Page 2

And yeah, me essentially living in the hallway of a secure ward in the James Blair Arcane Ward of the Augusta Health Hospital was undoubtedly a violation of hospital policy and more than a few laws, but nobody made me leave.

I’d walked for over five hours, my feet aching and covered in blisters, to get there.

I would have done whatever it took to stay—and they knew that.

When they finally released Noah, rail-thin and weak, I bought us bus tickets to Charlottesville, then to Richmond with the cash I’d stolen from our parents. One of the nurses had told me about Hands and Paws. That they could help Noah, but they only had shelters back then in the bigger cities.

They had helped. And even though I wasn’t a shifter, they helped me, too.

We went into foster care with shifter-approved foster parents, changing households six times before we turned eighteen and moved out of the foster care system.

Hands and Paws got Noah a tiny, awful apartment, and I stayed with him, because what else was I supposed to do?

We both got jobs—I waited tables at about four different places, working my way from Waffle House up the chain of restaurants until I was working somewhere that paid enough in tips that Noah and I could get a real apartment.

Noah worked at the Hands and Paws thrift store until he was old enough to take on full time hours, get his associate’s degree in counseling, and step into the role of intake counselor before working his way up to being Coordinating Director.

I started going to school part-time, then full-time and working part-time to put myself through college.

It took me seven years, but I did it. BS in biochemistry from UVA, and then I took another three to get my MS in forensic science from VCU.

From there, I went straight into the Virginia state crime lab in downtown Richmond.

I’d started in CSI a year later. Fast-forward two-and-a-half years, they fired me, and I moved to Shawano, Wisconsin.

That’s the outline, but I also gave him some of the details.

The enforced fasting to purify our bodies and souls.

The hours of ‘contemplation and prayer’ in the total darkness of the basement cellar so that we could better come to understand God through deprivation.

And, when that wasn’t enough, punishment for the frailties of our flesh.

Elliot’s face when I finished was a mask of horror, pity, and rage.

“So I really don’t give a shit that they’re dead,” I finished, still feeling oddly empty.

“They’re lucky they’re dead,” Elliot growled. “Because if they weren’t, I’d fucking kill them myself.” Elliot’s father literally had been killed, so when he said it, it meant a lot more than if some random person who knew nothing about murder or loss said it. He was pissed .

I found it disturbingly endearing and gave him a weak smile.

“Thanks.” I still felt strangely blank.

“Seth?”

I looked up at him, surprised, then registered that time must have passed. And he had probably been talking to me.

I put both hands over my face. “Shit. Sorry.”

“Baby, you don’t have to be sorry.” His calloused hands pulled mine away from my face, and he pressed a gentle kiss to each set of fingers. “How can I help?”

“I—don’t know,” I admitted. “The lawyer says I have to go… back.” The word was heavy and bitter, like lead mixed with the pith of a lemon.

“To—Swoope?” I was touched he remembered the name of the tiny-ass town that technically counted as my hometown.

“Not even,” I half-mumbled, feeling my neck flush. “Swoope is just the closest town—where the post office is.”

Elliot blinked. “What do you mean, ‘where the post office is’?”

I stared down at my hands, still held in his. “The Community lives up in the foothills. Father would go into town to get the mail once a week.”

“Once a week ?”

I nodded. “Otherwise it was just the Community.”

“The Community?”

I hadn’t said the whole thing in a decade. More than. “The Community of the Divine Transformation.”

I didn’t look up when he spoke, but I could hear the frown in Elliot’s voice. “That sounds…” He trailed off.

“Like a bunch of religious bullshit?” There was bitterness in mine.

“I…”

I sighed. “I know what it was,” I said grimly. “I lived through it.”

“Seth—” But he didn’t continue.

Restlessness hit me, quick and hard, and I stood up abruptly, pulling my hands away from Elliot, leaving him kneeling in front of the couch. I couldn’t look at him, couldn’t see the disappointment or hurt or whatever other expressions crossed the chiseled planes of his face.

“I have to go back.”

“Okay,” he said softly.

