Page 2 of The Elementalist
Boy, sounding sleazier and sleazier.
“Really?” she said, her eyes innocent and trusting.
Okay, now I felt like shit for lying to her. I sighed, then brought the coffee over and handed it to her. She looked up at me with what I would classify as gratitude, so I coughed up the truth. “No. I’m just making a joke. I didn’t have any other client.Lyingis what private eyes do sometimes to get information. We’re good at lying. I’m good at it.”
“That’s not really something to be proud of,” she said, avoiding eye contact. “Lying, I mean. Lies can cause a lot of damage.”
“You’re right, sorry. But you might think differently if my, um, skills were able to help you.” I slipped back around my desk with my coffee mug in hand. “Speaking of which, how can I help you?”
She processed what I’d said and nearly got up to leave. I mean, I’m not a mind reader or anything, but I saw her questioning... everything. Luckily, my coffee must have beenthat good—or the warm mug felt comforting in her hand. Or maybe my encouraging smile did her in… or the relaxing ambiance of my simple office with its cluttered desk and foldout client chairs. At least she wasn’t put off by the scar on the right side of my neck…a nasty sucker that reached up almost to my ear and plummeted to well below my collar bone.
Or, perhaps, she was that desperate.
“I need help, Mister....”
“Long,” I said. “Max Long.”
She nodded. “I need help, Mr. Long.”
I nodded along with her. “What kind of help?”
She sipped from her coffee mug, her pinkie finger sticking out at a 90-degree angle. She’d had etiquette training, which didn’t surprise me. This town had old money, and a lot of people who still held onto past niceties. Nine families had most of the wealth in the area, and they’d had it for a couple centuries at least. People around here referred to them as the Founding Families, since they’d initially settled the area. Etiquette training still remained popular for the upper class, like they clung to the old ‘royals and peasants’ mentality. This girl obviously had taken the white gloves and ankles-kept-crossed seminars. She exuded upper class—except for the haughtiness.
“Someone killed my sister and her husband.”
I was about to lift my coffee mug when I paused. Steam wafted up between us, drifting past the face of the blonde woman in front of me. I’d heard about the deaths, of course. “That was your sister? The animal attack in the woods?”
She nodded and looked down, fighting tears. Eventually, she collected herself and sighed. “You would think the woods here crawled with bears and wolves, based on all the animal attacks.”
“You disagree with the official findings?”
“Damn straight I disagree.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, but what exactly are you looking forme to do?”
“I know it wasn’t an animal attack, Mr. Long. I want to hire you to find proof of that. I want you to prove that something else is going on in these damn woods. Once and for all, I want you to help this town find answers for why so many people here die horrific deaths or just disappear.”
I blinked, absorbing her words. I hadn’t worked a wrongful death case in a long time. My cases tended to be lightweights. Heck, my last job had been undercover work at the Shadow Pines Hospital, trying to find out who’d been stealing from their blood supply. I never did find the bastard, although I was pretty sure the hospital was haunted as all get out. Moving shadows, disembodied footsteps and breathing sounds, and the overall disconcerting feeling that someone was watching me. Afterward, I had dreams of that place, nightmares where a tall man with a long face and Hollywood hair told me to forget what I saw. Of course, I could never quite remember what I had supposedly seen, but the dreams were weird as hell.
She bit her lip. “Sheriff Waters and her team of klutzes aren’t saying much. It makes me wonder whose side they’re on. It’s why I came to you.”
I nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Crystal Bradbury.”
Aww damn. There it was. Bradbury… one of the Founding Families. I said the dumbest thing possible after hearing that. “You live in town?”
She shook her head. “Ironside.”
Okay, that surprised me. If someone with that name didn’t liveintown, it meant something. It might mean she just happened to have a surname that matched one of the oldest, most influential families in the area, but I doubted that. Shadow Pines’ former mayor, Sterling Bradbury, had a reputation for being a real piece of work—that’s polite speak for asshole.Fortunately, he’d been eaten by a bear or something out in the woods… like so many other people in this place. It’s an absolute wonder why anyone still went out into the forest for recreation. With all the animal attacks around here, you’d think everyone would be hiding in their houses with the windows boarded up.
Another thing stood out to me. This girl didn’t resemble Sterling in the slightest. Though, sometimes genetics did weird things. I knew the nearby town of Ironside, of course. Locals called it a poor man’s Shadow Pines. At least, that’s what my generation always called it back in high school. Troublemakers often ended up being sent there to finish high school with the ‘less desirables.’ The town had a fair number of steel mills and mines, all started by the Founding Families years ago. Only a handful continued to operate these days.
Ironside also had some factories and a lot of nature tourism. With mountains on one side, forest everywhere else, it had become a beacon for people rebelling against urbanization. Some called it a sister city. I always thought of it as an annoying little brother city. Then again, I was biased. I grew up in Shadow Pines, and good or bad—mind you, this place had a lot of bad—I loved my creepy little hometown.
She must have seen the surprised look on my face, because she added, “You could say I started in Shadow Pines, and finished in Ironside.”
I put two and two together and figured she’d done something bad. Or at least socially horrible. Bad enough to be cast out, most likely. Or at least kept at arms’ length to protect the rest of the family’s reputation. I’d probably have known exactly what she’d done if I bothered paying attention to the upper class around here, but I never understood the fascination with that. Why would working-class people care who a celebrity dated, or freak out if they got in trouble with the law? I would never understand that the same way I couldn’t fathom how people in the UKfawned all over their royals.
