Song of Wishrock Harbor (The Invisible Entente Book 2) Read online

  After a moment, the lines around Clare’s mouth hardened and her eyes flashed with fire. The effect came as less of a surprise the second time around, and Gabe watched warily as the flames crackled along her irises. A jolt of surprise cut through him that the light was coming from within her rather than as a reflection of the candlelight.

  What is this woman?

  “It’s bullshit,” she spat. She gripped her hands into fists in her lap, and when she uncurled her left hand, her neat nails had left grooves in her palm. “He had no reason to be at the harbor. He was working late, then took himself out to dinner. He called me from outside the bar saying he would be home within the hour. Even if he did have to go to the docks for…some reason, he was more than capable of taking care of himself. They have no idea what they’re talking about.”

  She huffed and tossed back the rest of her drink. As soon as she set the glass on the desk, Gabe grabbed it and refilled it.

  Clare sipped the next drink more slowly, while Gabe spun his own between his palms.

  “Why do they think it’s a mugging?” he asked, wanting to break through the wall she’d formed around herself. Her gaze shifted from the dancing colors in her glass to his face.

  “Because Sam wasn’t the first one to go the way he did,” she said. Her tone turned sarcastic, as though she was quoting someone else’s words. “They think it’s a sign there’s a group of criminals preying on the defenseless as they pass through the harbor in this weather.”

  Gabe imagined a group of thieves trudging through waist-deep snow to get to the harbor, then hiding behind a snow dune and lying in wait in the frozen temperatures on the off chance some suitable victim walked by.

  He doubted even the dumbest criminal would come up with an idea that weak.

  Guess the lady has a point about the dim cops.

  He had to give credit where it was due: New Haven’s crime rates were low, all things considered. But if Clare was right about the crime being otherworldly, the mundane cops didn’t stand a chance.

  If the lady’s right, he thought.

  “I don’t know about the other victims, so maybe there is a group out there hunting people,” Clare said, “but there’s no way in all the heavens and hells a bunch of miscreant thugs could have taken down Sam.”

  Gabe took a sip of his drink as he mulled over her words. “If we’re talking numbers, it might not matter how strong your husband was. They could have overwhelmed him.”

  “I’d have liked to see them try,” she said, and this time the blaze in her eyes was unmistakable. The skin at the back of Gabe’s neck crawled and he jerked his whiskey away from her as fire sparked along the edges of her eye sockets to lick her pale eyelashes. The light from her skin overwhelmed the candles on his desk, making his office as bright as if the power had returned. “You see, Mr. Mulligan, Sam was a fire elemental, just as I am. I don’t care if they had a whole army of muggers at that harbor. He could have blasted them into ash with a wave of his hand.”

  Okay, so she is right, he thought, and took a gulp of his drink to compose himself. Not much surprised him anymore, but the sight of a beautiful woman shooting fire out of her eyes was enough to put him off-kilter.

  It also gave him a deeper appreciation of the risk she’d taken to reach him. While fire elementals were resistant to cold, it took energy for them to stay heated, and the colder the temperature around them, the faster it drained them. She could stand all toasty warm in a blizzard for a stretch of time, but once the heat ran out, she would die in a heartbeat.

  Apparently Clare’s dead husband was worth the danger for her.

  She drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, then reached for her glass. Gradually, the fire in her eyes ebbed and the glow on her skin paled, but the set of her jawline remained stiff.

  “Please understand that, if I could, I would go down to the harbor myself and tear apart whatever did this to Sam with my own hands. I wouldn’t hesitate. But I’m a busy woman with, unfortunately, a tenuous reputation to uphold. With Sam gone, my father-in-law would be within his rights to pull my position and social status out from under me if I did anything to jeopardize the family name. I believe he would ask the police to cover up the whole tragedy, except that he wants to know what happened to his son. So that is why I came to you.”

  Gabe scratched the back of his neck and weighed his options.

  The idea of taking on a new case right now exhausted him. He’d sat alone in this office for the last couple of days, watching as seemingly everyone else came together. He’d watched families preparing for the storm the weatherman warned was coming, watched lovers playing in the snowbanks before the weather got so bad they couldn’t leave their houses. All he wanted was to lose himself in the temporary mindlessness of alcohol until this ugly sense of loneliness left him.

  A louder voice prodded his curiosity, his love of riddles and puzzles urging him on despite the dense, depressive fog around his brain. Here was a woman with enough heat to burn down the entire city if she wanted to, but she had come to him for help to solve a crime that, in a more mentally stable state, he would have jumped at.

  This was the kind of case he had wanted when he’d opened his business. A string of murders by an unknown enemy that could take down a fire elemental? Yes, please.

  Your bank account could also use the boost.

  Gabe grimaced at the reminder of the electronic figures dwindling by the day with his increased pizza-and-alcohol consumption. The only silver lining he could see in this storm was that his metabolism would prevent his Snow Diet from sticking around his waistline.

  He glanced outside into the swirling snow, the doused lights of the city giving the world a claustrophobic closeness.

  What kind of creature would have set up camp in the elements just to attack an unwary straggler who happened to pass along the harbor?

