O Fortuna
Chapter 8
Season 5 Episode 4 Maiden Quest
Season 5 Episode 5 The Rat King
-/-/-/-/-/-/-
The Humboldt current stole ice-cold water from the North Pole and spirited it straight down the winding Pacific coast, past the secluded bluff where Adalind sat. Inland, the weather was a balmy seventy degrees, but here, it was barely thirty six with a stiff wind that cut straight through anything less than a decent parka. These cliffs had been her secret escape since saying goodbye to New York City's seedy criminal defense law offices and glittering skyscrapers.
Juliette's Subaru was nestled, out of the wind, under a grove of smooth barked Pacific Madrone in the hard packed sand at the tail end of a dirt road. The narrow cut threading through the weeds under the Strawberry trees quickly gave way to gnarled spruce and pines straining and groaning against the ocean's howling onslaught. The dirt path snaked three hundred yards through heavy underbrush before the sparse trees, twisted and bent as if clawing away from the edge of the earth, broke from a rocky clearing a bit wider than one could throw a rock. Her perch on the sandblasted heart of a fallen log jutted out into the blue majesty of the Pacific Ocean. South of her bluff were the submerged dead timbers, the ordered ranks of ancient carcasses standing at attention in the pounding surf, known as the Neskowin Ghost Forest.
She hadn't stepped foot in the stiff grass in six years, long before her life burned. That was back when she still believed marrying a prince would surely make life perfect, Sean was certainly a good man, and Grimms only existed in fairy tales. Nonetheless, her refuge still welcomed her with its icy kiss.
A white iceberg dotted with the black outlines of seals and sea birds floated by while she sat on the gnarled log with Kelly bundled into her breast. Her fingers bumped over the salted grooves and whorls ground into the old spruce stump.
She sat her little eskimo on her leg and wrestled a flapping windbreaker over his clothes so he could look out over the ocean with her.
"Kiddo, I used to come here to think and dream, before I blew my life completely to hell."
The glitter in his blue eyes warmed her heart. "But without all that, I never would have gotten you."
She closed her eyes and let the cold sea air perfume her world, erasing the stink of civilization, failure, and broken dreams alike.
Money and housing made powerful leverage. Both had been used against her far too many times. It didn't matter that Nick didn't seem like the sort who would lord such things over her head or imprison her. He had shuffled her off once before. They all had. Things happen. God forbid he died tomorrow, leaving her on the street with a baby, but no job, money, car, or place to live.
He had not pressed the financial contribution question either way, simply offering the option to stay home with the baby, if that is what she wanted. It made sense from both a developmental and a health perspective. Any pediatrician would admit that day-care parents paid for their medical school and put their kids through college. But, to her surprise, he left the choice to her. Of course, she wanted to focus on raising her son... And make a place for her daughter... But there was the matter of the household budget. She was already tired of her mother's furniture staring at her, but Nick's detective salary was one-quarter of what she made four years ago.
And, well, there was still the nagging about when her brain farted and she turned the very best thing she ever had into yet another smoldering heap of bitter ash.
She mulled over some options while her boots massaged jagged, brown rocks into the rotten bark where the humped log turned into the earth. A regular Kehrsite law firm specializing in transactional law was her first preference. Ease into working a couple days a week doing contracts, wills, probates, and the like. This sort of thing was friendly on family life. Barring that, she knew enough about the Wesen world to be involved in legal work there.
Now, she just had to get her act together. The resume update was easy enough. She decided to put out some feelers by the end of the week.
There was just one problem.
This very morning, Adalind groaned as she strained against what used to be her very favorite little black skirt. She felt like an overstuffed sausage squished halfway into the zipper. A red and gray skirt had followed it to the floor in disgust. It was official, every single piece of professional clothing had to go. Her first interview for a part-time position would be here soon, and she was riding the hairy edge of desperation. She had to find something decent looking with no money.
Her cheeks were hot from the salt and the icy wind. Kelly was getting hungry and probably needed changing. The cold mist and blowing sand would not be welcome against either her exposed breast or his naked bottom, so she packed up and wound back through the tangle of blackberry brambles and spruce branches towards the car.
