Conviction Read online

  Conviction

  Jennifer Blackstream

  Skeleton Key Publishing

  Contents

  Copyright

  Don’t Forget!

  Summary

  Also by Jennifer Blackstream

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Next Book

  From the Author

  Did you find a typo?

  Ahoy, ebook pirates!

  CONVICTION

  A Blood Trails Novel, Book 9

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  JENNIFER BLACKSTREAM

  Website

  Mailing List

  Facebook Fan Page

  Conviction

  ©Copyright Jennifer Blackstream 2020, Skeleton Key Publishing

  Michelle

  Cover Art by Covers by Juan © Copyright 2020

  * * *

  This is a work fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form without the written permission of the author. You may not circulate this book in any format. Thank you for respecting the hard work of all people involved with the creation of this ebook.

  Temptation, Blood Trails #0.5

  A dinner party ended with a dead body.

  A young officer recognizes the foul stench of demon at the crime scene.

  It’s time to call for backup.

  Not a cop.

  A witch.

  Tap or click HERE and tell me where to send your free ebook. Quick! There's a murder to solve...

  I love hearing from readers, and I respond to all messages. You can reply to a newsletter, you can message me on Facebook, or you can email me at [email protected].

  I will always respond, because you’re the ones that make these books possible.

  With much love,

  Jennifer Blackstream

  P.S. Your laundry is still in the dryer.

  Shade's FBI partner has shot a kelpie.

  Again.

  And this time, the law may not be on his side...

  Agent Andrew Bradford once used deadly force to stop a kelpie from kidnapping a human teenager. And now Shade has gotten a call saying he's done it again. Flesh-eating kelpie dead, human victim saved.

  At least, he thinks that's what happened.

  He doesn't remember.

  His inability to clearly recall the night's events forces Shade to seek answers among the monsters of the Otherworld. She'll have to question scheming leannan sidhe, malicious waterhorses, and take a dangerous step into the world of vampire politics.

  Otherworlders are nothing if not opportunistic. And there are plenty of powerful players ready to take advantage of Shade's desperation to do whatever it takes to save her partner...

  ALSO BY JENNIFER BLACKSTREAM

  * * *

  Join my mailing list to be alerted when new titles are released.

  * * *

  Urban Fantasy

  * * *

  Blood Trails Series

  Temptation (prequel, mailing list exclusive)

  Deadline

  Monster

  Taken

  Corruption

  Mercenary

  Caged

  Betrayal

  Thrall

  Conviction

  * * *

  Paranormal Romance

  * * *

  Blood Prince Series

  What Big Teeth You Have (bonus short story, mailing list exclusive)

  Before Midnight

  One Bite

  Golden Stair

  Divine Scales

  Beautiful Salvation

  Bonus Novel: The Pirate’s Witch

  * * *

  Blood Realm Series:

  All for a Rose

  Blue Voodoo

  The Archer

  Bear With Me

  Stolen Wish

  * * *

  Join my mailing list to be alerted when new titles are released.

  * * *

  Short stories are not listed here, but can be found on my website here.

  "Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice." -

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Chapter 1

  “Shade, I’ve been arrested for murder.”

  Andy’s words sent a shock wave through my system, his calm tone doing nothing to soften that last, crucial word. I clutched my cell phone tighter, fighting not to press it too hard to my face lest I mash the end call button by mistake. Across the cozy cafe’s dinner table, Liam tensed, the hand holding his coffee going still before lowering the mug to the table with a grim thud.

  Arrested for murder. Andy had been arrested for murder. But why call me? Why not a lawyer, or a coworker from the FBI?

  Unless…

  “What murder?” My voice didn’t shake. Yea for me.

  Andy took a deep breath. “They said I shot a kelpie. Someone named Raichel.”

  My gaze locked onto Liam’s. Thirty seconds ago, I’d been appreciating how handsome he looked in his forest green flannel shirt and the dark jeans that made his midnight eyes look even more blue. I’d been basking in the warmth of his smile, the promise I could see in his eyes that had built the longer we lingered after we’d finished our meals.

  Now I was appreciating other things about him. The fact that he was a detective sergeant of the Cleveland Metropark Police with a flashing light he could smack on top of his truck for speedy travel. The fact that he was a werewolf, and he’d already heard what Andy said without my having to repeat it. And the fact that he was an alpha, and he knew the difference between the time to talk, and the time to act.

  “Where are you?” I asked, already standing as Liam dug out his wallet and left enough money to cover our meal, dessert, post-dinner coffees, and a tip.

