the other woman’s warm, tomatoey breath and sighed, deepened the kiss as she felt Grace’s mouth start to part under hers. In the next moment, she felt the werewolf’s hands close down on her biceps and shove her away. Sabira stared into Grace’s wide-eyed face, watched the color drain away so fast it left her looking sickly under the low lights. And then Grace was off the couch, jamming her feet in her unlaced boots and the door had slammed shut behind her.

  This time, Sabira let the laugh rip its way out of her throat. Her temple pounded with a tension headache, her heart beat triple time, and she felt unhinged in a way she hadn’t since… Since she didn’t know when.

  “Bugger,” she said to the empty apartment, slumping down into the worn IKEA cushions on her couch.

  #

  Grace Clanahan

  Grace ran, and then she kept running. She ran as the wolf rose up inside her, baying for a release that she—

  “Fuck,” she swore, gasping for breath, she should go back for her car. She shouldn’t be driving. She stared around the street trying to figure out where she was in relation to where she wanted to be. And wasn’t that the question? Where the fuck did she want to be? With her mouth still stinging from that kiss. It had hardly been a kiss, a brush, a soft meeting of lips and—she shuddered and straightened up—and tongues, and Sabira Mallory’s warm breath slipped straight into her own mouth.

  “FUCK!” she growled and listened to someone a block over swear back at her, making her blush even harder.

  Grace ran and she didn’t stop running until her lungs burned, skin slick with sweat, and the moon had risen high over her head.

  She wasn’t gay, it repeated in a mantra in her head. Not that there was anything wrong with being gay. For fucks sake, her own brother was—something, gay or maybe just Ethan Ellison-sexual—but that didn’t mean that she was… She’d been in love with Adam, or nearly in love. Could have been in love with. He could have been her mate; she’d thought he might have been. But then, if he had, would she really be here describing her aborted feelings for him as “nearly almost could-have-fucking-been?”

  Grace growled in frustration and ran harder. She ran all the way to Myrtle Beach, stripped off her clothes and left them on top of her father’s hatchback and left her wolf out in one smooth rippling move that left her on four legs, reddish brown fur bristling against the cool autumn air. And then she ran again, heading north where she could hear the distant yips and barks of her pack.

  Chapter 7

  Sabira Mallory

  She couldn’t think about that disastrous dinner. Sabira slept fitfully and woke up in a foul mood, barked her shin against the edge of her bed, and snarled at the barista when she fudged her coffee order. And then immediately felt like a heel and went back to the register to slip another dollar in the tip jar. She was so focused on not thinking about the kiss, she arrived in Snoqualmie without really noticing. She went by the police station to talk to Dorsett first.

  Detective Dorsett looked surprised to see her—she was a petite pale-skinned woman in her mid-thirties with lines around her eyes and the edges of her mouth—but brought out her files to go over everything again.

  “Any indication that Cohen was involved with the occult? Or the supernatural sector?”

  “We don’t get a whole lot of that out here, this far from the city.”

  “It’s that far.”

  Dorsett squinted at her. “Where are you from, Detective Mallory?”

  “I grew up in Seattle. But I was born in Oxford, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Oxford. In England, really?”

  “Yes, in England. Your point?”

  “Just curious. You look like you’re a long way from home.”

  Sabira bit her tongue and kept her expression schooled to bland politeness. She felt anything but on inside, irritated and ready to jump out of her skin, and her coffee had hardly done anything for her headache, but getting visibly upset wouldn’t do her any favors. She knew what she looked like, a Middle Eastern transplant of some kind or another with a fancy accent she’d never quite lost despite living nearly twenty years in America. She didn’t need to be reminded how out of place she appeared in a relatively white, affluent county with a police badge clipped to her belt.

  “Cohen?” she prompted.

  “Dunno,” Dorsett said, “Didn’t think to ask. If there are any supernaturals living out here they keep a low profile, and we like it that way. Let the city keep the packs, we don’t want to deal with them.”

  “Seems like they’d enjoy the space. All the fresh air.”

  Dorsett shrugged. “Who knows what the hell werewolves or vampires like. You think our young Mr Cohen got himself mixed up with a dangerous crowd?”

  “Someone wanted to kill him. Just following a hunch.”

  “Well, why don’t I leave you to that. I’ve got work to do.”

  Sabira said a stilted goodbye and left, driving over to Cohen’s apartment. She was surprised when someone answered her knock, a young man who couldn’t have been much older than the victim.

  “Good morning, my name is Detective Sabira Mallory. Do you mind if I ask you a couple questions?”

  She perched awkwardly on the ratty arm chair across from their sofa and watched Cohen’s roommate fidget.

  “You’re not in trouble,” she said.

  The young man, he’d introduced himself as Perry, looked up and shook his head. “I found his body.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “What do you want?”

  Sabira asked her questions and watched Perry think about them, staring at the wall. He was silent for so long that she’d almost given up on an answer when his shoulders twitched violently.

  “It’s weird that you should ask. I don’t know about this occult stuff, Dave wasn’t a fortune teller or anything like that, but he… Sometimes he would do stuff, it was just weird…”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like, frying his cellphone? Growing herbs out back?”

  “He was a gardener?” Sabira struggled to follow Perry’s train of thought.

  “Do you know gardeners up here who can get rosemary to grow in December?”

  “Ah.”

  “I always kind of thought he might be magic. Not that his family would have realized it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Hasidic. He was estranged.”

  “But you think he might have some natural magical ability?”

  Perry shrugged. “There’s more. There was this girl, real pretty, she came up to him at the bar a couple nights ago.”

  Sabira waited.

  “I know what you’re thinking, whats strange about that? Nothing. I just…the name she gave Dave wasn’t the one on her license.”

&
nbsp; “That’s certainly odd, but not necessarily incriminating.”

  “Except she kept asking him about magic too. Like your questions.”

  “Can you describe her for me? As many details as you can remember.”

  Sabira copied Perry down word-for-word and thanked him. Then, with no other leads, she went to the bar he’d mentioned and asked the bartender if he recognized anyone matching the young woman’s description.

  “Sure, I’ve seen her here a couple of times.”

  “Does she have any friends? Talk to anyone? Go home with anyone?”

  The bartender shrugged. “Pretty girl like that, she’s always blowing them off.”

  “Is she from around here?”

  He folded his arms on the bar and gave Sabira a once over. “Are you? Look, detective, you want my guess? Blonde hair with pink and blue streaks? Fake ID? She’s just a college kid trying to pull the wool over my eyes. You’ll have better luck checking the UW.”

  “You knew she had a fake ID?”

  That made the slick look slide off the man’s face.

  “I don’t suppose you remember the name she used?”

  He frowned and huffed and said, “Only because it was an odd on: Dierdre something…Eliot? Ellison? Dierdre Ellison.”

  Sabira climbed into her car a couple minutes later and stared out the windshield at the distant mountains rising up out of a purple-grey cloud cover. Dierdre Ellison, why did that name sound familiar?

  And then it hit her.

  “No,” she muttered. “No way. It has to be a coincidence.”

  She shook her head and turned over the engine to head back to the city. She wasn’t going to assume anything until she’d checked official records.

  #

  Grace Clanahan

  Grace stayed in bed, listening to the rest of the pack wake up and trundle downstairs sounding like a herd of stampeding elephants, shouting over the mound of fried meats she could smell wafting out of the kitchen. Her entire body hurt, a bone-deep ache that spoke loudly of strained muscles. It took a hell of a lot to overtax a werewolf’s body, but she’d done her damnedest the night before to get there, running herself into sweaty exhaustion to ensure she passed out when she got back to the house. And she had succeeded in her goal, for what little it was worth.