The last thing she wanted to face was a day of thrift store scavenger hunting. That was the opposite of here.
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It's strange how every one of these stores smells the same, like a cross between mothballs and carpet glue.
The shop filled the beat-up carcass of what used to be a small supermarket. The sea of clothing cascaded across rust-pocked chrome racks, paralleled by gray piggy trails beaten into fifty-year old black and white vinyl asbestos tile.
The boys' clothing instantly caught her eye. The selection was heavily picked over, but the little blue pants embroidered with fuzzy teddy bears and white shirts with red fire trucks put a smile on her face. She exhaled hard. Get back on track. Kelly has plenty of clothes.
Her eyes surveyed the place, and despair soaked into the depths of her soul. There was only one way to the treasure she sought. She would be forced to run the gauntlet.
The corners of her eyes twitched at the sea of tiny dresses, pink jumpers, and fuzzy pajamas covered with hearts.
You can do this.
She was halfway through the little girl's clothing when the soft grooves of a fuzzy, blue corduroy, fifteen-month skirt caught her fingertips and entwined them into its soft embrace.
Her heart wrenched. In her hand was the very same dress Diana was wearing in one of Nick's mother's pictures.
The rusty racks stretched out to eternity as her breath fled. Images of herself betraying her beautiful daughter into Sean's arms knotted her stomach. She stood there, paralyzed, with lips trembling and tears drizzling down her nose as her missing baby's dress caressed her thumb and forefinger.
Tap-tapping jerked her out of purgatory's naphtha-tinged vapors. Buzzing congealed into a loud woman in a garish orange dress, scowling. Her grating voice demanded, "Hello! Excuse me! I don't want to tell you how to raise your son, but I doubt that will fit him. I'm making a dress for my sweet, little Cody. She has the most beautiful eyes, and I think it will fit her perfectly."
Her hand jumped loose as if burned. Her fingers barely cleared the ruffles as the woman swooped, snatching the object of her affliction. Adalind scurried away as the woman chattered and clicked through video after video of a fat corgi waddling through a purple dining room, decked in a variety of cobbled-up dresses.
Now, solidly walled within the yawning maze of women's clothing, she searched haphazardly stacked racks for those objects promising an end to her quest. A dozen trips down a plastic hanger strewn path to the gray bedsheet curtain masquerading as a fitting room left her cursing the gods of women's clothing. Like sirens, they sang of beauty and light, but ate the souls of the innocent. Their gifts of haphazard cuts and random size tags multiplied the weeping and gnashing of teeth of the wretches interred within.
But worse than the mysterious sizing inherent in women's fashions was their ever growing accusation that the body she had once flogged relentlessly if it required a trim size one, barely fit into an eight.
And then, there was something else.
Every time she considered a backup plan, she found herself moping around, frustrated and grouchy. The escape route and the prospect of leaving hammered ten thousand nails into her heart, and she had no idea why. This had never happened before. She took pride being the one strutting out with a smile and her head held high.
Until..
Until the day she stood in the middle of the street, screaming for her beautiful daughter. She had never felt so empty and alone in her entire life. Walking from house to house. Brushed off by every one of them. Completely powerless to accomplish anything, she couldn't rally a single person to her aid.
Would anyone come if she ended up alone again?
She paused. It was barely four months since Nick and four of his friends murdered two entire royal security details and a prince. A king would have accompanied Kenneth and Rispoli home in a matching steel box if he hadn't scurried off like a rat while men innocent of his wrongdoing paid the piper...
How far would Nick go for his own children...
And...
Wife?
The word flashed out of nowhere, shocking her, and she beat it away as quickly as it appeared. Never mind that Grimm and Hexen were two different species, no one could possibly want the sort of woman who did the things she had, for a wife.
But the thought lingered.
-/-/-/-/-/-
She was rocking Kelly through one of his all-too-frequent colic episodes as the grinding garage door motor signaled Nick's return. The elevator's slatted grate rattled open, sending yellow light slicing through the dark kitchen. He must have seen the weariness shadowing her eyes, because he made a beeline to the kitchen table where she sat, and scooped their son out of her stiff arms.
