Chapter 15

CHAPTER 15

MARNIE

“ I have a lead.” I snapped the door shut behind me as I entered my hotel room.

Imogen bolted upright in bed, her eyes still closed. “Hmm…what? Mead?”

Her short dark curls matted to the left side of her head. Pink lines crossed the same side of her face, imprints from the pillowcase’s wrinkles.

“I could definitely go for some mead.” Imogen smacked her lips, still without opening her eyes. Her voice was scratchy with sleep. “That’s old-fashioned honey wine, right?”

“Not mead. Lead as in information to find out what happened to Nie, but we have to go right now.”

“I’m awake.” Imogen patted her cheeks, then finally opened her eyes.

She climbed out of bed with a stretch and a yawn and ran her hands quickly through her hair, effortlessly fluffing it back into its usual shape. She slipped on her high heels. The four-inch fire-engine-red pumps were an impractical choice of footwear for a murder investigation, but impracticality had never stopped Imogen before.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Around five. I don’t know.”

“What’s this about mead and murder?” she asked. “What’s the emergency?”

I shook my head. “Downstairs. Let’s go.”

We made our way to the elevator and watched the floor numbers go down. This time the ride didn’t feel so slow. It felt a little too fast, in fact.

Maybe that was just my perception, my nerves getting the better of me as I worried retrieving Imogen would take too long and I wouldn’t return in time to catch the muckwart stealing the body.

“We’re meeting someone,” I said. “He’s investigating his friend’s disappearance. He’s an ally.”

“I can’t wait to meet him. There’s no such thing as too many friends.”

Imogen didn’t have a single question about how long I’d known this man or how I knew we could trust him? Then again, this was the woman who assumed the best intentions in everyone. That included the spam caller who tried to swindle away the life savings she didn’t actually have, and of course the reaper who’d tormented her.

Imogen was trusting to a fault.

The elevator doors opened to the dreary basement.

I took a step forward.

“Wait.” Imogen grabbed my arm, stopping me. “Does your friend know about magic? I don’t want to say something I shouldn’t.”

We didn’t have time to stop moving, but it was a good question and I was glad she asked.

I said, “He does.”

“Awesomesauceum.” She released me with a smile and a nod.

But as we headed from the first crypt-like room, into the stone hall, I felt her pinching my sleeve as if she was afraid to lose me.

“It’s creepy down here,” she said.

“It is.”

“Is your friend a talking rat?” Imogen asked this question lightly, and without judgment. “This seems like the kind of place a rat would live.”

“He doesn’t live here.”

“But he is a rat?”

I sighed. “No, Imogen, he is not a rat.”

She shrugged. “Okay.”

We entered the room with all of the rusty metal boxes, then continued on to the fenced space.

Relief washed over me as soon as I spotted the body exactly where we’d left it. Levi, crouched in the corner, waved us over.

Imogen paused for a moment and waved back. “Hi, there.”

Her tone was almost melodic, which was weird. I expected her to call him something like Mr. Not A Rat, but fortunately she refrained. For now, at least.

Imogen stopped at the body, pulled out her phone, and snapped photos. She said, “Sending these to the crew.”

I should have thought to do that, but I hadn’t. Since no one had been arrested for sending texts about murder using the untraceable app, it seemed to be safe for sharing these things. But reaching out for help wasn’t my default. My brain wasn’t wired that way.

When Imogen finished her task, we crouched down on the floor with Levi. Metal pipes blocked the area just enough to offer cover. It was exposed enough to let us see when someone entered the basement from the back door.

Imogen grabbed some cardboard boxes and slid them in the way so anyone coming from the elevators wouldn’t see us either.

“Levi, this is Imogen,” I said. “Imogen, Levi.”

They shook hands.

“Great to meet you,” Imogen said. Her eyes flared and she formed an O with her lips. It was a look that suggested she had a lot to say about her first impression of Levi, but to her credit, she didn’t utter a word of it.

“You, too,” he said to Imogen. Then he turned his gaze to me. His attention lingered a moment too long before looking back at the body.

“Obviously we’re hiding out and waiting for someone to show up. But what’s the plan?” Imogen shoved her phone in Levi’s face, taking another pic. “And who’s the stiff?”

I hoped she meant the body and not Levi.

Levi blinked in the bright flash, but otherwise didn’t react. “We’re waiting for muckwarts.”

My gaze snapped down to his pants on its own, and as quickly as possible, I looked away. There was no way to tell in the dark, and with the way he was crouched, and I should not have been thinking about this.

“Oh! I know that one,” Imogen said. “They’re like squirrels on espresso who love dumpster diving. They treat a dead body like it’s the last slice of pizza at a kiddie party. And they look like shrunken trolls dipped in swamp water. I just read about them last week.”

“Interesting description,” Levi said.

Imogen smiled at Levi and then at me. “You two think since there are muckwarts here in Nevermore, they’re going to show up to drag whoever this dead dude is to their lair, and then we can follow them and look for the rest of Nie.”

It felt strange laying everything out instead of holding back, but I found myself not only needing to be completely honest but wanting to be as well.

I nodded. “The dead guy is the one who broke into the hotel and took Nie’s head from my nightstand.”

“You described the kidnapper as a shadowy figure. This guy looks so human,” Imogen said.

Yes, he did. It was unsettling.

“You’re sure this is the guy?” Imogen asked.

