It couldn’t be a whale. Not in Port Phillip, not these days. And the bay’s dolphins didn’t usually hunt this close to the city’s shoreline. The attraction could be dead fish washed up on the beach—it had happened in the past, when foreign tankers decided to offload excess oil in the middle of the bay. Or it could be something else entirely.
Like a body.
I flicked up the collar of my coat then shoved my hands into my pockets and headed down to check it out. It might not be anything more than a busload of school kids armed with hot chips that was causing all the seagull fuss, but it would only take a few minutes to find out.
It wasn’t school kids. Not with the crowd that had gathered on the foreshore.
I slipped through to the front of the throng, but was stopped from going any further by blue and white police tape. Ahead, on the beach proper, waves whispered up the yellow sand, their foamy fingers playing with the toes of the woman who lay there, tickling but not quite touching the tiny tattoo of a dolphin that leapt across her calf. It was a tattoo that was siren specific. God, I thought, no. My gaze darted upwards. A plastic sheet covered the majority of her torso, but the wind was fierce this close to the sea and the ends flapped unrestrained, revealing not only chilling glimpses of what had been done to her, but wet platinum curls.
The dead woman was a siren.
And I suddenly had no doubt that it was Mona.
Chapter Three
Fuck, I thought. How the hell was I going to tell Lyle? He had to care deeply for this woman if he’d been willing to pay me and Ceri to find her, and I really didn’t want to be the one that bought him the news. Not when it was likely to send him into yet another spiral of alcohol abuse. He’d only just come out of one.
Maybe I should wait until I knew for sure it was Mona. And maybe that was just cowardice speaking, given the certainty I felt deep inside.
I sighed and let my gaze wander the immediate area. There were a number police officers standing around, either keeping the crowd back or taking statements, but it was the one who wasn’t wearing a uniform who caught my attention. Not because he was tall and well-built—which he was—but because there was something very familiar about the set of his shoulders and the way his brown hair curled at the nape of his neck.
I dropped my gaze to his waist, and my breath caught somewhere in my throat and refused to budge. Strapped to the officer’s right side was a plain black knife sheath, but the protruding hilt was anything but. The ebony stone of the grip was embossed with silver leaves and ornate swirls, the workmanship intricate and beautiful. I’d only seen it’s like once before—in the workshop of the dark fae who’d been making it.
Dark fae were far different to the small, winged humanoid creatures who bore a similar name and who could found in both fiction and in life. They were also mostly human in appearance, and were smiths by nature, gifted with the ability to bend any sort of metal to their will. Like their smaller, fairer kin, they were also capable of magic and mayhem, and—despite their smithing skills—were at one with nature. Once upon a time it had been unusual to see dark fae in the city—like most fae and fairy, they seemed to prefer the shadowed safety of trees and wilderness—but their metalworking skills meant they were in great demand as both artists and as builders, and, over time, as they’d developed a greater tolerance of the concrete jungles of humanity, had crept into other professions.
The dark fae I’d known had left the city ten years ago, and had sworn there was nothing on earth that could ever make him come back.
This couldn’t be him. It simply couldn’t.
He shifted slightly, revealing the sharp but beautiful angles of his face.
It was.
Panic surged, but I clenched my fists and forced myself to stand still, to not make any sudden movements lest it catch his attention.
Kaij was back.
He was the boyfriend who’d taught me to fight. The man who’d made me feel more alive than any person ever had, before or since. Someone I thought I’d have a home and family with.
But he was also the man who’d taken my heart, smashed it on the ground, and stomped all over the shattered pieces.
I wasn’t ready to face him again. Wasn’t ready to see the rise of contempt and loathing in his eyes.
Checking whether the dead siren was indeed Mona could wait until later. If Kaij was still with PIT—the acronym for the Preternatural Investigations Team—he’d leave the grunt work to the local police and get on with the business of tracking who she was and why she was murdered. Which meant he wouldn’t be here long and I could come back and question whatever bystanders remained later. Hell, for that matter, I still had plenty of contacts at the paper, and if they couldn’t confirm the dead siren’s identity, they’d know someone who would.
I stepped back, but just as I did, he turned. His gaze—which I knew from long ago was the green of a shaded forest with flecks of gold floating in the deeper depths—skimmed the crowd, brushing past me without concern then coming back with force. For a moment, he simply stared, as if he couldn’t quite believe who he was seeing.