Nick gently bounced Kelly while giving him a kiss. The baby let out a burp and some gas, then settled into Dad's arms. Drowsy eyes drifted shut as Nick laid him in the crib.
She approached the beckon of his shadow and let her voice drift towards him. "I was worried."
"About Kelly?"
"No, you."
Silence stretched towards eternity. Her stomach clenched, bracing for "The Roommate Talk," or worse, but strong arms wrapped her and drew her into his chest. Hers twined around him, and they just stood there as the world turned around them. Her fingers were trailing towards his when a crash echoed outside. Trubel was barely conscious, with blood drizzling out of her nose and mouth and both eyes swollen nearly shut, and Nick was off again.
-/-/-/-
The morning sun found Nick asleep from an all-nighter at the hospital while she rummaged through half a dozen skirts, tops, and jackets scattered across the bed. Her body twisted and turned in front of the full-length mirror, alternating between grins and grumbles.
A dark glimmer in the mirror caught her eye. Nick's blue eyes were gazing while she shimmied into a gray business skirt. The sole consolation of this clothing process was that her recent enhancements all came in the form of breasts and hips, so she bent a little more deeply at the waist as the skirt slid into place.
"What do you think?"
Nick sat with the beige comforter draping his waist. "I think you did a lot better than I ever could for twenty bucks."
She was frowning against the cranky zipper.
The merest hint of a grin perked his lip. "You need a hand with that?"
"Do you mind?"
Nick ambled behind her, clad in baggy sleeping pants and a white tee shirt. The morning sun and his day-old stubble accentuated the weariness in his eyes. His fingers trailed down the small of her back to the tangled zipper. A quick twist and it unsnagged from the hem.
"You've done this before."
"A time or two." His eyes glittered with a hint of mischief. "But I'm better going the other direction."
"Oh, really?"
His palm drifted from her waist to her hip. She leaned back against his chest and watched the reflection of his eyes closing into the scent of her hair.
The fan slowly turned above the bed. She marveled at the domestic scene unfolding in the mirror. The couple within the wood frame, with morning sun reflecting off the rumpled bedsheets behind them, looked so normal, like they had done this every day for years.
Her fingertips were sliding into the gaps between his when Kelly called. Nick scrubbed the sleep out of his eyes with the other hand while clouds threw shadows across the bed.
Kelly's chuffing had already passed angry coughs and gave way to red-faced crying when Nick exhaled a low groan, mirroring her own sentiments.
"I'll get Kelly. I don't want him to mess up your new clothes."
"Thank you."
He changed the baby and got a bottle going while she swapped business casual for loose fleece house pants and a tee shirt. She returned, trading him a steaming cup of coffee for one wiggling boy.
They were sitting at the table with Kelly bouncing in his lap when he got the call. Two bodies were waiting in a corn field.
-/-/-/-/-/-
Her first job callback came fast, too fast, and she had no time to sort out the odds and ends of babysitting. She suited up in her gray skirt outfit and hauled Kelly along for the ride.
The place was across town, and the owner wanted to talk at lunch. The law office was a converted house along one of the busy, tree lined roads. The gray front door creaked as she hauled Kelly into the empty, vinyl-tiled foyer. She sat Kelly's car seat in one of the padded metal chairs and found the receptionist.
The older, brown-haired woman glanced up from her Lean Cuisine baked chicken. "Can I help you?"
"Adalind Schade. I'm here to see Mr. Wilks."
The woman looked her over for a minute, but her gaze landed on the baby carrier. "He's a cutie. How old is he?"
"Four months."
"I don't see you on our appointment list. What sort of case is the consultation for?"
"Oh, no. I'm a lawyer. I'm here to see Mr. Wilks about picking up some part-time legal work."
The woman asked for a copy of her resume and then glanced at the baby again from her perch behind the worn counter. A minute later she let out a low whistle. "Oregon supreme court? What's that like?"
"It's weeks and weeks of prep for a quick session. Lots of posturing over legal procedure and precedent. It's never as glamorous as it sounds."
The woman chuckled, then glanced at Kelly again.
Then came the interview, if you could call it that. She saw it in Wilks' eyes as she sat across from his walnut desk, the way he kept glancing at her resume and then the baby in the carrier. The answer would be no, politely couched as it was, and that stung.
