Chapter 12

As I chewedmy slice of pizza, I kept calling myself dumb for opening my mouth and saying the wrong thing. How could I have called the most epic sex of my life fun? It had been so much more than that. However, I couldn't take the words back, and worse, I couldn't read Koda.

He'd dressed in silence after our interruption. No soft touches or looks, no playful banter. Was he insulted? Then again, I should know this was how people acted after no-strings sex. In the past, I'd gotten what I needed and gone on my merry way. But now, it left me perturbed.

I'll admit I'm not sure what I expected. A declaration of love would have had me snorting. I didn't need to be coddled. Never needed it before, didn't need it now, either. So why did I keep glancing at Koda waiting for him to… what? Treat me like his girlfriend? I'd been the one to recommend sex to reduce the tension between us. Never once did I advocate for something more. Then again, neither did he. What if he'd not been as impressed? What if I spoke up and it turned out he didn't feel the same way? Best I keep my mouth shut.

But what if keeping quiet meant it never happened again?

Ugh. No wonder I remained single.

While we ate, Koda questioned Hekate's hounds, who'd followed instructions and found themselves some clothing.

"Where do you live when you're not on a mission for your goddess?"

"We have an apartment in New York, but we don't see it much given the goddess has us moving about quite a bit in her name."

"Doing what?" I asked before taking a bite of gooey cheese with a crispy pepperoni. It surprised me to hear Hekate kept them busy, given she didn't much involve herself in the world these days.

Ambrose offered a vague reply. "A little bit of everything."

Orion added on to that. "If the goddess is being threatened, we work to circumvent. If a friend of hers needs aid, we provide it."

"You have magic," I stated. I still remembered the feel of it flowing into me from them when I cast the spell in Lenora's yard.

"We carry the goddess' blessing with us, but only those in her favor can use it."

"And she was the one to send you to Marissa?" Koda clarified.

"Yup. We would have arrived sooner but someone"—Ambrose turned a glare on Orion—"forgot to rent a car before we got on the plane."

"Well excuse me," Orion drawled. "How was I to know a convention in town would mean we'd have trouble finding transportation?"

"Did you see who attacked Marissa?" While Koda had a plate with a few slices, he didn't appear to be eating much.

Hekate's servants glanced at each other, and Orion shrugged. "Sorry. But no. We arrived in time to see the smoke starting to seep out of the house, and we charged in to see if anyone needed rescuing."

"Good thing too," Ambrose added. "The banshee wasn't exactly worried about the witch passed out on her living room floor."

My lips pursed. "Lenora had other things on her mind, such as the attack on her home, which was entirely my fault. I should have never involved her."

To my surprise, Koda leaned over and put his hand over mine. "You couldn't have known what would happen. And from the looks of it, you actually did Lenora a favor. You reunited her with her family."

True, but that didn't stop the sad tilt of my lips. "I hope she's at peace now."

Koda removed his hand from mine, only to place it on my leg, just above my knee. Possessive, without being overbearing. It gave me a tiny thrill. Maybe what I felt wasn't one-sided.

Orion had questions. "So am I getting this straight? You don't know who your enemy is?"

I sipped on a can of cola, swishing the bubbly sugared liquid around before I swallowed. "There's a few possibilities." It took us a few minutes to explain our current case, what we'd found thus far, and by the time we finished, even the jovial Orion frowned.

"Sounds complicated," he commented.

"Because there's a missing piece," Ambrose interjected. "There has to be something linking all these events, and I don't just mean the chimera."

Me. I hadn't yet voiced the suspicion that had been growing with each new detail we learned about the fires. I feared I'd sound like some kind of narcissist, making the case all about me. And yet…

"Speaking of pieces." Koda held out his phone and pointed at the screen. "I got that address."

I dreaded looking at the pictures of his notes, even as I needed to be sure. I stared at the neat handwriting, and my stomach clenched as my fear manifested.

A watching Koda saw the change in my expression. "What's wrong?"

I shook my head, unable to answer. Still hoping I was wrong and as though on auto-pilot, I pulled out my phone and opened up the attachment I'd previously left closed. The details of the single residential purple fire Rick had found. My vision blurred as my eyes read the address.

"Marissa, tell me what's going on."

