She wasn’t dressed. She was still marked by last night’s spectacularly wonderful yet unhelpful session with Ezra. And now Splice was here, striding into her apartment with that look in his eyes. Not horror, not the recoil she remembered, but possessive. Like he had a claim.
Goldie drew a breath, sharp and grounding. When she spoke, her voice was steady only by sheer, practiced will. “And you decided you needed to barge in here… because?”
That stopped him. Splice turned and looked at her fully, as if he’d just registered the temperature of the room. Confusion flickered across his face. Then recognition. Then a wave of pure panic, the look of someone who knew he’d just broken every rule of etiquette and maybe a few laws of physics on his way in.
“Because,” he stammered, throat working. “Because you were there.”
Goldie snorted and tossed her hair, finding a sliver of comfort in the familiar drama of it. “So? I’m not the police. I’m not on the council. I’m just a witch with amazing fashion sense and a knack for showing up at the worst possible time.”
“I felt you.”
The words dropped into the air between them like an enchantment gone sideways. Splice’s cheeks flushed a startling green, and he looked away, jaw tight with a mortification that seemed alien and agonizing on his features.
“In the Grove Core,” he added, his voice lower now, strained. “When you found the body. Something happened, and I know you felt it, too.”
Her gaze slid instinctively to the faint red line curving across her forearm. For a dizzying moment, she swore it throbbed, a phantom pulse humming a drumbeat just beneath her skin. Her eyes flicked to the vine creeping across her windowsill. A tendril slowly uncoiled, stretching toward her with a deliberate, hungry intent.
Heat coiled in her belly, but an icy chill ran just as deep down her spine as the thoughts began to line up, sharp and merciless.
The Grove Core tasted me. I’m sleepwalking into it. The Thornfather woke, and is shackled to the Holdings, and it’s killing him. The building all but admitted it wants me to walk. And Splice… Splice can feel me.
Her breath hitched. “Oh, gods and goddesses,” she whispered, the words barely audible. “It’s all connected.”
If he’d heard her whisper, he gave no sign. He was pacing again, one hand raking through his dark hair. Vines ghosted along the column of his throat, twitching with each breath, coiling and uncoiling as if they couldn’t decide whether to strangle or soothe.
“Okay,” Goldie said flatly, before her brain could explode. She jabbed a finger towards one of her wingback chairs. “Sit down.”
He didn’t.
Fine. She spun on her heel, opened the fridge and grabbed a water bottle, and returned in two strides. Without ceremony, she lobbed it underhand at his chest.
“You’re a plant. Hydrate.”
He caught it on instinct, blinking at her like she’d just hexed him with common sense.
Before he could form a reply, she was already stalking toward the bedroom. “And don’t touch anything,” she called over hershoulder. “The cats will know, and they’ll throw up on your shoes.”
In her room, she yanked on leggings, a bralette, and the least-wrinkled shirt from the pile on her floor, her thoughts shuffling like tarot cards dealt too fast to read.
Something was wrong with the Grove Core. Something was wrong with her. Something was very right about Splice’s body, but that was not helpful right now.
She didn’t want to think about the murder. But the harder she shoved the memory away, the more it leaked back in: Marlow Truckenham, sprawled and broken, blood black beneath him. The stink of iron and moss. Her own hands, trembling as they’d reached out… hadn’t she taken something from the ground?
Her stomach flipped.Yes. She had.
She dropped to a crouch, rifling through the clothes on the floor until she found the leggings from that night. Her fingers dove into the pocket and closed around something small and cool. She pulled it free.
A bead. No bigger than a marble, faintly luminous, as if lit from within. The surface shimmered, wet and slick, like something just plucked from a tidepool.
She hadn’t meant to take it, not in the moment. She’d pocketed it in shock, a magpie brain tucking away a shiny object, and then completely forgotten about it in the chaos that followed.
Rolling it between her fingers, she felt its weight settle in her palm. What had it been doing in the Grove Core? Why had she taken it? More importantly,why hadn’t she given it to the police?
Shit. Shit, shit,shit.
She’d seen enough TV procedurals to know you weren’t supposed to pocket things from a crime scene. Even by accident. Even if it had just sort of rolled over to you and ended up in yourhand because your brain was short-circuiting over the very dead municipal bigwig nearby.
And what was she supposed to do with it now? Waltz into the station?Hello, Officer, here’s this strange item I found by Truckenham’s corpse and then misplaced in my laundry for a week. Please, don’t arrest me.
