Page 53

Behind me, Elliot let out a strange half-grumble, half-groan. The others at the site—Raj Parikh, a few other Feds I didn’t know from Charlottesville, the guy operating the digger—made other unhappy noises.

I guess I wasn’t eating lunch today, either.

The only redeeming part of the day was that I—unlike Raj and Hart—didn’t have to attend the autopsy. Instead, Elliot and I went back to the house, working on packing up the everything that Noah and Lulu had said they didn’t want… which was pretty much everything.

Honestly, my instinct had been to just toss everything.

Burn it, bury it, throw it away. Elliot had very practically pointed out that it would be far better for the environment and the local economy if I at least donated things, but had also mentioned that this might be a way to help pay for either the car I now needed or my new knee.

Insurance was going to pay for a new car, but it was going to take a few months before that money would hit my account, and if we did some sort of sale or list stuff online, we might make at least some money.

Of course, nobody in their right mind was going to drive up here to buy it, but Humbolt had very nicely offered to let us use his driveway when Elliot just happened to mention the fact that we wanted to do a yard sale. Anything that someone didn’t buy, we could then donate.

I knew he was right, but I was still deeply resentful of the fact that I was going to have to do it. To sit in this house, to look at the things that had surrounded me as a child, reminding me of all the days I’d spent wishing I were anywhere but here.

That part, at least, hadn’t changed.

“The ME confirmed canid dental marks on her bones,” Hart said, shifting awkwardly. He was standing just inside the doorway of our hotel room. I hobbled my way back to the bed after letting him in.

Elliot was out getting dinner for all of us—me, Elliot, and Hart—from the Chinese place, because I was craving sweet and sour shrimp, and they had cream cheese wontons without crab in them, which meant that Hart—who, as an elf, can’t digest any meat—could eat them, and Elliot knew he loved them.

I looked up at Hart, still standing by the door.

“Are you going to come in?” I asked him.

He blinked. “Fuck, May—Seth,” he corrected himself. “You seriously don’t care that those fuckers ate your sister?”

I sighed. This was going to be a thing, apparently.

“I didn’t know her,” I replied. “I’m not happy about it, but it’s the same to me as if a total stranger was eaten by the Community Elders. Disgusting, horrifying, yes, but I’m not particularly emotionally invested in it.”

“It,” he repeated.

I couldn’t help the eye roll. “ Her ,” I clarified.

“Jesus fuck,” Hart muttered, but he walked into the room, scooped up Sassafras from where she’d nested in Elliot’s duffel, and settled himself in the one semi-comfortable chair in the room, the cat on his lap, content to stay there as his long-fingered hands scritched and stroked.

I sighed again. “Look, Hart, I know you had a lovely, idyllic childhood in one of the most wholesome places on earth, but some of us were raised by a toxic, apparently homicidal cult and didn’t properly develop human attachment, okay?”

He stared at me for several breaths, then let out a sharp laugh. “You’re okay, you know that, Ma— fuck ! Seth. Goddamn it.” He scowled, but I knew it wasn’t at me. “Sorry. It’s taking some getting used to.”

I knew he meant not calling me Mays anymore.

I was honestly surprised that I’d adapted to it so quickly.

I’d already filled out as much paperwork as I could online, including a name change form for work that had earned me several shocked emails from Lacy, Roger, and Ronda. All congratulating me. It was sweet.

“I can throw things at you every time you get it wrong,” I suggested.

Hart flipped me off.

“Anything else I should know?” I asked him. “About… Rachael?”

Hart toed off his shoes with a sigh of his own. “Cause of death was loss of blood,” he said softly. “Best guess is they went for her throat first.”

“Faster that way than if they went for her belly,” I observed, a little weirded out by my own coldness. It was probably some sort of defensive coping mechanism, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. It made me feel—I wasn’t sure. Like I might be turning into my father? I shuddered.

“You okay?” Hart asked, his voice concerned.

“I don’t think so,” I answered him honestly. “This has me all messed up.”

“Understandably,” came his response. “You ever talk to anybody about all this shit?”

I looked over at him, surprised. “Like a psychologist?”

He shrugged. “Councilor. Psychologist. Therapist. What-the-fuck-ever.”

“No,” I admitted. “Not sure there is one in Shawano. Not that could handle my level of messed up, anyway.”

“You might be surprised,” he replied, his voice soft. “People in Shawano have seen some shit. Especially the Menominee.”

“They’re not going to want some white guy to walk in there demanding care, though,” I told him.

“They don’t all go to the tribal clinic, you know,” he countered. “Besides, there’s also remote appointments and shit.”

I grimaced. I know telehealth is a thing—it had to become a thing because of the Arcanavirus pandemic and never went away—but the idea of talking to a computer, even with a person behind it, was repulsive. Too distant. Too inhuman.

“Seth,” he said, and there was a twitch of his lips that told me he was proud of himself for getting it right that time. “I’m no expert, but what you went through here was fucked up.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “Pretty sure it doesn’t take an expert to know that,” I remarked wryly.

“No,” he agreed. “But it’s a lot to put on other people—dealing with your shit.

” He made a face. “I don’t mean your shit specifically, just…

Shit. My shit. Your actual shit. It’s a lot.

” He let out a sigh. “Taavi had to put up with a lot of it before I pulled my head out of my fucking ass,” he said, not looking at me.

