“Echo, this is Camellia, our karma weaver. Cam, Echo’s here to help us find Wren,” Brogan explains.
The look on her face is less than welcoming and I kinda wonder if it’s a karma weaver thing, considering that my sister isn’t the friendliest person in the world, either.
“Oh, really.”
I nod a few times, slightly overenthusiastic with my response, considering how little Camellia seems to want me here. “I was hoping to look around, see if we can pick up any hints about where she might have gone.”
That’s what investigator people do on TV, anyway. And since I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, I imagine a lot of my decisions over the next week will be guided by stuff I’ve seen on TV or in movies.
She waves a hand with zero gusto and continues to lean against the wall, keeping her eyes on me like she thinks I’m going to steal something. “Knock yourself out.”
Wandering through the small living room and into the bedroom, while the men stay in the other room and Camellia follows closely behind me, I find there isn’t a lot here to look at. A large bed covered in a gray duvet, a small dresser and a closet that’s full of…
“Shoes. She has a lot of shoes.”
“Yeah, Wren wasn’t into clothes or anything, but she loved her shoes.”
I nod a few more times because I haven’t looked enough of a bobblehead doll with this woman so far. “Do you guys get paid for what you do here?”
“No.” Her reply is short and not so sweet.
Trying not to frown, both at her attitude and the questions that her response has left me with, I wonder how the heck Wren afforded the dozens of pairs of shoes she has in her closet. But I figure it’s maybe not the right time to dig around in Wren’s finances. I’m totally flying blind here with this whole investigation thing, but even I know that it’s not a good idea to piss Camellia off right now.
“You must have spent a lot of time together,” I say instead. “Did she ever say anything about leaving the garden?”
Camellia shrugs and shakes her head. “Not to me.”
I take another brief walk around, as if I’m going to pick up clues that way. Right now, I don’t think I’m going to get any more information out of Camellia even if I wanted to, considering she seems to have taken an instant dislike to me and my presence here.
She can join the club, since Soren doesn’t seem all that pleased that I came back, either.
He excuses himself shortly after my tour of Wren’s place. To do what, I do not know. It’s then just me and Brogan and we spend the rest of the day taking another look at the garden and talking about Wren. He then cooks me a delicious meal in Soren’s fancy kitchen, flitting about the place like he’s super comfortable here. Soren doesn’t join us, but I grow increasingly comfortable in Brogan’s company. He, at least, seems pleased to have the company.
He’s also weirdly bashful about how delicious the meal is and at my gratitude when he strips Wren’s bed for me, putting on fresh sheets. This beefy, super chill guyblusheswhen I thank him and pop a kiss goodnight on his cheek.
It’s been a weird, long day. I went from panicking after finding a random stranger in my kitchen, to agreeing to help find a missing person, even though I feel entirely out of my depth about it.
As I settle under the blankets of the missing fate weaver’s bed, I consider the magnitude of the challenge. But with my sister’s freedom on the line, I will not shy away from it. Nope, I’m gonna make fate my bitch.
5
Soren
My mate is here. Sleeping just a couple hundred yards away in Wren’s hut.
It’s something I never thought would happen. I never thought I’d be one of the people lucky enough to find their mate, much less have her fall into my lap.
Reapers on the whole are brought up without family. Our lives are instead supposed to be entirely focused on the business of finding and reaping souls. While we’re assigned a mentor as young reapers, they are the person we grow up with and live with, interacting with only them until we are assigned our own gates.
I reaped my mentor a few years ago and since then, I’ve been alone a lot. If it weren’t for Brogan as my near-constant and often unwanted companion, I could go days without even speaking to another soul.
I expected to be alone most of my life. And yet, if I’m not mistaken, that bundle of hair and smiles and little jokes and casual touches is the one person meant for me, the other half of my soul. My perfect other half.
The fact she can hear Brogan’s voice even without him being in his two-legged form is… interesting. I can hear him, of course. He is the hound assigned to me as my companion. And the only other person who should be able to hear him in his other form is his mate.
Which means… we share a mate.
A mate that doesn’t seem to realize what we are to her.
