Induction - T.K. Eldridge (ebook reader macos TXT) 📗

Sid

This was not how I had planned to spend the Friday after final exams. A week of high-pressure testing was supposed to end with a day of pampering with the girls. Followed by good food and a night of drinking with the whole gang. It was not supposed to be spent standing around a smelly police station, watching a guy I’d turned down more than a few times question my brother.

I stared at Jenkins for a few minutes. He was a mundane. Nothing special about him at all, if you didn’t count his arrogance.

You could see the paranormals if you knew what to look for. Witches had that veil-thin shimmer around them, like heat rising off of asphalt. Shifters got that animalistic green glint in their eye when the light caught them just right. Me? I just confused the hell out of them. Sometimes I shimmered, sometimes my eyes caught the light just so, and sometimes I could hide it all. Same with my brother, Sin. The whole hiding thing? We think it’s because we’re twins. Or maybe because we’re not supposed to exist in the first place.

I stood with my back against the wall and watched as my twin brother twisted his ball cap into a nest of cloth and cardboard. The cops had wanted to talk to him first, which was fine with me. I had nothing to say. I had fallen asleep in my friend Aaron’s car and barely woke in time for my ten o’clock class. I never made it home last night. Listening to Sin, it sounded like he hadn’t made it home either.

I was starving. It was time to put the Boudreau moxie into play. I sauntered over to the table and leaned a hip against the sticky metal surface.

“Officer Jenkins, could you please tell us what is going on? I’ve got…plans.” I gave him my best sexy smile and peered up at him through my lashes. Hell, I even bit my lower lip.

Sin leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. “Yeah, I think we’re done here. I’ve told you where I was, what I was doing and who I was with. My sister and I need to get home.”

Jenkins smirked and shook his head. “Damned Boudreaus always think you’re better’n everybody else. Well, you’re not. Sit down and I’ll ask all the questions I want.”

My sultry look disappeared, and I sighed as if he’d just disappointed me beyond measure. “Okay. Lawyer.”

“What?” Jenkins snapped.

“Law…yerrr. Lawyer. You either get us a lawyer now or you let us go,” I told him. Hey, pre-Law classes came in handy for something. That, and family history.

“What about you?” Jenkins asked Sinclair.

“Lawyer,” Sin said.

“Well, fuck you both. Go ahead. But good luck getting into your house,” Jenkins smirked as he got up, grabbed his notebook and stormed away before we could ask him what he meant by that.

I took one look at Sin. He nodded then said, “My car’s outside. Let’s go.”

Once we were in his car, I asked Sin how he’d ended up at the station. “Stumpy called and said they needed to talk to me, so I drove here. How’d you get here?”

“Stumpy. He picked me up outside Kittredge Hall after my sociology final.”

“Where’s your car?”

“Home. Bella came and got me last night and we hung out at Aaron’s. He dragged me to the campus with him but his exam was at eight, so I slept in his car until time for my exam at ten. Went in, took it, came out and there was Stumpy.”

Stumpy was actually Detective Patrick Clancy, our dad’s best friend since they were toddlers. We couldn’t say ‘Clancy’ when we were little and ended up calling him Stumpy. It stuck. He was more of an uncle to us than our blood uncle who had lived on the other side of the continent most of our lives but now lived in town.

“Well, if Stumpy called you and picked me up, why was Jenkins the one questioning us? What the fuck happened that Stumpy wasn’t there?” Sin asked as he pulled up next door to our house. We couldn’t get any closer with all of the police cars around.

“I think we’re about to find out,” I said and got out. “Stumpy’s car is over there.” Something cold settled in my chest. I reached out for Sin’s hand as he came around the car. “I’m scared,” I whispered to him.

“You’re not facing this alone, Sid. Never alone,” Sin said and squeezed my hand.

“Never alone,” I repeated. Our mantra whenever we had to face something that made us worry.

We walked past my cherry red Mini and our parents’ SUVs, one silver, one black. Crime scene tape blocked the path to the front door along with two officers. We made our way around the cars to the side of the house. I pulled out my keys, unlocked the back door, and we entered the kitchen. Both of us slapped our hands over our noses as the smell hit us.

“What is that smell?” I asked Sin.

“Blood. It’s blood,” Sin said.

Leave it to the pre-Med student to know what blood smells like. Two steps into the kitchen and we saw where the smell was coming from. It was sprayed all over the kitchen and into the dining room. Belle Cove police and crime scene techs were taking samples, photos, and examining everything from the kitchen on through to the front door.

“Hey, you two can’t be in here,” yelled one of the techs.

“Fuck you, we live here,” Sin snapped back.

“Not right now, you don’t. This is a crime scene. Who let you in here?” The tech wore blue paper booties splattered with blood as he edged around a particularly large smear. I held up my keys.

“Like he said. We live here. What the hell is going on?” I told him.

The tech sighed and shook his head. “Go back out and around to the patio. I’ll send Detective Clancy out to talk to you, okay? Just…be careful where you step.”

Sin took my arm and led me back to the door. “Thank you,” he muttered as he ushered me outside. I was a mixture of furious and completely freaked out, so of course, I snapped at my brother. “What the fuck was that? You’re going to let some twit tell us to get out?”

“It’s a crime scene, Sid. Let’s let them do their job. We’ll have plenty of time to do ours when they’re done.”

I stomped around the back of the house to the patio and dropped onto a cushioned rocker. Once I pulled out my phone, I dialed Mom’s number. She’d be pissed that I bothered her during work hours, but this was serious. Our house was a blood-splattered disaster area.

The call went to voicemail.

I tried Dad’s number.

Same thing.

“Sin, why are Mom and Dad’s phones going to voicemail?” Yeah, I know, you probably think I’m being a clueless idiot and not putting one and one together. It was not my finest moment.

“Sid, where do you think all the blood came from?”

I stopped dialing and shook my head. “No, if they were dead, we’d feel it. Right?”

Sin just looked at me.

“Right, Sin?”

“I don’t know, Sid. That’s an awful lot of blood for someone to still be alive.”

“But they’re powerful, Sin. They wouldn’t go down easy.”

“No, they wouldn’t. That’s why the house is so trashed.”

“Well, if they’re dead, where are the bodies?”

Stumpy came around the corner as I said that and shook his head. “There are no bodies.”

He was holding an evidence bag with a piece of paper in it. “This was stuck on the front door. There are no prints on it.”

Sin took the bag and read the note. “We have Andre and Amelia. We will exchange them for Sinclair and Sidonie at Arcadia Park in two days at sunset. If they do not present themselves, we will kill the parents.”

I took a breath. “We’ll be there.”

“Not alone,” Stumpy said. “If you plan