  “I’m on a boat tied up at a bar.” He cleared his throat. “It’s the place you and Flint dragged me out of when we were working that artifact case. It’s called Something Fishy.”

  Something Fishy. I’d have laughed if I had the breath to spare. If my memory wasn’t prickling with images of the night he’d mentioned so casually. When he’d almost died after going after a group of kelpies.

  I snagged my red trench coat off the back of my chair. “Andy, whose boat is it?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

  “I haven’t seen ownership papers, but if I had to guess? Siobhan’s.”

  Bile splashed the back of my throat. Siobhan. Sister of the kelpie Andy had shot. Killed. “Are you all right?” I didn’t bother to put my coat on as I bolted for the door, my burger and fries sitting significantly less comfortably as anxiety stirred my stomach.

  “I’m fine. Vincent woke me up and told me he healed me a little. He and Kylie are here processing the crime scene.”

  “What do you mean, he woke you up? And why did you need healing?”

  Liam’s hand on my arm drew me to a halt before I touched the front door, and he wordless
ly tugged my coat out of my grasp and helped me into it. I would have told him the cold didn’t bother me, but Andy was talking again and I didn’t want to miss anything.

  “I was unconscious for a while. I’m not sure how long. What time is it?”

  “It’s just after ten.”

  Andy swore under his breath. “I was out for a couple hours then.”

  “Out for a couple of hours?” An injury that knocked him out that long meant moderate to severe brain injury.

  “Not from my injury,” he said, brushing off my panic. “I was unconscious when Vincent got here. He woke me up and healed me, but he said healing isn’t his specialty, and he didn’t want to take a risk with a head injury where I lost consciousness. So he put me to sleep and called a healer. She just woke me up.”

  “You shouldn’t sleep with a possible brain injury,” I said uneasily.

  “He didn’t call it sleep. He called it ‘stasis.’”

  “Oh. Fine, that makes sense. Who is she? The healer?”

  “She introduced herself as Justiciar Evelyn, from the Ministry of Deliverance?”

  I relaxed, slightly. I’d met her before, and if Vincent had called her for healing, she must be good.

  I shoved the door open and a gust of October wind tried to shove me back into the restaurant. I gritted my teeth and held my coat closed with my free hand as I made my way toward Liam’s truck.

  “If Evelyn and Vincent and Kylie are all there, then you’re safe. And I’m on my way with Liam.” I tilted my head to find an angle that wouldn’t let the wind steal Andy’s words before I could make them out. “Tell me what happened.”

  Voices in the background caught my attention, and in that moment I would have given anything for Liam’s extra-sensitive hearing. Unfortunately, he was already at the truck, unlocking the doors and getting the engine started. I felt a little better when he pulled out the flashing light and stuck it to the top of the vehicle.

  “I have to go. Apparently my phone time is up.”

  “Liam and I will be there in less than ten minutes.” I jerked open the passenger door, and Liam started to pull out before I’d even gotten it all the way closed. Bless him.

  The call ended, leaving me holding a silent phone and trying to swallow past a sudden lump in my throat.

  “I’m not familiar with Something Fishy,” Liam said, handing me his GPS.

  “It’s not far from my apartment. It’s on the east side of the Cuyahoga, right before the West Basin.” I punched the address into the GPS.

  Liam nodded. “What do we know?”

  I put the phone in the side pocket of my waist pouch, suddenly grateful I’d worn it on the date despite feeling a little silly about it. I unzipped the flap and lifted it open. “Peasblossom? Come out, I need you.” I looked over at Liam. “I don’t want to tell this story more than once.”

  There was movement in the enchanted confines of the pouch, and suddenly Peasblossom’s voice came from far away. “Is the date over? It’s awfully early, do we need chocolate? We could stop for ice cream?”

  “Andy’s been arrested for the murder of a kelpie. Siobhan is holding him on her boat.”

  “What?!”

  I jerked back as my pixie familiar launched herself out of the pouch like a tiny pink bottle rocket, her multifaceted eyes wide as she looked back and forth between me and Liam.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t have any details yet,” I said calmly. “We’re heading there now.”

  “You said Kylie and Vincent are already there,” Liam clarified.

  “Yes, so Andy’s fine. They won’t let anything happen to him.”

  Liam flexed his grip on the steering wheel. “Kylie and Vincent are independent contractors connected to the Cuyahoga County Coroner’s office. They’re called in for task force cases, and anything that might be Other. I didn’t call them in, so if they’re at the scene, it means someone called the Vanguard.”

  Peasblossom squeaked in alarm.

  The Vanguard. The Otherworld’s answer to Interpol.