You have to break the ice somewhere. A strange feeling laid in the pit of her stomach as she walked out of the generic, gray and beige office, sadness mixed with frustration. She had never been rejected for a job before. She put on her best fake smile. It's only the first one after all. A nagging suspicion lingered. This wasn't going to go as planned because of some secret everyone knew, except her.
She ran back across town and stopped at the spice shop to catch up and help put away a couple shipments. The wooden door swung open with a welcoming jingle, but Rosalee was hunched over the wooden counter, wiping her eyes and sniffing.
Adalind laid a gentle hand on her back. "Hey, everything OK?"
Rosalee scrubbed her hand across her nose and slid the letter across. "It's the city. They want to condemn the spice shop."
"What?" Adalind perused the letter. "I thought we already dealt with this?"
"It's another new environmental regulation. They forced my father to put asbestos paneling and insulation all over the place for fire prevention. Now, they want to condemn the property because of it."
"Sure, if they buy you out."
"They are threatening to shut the place down and put me in jail. I can't afford to have the whole store torn apart and remediated."
"If they forced him to put it in, they can pay to take it back out. Do you have documents showing this business with your father?"
"Of course, he kept everything from the city in a file."
Adalind spent the rest of the afternoon sifting through dusty boxes in the spice shop's overflowing basement. There, in a dented metal cabinet marked "City of Portland," she struck gold. Armed with specific regulation information, she headed over to check the actual city records. There, she learned that, yes, the city had a fire prevention act which forced businesses to install asbestos fire paneling going back to the early 1960's. Best of all, it was still on the books. Next, a trip to the tax office for a list of all two hundred sixty-three shop-keepers affected.
She marched into City Hall, ten minutes before closing, and presented the mayor with a letter threatening a fifty-million dollar class action lawsuit unless the city paid for all the remediation work to undo the asbestos fireproofing its own laws still mandated. The mayor was in the process of blowing her off as a crank when his assistant reminded him that she was an actual lawyer who had already won two cases against the City of Portland in the Oregon Supreme Court.
He promised to look into the matter and get back with her. It was a far cry from a win, but it helped lift the weight of inadequacy that had been crushing her chest all afternoon.
-/-/-/-/-/-
The whole gang, including Rosalee, were out on a weird Wesen case, so she settled for another quiet dinner with her favorite little man. She had just folded laundry and was fishing her noisy little splasher out of the bath tub when the security monitors started blaring. It was Meisner, and he was looking for Trubel. They caught up for a few moments before she put him in touch with Nick.
Meisner disappeared into the night, and an hour later, she was opening doors and clearing the way while Nick hauled Trubel's limp body out of his unmarked patrol car. She was still unconscious, but stank of Skalengek, Drang Zorn, blood, and gasoline. The long sedation, coupled with fighting and the ride, hadn't helped, leaving her soiled. Nick propped her up on the toilet so Adalind could bathe her while he went back downstairs to wash out the patrol car's rubberized back seat.
Seeing her like this, bruised and gaunt, it just didn't make sense. She didn't have the thick, muscular build of a bruiser, much less the athletic centerfold model build shared by TV heroines. She was wiry, bordering on bony, like the long distance runners who burn all their curves off.
If you didn't know, you might think she had been in a car accident or was just some poor girl who found herself on the wrong end of a boyfriend's drunk rage. The first clue she was different was the scars. Claw and bite marks dotted her back, chest, arms, and legs. The next clue was her wrists and knuckles. Hard, olive knots capped her knuckles, and her wrists were strong and thick, the sort that bare knuckle fighters earn after too many hours on speed bags and heavy bags. Nick had the same callouses and wrists.
She marveled as the thought drifted by. Mothering two Grimms. Talk about the last thing I ever expected. Luckily, it wasn't all that different than cleaning up a baby.
Trubel's eyes started fluttering. Seconds later, her arms and legs were jerking and flailing as muted grunts and whimpers puffed out.
Nick rushed across the polished concrete floor, with a frantic look. "Do we need to get her back to another hospital?"
Adalind felt her forehead. "No, I think it's just a nightmare."
