“She can’t be gone,” I said simply, as if that settled things. “We always have tea in the morning after work, and I don’t know if she wants the mint, or the chamomile, or… I mean, I can’t just pick for her, you know? She’s allergic to cinnamon.” I was babbling, but I couldn’t stop myself. Stopping meant seeing reality. Stopping meant acknowledging that she wasn’t coming back, and that wasn’t an option.
As long as I kept talking, kept pretending, I didn’t have to accept the fact that she was gone. That I had tasted her soul. That Death himself had removed it, sent it on its way, and was now standing in our home like some kind of invited guest.
You’re Shadowborn…
I felt Ronan's hand on the back of my neck and flinched.
“It’s okay, Gray,” he said gently. Softly. “I’m right here.”
Since my arrival in Blackmoon Bay, Ronan had been my rock. He’d picked me up from my lowest point, dusted me off, helped me find my footing again. No matter how strained things had gotten between us, I knew I could always count on him to give it to me straight.
I tilted my face up and looked into his eyes for confirmation that everything reallywouldbe okay, that somewhere in all this impossible shit, a sane explanation existed. That in a few hours we’d hear Sophie's keys jingling in the front door, and she'd walk in, kick off her shoes, and say, “Oh my God, you guys. Wait till I tell you about my crazy night!”
But when I looked into Ronan's eyes now, they were black and empty, offering no solace.
Instead, he said, “We need to call—”
“No, we don’t.” I rose to my feet, then pulled up Sophie’s comforter and tucked it under her shoulders. I didn’t want her to be cold. “Let’s go. Sophie doesn’t like people wearing shoes in her bedroom.”
Thirteen
Gray
Ronan made the call anyway, and fifteen minutes later, Detective Emilio Alvarez arrived with the cavalry, shattering my bubble of denial.
Clutching the mandala stone in my hand, I lay on the living room couch with my head in Ronan’s lap, his fingers tracing light circles on my forehead as I watched the muddy boots of half a dozen cops stomp back and forth between the living room and the bedroom of my dead best friend, picking up fibers and dusting for prints and whatever else they did at a crime scene.
That’s how they were treating this. A crime scene.
Death had vanished as quickly as he’d arrived, and Ronan hadn’t uttered a word about it. I still couldn’t get my head around it. Death had said things, revealed things,donethings in that room that should’ve left my mind spinning with impossible questions, but all of that felt like a distant memory now, like a story I’d been told about someone else a long time ago.
In Sophie's room at the end of the hall now, one of the cops was shooting pictures. I flinched every time the flash sparked, but Ronan sat still as a statue, trailing his fingers through my hair.
The cops spoke in hushed voices. I pictured them touching Sophie’s body with rubber gloves and tweezers, and putting her personal things into plastic baggies labeled with black Sharpie, and all I could think was,They’re getting mud all over her carpet. She’s going to kill me for letting them in there.
After more than an hour, Detective Alvarez emerged from the bedroom. He looked like an ER doctor coming to tell the crying family there was nothing more he could do.
I sat up and leaned back against the couch, pulling my knees to my chest. The detective crouched down in front of me, as graceful and powerful in human form as he must’ve been as a wolf.
Shifter grace aside, everything else about him was totally human. A faded San Francisco T-shirt stretched across his broad chest, the kind of shirt somebody buys you at the airport on the way home when they realized they forgot to get you a souvenir. His skin was golden and smooth, and his wavy, jet-black hair stuck up on one side.
It made him look young and playful, despite the seriousness in his eyes.
“Miss Desario, I know this is hard," he said in his light, lilting Spanish accent. “I'm so sorry.”
I nodded, letting him get away with that comment because hedidknow. Ronan had told me once that Alvarez was a lone wolf—that he’d emigrated here with his sister from Argentina decades ago, shortly after they’d separated from their pack.
A wolf shifter without a pack was never something that happened by choice.
Ronan hadn't called him tonight for empathy though. He’d called him because Alvarez was the only one who cared enough about people like us to do the job right.
“How did she die?” I asked.
He narrowed his eyes on my bruised face, but his scrutiny felt more like concern than suspicion. “Are you okay? That… looks like it hurts.”
“Just a scuffle at work last night. It’s fine.”
He nodded, and I forced myself to focus on his kind face. “We don’t yet know what killed Sophie, but I can tell you that there’s no obvious trauma to her body. I don’t believe she suffered.”
