by Amir Lane
I stopped dead in my tracks, not realizing why until my brain caught up to her words. Three or four a month? I’d only noticed three total.
“For how long?”
Sabine paused and looked back for me. I came back to myself and started walking again.
“I noticed it in June, but I think it’s been going on much longer than that. Years, even, on and off.”
I did the math in my head. June was eight months ago, not long after I’d started with this division. Even if it was only three murders a month, that was almost 30 people dead. I hadn’t even seen numbers like that when I was working Homicide.
“Why is nothing being done about this?” I demanded. “How many people have to die before we—”
It was Sabine’s turn to stop. She whirled around and jabbed a bony finger into my chest, switching back to English.
“My job is to protect this division. If we get shut down because you’re poking into things the bosses don’t want being poked into, there will be even bigger consequences. We have a city full of parahumans. Without us, who do you think is going to respond when a teenage witch loses control of their powers, huh? No-one else is trained the way we are. We cannot lose that.”
I clenched and unclenched my hands. The anger was coming in so strong, I was worried I was going to lose control of my powers. The veins in the back of my hands burned with a faint purple glow, and my skin tingled like I’d been shocked. Every inch of me felt cold.
“So if we investigate these murders, we get shut down.”
My voice sounded tight, even to me.
“The orders to ignore come from higher up. If we don’t listen, they’ll cut our budget until we have no choice but to shut down. It’s all politics, Arshad. Everything in life is politics.” She sighed, her eyes closing for a moment. “Believe me, I’m as upset about it as you are. I’ll protect you as much as I can. But you have to be smart about this.”
We got our coffees and returned to the precinct in silence. There was a piece of paper folded on my desk. Frowning, I opened it and recognized Indira’s neat handwriting. He must have heard Sabine’s warning about the walls having ears.
Are you in trouble?
I picked up a pink pen and tapped it against the paper for a moment. Was I in trouble?
I don’t know yet.
I folded the paper back up and slid it across my desk to Rowan’s. Indira reached over to grab it. He pulled the pen from behind his ear to scribble a response before sliding the paper back. All the while, Kieron stared at his computer screen as if making a point not to look at us. There must have been something very interesting in that blank Word document I couldn’t see.
Rumour has it you’re running a rogue investigation. We want to help.
Our eyes met. The bright fluorescent light made the red of his irises that much more pronounced. There was an intensity in them I’d never seen in him before. He meant it. When I turned my head to Kieron, I saw he was wearing a similar expression. Despite my worries, relief filled my stomach. I didn’t think I could do this alone. I didn’t need to do this alone. Even if Rowan was out, I still had backup.
Looking at my makeshift task force and thinking of the shape Rowan had been in when I stormed his apartment, I realized what I was asking of them. I couldn't let them down.
Chapter Eight
In my experience, it was never a good thing when someone said they needed to talk. Even if that person was your partner. Especially not if that person was your partner.
I was only glad it was coming from Rowan and not Ariadne. Having my work partner upset with me was infinitely better than my life partner. Still, I nearly punched him out of reflex when he grabbed my arm as I stepped outside.
It was his first day back at work after his string of sick days. He looked much better than he had last time I’d seen him, but he kept rubbing his neck and swallowing throughout the day, and Sabine had him on paperwork until she felt he was recovered enough to be back in the field. The tight press of his lips had said how he felt about that, though he kept any complaints to himself.
Rowan let go of my arm and tucked his hands into his pockets.
“Look,” he said without waiting for me to say anything first, “I’m sorry I was such a dick the other day. I mean, I had a pretty damn good excuse, but it’s not an… excuse.”
I tried to smile, but the sting of him telling me we weren’t friends came back sharper than I expected it to.
“It’s fine,” I said.
He reached into his back pocket, hiking his jacket up. I tensed, the detective in me expecting a gun for no other reason than because it was what my training had conditioned me to expect. His eyes met mine, and he tipped his head in a silent, ‘Would you fucking relax?’ I fucking relaxed with an annoyed huff, and watched him pull out a folded sticky note. I took it from his hand and opened it. The handwriting was a neat, flowy cursive that almost looked like calligraphy. It wasn’t his handwriting.
Lucas Horst Terrel.
The name wasn’t familiar. I raised an eyebrow at Rowan.
“I did some poking around when I was off sick. I think this guy might be the one to talk to. The only problem is we’re going to have to go to the East prison to talk to him.”
“‘We?’”
“Well, yeah. I think you're going to need all the help you can get, and I'd be the shittiest friend ever if I didn't try helping you out.”
It took everything I had not to hug him right there. Except—
“We can’t go now,” I said. “If we go as police, word will get around. We have to keep this quiet until we know how far this goes.”
“So we go as civilians.”
“Which we need to register for two weeks in advance.”
Rowan clicked his tongue. “The warden and I curl together. I subbed in as the skip for his team a couple weeks back. He owes me a favour. He can make an exception for us, but only once. Next trip will have to be by the books.”
I frowned. The second half of his words made sense but the first part…
“What is… curl?”
I always hated asking questions like that. It was probably something I should know, or something I did know but didn’t know the name of. It could have been some odd Albertan dialect I didn’t know or some odd word that didn’t translate right.
“Curling. The sport.” He must have read my blank expression, because he continued. “You know, you slide a rock across ice to get it into the big circle thing. Like darts, but on ice. Then you sweep and there’s a lot of yelling. Come on, you have to know curling. Do they not have Winter Olympics in Lebanon?”
“We barely get winter in Lebanon.” But I did know that he was talking about now that he’d sort of explained it. “Are you good? What’s skipping?”