She hummed a soft melody, stroked across Trubel's cheek and back, and petted her hair. The agitated Grimm settled back into her rhythmic slumber in time for Nick to arrive with a spare shirt and an extra mattress pad.
Relief washed over Nick as they tucked Trubel's lanky body into the spare bed. Adalind thought back to his tortured soul grieving the girl's loss and how that night had wracked him with guilt and inadequacy.
Vindicated by her rescue, Nick wanted to talk. He regaled her with the tale of their epic battle against the giant Riesen-Ratte.
"That's real?"
"You've heard of it?"
"Yeah, but it's just a crazy legend, like Wildesheer blowing in on a storm, and how their cloaks made of warrior scalps make them invincible."
Nick huffed out a laugh.
Her eyebrow quirked. "Wait, no. Really?"
He nodded and wiggled three fingers.
"You killed three Wildesheer?" She popped the latch on the ancient refrigerator and fished out an IPA. She slid the beer in front of him and grinned. "Ok, so tell me about this Riesen-Ratte first, then Wildesheer.
His eyes glittered as he launched into the stories.
Half an hour and two beers later, he cajoled her into telling him about her day.
She regaled him with her tale of rejection and woe. Grinning and loosened up from the beer, he asked, "Mind if I take a peek at your resume?"
She retrieved a copy and slid it across the wooden kitchen table.
"Damn, you're smart. 4.0 at Stanford Law? Four trips to the Oregon Supreme Court?"
She blushed.
"And a hard charger too. Look at all this high profile litigation you won. That's why he didn't offer you the job."
"Huh? I could make him some real money."
"Ok, hypothetically, you need something more complicated than a will or a real estate closing. Would you use him? Say you needed some litigation?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"He's only in court two, maybe three times a year."
"And his win-loss record?"
"Flip a coin."
Nick nodded. "And what does this resume, plus you walking in dangling a baby say?"
"A qualified job applicant?"
He shook his head. "He really wants a lower-mid pack grinder, the sort who just shows up every day and doesn't get bored. He's looking for somebody content with a career of leaning her shoulders into the plow under his shingle. He wants somebody to lock up while he takes his vacations in Cancun. Your GPA with Stanford Law, Washington and Oregon Supreme Court wins, along with a laundry list of high profile litigations pegged you as exactly the sort of lawyer he was not looking for. All he saw was a hot shot riding a rocketing trajectory turned mom who would be chasing doctor's appointments and emergency calls until she took all his clients to her own law firm."
She frowned. It seemed so obvious now.
His eyes glittered. "And smoking hot to boot. His wife would never let you work in the office, anyway."
She blushed and looked away, but his fingers were brushing hers.
"I know you don't really want to hear this, but maybe contact Berman. That firm is huge, and they already know you."
She signed, twining her fingers into his. "Yeah, I guess I was trying to leave that behind."
An hour later, she was in bed, rubbing gentle fingertips over his face and humming a quiet melody as his lips and eyes fluttered, arms jerked, and grunts wheezed out. Soon, his body settled in. He threw his arm over her and fell into the hard sleep of warriors.
-/-/-/-/-/-
To say she understood Nick would be a bold faced lie. Add that her life, career, and especially her mother's grooming shuffled her safely away from people like him. I mean, sure, theoretically, she might have a client like him, well, early in her career maybe. She paid her dues like everybody else, grinding through the reams of paper, briefs, and filings that make up the bulk of legal work. She knew how to do it, but nobody would ever pay for a Hexenbiest for that. They weren't the ones you hired to write a will or file the paperwork for an amicable probate. Not even a nasty one. A fellow making a detective's salary simply couldn't drop five grand per hour for the consultation.
But... She was a quick study, and her "background research" gave her mind a break from the baby, especially since she was stuck at the house with an unconscious Grimm sleeping off a horrific beating.
The morning sun was streaming in, dappling the couch in light and dark. She sipped steaming coffee out of a "World's Best Mom" coffee mug while Kelly pushed up, rolled, and crawled backwards on the rug by her feet. He grumbled, craning towards the stuffed bear in front of him, but every time he pushed, he ended up farther away.
