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The doors opened, and Agnes came in on a run with her staff behind her. Natalie moved back with Grant and let them work. Agnes had a fat syringe with her and to Neil’s protests, she uttered a sharp, “Shut up, spell-boy. You’re getting the juice. It’s my own concoction, though you’ll probably fall asleep within five minutes.”
Natalie liked Agnes a lot.
Agnes didn’t bother with an alcohol disinfectant. Alter species didn’t need protection from germs. Instead, she jabbed his arm and unloaded the contents.
Within seconds, his whole body relaxed. Neil was soon smiling and said, “Agnes, I think I should marry you.”
At that she laughed. She directed her men and had him loaded onto the stretcher. She walked beside him up the aisle and asked for his address and any pertinent security info her men would need to get inside his island domicile.
They moved swiftly to the doors, then passed through. Another staff member closed the chapel doors behind them.
The room was quiet once more. All that bustle, now nothing.
Except her own thoughts.
Natalie moved to the front pew, turned and dropped into the cushion. She planted her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands. She hardly knew which aspect of the past fifteen minutes to take up first.
Grant remained where he was and for that she was grateful. She needed time to think. Maybe he did as well.
There were a couple of hours before dawn, so there was no rush to head home. As it was, her house was only a few minutes’ flight from Agnes’s compound. She was grateful for levitation.
Besides, she wasn’t tired at all. Full of dread, maybe. Certainly, a growing rage. But not fatigue.
So, Kryder had taken the lives of her husband and her baby because he wanted the use of her fae powers at some fixed yet unknown point in the future. He’d pumped the strawberry pie full of fae alter serum. She couldn’t imagine the kind of mind that would plan six years in advance. Clearly, he’d seen something in the future where she could prove useful to him.
She glanced up at Grant. “Kryder must be working with an alter fae who in turn keeps tabs on me in the future.”
“That would make sense.”
Grant sighed heavily as he joined her on the pew bench. He didn’t try to take her hand or in any way connect with her physically. She was glad. Again, too much to think about.
“So now you know the truth.”
“Now I know,” she murmured. She leaned against the cushioned back and once more looked at the wood carving of the water. “Now I have reason to despise Kryder as much as you do.”
“To say the least.”
She narrowed her gaze, letting it fall to the candles. “He must be an arrogant man.”
“That would be just the beginning of a long list of flaws.”
“I don’t know how to process all of this.”
“Take your time.”
Heat radiated off his body. She realized he was angry. No doubt the discovery that Kryder was the invisible presence stalking her was bringing up his own set of memories.
She did, however, take his advice. She knew what she needed to do because it sat just beyond her confusion. Only, she didn’t want to explore her grief again. But there it was in the waters off Cape Town, with the penguins Grace would never get to see.
With her gaze fixed to the wood carving of water, she let the sensations of terrible loss roll through her and have their way once more. It was the only way to dispel them. She knew from experience that the tighter she held herself to avoid whatever feelings were troubling her, the worse she felt.
The only way to get over something was to go through it. She lived by that admonition.
She recalled being in the parking lot at El Pedregal in north Phoenix. The sun had already set. She remembered the joy of buying something her husband loved. She wanted Aaron to have his pie. She wanted to hear him make his peculiar grunt of enjoyment when he was savoring something he loved. He’d sometimes made that sound when he made love to her.
Then she’d felt a presence in the parking lot but had dismissed it. She’d looked around carefully. The pie had been in a taped box, so it couldn’t have been tampered with in the parking lot.
She recalled now that one of the servers behind the counter had slipped while taking care of her pie. It had been left exposed to the air. So, that’s when Kryder had infected her pie.