  I didn’t look at Peasblossom. I couldn’t. Not when I knew we were both having the same thought.

  This wasn’t the first time the Vanguard had been called in after Andy had a run in with the kelpies. And even without knowing the details, I knew the Vanguard would raise an eyebrow at a second confrontation between Andy and the kelpies in which the human walked away and the kelpie didn’t. Another incident with a gun.

  The Vanguard didn’t like coincidences.

  “Tell me about the kelpies.” Liam’s firm, neutral tone meant he was in full cop mode. It wasn’t an order, as such, but his manner said he expected an answer. “I remember when we interrogated Stavros, he taunted you over something between the kelpies and Andy. What happened?”

  I pressed my hands flat against my thighs, rubbing them along the black, blue, and white geometric pattern of my leggings. “Earlier this year, Andy and I attended an art auction at the home of a leannan sidhe. Only it turns out, paintings weren’t the only things being auctioned off—the artists were on the block as well. Young artists that the leannan sidhe’s agent sought out at local homeless shelters. One of them, Grayson, was sold to the kelpies.”

  “Kelpies are waterhorses. What would they want with a human artist?”

  I clenched my jaw. “Kelpies used to eat humans. They don’t do it as much now, because these days when someone goes missing, there’s an investigation, and too many missing people at the water’s edge is bound to draw attention. Possibly on a scale large enough to force the Vanguard to act. But the kelpies didn’t just eat people. They terrified them.”

  “The stories about wild rides over—and eventually under—the water,” Liam noted.

  “Yes. I think the kelpies found a way to merge their desire to instill fear with the desire to get more of a presence in land-based society. I think they bought Grayson with the intention of scaring the daylights out of him and seeing what kind of art he turned out.”

  Liam glanced at me. “You’re serious?”

  “I wish I wasn’t. But you should have heard the crowd at that auction. The people who bought the artists.” My mind drifted back to that night, taking me to a dark place I’d never wanted to go again. “There was a woman there, one of the leannan sidhe. She stood over the body of a dead girl, one of their victims who’d committed suicide and made her body part of the art. If you could have heard this sidhe speak. Not about the loss of life, not about despair… But what that pure emotion had done for the artist’s work. How it—”

  I stopped. I couldn’t talk about it anymore. I couldn’t help Andy if I went in with a hot head, and there were few things that upset me as much as the thought of those leannan sidhe. People who could talk about art as if it mattered more than someone’s well being. Someone’s life. It was a common failing of creatures who lived for centuries at a time. They started to value abstract concepts more than a single life. In some cases, more than many lives.

  “So this artist the kelpies…purchased,” Liam prompted quietly.

  I stared out the windshield at the night sky, the stars trying their best to shine on a city with too much artificial light. “We went down to the lake to talk to him about a murder, but when Andy saw what was happening, how frightened Grayson was of the kelpies, he refused to walk away. Grayson was underage, and Andy refused to acknowledge the validity of any contract he’d signed that let the kelpies take him.” I took a deep, slow breath. “When all was said and done, he’d shot two kelpies.”

  “He killed them?”

  “One of them. Bradan. Rowyn lived.”

  “And the kelpies just let him walk away after that?”

  “I made a deal with Marilyn—the leannan sidhe in charge of the auction—to offer myself to be bid on, and in exchange, she didn’t contest Andy’s assertion that the kids were too young to enter into a legal contract. The kelpies’ ownership was deemed null and void. Therefore, Grayson wasn’t their property, and Andy�
��s actions constituted defense of a minor. The Vanguard was there to witness the deal, so there was nothing the kelpies could do.”

  “But they tried,” Peasblossom told him.

  I nodded. “Siobhan, Bradan’s sister, kidnapped Andy while we were on another case. They’d been spying on him. When he got shot while we were dealing with a demon’s acolytes, they took advantage of his injuries to claim they were ‘trying to help him.’”

  Liam tapped one finger against the steering wheel. “On the phone, he told you he was near the place where you and Flint ‘dragged him out’ last time.”

  I’d really hoped he wasn’t going to pick up on that one. My appreciation for his cop side wilted a little. “A few months ago we went to the Cleveland Museum of Art for a case and we ran into Morgan—a fey woman who was at Marilyn’s the night Andy shot Bradan and Rowyn. She’s not a leannan sidhe, but she is part of the Unseelie Court.”

  I gripped the door handle. “I thought she was egging Andy on that night. Encouraging him to take action in Grayson’s defense while I was trying to calm him down. Then when we ran into her at the museum, she brought up the kelpies again.”