Page 112 of The Sister's Curse

“Shit.” I thought of Viv.

“I asked them to compare those against the body you found last night, and known exemplars for Dana Carson and Viv, and that stain in the basement of the Sumner house. If we get some correlation, then Judge Chamberlain will give us an arrest warrant.”

“I’m gonna bet that Sumner will throw Sims under the bus, say he did it.”

“If he knew, it’s conspiracy. We aren’t gonna let them get away with this. We just have to let the evidence connect the dots.”

I sure didn’t feel like sitting on my hands while this happened. This had become personal.

—

I headed home to change clothes and drop Gibby off. Nick was gone, but he’d left me a note saying that he was consulting with lawyers. I scrubbed Gibby and myself down thoroughly, then crowded into a closet with the UV light from my evidence kit. Nothing glowed, so I figured we were okay. Still, I was determined to watch Gibby for any effects from contaminants in the water. He was content to crawl into bed and stretch across both our pillows.

I stepped outside, into the dry, brittle forest. I walked a gooddistance away from the house, seething. I should get my shit together, work on the case.

But I was pissed. I’d devoted my life to my career with the sheriff’s office. I had put my life in danger to do that work. I’d been shot, more than once. The fucking sheriff owed me more than a fucking suspension for flouting his stupid rules.

My hands balled into fists, and I howled into the woods. I filled my lungs with air and bellowed an uncivilized scream of fury. I’d followed the sheriff’s rules, been stuffed into box after box, been forced to tiptoe around politics and sensibilities and money. Men in power made the rules; men in power protected themselves. To hell with the women who were victimized, burned, and buried. We were mere things to them.

And I was done with it. I was done with being tamed. I had worn the power of the sheriff’s office for a long time. It was time I wore my own.

Birds fluttered from their nests in trees, and a squirrel fled. My voice echoed, chasing garter snakes and frogs from their dens.

I announced it. My voice roared with my pulse in my ears. Funny how I never screamed, not even when I’d been shot. I always kept my voice strictly modulated and reasonable, to avoid ruffling the feathers of any colleagues or suspects.

Fuck it all.

I turned on my heel, feeling a deadly peacefulness, though my throat was sore.

The fox was sitting in Nick’s garden. The garden was withered and browning, and full of freshly dug holes. She’d unearthed the marigolds near the memorial stone for Nick’s mother. Sinoe watched me with narrowed eyes. She wasn’t laughing. Instead, she was crunching up a mole.

I regarded her, thinking how different she was from Gibby,who begged for tortilla chips. How she was domesticated only when it suited her.

Maybe she had things to teach me.

She swallowed, lifted her head, and yipped.

I took that as approval.

When I returned to the house, I had a message Monica had forwarded to me. It was from Owen Destin, the owner of the Grey Door.

“Look…I think I know where Viv is. She’s in trouble. I don’t like having to turn her in like this, but…she needs your help.”

He left an address way out in the boonies.

Could be a trap. But he sounded sincere.

I had no choice but to follow.

26

Feeding the Curse

I drove down a gravel road that dropped off to a dirt drive. The humidity was thick, and cloud cover obscured the stars. I pulled off before a rusted trailer. It didn’t look like anyone lived there; the windows were busted out and the grass was up to my knees.

I stepped up to the front door and rapped. The sound echoed in the trailer, but I heard no movement within. I knocked again, still with no response. I looked down at Gibby. He didn’t alert to anyone in the trailer, being more interested in chewing his toes.

I circled around the back of the trailer, where a meadow sloped away to forest. In the distance, I thought I heard singing.