way I had loved Will. How hard it was, even now, to stop caring completely. Twelve years of loving someone just doesn’t go away overnight, divorce or not.
Something stirred inside me, snaking beneath my skin, wanting release, wanting a fight. I swallowed it back down. “Just back off, okay? I know how you feel about it, but …”
Sometimes words didn’t need to be said aloud to be understood. I could feel him look over at me in shock.
“It
Fine. I turned in my seat. I knew where this was heading but I couldn’t stop myself. “Then why the hell didn’t you say anything? You’re a siren. You can sense shit like that. All that time you had to have known, and you’re going to sit here and lecture me?
So there it was. Finally out in the open. Hank, being an off-worlder, was way more in tune to sensing auras and the taint caused by black crafting. There was no way he had missed sensing it on Will back then. Yet he’d said nothing at the time. Had he told me, maybe that night never would have happened.
“It wasn’t my place.” He kept his eyes focused on the road.
“So first, it’s not your business. And now it is. Which is it, Hank? Because you can’t have it both ways.”
He held up his hands for a second as though he was about to make a point, but then put them back on the steering wheel. He stared ahead for a long moment, and I knew he was trying his hardest to calm down. We were both treading on the edge of an explosive situation if one of us lost it.
A thought occurred to me. “Let me ask you this then: have you sensed it on him since that night?” I certainly hadn’t, and I’d gotten pretty good at detecting the fine, smoky odor since learning of Will’s addiction.
“No.”
“Well, gee, don’t sound so happy about it,” I snapped. I returned to my proper sitting position and folded my arms over my chest. “You could give me a little credit, you know. And Will, too. He’s been clean for eight months, going to therapy once a week, and he’s a good father. So lay off him.”
My hypocrisy was not lost on me. Hank was right and he’d said everything that I’d pretty much said to Will earlier. Yet here I was taking up for Will. I knew Will was clean, and I knew it was his addiction that had caused all the trouble in our marriage. But it didn’t erase the hurt and the deep sense of betrayal I still felt.
Hank didn’t respond, and I let the subject drop.
Talking about Will gave me a rush of nervous energy. Usually a long run or a good workout put me back to rights, but there wasn’t exactly time for that. And I hated being on the outs with my partner. So, in typical fashion, I changed the subject to redirect my energy toward something I could better control. “So what do you know about the two Houses of Charbydon? Astarot and Abaddon.”
Hank took the ramp to the highway, which wasn’t the fastest way to get back to the station.
Focusing on work, on the investigation, was where we needed to put our concentration, not on bickering about the past. He seemed to agree, because his shoulders relaxed a little and his grip loosened on the steering wheel. “Not much. They’ve been at war for centuries. Mostly political, but they’ve gone to the battlefield many times over the years. The Astarots blame the Abaddons for causing their moon to fade, among other things.”
“How do you cause a moon to fade?”
“Not sure—pollution? Someone messing with the alignment, who knows? Their moon is like the sun is to our planet. It’s different than the moon here, stronger, brighter, bigger … And now it’s dying.”
“That’s what Auggie meant.” I chewed on the straw for a few seconds, and then put the cup back down. “He didn’t want to go back home. He said it was dark, too dark, that no light shined.”
“Moonlight. The days in Charbydon are said to be blacker than black, a time of rest, but the nights are bright and active.”
I remembered Carreg’s odd words in the limo, and now I realized what he’d meant. “Both Houses are working together to find a solution. That’s what Carreg was referring to in the limo.”
Hank cast me a knowing glance. “And who best to help them figure it out? Who is the best and brightest scientist this side of the Atlantic?”
“Titus Mott,” we said in unison.
“So Mott Tech is helping them revive their moon. Could be totally unrelated.”
I shook my head. “We’re missing something. We’re missing huge pieces. Don’t you feel it? Mynogan. The jinn. The Motts.
“Well, that’s what we’re here for, kiddo,” Hank said, pulling into a parking spot near the station. “To figure it out. Maybe one of the pieces we’re missing is in Amanda’s backpack.”
“Let’s hope.”
As soon as we stopped, I slid onto the floorboard of the car, knowing the jinn had to be watching the station and the last thing I needed was to be hauled in front of Grigori Tennin. He’d have to wait. Hank set the alarm and then went inside. All he had to do was retrieve Amanda’s backpack from the backseat of my vehicle parked in the lot out back. No one would think anything of it. Sounded simple enough, but with everything that had been going wrong, I had my doubts.
A few minutes later he was back, tossing the backpack into the passenger seat above my head. As soon as he pulled away from the station, I got into the seat and searched the pink-and-black REI backpack.
Notebook. Makeup case. Geology textbook. Glitter pens. Crumpled paper and wrappers.
“Nothing.”
I checked all the front pockets. Empty. Hank parked the car in an open spot near Dewey’s Pub. “Here,” he said, grabbing the pack. He pulled out the books and leafed through them.
I fished around in the trash, hoping for a clue. The first thing I uncrumpled was a piece of notebook paper with a boy’s name written all over it. A gum wrapper … and then a pill wrapper.
“What’s this?” I asked more to myself than Hank. It was one of those individual packets with an indentation that held medicine or gum. “This is like those old square gum packs, like Chiclets.”
“Chic what?”
“Before your time,” I said, examining the packet. The strange thing was there was no brand name written on either side of the paper. I sniffed the inside, surprised to detect a honeysuckle-like scent. There was a perforation line along one edge, as though it had been separated from a bigger pack. No markings or words anywhere.
“This looks just like the other one we found on that vic near Solomon Street.” I passed the wrapper to Hank.
He studied it and then sniffed the inside, his forehead wrinkled in concentration. “Sweet,” he muttered. “Smells like the other one, too. We should get this to the lab. They’ve been dying for another sample.” He let his head fall back against the headrest, completely still, and his eyes closed for a long time. Frowning, he passed it back to me, the blue in his irises turning darker with his frustration. He scrubbed his hands down his face and sighed. “It’s the smell, though. I swear I’ve come across this scent before.”
“Sucks getting old, doesn’t it?”
“Speak for yourself.” He glanced over his shoulder to pull into traffic. “Sirens don’t age.”
“True. You don’t age on the outside, but the mind is another ballpark. Give it a few hundred years more and you’ll be like Doctor Dolittle, attracting all the little birds and creatures of the land.” I wiggled my fingers in the air as though they were little birds, flying toward Hank.
“You’re insane,” he said under his breath.
“And talking to yourself is one of the first signs.”
We stopped at a red light, and he turned to me. “Charlie … I want to apologize for what I said. I—” He stopped me when I went to speak. “Let me finish. I should have said something back then, found some way to tell you. We were still getting to know each other, and I guess, after a while, I convinced myself you knew. So I just ignored it. And you’re right, it’s none of my business now. But watching you die …” A trace of anguish crossed his face, making his eyes dim. The light turned green, and he quickly faced the windshield. “Anyway, for what it’s worth I am sorry.”
A wave of emotion lodged in my throat, and I could only nod as we drove through the intersection. I tucked the wrapper into Bryn’s large pocketbook. “Well, maybe we can lift a print from this.” Most likely not. We’d only get partial prints, if anything. And Amanda’s would be the most prevalent.