I handed over my phone for him to look at, though I knew the numbers wouldn't mean anything to him. Not like they did to me. In a dull monotone, I explained, "These addresses do have something in common. Me." Before they could bombard me with questions, I explained. "The foster care office that burned down? I was in their system. This address…" I pointed to Koda's phone and the image of the scribbles. "The house that burned down thirty years ago, it's the same one from the file I found about myself. It's where I was found."

"A fire set by the chimera," Koda murmured.

"How did you survive?" Ambrose's tone lilted in curiosity.

I shrugged. "No idea. The authorities found me in the ashes, naked and unharmed. Despite them questioning me, all I knew was my name. Marissa. And my age. Five. Which I'm thinking I might have gotten wrong, based on the hospital burning six years previous. In any case, I didn't know how I'd gotten there, or even who my parents were."

"At that age, it's possible you didn't know your last name, or your parents' names," Koda mused aloud. "It's also not uncommon for children to only refer to their parent as mom or dad."

"I also couldn't tell them how I came to be there or what happened. It's like my memories were wiped."

"No one ever came forth to claim you?" Orion's brows rose high on his forehead.

I shook my head. "Nope and no database DNA ever matched mine."

"And this other address?" Koda inquired, pointing to my phone with Rick's report.

"Used to be my foster home. I got sent there after Cryptid Youth Services satisfied themselves that I wouldn't cause harm."

"Don't tell me they thought you might have set the fire you were found in?" Orion jumped in.

"They didn't know what to think. Here I was, in the still-smoldering ashes, with no real memory or explanation nor a single burn. They ran extensive tests on me, only to realize I was an ordinary human and not a cryptid."

"Hardly ordinary given you're a witch," Koda pointed out.

I could only offer a faint smile. "A witch with an unidentified bloodline and muddied past. Luckily, Hekate didn't care."

"That is our goddess," Ambrose stated with pride. "She isn't one to discriminate. Magic is magic."

Koda squeezed my leg. "Sounds like a tough childhood."

"Not as tough as some. I lucked out in that my foster family actually cared for the kids they took in. Not everyone is that lucky." I'd been donating clothes and other gear to the Cryptid Foster Care Society ever since I started working full-time. I was grateful for a system that took care of me and hoped to give back.

Ambrose stood and paced. "Is it me, or do some of these fires seem like their purpose was to erase Marissa's existence?"

I blinked at him. "Why would you say that?"

"Because they obscured your roots, and in turn, no one ever figured out your identity." Orion pointed out.

"Why would anyone do that?" Koda asked.

"You should know solving a case involves finding the coincidences."

"I think you're reaching," he scoffed.

"Am I?" I countered. "There's the CA science lab fire. It supposedly had a magical glitch that torched their records, but want to bet that's where I was tested?"

He frowned. "I guess it's possible. But wouldn't those records have been backed up on a computer network?"

"In a perfect world, yes. But guess what? Right before we were assigned this case I was working on entering thirty years' worth of precinct files that someone decided to throw in a storage unit instead of digitizing. Turns out, the CA and file maintenance? Not so great."

"I think you're grasping." He picked my phone back up and I watched him flip through the attachments of Rick's reports. "Do you know the car dealership that got hit by the arsonist? Or the clothing store right after? Have you visited a motel by the name of Quickie Dickie?"

"I'm not saying they're all connected to me—the mobile phone store sure isn't—but maybe the fire starter burned down other places to try to throw us off. In any case, those places all happen to be on a direct route from the prison the chimera escaped from to here."

It was Ambrose who made me stiffen by asking, "Are you by any chance related to the chimera?"

"No. Don't be silly. I'm a witch." The very idea sounded preposterous.

"But you said it yourself. You were an orphan with no roots, so it's possible," Orion countered.

"I can't shift into a chimera shape. Nor is my magical fire blue."

"Could be you take after your father," Ambrose suggested.

"No. The chimera is not my mother." Me, descended from a dangerous cryptid who was responsible for the house fire where I was found? Never. My blood work had me as human in origin.

"A good agent doesn't discount possibilities so quickly," Koda stated. "We have two known blue fires. One being the house where you were found and the other a hospital records room. Based on the conclusions you've already drawn, I think we can safely bet they had a log of your birth."

