And they’d been killed anyway.
I worked to practice the breathing that was supposed to help with flashbacks, only it wasn’t a flashback I was trying to calm, but an intense and fast-growing rage.
Rage that built at an alarming speed within my body, going to spill over my lips. “You don’t know that it was an accident, Zee. You weren’t there, I was. There were gunshots, there was an explosion under the goddamned truck and we were lifted with some sort—”
“Yeah, and you hit your head hard enough to be out cold when the paramedics and first responders showed up, your face in the water. You almost drowned!” He threw the words at me as his face bloomed a dark red and the veins in his throat pulsed.
“There was death magic, Zee. Green and dark and vibrating. I saw it at the party, just a glimmer and I thought I was seeing things. I . . . I should have checked.” Oh my God, if I’d only checked, maybe my boys would be alive now. My stomach heaved.
Everything Zee was saying was a lie. I knew it in the depths of my gut.
I’d been awake in the truck, I’d been reaching for Bear. I’d seen the green swirling aura around us, and I’d heard the gun click as a bullet slid into the chamber.
I’d been hit in the head, but not because of the accident.
“Fuck you!” I slammed my good hand onto the dash of the truck. “There were gunshots and death myst, Zee. I think I know a goddamn gunshot when I hear one.”
Finally, I had his attention. He slowed the truck and looked at me.
“Death myst and gunshots. Are you absolutely sure?”
I clenched my hands in my lap. “Three tires, Zee. Which means at least two shooters, likely one of them was an abnormal. The brakes went out, and we both know that is no simple thing. Not for them to fully fail like they did without interference. I was there. Justin was pumping the brakes and getting nothing. You think I don’t know what destructive magic looks like anymore? That I’ve forgotten? After the crash, Justin was shot in the head, I watched it happen. Why are you fighting me on this?”
Zee’s eyes flicked over me. “Because . . . our past, your past would make you believe this a murder no matter if it was an accident or not, because you know how ugly the world can be. There is no way your family found us, Nix. There is no way they got past my wards around you and the house. Those wards extended to Bear, you know that.”
I let out a breath. “But not Justin.”
“I had to pick two people.” He looked to me and then away, shame coloring his face. I shook my head.
“Zee, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.”
His ability to hide things was stronger than most others in his genre of magic and I’d trusted my life to it. But I’d known the risks. I’d known Justin would be left in the open. I’d thought he’d be safe, though, because I’d met him long after I’d left my family.
I struggled to swallow, seeing Justin’s head explode once more inside my own mind. “If it was my family that did this, I would be dead, too.”
He nodded. “Then there is no reason for this to be anything but an accident. An accident you want to believe is something more so you have someone to hate for it. Magic happens, Nix. It does. Maybe Justin pissed off the wrong person on the circuit.” His words were incredibly soft. More than he’d ever been with me. He was using caution.
My jaw was so tight, my teeth ached. What if he was right? I blew out a slow breath, thinking.
Zee stayed silent, letting me work through things on my own. I couldn’t take my mind away from the gunshots, from the death myst, or the man who’d shot Justin through the window.
I didn’t look at him. I didn’t want to see pity in his eyes. Pity for me. For the girl who’d been beaten and abused as a child, whose father had turned her into a killer, and who’d finally found peace in the arms of an everyday man, and hope and a love she never thought possible in the heart of a boy who’d been her world. A groan slid from me, shaking my teeth, shaking my entire body.
“Goddamn it, Zee. I don’t even know if I want to be wrong.” The thing was, I knew what I’d seen. It was burned into my mind like a brand.
“I know, doll face,” he whispered. “I know.”
The balance of the truck shifted as we started on a short slope downward, one that would quickly rise and then we would be on the hill. I sat straighter and stared out the side window. The snowy white scenery flickered by as we crested the hill, the hill that had been dark and too slick for a truck that held my most precious cargo.
I closed my eyes. I was not resilient enough to see the skid marks if they were still there, to see the impression at the edge of the water and know that my boy had bled out, breathed his last breath, and I’d been helpless to save him.
No . . . I had to be strong, now more than ever. I had to find out why Bear and Justin had died. They deserved that much from me.
Carefully, I let out the darkness I’d kept caged for so long. I let Phoenix Romano out, and allowed myself to truly see through her eyes. Who I’d been before. She was strong enough to do this, because she didn’t love anyone.
The sensation was strange, but in seconds, I felt the truth slide under my skin. Phoenix was a predator and it would take that kind of mentality to track down the truth of this.
There were clues here on the hill, clues to what had truly happened. “Pull over, Zee.”
“You sure?”
“Do it.” Nausea rolled upward in my guts and I pushed it down with a simple image. A raging fire rolling through a forest, roaring at the edges, wiping out everything in its path. Emotionless, and driven by nothing but nature and the desire to consume.
My heart rate slowed, and the gut-wrenching grief and nausea bled away drop by drop.
Zee pulled over and put the emergency brake on. He got out and came around to my side. I grabbed his hand and let him help me out as I took stock once more of my injuries. My pelvic bone was the worst, aching with every step. I focused on that, on the peripheral as I let my eyes sweep the area.
We walked to the side of the road and looked over the embankment. The trees that were shattered by the weight of the truck, the drag marks where the Ford had been towed out of the water and back up the bank. A tremor slid through my armor, but I made myself look at the scene with an analytical eye. If this had been a job of mine, there would be no clues left, but there were very few people as good as me, even when it came to the abnormals. That was where I had always come in.
Abnormals were cocky, thinking they could never be caught because of their abilities with magic. I was good enough to know everyone could be caught—magic or not.
Even me.
I needed to find something that backed up my memories to prove to Zee I was right. Maybe even to prove to myself I was right, that it was not some paranoia-induced memory that clung to me. If not, I would be forced into believing the accident was a lie, when I knew in every fiber of my being it wasn’t.
Jaw tight, I searched the area, looking for tracks. Anything would have worked for me: another vehicle’s tire treads, footprints that didn’t fit, the tripod marks from a long-distance rifle of some variety. It had been several days since the accident and traffic through the area had not been light so I wasn’t hopeful.
No doubt the local police force had screwed over the crime scene with their ineptness.