“Tell me what you’ve been doing,” Corb said as he slid an arm around my shoulders and tugged me close as he finished sending the text. “I know a bit from earlier but tell me in more detail.”

I started slowly rehashing the last two days, everything from opening the envelope but not looking into it to getting information from Jinx, finding Grimm, coming back to find Suzy dying, seeing Alan’s ghost in my room, putting Grimm’s pages in the Sorrel-Weed house, getting drunk with Robert, and heading to the council with my new bestie Rod. “And now I’m here with you.” Funnily enough, I skipped right over the shower scene with Crash.

Talking through the situation, it struck me that I didn’t feel like I couldn’t look at the papers. It was more like I had legit been too busy.

“Not a lot of time spent in your own room even, never mind the house,” Corb said, and I ducked my head, again choosing to say nothing about that blip in my timeline with Crash.

“Are the papers still there, in the house?” he asked.

I paused, forcing him to stop. “They’re in my bag.” I put a hand to the bag on my hip and Corb stared at me, horror flickering through his eyes. “I’ve got them with me right now.”

19

Corb took the bag from me, almost yanking it off, and opened it. Of course, the first thing that came flying out was Alan. What hair he had was all mussed and fluffed up in every direction, and his eyes were wild with rage.

He immediately started shouting at the top of his lungs. “How dare you stuff me in that bag,” he shrieked. “I have every right to defend myself against your lies. In a court of law—”

I snapped my fingers at him, and his mouth clicked shut.

Corb didn’t so much as flinch as he dug around in the bag. “Where is it?”

I turned my back on a freaked-out, mouth-flapping-but-no-sound-making Alan. We stood on River Street, tourists flowing around us, and we were going to pull out something that potentially carried a black magic spell. Probably not the best idea we’d ever had. I tugged Corb away from the flow of traffic and down a set of stone stairs that led to the river’s edge.

You’d think there would be a lot of people there, but you’d be wrong. Most of the humans were up in the shops or eating their dinners, doing things that kept them busy enough not to pay any attention to a pair of people digging through a bag.

“Look at us, our first date and we’re playing with a spell,” I muttered.

“First implies that there will be second,” Corb said as he put my bag down at our feet.

Alan shot between us, finding his voice again. “Don’t you dare kiss him, Breena. Don’t you dare.”

“Not right now, Alan. Seriously.” I snapped my fingers again and made a reach for his ear. He dodged me, stepping over the edge of the walkway, and floated out over the water. If he looked down, he might wonder just what was happening to him. Then again, he’d spent the last several hours in a bag that was far too small for his physical body, and still he didn’t seem to understand his situation.

You know, that he’d been killed and was currently a ghostly pain in my ass.

Corb seemed perfectly unfussed that I was talking to his cousin, now a ghost; he crouched down. Likely he couldn’t see him. I followed suit, my thigh muscles screaming at me. Forget that, I went to my knees, tucking my feet under my butt with a heavy sigh.

“Give it here.” I took the bag from him, stuck my hand in, and pulled out the manila envelope. I opened it and dumped out the contents.

I blinked a few times, staring at the script that was scribbled all over the thick paper. It took me a moment or two of staring at the contents to realize what had happened.

“Oh shit,” I whispered.

“What?”

“The envelopes got switched. How the hell did that happen?” I frowned, thinking of the moments in the second-story room of the Sorrel-Weed house. I’d been distracted. I’d grabbed the envelope I thought held all the papers . . .

Corb touched the paper. “This is all in Goblinese.”

“It’s Grimm’s family history.” I touched the pages again.

“No, I don’t think that’s it.” Corb picked up one sheet. “I only have a little of that language under my belt, but this here is a stanza.” He touched the middle of the paper, which looked no different to me than any of the other sections.

“Okay, and a stanza for what?”

“I think it’s a spell. Something about a warning. Strife . . . no, I’m not sure if that’s the right word. It’s been years since I studied this language.” He flipped through the pages. “Whatever it is, it’s hidden within this family tree crap. I can’t make it all out, though, it’s been too long.”

I closed my eyes, thinking. I could ask Bridgette. She’d said she’d help if she could. But I couldn’t focus on that thought—my attention was on that word: strife. It had stirred something in me, but I couldn’t pinpoint what or why.

