With a self-satisfied smile, she turned her monitor so I could see the screen. “Check this out.”
I leaned over the desk and skimmed through an agent briefing notice. “Sekka was a Consortium agent?”
She nodded. “I found that in an archived alert file from two months ago. All references to her were wiped from the system the day after you found Jark.”
I stared at the screen. “The day Jark killed Sekka. And now you’re going to tell me who deleted the files.”
Meryl’s eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. “Keeva.”
Keeva followed the rules. She bent them occasionally, but only when she felt a situation forced it. Or her. Wiping internal files didn’t sound like something she would do unless it was so serious, she needed to cover her own ass. Or she was ordered to do it. “They’re trying to bury something, and it isn’t dead bodies.”
Meryl leaned forward. “Here’s the juicy part. Keeva hasn’t had any assignments related to the Weird. MacGoren has a contained group of agents working down there under confidential directive. Rumor has it that Keeva and macGoren have been arguing behind closed doors.”
“I told Keeva about the leanansidhe. That could be what they’re working on.”
Meryl shook her head. “MacGoren’s boys have been down there since before you found the leanansidhe.”
I looked down at my hand. The spot where my essence had faded last night was normal again, my body signature intact. I scratched my palm. “Meryl, I have to ask you something. What do you know about leanansidhes’ abilities?”
She bobbed her head slowly from side to side. “You mean besides the whole soul-sucking thing?” I nodded. She shrugged. “Not much. They’re rare. I don’t think anyone’s studied them much.”
“What do you know about the other side of the Wheel?” I asked.
She pursed her lips. “The Wheel is what is, Grey. It’s all there is. There is no other side.”
“What about beneath the Wheel?”
She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it in thought. “There is no beneath. It’s not a wheel like a ribbon. It’s a Wheel like a movement.”
“You’re changing the metaphor,” I said.
She shrugged. “Only sorta kinda. There are no sides. There are relative relationships—that’s what we mean when we talk about paths—but talking about sides is taking the metaphor too literally.”
I shifted in my chair. “Okay, let me put it this way. What’s not the Wheel?”
She shrugged slowly. “Nothing. Chaos. The Void. Utter Meaninglessness. Something we cannot define because we can only define things in terms of the known, and what’s not the Wheel is so inconceivable we can’t begin to describe it.”
“You sound like you’re quoting something.”
She smirked. “You sound like you made a deep knowledge leap.”
I nodded. “Which is why it makes sense to me, Meryl. I think the thing in my head is outside the Wheel. That’s why no one understands it.”
She tilted her head. The moment lengthened while a cryptic expression passed over her face. “What does this have to do with the leanansidhe?”
“It was something she said.”
Meryl licked her lips. “You didn’t mention this before.”
I shrugged and failed to look casual about it. “I didn’t think of it.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You found her again, didn’t you?”
We had grown close in the past few months, closer than I would have guessed. Despite her insistence that we weren’t a couple or seeing each other or friends with benefits or whatever I wanted to call it, we had made connections that friends without didn’t have. I could lie. She might believe me. But if I lied, and she knew it, I would damage whatever the hell it was that we did have. I took a deep breath. “Yeah. I had to know what she meant when she called me ‘brother.’ ”
Meryl frowned. “It’s a leanansidhe, Grey. If there’s one thing I do know, it’s that they’re liars. They have to be to survive. She’s playing with your mind. The thing in your head has an explanation, and the answer is within the Wheel of the World. It has to be, by definition. If it’s within the Wheel of the World, it’s part of the Wheel of the World, not outside It.”
I closed my eyes and rubbed them. Even as I did it, I knew it was to hide the fact that I was embarrassed. “She made the dark mass in my head move, Meryl. She showed me how to let it free and it felt wrong and it felt amazing. I used to be afraid it would kill me.” I opened my eyes. “Now I’m just afraid of it. I’m afraid of what it makes me want to do. I’m afraid it’s not really making me feel that way and is just exposing something wrong inside me.”
Meryl came around the desk and sat on my lap. She wrapped her arms around my head and pulled me to her chest. My stomach did a little flip as the dark mass pulsed from being near her strong body essence. She tilted my head up by the chin. “Listen to me, Connor. You were one of the biggest assholes I’ve ever worked worth. That was then. If you were in danger of some weird-ass darkness in you coming out, it was before this thing happened to you, not now. Not from what I’ve seen. You might be caught up in some shit lately, but if I thought for one moment there was something seriously whacked about you, you wouldn’t be here.”
I leaned my head against her shoulder. “I hope you’re right.”
She scrubbed her fingernails through my hair and hopped to her feet. “I am. Besides, in any given personal relationship, I have to be the crazier one. It’s a rule. Now, let’s go have lunch.”
I stood. “I want to go talk to Keeva and see if I can find out what’s going on.”
Meryl rolled her eyes. “Yeah, she loves to confide in you.”
I pushed playfully at her shoulder. “Hey, don’t underestimate me. I know someone who never thought she’d confide in me.”
She looked at her watch. “Okay. Go. If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’m getting takeout.”
I took her hands, leaned down, and kissed her. She kissed me back with no games. I tousled her hair. She punched me.
Since I wasn’t officially in the building, I used the freight elevator, which was accessible in the basement but the call buttons on the upper floors were disabled. Which meant no guards riding them for routine security. The added benefit was it opened near Keeva’s office, so I could bypass the floor receptionist as well.
Keeva looked up from her desk when I knocked, and I immediately got her narrow-eyed, compressed-lipped suspicious look. “I don’t remember guards locking down the building. How’d you get in?”
I sat in her guest chair. “Nice to see you, too. How are things going?”
She didn’t change her expression. “Busy.”
I nodded. “Good, good. How’s Ryan?”
Her frown deepened. “Busy.”
I looked around the office, then brought my gaze back to Keeva. “You’re still wearing a glamour.”
She leaned back. “Why are you here, Connor?”
“I have a proposal for you. I have a piece of information you might find helpful. In exchange, I need a favor.”
She smiled. “It would have to be some very good information.”
I smiled back. “Is it a deal?”
She shook her head. “You know better than that. I’m not going to obligate myself without hearing the whole story.”
I nodded. “True. That’s smart, of course. How about this, if you use the information, you don’t have to do the favor if you think it isn’t equitable.”
She grinned. “This should be interesting.”
“I know what Sekka was hiding.”
As Community Liaison Director, Keeva saw all open case reports from the Boston P.D. She twisted her lip in dismissal. “Why should I care about a routine murder case?”
“Because it wasn’t routine, and I know you know that. Sekka was a Consortium agent, and macGoren has people trying to find what she had.”