“Yeah. But I came out too.” Just thinking about the bone trees creeps me out. And knowing my mother is still in there…nope. I can’t think about it. Not right now.
Gemma pulls a bottle of wine from the fridge. “After the last few days you’ve had, you deserve the whole thing.”
I chuckle. “I won’t disagree with that. I’m starving. Who wants to make dinner, because I’m beat?”
Taking the bottle of wine from Gemma, I sit heavily in a kitchen chair. Tom looks at Gil and then at Jacques.
“What?” I ask, bringing the bottle of wine to my lips.
“You went into the spirit world, Ace,” Thomas says gently. “Don’t you want to talk about it?”
“No.” I take another drink of wine. I don’t want to talk about it because that will make me think about it. Thinking leads to feeling, and emotions are bad. “Not now.”
Hasan opens the fridge and gets out lunch meat and cheese. I let my head fall back against the chair and close my eyes. I don’t know what time it is, but we have to be nearing sunrise.
After I eat, Jac takes me upstairs, wanting to lie in bed with me while he can before the sun comes up. I strip out of my clothes and fall onto the mattress next to him, curling up between his wings and his body.
My eyelids are heavy, and I fall asleep almost instantly.
* * *
I sleepfor a solid ten hours and still feel groggy when I wake up. Though it’s probably because I slept for so long. Rubbing my eyes, I sit up and look around my room, remembering everything that happened this last week.
After this, I need a real vacation.
I stretch out, taking my time getting out of bed. I shower, put on clean PJs, and go downstairs to find Gemma. She’s sitting in the living room, opening the boxes to the portable air conditioning units that I never got around to.
“Hey,” she says, ripping the cardboard enough to get the air conditioner out. “How’re you feeling?”
“Better. You?”
“I’m still good.”
My eyes go to a flat white box on the coffee table. “What’s that?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. It’s for you, and I had to sign for it.”
I cross the room and pick up the box. Whatever it is was shipped first class, and there’s no return address. I take it into the kitchen with me, needing my morning coffee even though it’s the afternoon now. I start the coffee and open the box.
It’s full of files, and I recognize them right away as police reports. Each file has a different name on it, and they’re stacked in order from oldest to newest. I sit at the table, getting more and more confused as I flip through them all.
The coffee is ready, but I don’t get up. I sit there transfixed, eyes brimming with tears and the weirdest feeling of panic and fear mixing with the thrill of discovering something I’ve been searching for my whole life.
“Ace?” Gemma calls, coming into the kitchen. I’ve been sitting here for at least twenty minutes, reading through the files. “Do you want any—what’s wrong?”
I look up, blinking back tears. “The files…” I start, but words leave me. I close my eyes and an image of my parents’ dead and bloody bodies flash before me.
“That’s what was in the box? Files? Files of what?”
“They’re all cold cases. Some date back to the early 1900s.”
“Someone sent you work?” She tips her head to the side, not following.
“No…not in that sense. But someone sent them to me for a reason.”
“What is it?”
“The cause of death…it’s the same for every case. Their hearts were frozen from the inside out.” A tear escapes and rolls down my cheek, splashing onto the last file. The one I haven’t brought myself to open yet.
The one labeledFrank and Jessica Bisset.
The one about my parents.
To be continued…