My lips pressed tight. "I think I'd know if a criminal was my parent. And before you tell me I'm being emotional, the fact is all cryptids who are incarcerated have their DNA scanned. Given how often they checked to see if I had relatives, it would have pinged." Yet even as I said it, the image of the chimera's heavily redacted file sprung to mind. All those black boxes covering all those hidden truths…

"Unless the fires aren't the only way someone was actively hiding your existence," Koda interjected.

"Why?" I exclaimed.

"Could it be because they knew the chimera would come looking and wanted to keep you safe?" Ambrose offered a reason, but I remained unconvinced.

"Let's say you're right about me being related to the chimera, which I don't think you are, by the way. Why would someone go through the trouble of hiding me, only to turn around and try to kill me at Lenora's house?" I attacked the flaw in his logic.

"Because we're not dealing with one person," Koda mused aloud. "At the start of the case, we assumed we had the chimera starting the fires, the person who put out the bounty for the chimera, and someone hiding the chimera."

"And now, what? Are you saying that whoever hid the chimera also hid me?"

"I'm saying there could be someone who was hiding the chimera's info and someone else hiding your info, or it could be one person who wasn't protecting the chimera by redacting her file, but protecting you by making sure no one could prove a connection between you two."

"Because the chimera tried to murder me in that house fire and no one wanted her to know she didn't finish the job." There was no proof of it, yet it seemed to be where the evidence pointed. "Now she's somehow learned that I survived, and she's coming for me."

"Not necessarily." Koda spoke in a no-nonsense detective voice, even though we talked about me being specifically targeted for murder.

"Oh, okay, What else could it be?" I tried to keep my nerves in check but failed. "Let's not forget we also have the person who put out the bounty. They want the chimera captured, probably so they can torture her for revenge. Could be that they might have made the same stupid guess that I'm related to the chimera and thought, why not go after me, too."

"At least in that scenario the chimera probably cares about you and isn't a cold-blooded daughter murderer."

I couldn't help but grimace. "I really wish you'd stop implying I'm her daughter. I'd rather not be related to a monster."

"We still don't know what she actually did," Koda reminded.

"We know I was found in the remains of a house that burned down in blue flames. We know chimera's flames burn blue. We know the chimera was in a supermax prison, had her existence wiped, even her file redacted. Whatever she did must have been bad."

Orion piped in. "Better hope she's got a maternal instinct then, because if your boyfriend is right, one way or another she's coming for you."

"It does seem like that," Koda agreed.

"How do you figure?" Denial seemed to be my only friend at this point. The only way I was going to save myself from becoming the target—or maybe even worse, the daughter—of a monster. "I'm like what, a two-, three-day drive from where she escaped? It's been almost a year since the prisoners escaped. More than enough time for her to get here if that's what she wanted."

"You're talking about someone with no money, who's been in jail for three decades. Could be she wasn't sure where to find you. Maybe she can't drive." Koda gave reasons, and I shot them down.

"There's buses."

"Where she might be seen and reported. And don't forget, she's a fugitive with a bounty on her head. She knows she has an enemy, that someone is actively hunting her, so she has to be careful. Maybe she waited until she thought things had calmed down and she could roll into town unnoticed." Koda kept insisting.

I sighed. "This is crazy."

"It is, but this is also the break we've been waiting for. Right now, whoever attacked you at Lenora's house thinks you"re dead. You need to make a public appearance, alive and well, before the chimera leaves town."

"Is your boyfriend suggesting we use you as bait? That's cold, man," Ambrose exclaimed.

I jumped to his defense. "No, because he's right. I only have two choices, hide or set a trap. I know what I prefer."

"On second thought, Ambrose is right. I shouldn't be putting you in danger," Koda's tight reply.

"Not up to you, and don't forget, this is our job. We capture cryptids. It's what we've trained to do. And at least, now, we kind of know what to expect. Since the arsonist relies on fire, I'll work on ways to extinguish and render them impotent. I can check the spellcasting database for some techniques."

"Don't be so quick to assume we can handle it. We have no idea what the chimera is capable of," Koda reminded.

"Then it's a good thing you'll be around to protect me. You and the Hounds."

My solution only made Koda's grimace deeper, but Hekate's pets?

Ambrose grinned widely, and Orion fist-pumped. "Bring on the hunt. Awoo!"