Then his expression closed over and he began to walk in my direction.
I turned and fled. I wasn’t by nature a coward, but when it came to this man I had nothing. Not when I’d come upon him so unexpectedly. Given time and enough booze, it might be a different story.
I had no idea whether or not he ran after me. I didn’t bother looking over my shoulder to find out. I just kept running.
Thankfully, I’d grown up in this area, so I knew more than a few places to hide. I ducked into the nearest lane, scooted over several old paling fences, then down several more back lanes before running into the rear of a gaudily painted apartment block. I caught the door with my fingers to stop it from slamming, then took a deep breath that did little to ease the hammering of my heart or the tension churning my stomach, and walked, with as much calm as I could muster, to the front of the building. I didn’t go out. He might be looking for me and he might not, but I wasn’t about to discover which was true. Not until it felt safe to do so. I sat on the bottom step to wait out my nerves.
No one came in or went out of the building, and there was little noise beyond the occasional tread of steps in the rooms above. I glanced at my watch. It was nearing seven, so the men and women who’d answered the call of the sirens the previous night would soon be leaving. I gave it another twenty minutes, then, as rhythm of life in the rooms around me began to increase, I pushed to my feet and cautiously exited the building.
The rain was coming down heavier, and the gloom settled around my shoulders, chill and heavy. Or maybe that was just the weight of the ghost from the past. I shivered, shoved my hands into my pockets, and studied the street ahead. I couldn’t even see the beach from here, so I had no idea why I was suddenly hoping that I would sense whether Kaij was still there or not. He shouldn’t be, but then, he shouldn’t even be back in Berren. Not when he’d sworn so vehemently not to return.
The door behind me opened and I glanced around. A short, stout man exited and gave me a tight smile, but his gaze avoided mine as he turned up the street and hurried away. Obviously not someone who wanted to be spotted leaving a siren’s building.
I studied the other end of the street a little longer, then sighed and forced my feet into action. I owed it to Lyle to at least see if I could uncover whether the siren on the beach was Mona. If Kaij was gone, I could hang around and ask some questions.
And if he wasn’t?
Well, I’d be running again. Cowardice, thy name is Harriet. I half smiled. Cowardice was better than bitterness or anger, I guess. Once upon a time there’d been plenty of both, and the mere fact I didn’t feel them now surely meant that I had at least moved on from the pain he’d inflicted.
It was something. And maybe it meant that the next time we saw each other—because there would be a next time, I was sure of that—I could stand there and face him.
I would stand there and face him.
Hell, I’d stood up to a trio of trolls. An old flame shouldn’t be anywhere near that scary now I knew he was back.
The wind caught my hair and tossed it wildly across my face as I turned toward the beach. I caught it with my fingers, holding it out of the way as I scanned the beach. The cops were still there, but the siren’s body had been taken away and the majority of the crowd had lost interest. Kaij had gone.
Relief stirred through me. I tucked my hair behind my ears and suddenly noticed a lone figure standing on a small, grass tufted rise of sand further down the foreshore. He was wearing lime green Lycra shorts that seemed to glow in the early morning gloom, and a tight fitting Nike shirt that emphasized his stocky build.
Dwarf, I thought. And given dwarves were passionate avoiders of all things ocean, the mere fact this one was here, staring down at the place where the siren had washed ashore very much suggested he might have known her. I walked over. He didn’t look up or acknowledge my presence in any way. He simply stared at the sand.
After a few minutes, I said, “Did you know her?”
He glanced up then. Droplets of rain silvered his bushy eyebrows and lined his handle bar mustache. “What’s it to you?”
“I’m a private investigator. I was hired to find Mona Delmare.”
His gaze swept me, but gave little away. “Oh yeah? Why?”
He’d known Mona. It was evident in the briefly visible pain that mingled with the shock in his brown eyes. “Because she went missing a couple of days ago, and my client was worried about her safety.” I hesitated, then added, “He called in the police.”
“Who did fucking nothing until it was far too late, as usual.”
So the siren was Mona. Fuck, I thought, and pushed the wayward strands of hair out of my eyes again. “Were you the one who found the body?”
It was a guess, but he was dressed for running and there was still sand all over his shoes.
His gaze slid from mine. Hiding emotion. “Yes.”
I hesitated, then said, “Do you often run on the beach?”