I gulped down two glasses of water before I slowed enough to see that Corb was staring hard at me.
“What? You’re supposed to drink like ten gallons of water a day,” I said.
“I think it’s ten glasses.” He smiled and I settled slowly into my chair, muscles in me sore and completely fatigued.
“Same difference, and I’ve not been keeping on it.”
Corb chuckled, but he quickly sobered. “So you figured out that I’m not human.”
“Hmm.” I nodded and crossed my arms. “Go on.”
“Alan and I, our moms are only half-sisters. They share the same father. My dad was from the shadow world, and my mom’s mom was from the shadow world, and—”
I held up a hand, stopping him. While I fully intended to find out more about his magic and his background, we had more important matters to discuss. This would have to wait. “Doesn’t matter what your family tree looks like, though I’m sure it’s better than Alan’s.” He rumbled in my bag and I smacked it hard—twice for good measure—though that did earn a look from Corb.
I took a deep breath. “Alan is dead. He’s a ghost and I stuffed him in my bag.”
Corb sat very still, then reached for his whiskey and snapped it back. Tapped the rim, and when the waitress came over with the bottle, he took it from her.
“We’re going to need this,” he murmured. “I was in his apartment, but I didn’t see his body.”
I shook my head and put my hand over my empty glass before he could pour me anything. “I’ve already drunk most of a bottle today, thanks.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Start from the beginning.”
I looked at Corb, really looked at him. “Can I trust you? I mean really, truly trust you?”
That earned me a sad-eyed look like I’d just kicked a puppy dog. “Bree, I’ve never done anything to hurt you. I’ve tried to protect you as best I could, and given your ability to find trouble where there is none, that in itself is exhausting. I have ties to certain groups of people that force me to not always tell you stuff upfront.”
“You find me exhausting?”
He paled. “That’s not what I meant.”
I grinned and winked. “Couldn’t help it. You set yourself up for that one.” I leaned back in my chair. “So you’ve signed something like a non-disclosure agreement?”
“With spells woven through it, yes. There are things I literally cannot say,” he said softly.
The waitress showed up with food we hadn’t ordered and I looked at Corb. He gave a nod. “I ordered ahead of time.”
I didn’t care. I dug into the food, realizing only then just how hungry I was, how much energy I’d burned in the last twenty-four hours. I cleaned my plate and looked up to see Corb with a fork partway to his mouth, his eyes wide.
I leaned back, letting the food settle. “Here’s the deal. It started yesterday really.” Had it only been yesterday? Jaysus lawdy, my life had turned upside down. . . “The minute I opened the envelope that holds all the information on my gran’s and my parents’ deaths.” I breathed out the words, recalling the feeling of ants all over my body, biting me here and there. The sensation that my life was to go to shit the minute I peeled that envelope open.
“What was in it?” Corb laid down his fork.
“I don’t know, I just . . . I didn’t get a chance to look at all the stuff.” I frowned, thinking about that. “I poured the contents out onto the bed and then . . . I got distracted,” I said. In fact, even though I’d been in the bedroom again during the last twenty-four hours, I still hadn’t looked at the contents of the envelope. I put a hand to my head, feeling those invisible ants crawling all over me again.
Corb frowned. “That sounds like a spell of some sort. Some of them are subtle, not necessarily made to kill, but to keep you . . . busy. As you said, stuff just kept happening, obstacles kept getting thrown in your way.”
A spell would make sense.
Who would put a spell on my gran’s death papers? The person who killed her. But did that person even know I was looking? Probably not. Which meant it had to be someone else. I knew it wasn’t the human police officer who’d given them to me, Officer Burke. In fact, I suspect she’d put herself at risk to get the information to me.
Corb tapped the table with one hand. “We need to go back to the house and look at those papers. That’s the only way to figure this out.”
“You can tell if it’s a spell?” I frowned, wondering again about what he was, supernaturally speaking. “What about Missy?”
Corb’s eyebrows shot up. “What about her?”
“She is the most likely candidate, and she showed up at the house yesterday, pissed that she couldn’t get Gran’s spell book to work.” But even as I said it, I found myself thinking about those desks I’d passed before entering the council meeting, the ones that stripped people of magic.
“I don’t think it’s a spell,” I said. “I really don’t.” If the envelope had carried a spell, then it would have clung to me, right? The desks would have removed it, and Roderick would have noticed. He’d said there was only a glamor on me.
Corb stood and offered me a hand. “Just trust me, okay? We’re going to go for a walk, and I’m going to show you around town. While we walk, I’m going to make a phone call. I think we’ll need Tom on this one. I don’t want to risk you being hurt, so let’s just play it safe, okay?”
One look at him told me that he was genuinely concerned.
Besides, Tom was a good guy, I liked him, and hanging out with him was fine by me. Besides, as long as I kept moving, the goblins would have a harder time pinning me down.
In the back of my head, my own thoughts whispered the fear that Corb was indeed right. That the envelope was spelled and I’d unleashed its dark magic simply by opening it. I should have trusted my feelings all along and asked an expert to look at the envelope to figure out why it had upset me so.
It struck me that Robert had kept tapping at the envelope. A warning, damn it, had his tapping on it been a warning?
Corb led me out of the restaurant the way we’d come, sending a text one-handed as we went. I waved at Skel. “Go relax, I’m walking from here.”
The skeletal horse snorted and flipped his mane once before turning and trotting up the street. I don’t know if Corb even saw the horse, and if he did, he didn’t so much as flinch.
“Tell me what you’ve been doing,” Corb said as he slid an arm around my shoulders and tugged me close as he finished sending the text. “I know a bit from earlier but tell me in more detail.”
I started slowly rehashing the last two days, everything from opening the envelope but not looking into it to getting information from Jinx, finding Grimm, coming back to find Suzy dying, seeing Alan’s ghost in my room, putting Grimm’s pages in the Sorrel-Weed house, getting drunk with Robert, and heading to the council with my new bestie Rod. “And now I’m here with you.” Funnily enough, I skipped right over the shower scene with Crash.
Talking through the situation, it struck me that I didn’t feel like I couldn’t look at the papers. It was more like I had legit been too busy.