A uniformed officer with the Seattle PD recognized her and held up the caution tape for her to pass under. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem, Detective.” He grinned at her, rolling his eyes. “The Feds have swooped in and taken over already.”
“I know. They called me in to assist.” She shrugged, not returning the smile. She’d found that offering too much familiarity at work caused problems in the male-dominated world of law enforcement. After the cracks everyone had made about her dress last night, she definitely wasn’t thawing out anytime soon.
She met Merek outside the door of a neat little Victorian cottage. He did not look happy to see her. She arched her eyebrows at him.
“You rang, dear?”
“Shut up.” Merek snorted and rubbed a hand down his face. His blond hair was mussed and his gray eyes bloodshot. “This one reminds me of something you described once. From back when you first became a cop. Looks like the same M.O.”
She sipped her coffee, considered offering him some, but then rejected that thought. She might like Merek more than any other partner she’d worked with, but this was coffee. A girl had to have her priorities. “For a man who’s supposed to be enjoying his wedding night, you look wrecked.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He gestured to the house. “I don’t want you here.”
“Why?” She walked around him and headed inside, following the trail of cops to a bedroom. The hallway was a bloody mess, so she figured whatever had taken place in the bedroom wasn’t going to be pretty. Tess was beside the bed, collecting evidence. She bent to pick something up, blocking Selina’s view.
When the redhead shifted out of the way, Selina got a good look at the body, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach. It was like taking a hammer blow to the chest. Her heart stopped, and her lungs seized. Blood, death, destruction. She swayed on her feet and had to grab the doorjamb to remain upright. Not because she’d never seen anything this gruesome before, but because she’d seen this before. Memories swamped her, overlaying the picture in front of her. Only it wasn’t some nameless victim, it was Bess. The younger cousin whom Selina had helped raise, who had danced with so much boundless joy at her wedding, who had grown up to become her confidante, her closest friend.
Selina’s stomach revolted, and for a moment, she was certain she was going to vomit. Acid bile burned its way up her throat, tears stung her eyes, and her fingers tightened on the door frame, her nails scoring the wood. Oh, gods. Oh. Gods.
Bess’s killer was back. It had been decades since she’d been murdered, and now he was back.
“You know why I don’t want you here,” Merek growled behind her.
His words slapped her back to reality, and a frosty numbness began to harden within her. It was almost a relief. At least it was familiar. She’d felt this numbness, this nothing, since Bess had died. Since she’d failed to catch the killer. That still had the power to rip open a hole in her soul. Her cousin’s murderer had never been caught. It had been her case, and she had failed when it meant the most.
So, yeah, she knew why Merek didn’t want her here, and he also knew why she had to be here. For Bess. Selina glanced at her former partner. He didn’t want her here because his visions had been predicting this for quite some time. This was going to be the case that killed her. Her very long life was going to hit its inevitable end. He hadn’t known specific details, just that she would die on the job. Soon. And it would be a bloody, gory exit for her.
“Yeah, New Orleans. The serial killer who got away from me thirty years ago. It’s funny how things come full circle.” She huffed out a small laugh, even as icy fingers gripped her heart. The same iciness that had frozen her since she’d seen her baby cousin sprawled across a bed, tortured by iron, drained of all blood, and marked by black magic.
“You don’t have to get involved.” Merek crossed his arms, looking big and rough and intimidating.
She cut him the kind of glance reserved for simpletons. “And let the bastard get away, knowing I could have done something this time? No. You know I have to be involved. This is me. I don’t walk away, and I sure as hell don’t back down.”
Not once in four hundred plus years. It had gotten her into a lot of trouble before, too, and she still didn’t back down. She figured at this point in her life, she was too damn old to go changing habits now. And even if she wanted to—this evil bloodsucker had killed Bess. No. There was no walking away from this.
He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t like this.”
“You don’t have to like it, Kingston. It is what it is.” She’d had a nagging feeling in the back of her mind for over a year now. Huge change was coming, looming over her like some creeping, insidious shadow. The end of life as she knew it. All of it would be over. She’d heard that older Magickals could often sense when the finish line drew near, and this was it. She’d come to accept it, even if Merek hadn’t. Then again, the control freak in him didn’t like that he couldn’t save everyone. He’d get over it eventually. There were some things that could be controlled, and others not so much. Death was not one of those things. It had come for Bess far too soon.
Selina sighed, shaking her head at him. “If one of us shouldn’t be here, it’s you. You’re supposed to be leaving on your honeymoon. Don’t let this hold you back.”
“Cavalli wanted me to get a read on this before I skipped town, so I came by. All my precognition showed me when I got here was you.” He swallowed hard. “Dead.”
A chill went though her at that one simple word. She’d known it, but it was one thing to see a live bomb, and a whole different thing to be holding the bomb in her hands. It hit her once again.
Boom.
Here it was. This was it. The case that would end all cases. Also the case that had stolen the last person she had ever loved, the last person in her family who’d given a damn about her. Now they were all gone, whether they loved her or loathed her. Some lines had flourished over the centuries, but not the Graysons. Selina was the last, and there would be no more after her. If she could give her cousin’s afterlife a little peace before she went, she’d take it and be grateful for the chance to get some justice for all this bastard’s victims.
Including herself, it seemed.
She cleared her throat, casting about for something else to talk about. “Chloe is a very understanding woman for letting the FBI interrupt her wedding night.”
He grinned, his face relaxing for the first time since she’d arrived. “I’ll make it up to her later.”
“You do that. Now tell me what you know.”
4
Jack was here.
Of course he was. He was on the MCU, why wouldn’t he be here? Somehow Selina hadn’t considered seeing him in a professional capacity. It ruined a little of the carefree sexual glamour of the night before. Then again, any reminder of this old case wasn’t likely to put her in the mood. She kept her face free of expression when he stepped in from the hallway and looked at her. From across a dead body.
“Agent Laramie.”
His blue eyes were even more brilliant in the light of day, the color pale as a laser beam and just as incisive as he stared at her. A little smile kicked up the corner of his mouth, and it kicked her heart rate up a notch. “Detective Grayson. Nice to see you again.”
Since other people were in the room with them, she merely nodded. Clearing her throat, she glanced at Merek. “You were saying?”