Nick was walking by when he stopped and stared. "Sherlock Holmes?"
Adalind blushed and brushed a blond lock out of her eyes as he sat on the rug and wiggled Kelly's bear. "I couldn't take any more kid TV, and everything else is just people screaming at each other about their political views... And General Hospital hasn't been the same since Nadine Crowell left."
"I would have taken you as more of a closet romance novel reader."
She snickered because, of course, he had her pinned. She ate romance novels for breakfast in middle school, but mostly gave them up because of college. "The library has story time on Wednesdays for little kids... And the card was free."
"I've read most of them. Which one is that?"
She flipped it closed and pointed the cover his way.
"Hound of the Baskervilles. That's a good one."
"Ok, Mr. Detective... Sherlock is always going on and on about these subtle clues, dirt stains, tobacco ash, peculiarities of the city of London, pawn shop tickets, and the way certain things work there. Does it actually work like that?"
"Most of the time, crime is pretty straight forward. The husband kills the wife, and admits it to the police when they show up, or a thief gets arrested with half the stolen goods in his house. Maybe a gang shooting where they are talking about it to everybody... It gets tricky when somebody is smart or nobody knows who they are, and then you have to do detective work the hard way."
"I've never heard you waxing poetic over tobacco ash or the five hundred different types of dirt in various parking lots."
"Well, Renard only uses Hank and I for the weird ones, anymore. I think he gets a kick out of closing cases that the FBI can't figure out. I feel like I've gotten a whole lot better at identifying Wesen from claw marks, bite patterns, and hair. In the end, it's still a lot of people stuff, and a lot of deductive inferences like Sherlock is doing."
"Give me an example."
Nick snorted. "Hypothetically, if your partner is dating a Hexenbiest and gets deathly ill, it's probably not natural causes."
She winked. "Oh, right, like if a Grimm visits your mother and she ends up with her throat slit, it's probably not natural causes. Hypothetically speaking, of course..."
His eyes twinkled. "Right. I see you've been studying his methods. But yeah, we match up finger prints, boot prints, and stuff like that."
She leaned forward in the couch. "Tell me about a weird one."
"We tracked Trubel down, the first time, from a single cold french fry."
"Seriously? One french fry?"
"Each restaurant's fries are slightly different. Cuts like crinkle, curly, waffle, steak fries, or normal. Then battered or not, the type of batter, how crispy, how dark, what they smell like, the oil they're fried in, stuff like that. Wu checked out a dozen drive-throughs and found the one. Then we got her face off security footage and went from there. Tobacco specific knowledge isn't as important as it was seventy years ago, but we still get quite a few perpetrators from chewing tobacco, cigarette butts, and stuff like that. Stains are a big deal. Dirt, blood, food, and the like."
"You know all that from one fast food french fry? Ok, so how did you track her down."
"Well, we guessed she was probably a woman. Her shoes were too small and narrow for most men with her stride. Her bootprints were heavily worn, with a sock telegraphing through one shoe, and she stole the victim's car, so we assumed a transient of some sort. The victims were both Wesen, with rap sheets a mile long. From the level of violence, we assumed it was some sort of Wesen, although all the cuts were from knives, not claws, and there were no bite marks from fangs. The victims' wallets had no money, so we figured she would crash at one of our local cheap motels. We put the word out, and connected."
"Really? All that from one fry?"
"Yeah, well, it's a lot of luck too. We never would have caught her if she had just got in the truck, drove to Clackamas County, and hopped a bus."
"So if she would have crossed the river into Washington?"
"Gone. Many of those crimes go unsolved because there's no way to track down any suspects. It's even worse when the victim just disappears, because there's no proof a crime even happened."
She brushed the hair out of her eyes and laid the book on the arm of the couch. "I was not particularly good at crime, was I."
He snickered and shook his head.
"Of course, at the time, I thought I was. But seriously, who walks into a hospital room when there's a family member present and tries to assassinate somebody in front of a cop? I know you investigated it, so what did that tell you?"
"You were clearly an amateur, and it was your first time."
She nodded.