“I am,” I said.

“Unfortunate that Wendy’s not here,” Imogen said. “You sure you want to let him be carried off? We could try to hide him until she can get here and make him talk.”

That wasn’t a bad idea, but I wasn’t completely confident in Wendy’s magical ability. If she brought the dead guy back to life and his communication was as limited as Nie’s had been, it may take days for him to be able to tell us what had happened. Or, even if he was capable, he may choose not to help us at all.

Plus, we’d lose the opportunity that lay in front of us right now.

“Who’s Wendy?” Levi asked.

“She’s this really cool lych in our coven, so like this undead witch who has powers over the dead. She can make them do stuff like follow her around, though the jury’s out as to how well the reanimated can communicate. But Wendy’s getting stronger and more magically amazing every day. We all are. So she’ll get there, I just know it.”

Imogen’s words struck me like a dagger to the intestines.

Levi turned to me. “You’re a witch?”

I wanted to trust Levi. I chose to trust Levi. I repeated the words in my head a second time. Then a third.

“Fiddlesticks.” Imogen lifted her hand over her lips. “Was I not supposed to talk about witch stuff? You said he knew about magic, and I thought…I’m so sorry, Marnie.”

“It’s fine,” I said, as much to myself as to Imogen, because it was fine. She asked me on the way down here what she was and was not allowed to say. I didn’t tell her to keep my nature a secret.

The uncertainty clenching in my guts was misguided. If I never let anyone in, I never would have become friends with Wendy and Jayden, or even Imogen. It wasn’t like she’d given him my social security number, the name of my first pet, and my mother’s maiden name.

I shook out my arms and pushed past the nerves tightening and pulsing through my limbs. “Yes, I am a witch.”

The words hung in the air between us. What they meant to Levi, I had no idea. I hardly knew what they meant to me.

“Nie wasn’t my sister,” I said, though I had already told him as much before. The next part, though, I’d held back. My hands trembled. I wove my fingers together like a basket, tight, secure, unmoving. I took a breath. “She was another version of me.”

Levi scanned my face as if there was something more to see or learn from my flat expression or maybe from my wrinkles.

I plowed ahead, putting it all out there. “I said before that I was in Nevermore to meet a friend, but that wasn’t entirely true.”

“I met you here,” Imogen said.

I nodded. “But I came to find out what happened to Nie. Her head was delivered to me in a box.”

“But without an address or gift tag on the box, it could have been for me,” Imogen said. “Or for Wendy.”

“She bought a train ticket for Nevermore before she died. She was cursed when she got here. And even though I have her memories now, I still don’t know what happened.” My pulse pounded in my ears. My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. The words wouldn’t stop pouring from my mouth. “The alley we found with the blood, it was a death site. That’s why Nie was chanting die die die . It was her glove, but she wasn’t the killer. She was the victim.”

“You found where Nie died?” Imogen said softly.

“Yes,” I said, not even realizing I hadn’t told her that already. “And the kernel of truth at the midnight market was don’t lose your head. Which I did.”

My whole body hummed with an electricity that made me feel like I could puke at any second.

“I don’t know what this kernel of truth thing is, but it doesn’t sound like it was very helpful,” Imogen said.

I stared at Levi. It was his turn to say something, to comment, to give me any sort of reaction beyond his own flat expression and the startling spark of light behind his green eyes.

Why were they glowing? What caused that? Did it mean something?

I was definitely going to hurl.

“I’m a bodysnatcher,” Imogen volunteered. “What are you?”

No vomit came, but the taste made its way up my throat nonetheless.

Levi pressed his lips together, his gaze never leaving mine. “I’m not permitted to share that information.”

After everything I’d shared, after as open as I’d been, he still wouldn’t divulge his supernatural nature.

“That’s a weird thing to say,” Imogen said.

It was weird. And frustrating.

I forced myself to look away so I could think. I tried to remember the exact words Levi had used when I first asked about his supernatural nature. Something about it being a secret that belonged to someone else…or to a group of someones? I couldn’t remember.

He’d told me other things about himself, and I wanted that to be enough, but doubt still scratched at the back of my mind.

“Is someone threatening you?” Imogen asked. “Is it like if you tell us that you’re a werehodag, the council of werehodags will come and throw rocks at you or something?”

The were part I understood, as in shapeshifting werewolf or werebear. But the rest…. “What’s a hodag?”

“It’s this giant frog thing with sheep horns and shaggy hair,” Imogen said. “They’re super gross.”

“There’s no such thing as werehodags. No one is threatening me. It’s….” Levi frowned and looked down at his hands.

The turmoil on his face suggested he wanted to share something, if only that “something” was the reason why he couldn’t tell me everything. Maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see. Still, I waited with bated breath for whatever it was he’d say next.

Imogen waved her arms in my face. Her eyes were wide, her lips pressed tightly shut. She pointed with so much emphasis, she appeared poised to explode.

Following Imogen’s direction, I peered through the gap between the cardboard boxes.

All I could see was the dead guy’s legs, exactly where they’d been.

I blinked.

Something moved, so quickly I didn’t catch what it was. A shadow, maybe.

A sharp breath filled my lungs.

I put a hand over my mouth, suppressing any sound.

I didn’t blink. I didn’t breathe.

All I could hear was the rush of my pulse.

Thin fingers wrapped around the dead guy’s ankle.