Page 5 of Blood & Ice

Taliyah pulled to an abrupt halt in front of the Haven Hollow police department. From the outside, it just looked like a small, bland office building. Unbeknownst to anyone but the pair of us, it had several cells built into a new addition, all equipped to handle monsters. I’d magicked the entrance to that particular part of the building so those not in the know wouldn’t take any notice of it.

Taliyah didn’t even glance my way before she stepped out of the car and stalked to the back, a permafrost hex arcing like lightning between her fingers. Touching the wolf with that lightning would be a hell of a lot more painful than being tased, and he knew it. The wolf stayed still as she booked him and even whimpered in fright when she frog-marched him toward the cells. I didn’t follow her. Crowding her elbows while she tried to do her job was going to earn me a scathing lecture at best and a soul-crushing diatribe at worst. Taliyah was a big girl who didn’t need my supervision, no matter how much I wanted to offer it.

I was debating on whether to bid her farewell, step out, and slink to my car to overthink things whenithappened. It wasn’t loud, but I was so attuned to the cadence of her breath and the inflection of her voice that I caught the hiss of discomfort. I’d almost completed the full circuit back to the holding cells before my body checked in with my brain. On this, though, we were in agreement: I wasn’t leaving if she was hurt. Proud as Tally was, she’d probably been banged up in the fight and refused to let it show.

I rounded the corner, expecting to find her bent over with bruised ribs or cradling a compound fracture. The running leap she’d taken off an oak branch had been awe-inspiring to watch.The fall she’d taken after a tentacle whipped into her mid-air, much less so. I thought I’d been able to cushion her fall enough to avoid catastrophic injury, but I might have misjudged the amount of power necessary to provide adequate protection. If she’d been hurt because of me...

But no. Her face wasn’t scrunched up in a rictus of pain. She was staring at a shallow cut on her forearm, probably sustained when she’d been manhandling the wolf. She’d used a little more force than was strictly necessary with him, but I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Even if the duration of the high was short due to werewolf metabolism, meth was still meth. I wasn’t eager to pit my strength against something that strong with no inhibitions and a limited perception of pain.

Blood oozed out of her wound, slowly staining her uniform a shade of purple.

“I’m bleeding,” she said, and her voice sounded distant and echoing, as though she was shouting to me from the end of a long tunnel.

It made the hair at the back of my neck prickle. Tally wasn’t acting like herself. She was many things, but vacant and distracted weren’t on the list of her attributes. Had she hit her head? A brain bleed might explain this odd behavior.

“I can see that,” I said slowly. “Will you let me take a look at it?”

“I’m bleeding,” she repeated, and her lips quirked into a truly unsettling smile. It was nestled firmly in the uncanny valley, an expression that in no way belonged to the woman I knew.

A hysterical giggle burst out of her then, sending a current of pure panic running through me like a live wire. This wasn’t Taliyah. If I hadn’t been with her most of the night, I would have accused the woman in front of me of being a shapeshifter. The bond between us said otherwise, still active enough to allow meto confirm it was indeed Tally standing here.

But what the hell could make her act this way? I’d seen her walk away from a pitched, life-or-death battle less shocky than this. There was no way that one werewolf had shaken her this badly. And neither had the tentacle monster, for that matter.

“I’m bleeding, Mav,” she said, her hysterical giggle rising in pitch.

“Do I need to hex the guy in cell two?” I asked.

It was a calculated and largely empty threat. I hated that she was hurt and would have reacted violently to her injury if it had happened in any other circumstance. Work was an unspoken exception for the both of us. Injury, trauma, and death were risks that came with the job when you were a first responder. She’d never forgive me if I treated her like she was incapable of doing her job.

She’d also never forgive me if I killed someone outside of a life-or-death scenario. My past was littered with every shade of gray imaginable, which both intrigued and disturbed her. If my Tally was in there somewhere, she’d react exactly the way she was raised to by the Morgan family.

A little animation flickered far back in her eyes. The giggle cut off abruptly, as though someone had clicked a mute button. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. Then, as though someone had flicked a switch, she was suddenly in there, her bleak, winter sky eyes filling with the tenacious strength that had suckered me in from the first day we met. Her familiar scowl was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Tally gave my arm a swat, but there wasn’t much life to the gesture. “You can’t hex him!”

I grinned, brushing a thumb over her jutting lower lip. This close, I could see the thrum of her pulse just under the skin. Her blush was subtle, just a dusting of pink over her cheekbones, barely visible if you weren’t looking for it.

“There’s my girl,” I said quietly. “I knew she was in there somewhere. Do you mind telling me what you were giggling about?”

The color fled as quickly as it came, and she swayed. I caught her before she could topple over and helped her to sit behind her desk. If she passed out here, she’d only have a bruise in the shape of her stapler to worry about, instead of a skull fracture from hitting the cement at speed.

“I don’t even know where to start,” she said on a sigh.

“Why don’t I get you a coffee and you can tell me all about it?” I offered.

“That sounds really good. Thank you, Mav.”

I gave her a knowing smile. “Hey, what are husbands for?”

Chapter Four

Taliyah

The over-brewed coffee with its cheap powdered creamer and copious amount of sugar tasted like ambrosia after the night I’d been through.

Maverick watched me sip it, knees braced against the side of my desk as he watched over me. My hands were shaking too badly to make the coffee myself, so he’d whipped up this monstrosity for me. Something about my new faerie form craved all forms of sugar, the way my human self used to crave steak. It was a deep, in-the-gutneedfor something your body lacked. I suspected that if a human scientist ever got their hands on a faerie corpse, the autopsy would show a metabolism similar to a hummingbird’s. Incredibly high output required equal input, or faeries would burn themselves out in a spectacular magical explosion. At least, that’s what I told myself whenever I caught myself visiting Sweeter Haunts for fudge three times in the same day.

Maverick waited until the shaking had subsided to touch me. I wasn’t as averse to comfort as Maverick, who’d distrusted everything and everyone on principle. But our families had something in common when you got right down to it. Intentional or not, growing up around first responders had shaped who I was, including some of the more toxic lies I told myself. That any sign of weakness would draw everyone down on you like starved piranhas. That people would think less of you if you let your mask slip. That they couldn’t possibly want the wildly insecure mess hiding just behind the façade. People couldn’t want the real you. Ever.

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