"You were so focused on my aunt that you never even noticed I was in the room till I grabbed your arm. Then you freaked out and jabbed me. A pro would just have cased the room and walked by without a word. But then, you didn't seem familiar with how hospitals work. Doctors don't give shots. Nurses always do that stuff. Even then, your clothes were all wrong. Doctors don't wear Armani skirts and high heels on their rounds. They don't dress to impress, they wear professional looking stuff that are comfortable and durable enough for twelve-hour shifts. It's a hospital, so there's blood, guts, bleach, and disinfectant all over the place. Clothes have to be inexpensive, durable, and machine washable. You were clearly a professional of some sort. You were at home in those clothes, but not in a hospital, and then you woged."
"Yeah, not my finest moment."
"But the interesting part of the security footage was that you clearly knew where all the cameras and nurse stations were. You stayed away from them, which suggests you were working for someone who was a professional. So I knew you weren't running the show."
"So I was a bad assassin?"
"No. You were actually a warning shot. I mean, come on, who hires an amateur first-timer to go after a stone killer and her cop nephew? Professional killers come out of the mafia, military, or prison, not law school or a masters degree program. Renard wasn't dumb. He had to know my car was in the parking lot. From the investigation, I was pretty sure you hadn't profiled either my aunt or me."
She shook her head. "In hindsight, it sounds so obvious."
"Monroe knew my aunt by reputation. I looked into her a little after she died. She was pretty hard-core. You know, she killed three assassins at the hospital."
The color drained out of her face as the pit of her stomach fell hollow. "That fucking bastard sent me to die. My God, I was so blind. So wait, with Hank? Was Renard?"
He nodded. "Playing both sides against the middle. Why do you think it had to be that night? He had to know I was forming alliances with Wesen. That's what he wanted. And we had just stopped the spell's progression in Wu."
Her hand covered her lips. Images flashed through her mind. Every single mission and gambit. "They sent me to die, didn't they? Every time. What was the biggest clue?"
"You were too brazen. You didn't try to hide your actions or intentions."
So, why didn't you kill me?"
"I needed to know who you were working for. In hindsight, that was a huge joke, because Renard knew exactly who was behind it."
She pressed her hands into her face.
He rubbed over her back. "It's OK, we're all just chicken fighting in some sort of sick game to them. Every single one of us is disposable. Don't think that Renard wouldn't backdoor me in one second."
"What else?"
"You don't actually like violence or killing. You woged in the hospital room because you were surprised and freaking out. You could have slit my throat right there, but you didn't. And the Mellifer queen. You could have witched her and bashed her skull in, but you were waiting for me. Even when you poisoned Juliette, you could have killed her just as easily, or me."
She paused. She always thought of herself as cold as ice, but he was right. It was really strange, a Hexenbiest having her humanity pointed out by a Grimm. "Isn't that just normal? I mean, I'm pretty sure Rosalee isn't some sort of cold-blooded killer."
"She caved a guy's head in with a brick, right in front of me. Smashed the pointy end into the crook in the back of his skull like she had done it a million times. Stone dead before he hit the ground, and she didn't even blink."
Her mouth dropped open.
"He pulled a gun on Monroe and was probably the one who murdered her brother."
Muffled yips, garbled words, and thrashing echoed out of the squeaky guest bed in the sleeping area carved out of the back end of the kitchen. He craned. "That doesn't sound good. I'm worried about her. What if those doctors were lying about broken bones and internal bleeding?"
Adalind wasn't sure why, but she didn't share his worry. It wasn't the detached callous of those who are numb to the death surrounding them daily, and it wasn't spite hoping for an early death. More like a distinct impression that the young woman would be fine. "It's probably just nightmares."
She ambled in to find Trubel's eyes twitching and her head craning. Her feet and hands shook and jerked as she mumbled, "No, no, I swear."
Adalind laid a soft hand on Trubel's cheek and brushed her forehead. "Shhh. Everything is fine." Trubel's hand shot up, gripping her wrist. With the quiet confidence of someone who does this every night, she petted the Grimm's sweaty hair with the other hand. "Shhh. It's just a dream. You're safe now." The jittering face settled and the steel grip fell slack. She shuffled under the blanket and her sleeping resumed it's slow rhythm.