Page 58 of The Elf Beside Himself

Another enchilada went into the pan.

“He wrote to me once. The letter was postmarked somewhere in Veracruz. The same cartel killed him—probably because he’d been asking questions about missing women. I don’t think they remembered my mother, specifically, and they certainly weren’t afraid of my father doing anything. The cartels do what they want.”

“What did you do?” Elliot asked.

Taavi shrugged, wrapping another tortilla. “I paid the bills. Worked my job cleaning after hours at a diner. Eventually, my boss found out I was a shifter. I got fired, supposedly for stealing food, even though free meals were included.”

“Jesus,” I breathed. That I hadn’t known.

“I sold the house. Got an apartment. Started picking up odd jobs wherever people would take me. Got into construction eventually. I could store my stuff in a unit somewhere, not pay rent, and take traveling jobs. A year ago I got on a bus to Raleigh. Shit happened. Val found me in a dumpster.”

Elliot knew that part of the story. He also knew some of what Taavi meant when he said ‘shit happened,’ although even I didn’t know all the details.

“How did you—” Elliot cut off the question.

“Because I had to,” Taavi answered. “It was deal with my grief or starve.”

Another enchilada went into the pan.

“My aunt had left years before and didn’t seem to care what her brother chose to do. I called her three times, but she made it clear that if Papá wanted to throw his life away, that was his choice. So I worked when I could. I ate. I survived.”

The expression on Elliot’s face as he watched Taavi was… odd. There was admiration there. Respect. Pity. But also something like fear, and that last one I didn’t understand.

Then Elliot looked at me. “Sorry I was a jerk,” he murmured.

“Me, too,” I told him. “Sorry that I was an assandthat you were a jerk.” He snorted. I’d take it.

Taavi shoved the next pan in front of me. “Front left,” he told me, then went back to rolling more bean and cheese enchiladas for the last pan.

The front left pan was a mole sauce—my favorite. And he’d intentionally put it on a pan of something I could eat. Because that’s the kind of shit Taavi always did. The kind of shit you’re supposed to do for people you care about.

The kind of shit I didn’t do nearly often enough, especially for him.

As I put the pan on the counter beside the stove, I paused to press a quick kiss to his temple. He looked up at me, a little surprised, but then flashed me a smile.

“Does it stop?” Elliot asked, then. “The—” He didn’t finish, the words choking themselves off in his throat.

“The deep ache that you feel in your lungs and your bones?” Taavi asked, and I winced a little.

“Yeah. That.”

“Not really,” Taavi answered. “But it becomes something you can live with. It slides to the back of your mind, to a corner where it settles and you can choose to take it out, to examine it. To sit with it.” He shrugged. “Sometimes something drags it out,” he said, his voice even softer. “And that’s hard.”

Something like this. This was dragging out Taavi’s past—not just his parents’ deaths, either. His own kidnapping and attempted murder. Murders. Fuck.

I was standing close enough that I could just put my hand on the small of his back. I didn’t know what to say, but I had to touch him. To let him know that I was there—even if I had no fucking clue what to do or say.

He didn’t turn or look at me, but I felt the shift of his weight, pressing back against my palm.

And then it occurred to me that while I couldn’t get justice for Taavi’s parents—and he’d never once asked me to, probably because I have negative power over Mexican cartels—I could get it for Gregory. I was here. I had a body, a crime scene, and a ghost that could tell me the details.

I’d talked to him, yes, but as my best friend’s dad, not as a murder victim. I’d asked the kinds of questions a civilian would ask. The kind a friend might ask.

I wasn’t going to make Elliot sit through it, but it was time for me to ask some different questions. To look at things differently. And not just Gregory’s office.

It was time for me to take a look at the cops who’d been on scene. At the ME’s office. At other obituaries.

Because the other thing that Taavi’d said that resonated with me was that his father had gone looking for his mother, and that he’d been killed by the same cartel. I was pretty sure Shawano, Wisconsin didn’t have a cartel, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have its organizations, formal or informal. Boys’ clubs. Hell, for all I knew, the fucking VFW had a roving gang of anti-shifter octogenarians.