“Are you okay?”

“Just give me a minute. There is something in here, something that my brain wants me to piece together.” But it was like grasping at oil-covered straws. I couldn’t for the life of me grab hold of the pieces and make them stick together.

Corb and I sat there across from each other. “Will you let me help you, Bree? I think this is bad. All of it stinks of dark magic and secrets that seem to want to put you in the path of some very bad people.”

Alan snorted. “Magic isn’t real.”

Corb looked right at him. “Says the dead man walking on water.”

Alan stared down at his feet—and kept right on staring. “Holy shit. I did die. I thought I was dreaming.”

Apparently Corb could see him after all, but my mind was preoccupied by the fact that Alan still didn’t believe in magic even after he’d used it to screw me over. It really said a lot about his mental state and inability to see what was happening right in front of him.

Corb grunted, stood, and handed me my bag, and he most definitely saw the look I was giving him. “I can’t always see the dead, Bree, but yeah, I can see him. It’s likely because he’s related to me. I was hoping if I ignored him, he would go away. You can do that with ghosts.”

I took my bag and slid it over my shoulder, choosing to shift the topic rather than to press him. “Where is Tom meeting us?”

“At your gran’s place,” Corb said.

Which really wasn’t that far of a walk, but Corb had his high-powered Mustang waiting not that far away. He let me in, and Alan climbed over me into the backseat—a weird sensation since I could feel and see him pass through me, but there wasn’t any weight to him.

“You aren’t getting rid of me,” he snarled. “I’m coming with you and you’re going to fix this. I am not staying dead.”

I didn’t bother to look at him. “You’d think that dying would improve your attitude. Also, just so you know, no one can fix you, Alan. You are the epitome of asshole.”

Corb gunned the engine and peeled out of his parking spot as only a younger man would do, not thinking about his engine, the rubber he was leaving behind from his tires, or the costs those things could incur. And yes, I thought about both.

“So are you going to tell me what you are?” I asked quietly. “Or why you tried so hard to stop me from joining the Hollows Group and returning to the shadow world? I’m assuming you knew all along that I actually had potential.”

I leaned back in the leather seat, enjoying the fact that, for the moment, I wasn’t running or climbing stairs. That my belly was full, and I was safe. I let my eyes close ever so slightly, watching him from just under my lashes.

Corb tightened his hands on the wheel, turning them this way and that. “Yes, I knew you had potential. I wasn’t worried about your age, but I knew it could be a deterrent to the other mentors. Or I thought so anyway, and I played it up.”

I watched him as he worked through his thoughts, noting that he still hadn’t answered my first question.

“What are you?” I asked again. I had a few guesses, but I wondered if I was close to the mark.

His hands slid down the steering wheel. “I’m a siren.”

Alan guffawed. “Siren? Like calling sailors to their deaths? Please.”

Himself might not see it in his cousin, but the second Corb said siren I started nodding, feeling the truth of his words even though I’d never heard of a male siren. It made sense, though. That was why he’d brought Suzy into the Hollows—because she was like him and . . .

“So that’s why there’s all that lube in the bathroom!”

Corb groaned. “Actually, no. That was Sarge trying to tempt me. We had a . . . fling when we met years ago. Every once in a while he tries to get me back into the sack.”

I could feel my jaw dropping. Maybe the heat in the car had cranked up, or it could have been the image of the two of them together—let’s be honest, that’s totally what it was—but suddenly I was flushing. I grabbed the envelope and started fanning myself. Hormones, they were going to be the death of me if this curse business wasn’t.

I cleared my throat. “So you aren’t really into me then, you prefer guys.”

Corb swallowed hard. “I swing both ways, but I tend to lean toward women more. It’s . . . being a siren is fluid in more ways than just the water we use to power our magic.”

That made sense. “I could taste the ocean when I kissed you. Were you . . . using your magic on me? Was that even a real feeling between us?”

Corb was shaking his head before I finished. “No. No, you wouldn’t have remembered much if I’d used my magic on you. It has a tendency to erase memories. But I let you in . . . if that makes sense.”

I lowered the envelope to my lap. “You let me see your magic?”

“Something like that,” he said softly, almost as if he were afraid of my reaction.