“I’ll leave in the morning,” I told him walking down the hall. “Try to get as much driving in as I can.”

“No,” he said softly.

I whirled. “What the hell do you mean, no ?”

“ You aren’t driving back,” he told me. “ We are.”

I tried arguing with Elliot about coming with me, but my heart wasn’t in it.

I knew he was going to have to give up some commissions, delay others, maybe get Shira and Hank to finish up some of the simpler jobs, although Shira was learning fast, so that shouldn’t be too much of a problem from a business standpoint.

But they weren’t Elliot Crane, master carpenter.

He informed me in no uncertain terms that they would be just fine, and his other jobs could wait until this got sorted out, or they could go fuck themselves. His phrase, not mine.

I didn’t point out that wasn’t the kind of attitude that got you repeat business, mostly because I knew it wouldn’t make a difference.

Also because I really, desperately wanted him to come with me.

I hadn’t been able to reach Noah, which was worrying, and I really, really, really didn’t want to do this by myself.

I had talked to Lulu. I’d texted them when Noah hadn’t replied after the first hour, and they’d sent back a message telling me they’d call when they could.

That reply had me in knots the whole time I threw clothes into the duffel Elliot had given me—because it was bigger than any bag I owned—and I was pretty sure I’d probably forgotten something important like socks or underwear or shirts. Toothpaste, maybe.

It had been another two hours before Lulu called back.

They told me that Noah had been pulled in for questioning and was still being held because Momma had contacted him and said she wanted to see him. Well. Sort of.

According to Lulu, she’d left a voicemail telling Noah—only she hadn’t called him Noah , of course—that she needed to see him. To speak to him. That he should call her or come see her.

But, also according to Lulu, Noah hadn’t called her back. At least not as far as they knew.

He had gone out camping to clear his head. Alone. In Shenandoah. He’d shut off his phone, and hadn’t resurfaced until the afternoon after Momma had been killed.

He’d used his one phone call to beg Lulu to call both me and a lawyer. I understood why. I’d have called Elliot if it had been me, but it still stung a little that I hadn’t been Noah’s first choice.

I didn’t really sleep, worrying about what had happened, worrying about Noah and what might be happening to him in the Augusta County Sheriff’s lockup, worrying about what I was going to find when I got back to the place where I’d lived the first fifteen years of my life.

Fifteen years I’d tried very hard to pretend hadn’t happened.

It was seven in the morning when I pulled my FJ Cruiser out of the driveway, Elliot already dozing in the passenger seat, although he’d promised sleepily to take over for me after a few hours.

I tried to remind myself to breathe slowly and deeply.

That getting worked up wasn’t going to get me there any faster, and it wasn’t going to help Noah.

I still hadn’t been able to talk to him.

It didn’t look good. Especially if you had even half an inkling how police were trained to look for homicide suspects, and I had more than that.

As much as I hated it, I couldn’t blame the police for bringing Noah in for questioning.

He hypothetically had motive—whether they wanted to go with the revenge angle or the inheriting-property angle.

He had no alibi for the time of the murder, having been camping and intentionally off-grid, shutting off his phone.

The people most likely to kill someone were family and romantic partners, so even those stats were against him.

The sheriff’s department was holding him while they tried to build their case.

I knew they had seventy-two hours to bring charges.

They had fifty-three hours left.

I’d also called Humbolt back and demanded to know why he hadn’t mentioned the fact that my brother was being questioned regarding our mother’s death.

He’d expressed surprise and told me that he didn’t know I had a brother.

Because of course he didn’t. My mother had hired him—which meant he’d been trying to find Eleanor Mays, not Noah Mays.

I’d cleared that up pretty damn fast.

It wasn’t Humbolt’s fault, exactly, although I got the impression that he wasn’t excited about getting the names changed on all the paperwork, even though he had the decency not to say so explicitly.

Or maybe it was the fact that one of the two people who was supposed to inherit our mother’s property was currently being held on suspicion of his client’s murder.

I’m sure that was a very large potential legal headache.