  As long as Gabe didn’t need to get too close to the water, he was determined to find out.

  A smile teased his lips, and he returned his attention to Clare, who hadn’t moved since she’d fallen silent. Her bright eyes stared at him and her lips were molded into a firm line — ready to smile if he agreed or offer a tongue-lashing if he turned her down. He knew the type.

  “All right, Mrs. Davidson, you’ve got my interest. I’ll find out what happened to your husband.”

  2

  The moment Gabe’s acceptance dropped from his lips, Clare’s stiff expression collapsed into relief before hardening again. It was a brief enough slip that Gabe’s brain registered the change only after she’d composed herself.

  The stoic socialite sat before him once more, but that window into her heart had been enough to assure Gabe that her anger came from a place of grief, and that her devotion to her husband was more important to her than her desire to remain on her in-laws’ bank account.

  While her motivation made no difference as to whether or not he pursued the case — money was money — he felt better knowing he wasn’t being sent out to perfume the family name and cover up any of her husband’s possible misdeeds.

  In one smooth motion, Clare dipped into her handbag and pulled out her checkbook and a monogrammed pen. She scribbled a few numbers on the check and slid it across the desk for Gabe’s perusal.

  He angled the writing into the flickering candlelight and a sharp breath lodged in his throat.

  “Is that a sufficient advance?” she asked.

  “Should be,” he said.

  Sufficient enough to buy a small country.

  “Good. Then I want this solved quickly and, most importantly, Mr. Mulligan, discreetly.” She rose to her feet, and Gabe stood with her. “I’ll be in touch in three days for an update. Good evening.”

  She inclined her head and stepped lightly out of Gabe’s office. He followed her as far as the doorway and detected the faint glow radiating off her as she moved away from the candlelight. The glow brightened as she moved farther down the stairs, then disappeared when she stepped out into the sto
rm.

  Gabe suspected that if he went downstairs to see how she’d reached the office building, he would find a path of melted snow in her wake.

  He shut his door, returned to his desk, and poured himself another finger of whiskey. The alcohol burned down his throat and warmed his belly, but his metabolism kicked in too quickly to allow such a small amount to offer any kind of buzz.

  Alongside the whiskey, though, the heat of excitement burned through him, an emotion he hadn’t experienced in weeks. It crawled into his cheeks with a flush and left a smile on his face.

  Clare’s case held an appeal that had been lacking from most of his previous cases. Whatever killed Sam had to have been strong and quick to avoid getting slammed with the fire elemental’s power. It also had been smart enough to leave no sign of what it was. If the police were saying a mugging, they probably had no better idea of had caused Sam’s death.

  Or if they do, they’re not revealing it to the public.

  Gabe wondered what the media was saying about the recent murders. Clare mentioned there had been more than one death. Even if the journalists weren’t able to get out to the scene on their own to poke around, he guessed he’d find some juicy tidbits online from people who still had the electricity to post what they’d been able to dig up.

  The third item Percy had insisted Gabe have in his office was a computer, but that’s where Gabe had put his foot down. He liked the old-school atmosphere created by the lack of technology, as though to step into his office were to step into another time. A scene right out of his favorite noir films. The papers and file folders on his desk gave the impression that he did his work here, by hand.

  The reality of his job lay two steps away in his apartment.

  He returned his whiskey bottle to the bottom drawer and blew out the candles on his desk, dousing the office in darkness.

  He ran a quick list through his mind to make sure he had everything, then ran his finger through the air in a vertical line. A faint golden light traced along the edges of the rift as it opened.

  While most of the other residents of New Haven were trapped in their homes, Gabe’s Fae blood gave him the great advantage of instantaneous travel — one of the pros of his heritage that offset the soul-crushing con of his Gorgon bloodline, the side that kept him alone and shrouded in a bustling, colorful world.

  He stamped down on the murky thoughts that threatened to overwhelm his fresh burst of enthusiasm and widened the rift into his dark apartment. Usually he left a light on for himself at home, but with the power out in his corner of the city, nothing greeted him but shadows and the faint glimmer of emergency lights from the hospital down the street.

  Over the past few days, as he’d grappled with his dark mood, Gabe found himself wishing those lights hadn’t survived the outage either. Their harsh white glow created eerie shapes on the road, as though the darkness were slinking out of its corners to ensnare anyone unlucky enough to pass by.

  He stepped through the rift, barely noticing the faint tingle and warmth that passed over his skin as he cut along the outskirts of the Fae dimension to get home.

  Once he stood in his bachelor apartment, he let the rift close behind him. A cool draft cut through his living room and brushed across his cheeks, but the chill only tickled his skin.

  Taking a step forward, he tripped on an open pizza box lying on the floor. With a curse, he bent down to pick it up, then grabbed the last slice of pizza from the box and tore into the day-old cheese and olives. It was cold, but that didn’t matter much to him. His stomach gurgled in appreciation.

  He tossed the box in the direction of the garbage can and opened the fridge to grab a beer. Even without power, the beer was the perfect temperature thanks to the weather outside, and the cool brew complemented the cold pizza.