“And I’m sure El will listen to anything you have to tell him.

Hold your hand or pat your head or whatever the fuck he needs to.

But we all have our own shit, and sometimes it’s more fucked up than we can handle on our own, and it’s fucking heavy.

Heavier than they deserve to have to carry for us. ”

“You’re telling me that by not talking to a therapist or whatever, I’m asking too much of Elliot?” It wasn’t something I wanted to hear, sticking like peanut butter or molasses at the top of my sternum.

“No more than he’s willing to take,” Hart replied.

“No more than I’d take for Taavi, or him for me.

But while he’ll do anything and everything, he doesn’t know what to do.

” He shrugged. “Neither do I. So unless you’ve got a bestie I don’t know about with a psych degree, I’m gonna guess that therapy is probably going to be more helpful than beating your head against a fucking psychological wall. ”

I didn’t want to hear it, but that’s what this whole shitty trip had been. Me hearing things I didn’t want to hear. Seeing things I didn’t want to see.

Marrying Elliot, which I did actually want.

But everything else …

“She was a wolf shifter,” Hart said, then.

“What?”

“Rachael.”

I went very still. “They would have killed Noah,” I breathed softly.

Hart didn’t bother lying to me. “Probably,” he agreed. “They didn’t tell her why, though.”

“Because she was a girl,” I said softly, my voice thick. “Because women aren’t meant to be hunters. Providers. They’re for breeding .”

Hart said nothing. There wasn’t anything to say. It was, to borrow his phrase, fucked up. They’d killed my sister—who might as well have been a total stranger—because she’d had the audacity to be both female and a shifter. There was nothing you could say to that.

There was less you could say to a trans man whose family would have killed him for the same reason—and probably would have been happy to do it, given his insistence that he was, in fact, a man.

“You know what?” I said. “Fuck them. Just… Fuck them.”

Hart blinked at me. “Absolutely,” he agreed, although I wasn’t sure how much of his agreement was because he actually agreed with me—which I assumed he probably did—or because I seemed somewhat unhinged and it seemed like agreeing with me was probably the safer idea.

Not that I was a danger to him or anything.

Maybe if I’d shifted, but my knee was still functionally useless, and I was pretty sure shifting would have rendered me nearly completely immobile from pain if I’d tried it.

Not that I wanted to. My last shifted experience was… not something I’d ever care to repeat.

I didn’t exactly feel afraid of shifting—even my messed-up psyche understood that me being shifted had nothing to do with the fact that I’d been attacked.

In fact, I’d have been attacked either way, and the only reason I was still alive was because I’d shifted.

I just… needed to give it a bit of space, both physically and psychologically.

Hart would probably tell me that was something I should tell a therapist.

I’d think about it.

Elliot chose that moment to come through the door, carrying two big paper bags smelling of Chinese food.

Both Hart and I were more than happy to drop the topic of conversation in favor of dinner.

At least until Elliot brought it up around a mouthful of eggroll. “Did they kill her?” he asked Hart.

“Yeah,” came the reply with a glance over at me. “Ripped out her throat.”

Elliot scrunched up his face in a grimace. “Ugh. Poor girl.”

“Yeah,” Hart agreed.

Elliot raised his eyebrows. “That’s all you’ve got?”

Hart set down his plastic fork. “She’s Seth’s sister, for fuck’s sake,” he blurted.

“It’s fine,” I said mildly. It was fine. I mean, no, okay, it was definitely not fine, but I was fine with it being the topic of discussion so long as Hart didn’t start talking about therapy again.

I don’t have anything against therapy in principle.

It was probably also true that it might be helpful.

I just… I didn’t want to talk about my childhood.

The fact that I’d told Elliot about it said a lot more about how much I trusted Elliot than it did about my desire to talk about my childhood.

Because if I hadn’t felt like I had no choice—if we hadn’t been driving down to this shithole—I wouldn’t have.

Not unless he’d asked or it had become relevant. Because I tried very hard not to think about it.

“It’s not fucking fine,” Hart grumbled.

“Not your call, Val,” Elliot said, and there was a slight undercurrent of warning in his tone, although he said it mildly.

The elf blew out a breath through his nostrils, but he didn’t say anything, instead picking up his fork again and stabbing a square of tofu slathered in ma po sauce. He clearly wasn’t happy, but he ate his tofu, anyway.

I picked up a sweet and sour shrimp with my chopsticks and ate it. Trying to ignore both of them.

“Mrrew?” I looked down at where Sassafras sat on the floor beside the bed, one paw reaching up.

“You are definitely not supposed to have Chinese food,” I told the cat.

Elliot got up and opened a can of wet cat food, setting it on the floor for her. She accepted his substitution for Chinese food, licking it a couple times, then settling down on her haunches to eat properly.

Elliot returned to his paper plate of noodles, fried rice, and fried wontons stuffed with cream cheese. “Anything else we should know?” he asked Hart.

Hart swallowed whatever he was chewing before he spoke.

“Not that an autopsy could confirm it, but I strongly suspect that she wasn’t the only one.

” He began swirling noodles around his fork.

“I’m going to pull a warrant to have Ward do an overall survey of the Community…

town, or whatever the fuck they call it.

” His expression was grim as he picked up a fried wonton and ate it.

“Because I have the feeling we’re going to find a lot more skeletons in this fucking closet. ”