  From the tiny kitchen space, he eased his way around the round Formica table to drop down onto the futon that served as his couch and bed. The hinges to open it up had rusted long ago, leaving it in permanent couch form, and the springs sagged and groaned under his weight, the stuffing in the mattress poking into his palms. The state of the couch brought to mind Clare’s check. He pulled it out of his front pocket and spread it across his knee, thinking about how different his lifestyle could be if he spent the money well.

  Across the small room, the black box of an old CRT television stared blankly at him. To his left sat his dad’s stereo, perched between ragged copies of Raymond Chandler paperbacks.

  With the exception of the state-of-the-art laptop in front of him on his coffee table, nothing in his slummy apartment was new or in great shape. He’d grabbed most of it randomly over his nine years living here, usually from the ends of driveways on garbage day. At any point, he could have filled his place with the comfortable, country-style furniture he’d inherited from his parents, but he had no real sense of personal decor and entertained so rarely that he didn’t much care what home looked like.

  He leaned over the side of the futon and switched on the small generator sitting on the floor against the wall. The lamp on the end table wedged behind it lit up with a dim glow. He opened his laptop, hit the power button, and watched the dance of the icon as the computer booted up.

  His little camping generator had been a godsend over the last couple of days, but each hour drained the power further, and he guessed it wouldn’t last beyond another two days without a top-up of gasoline, even with his minimal use.

  The new case called to him, though, and his desire to get started won over being frugal.

  His internet browser popped up, and he ran a quick search for the New Haven Chronicle, the only paper worth its salt in the city.

  He had to admit he was biased about that. When he’d spent the night locked in Jermaine Hershel’s magical trap eight months ago, one of his fellow sleuths in uncovering Jermaine’s murderer had been the Chronicle’s lead crime journalist. At the time, she’d been a petulant, driven woman who walked the wrong side of the magical road, but for all that, she was a damn fine writer.

  Sure enough, Daphne Heartstone had taken on the story of the men found at Wishrock Harbor. Although the print version of the paper had stopped running since the power went out, the online articles were up to date. Parts of the city were luckier than others and still had electricity.

  The article was short, with a black-and-white photo of the victim beside the text. Sam Davidson had been a handsome devil, in Gabe’s objective opinion, with light, smiling eyes and fair hair brushed into smooth waves. His smile was charming, and the cut of his suit was expensive. Just what a person would expect from the son of the founder of a successful transport company. Gabe imagined Clare walking on this man’s arm. A movie couple.

  Hoping Daphne would have picked up on the supernatural slant of the murder, he read between the lines of her article as he went.

  “Son of Kurt Davidson, Davidson Transport, Found Dead,” the headline announced.

  Today, police were called to Wishrock Harbor to investigate the death of a man discovered early this morning. Sam Davidson, 37, was discovered naked and apparently frozen to death following what police are calling the latest in a recent series of muggings that have occurred in the east end of town.

  Detectives Hunter Avery and Meg Kealey have confirmed that this murder is connected to two others that were discovered in the same area within the last week, and to as many as three additional deaths reported over the previous week.

  In all cases, the victims had no apparent reason for being in the neighborhood of Wishrock Harbor. Police are asking that anyone with information about the actions or whereabouts of Sam Davidson, or any of the other men listed below, on the night of his death contact the number provided.

  No photos were included of the crime scene, and no other articles touched on Sam’s murder. Gabe scrolled through the older stories to find out more about the previous victims, but the connection had been even thinner then, with less information to share.

  He rubbed his hands over his face and n
udged his sunglasses out of the way to press his fingers around his eyes.

  “All right,” he said aloud, and took a swig of beer. “So these men went out of their way to go to the harbor in the middle of the worst weather New Haven has seen in, well, ever, to do…what? Score some coke? Get their rocks off?”

  Gabe missed sex, but he doubted any kind of pleasure was worth freezing his sensitive areas.

  And for a fire elemental like Sam, that would be beyond strange. Fire elementals created and craved heat. Any kind of temperature drop left them cranky, and a dip too far below freezing ran the risk of turning them to elementicles.

  Definitely not worth the risk just for some itch scratching.

  Gabe pushed himself off the futon and paced the tiny space of his one-room apartment. Although it would suck more juice out of his generator, he switched on his stereo and let the cool notes of classic blues drift through the room.

  He stepped over to the window and stared out into the white night. The snow struck against his window pane and froze, making the visibility even worse here than it had been at his office.

  Thanks to the generator, he was forced to leave his window open a crack to vent the air, and a cold wind brushed against his thighs. The draft played with the small hairs on the backs of his hands and cooled the flush created by his excitement and the alcohol, but wasn’t enough to sink into his bones.

  Against the backdrop of falling snow, he cast his attention over his reflection in the glass: the messy hair, the ever-smooth jaw, the bulk of his sweatshirt. According to Percy, his was the kind of attractive that made women stumble and tempted other men to push him down manholes. Gabe accepted that it was less his face and more his Fae energy that drew people to him, but no matter the reason, his Gorgon side prevented him from taking advantage of the perks. His temper made him ill-inclined to socialize more than necessary, and no woman was worth the risk of turning her to stone just for a few hours of pleasure.