Rowan shrugged. “My team usually wins. The skip is the one who stands at the end and tells you what to aim for. We won when I played for the Warden’s team. Didn’t think I’d call in that favour so soon, but whatever.”
Oh, the advantages of playing organized sports. I used to play basketball and soccer when I was in high school. During my first year in university, I was on an intramural basketball team, but then I got too busy and never got back into it. One day, I might pick it up again. Sports’ connections ran deep.
“Oh,” he added, “and if anyone asks, I’m his cousin and you’re my fiancée.”
“I’m sorry, I’m your what now?”
“Just if anyone asks. I know I’m not your type.”
I snorted. That was true.
The Toronto East Correctional Facility was the farther prison, but it was still only a half an hour drive from the precinct if traffic was good. I tugged my jacket sleeve up and turned my wrist in to look at my watch. The small face was hard to read. Not wanting to squint and make it obvious how impractical it was, I pulled my sleeve back down. It couldn’t have been much after four. Maybe the 401 wouldn’t be packed yet.
That was optimistic.
We took m
y car. I had more gas, so we wouldn't have to stop to fill up. People also tended to talk more when they were passengers, and I was hoping Rowan would be comfortable enough to open up a little. I waited until we were on the highway to speak.
“Did you press charges against the person who hit you?” I asked.
I didn't want him to feel like I was prying, especially when he'd been so adamant at the time that it was none of my business, but I also wanted to know he wasn't going to get attacked again. It would make me feel better to know. Rowan rubbed his throat.
“Yeah. It's was just Kseniya’s ex.” So that was her name. “He's pulled this sort of shit before. Not with me, but it's not the first time he's been arrested for battery. The guys at the 51st division brought him in. I don’t know if they can prove he killed Dasha and Polina, though.” His voice broke a little.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
What else could I say? Those cats were his babies, and someone had taken them from him. A battery charge or even an animal cruelty charge wouldn’t make that go away. Rowan gave a small nod, but his hand was balled into a fist. The dark scabs on his knuckles caught my attention and it took me a few glances to realize they were black bark.
I focused my eyes on the road ahead of me, looking at the clock and speedometer in my periphery. We still had another 20 minutes until we reached the prison.
“So we think this guy knows something about our case?” I asked.
“Maybe. He used to be part of the trafficking ring I was in. He's in for a double homicide charge, but he knew a lot of shit on a lot of shit.”
I turned my head to stare. Had I heard that right? Surely I heard or understood wrong. When he said ‘in’, he meant he'd worked undercover. Maybe he'd been helping Guns, Gangs, and Covens or Organized Crime. That had to be what he was talking about. Right? Right?
“Faiz, the road!”
Rowan grabbed the steering wheel and pulled us back into our lane. A truck blasted its horn at me as it passed. My heart leapt into my throat, but it had more to do with Rowan's words than nearly getting us both killed.
“Sorry, sorry.” I forced a laugh. “I thought for a second you meant you…”
I couldn't finish my train of thought. It was too awful to say out loud. Rowan clearly didn’t feel quite the same. He sighed, leaning back in the seat with his eyes closed. He swallowed and for a long minute, said nothing. I was about to say something myself when he finally spoke up.
“I… ran away from home when I was a teenager. It wasn't a good place for me. I found someone who could get me out of Belarus, but I got screwed. Terell didn't have much to do with the trafficking side of things, not enough to tie him to it, but enough I'm sure he doesn't want it getting around.”
If my heart were beating any louder, I wouldn't have been able to hear him. Terrible as it was, it did explain some things about him. He never shared anything about himself. The most personal thing I knew about him was that he was trans, and the second was that his kittens were rescues. He always seemed like he was hiding something. Apparently, he was. He was hiding lots of things, maybe his entire teenage life. It explained why I'd always had that conflicting feeling that, though I could trust him, he didn’t trust me, at least not fully. Going through what he'd gone through, he may not have trusted anyone. I didn't blame him.
I also wondered if it didn't maybe at least partly explain why he had such a hard time with relationships.
“Your dad?” My voice broke. “What about your dad?”
“Adoptive dad. Never had anything to do with it.”
“Oh. I’m… I’m glad you’re safe now.”
What else was I supposed to say?
“I made a deal with someone to get me out,” he admitted. “He promised he could help me, but I would owe him down the line. I didn’t care, but… I don’t think he was anything, just something I made up. Between you and me, my head was… completely fucked up by then. The RCMP actually managed to shut it down. Guess statistically, even they have to get something right.” There was a wry grin on his lips. “Dad was the officer who found me. He fostered me and sponsored my residency until I got citizenship. Twenty-second January, most important day of my life. I probably would have died without him, you know. I could have been one of these kids. All I want is to make things right. That's all I ever wanted.”
There was a weight, a sincerity to his voice that made my throat sting. I reached out and squeezed his hand. It caught me off guard a little when he squeezed back.
“You're a good person,” I told him.
He laughed a little. “Okay, you are not going to start crying. If you start crying, I’ll start crying, and it'll be the worst not-interrogation ever.”
It was my turn to laugh, but then something occurred to me.
“Shouldn't you be worried about him telling someone he's seen you? From the department or… from your old life?”
“He won’t. I know too much.”
That didn't make him safe, though, did it? It was that fallacy again that knowledge was power. If that knowledge made Rowan a threat, then who knew what could happen to him? He'd already been beat up, strangled, and had his cats killed. What if his girlfriend’s ex had been sent by this old gang? Maybe it didn't have anything to do with us asking about the phoenix, but that didn't mean it wasn't connected to something.
Or maybe I was still looking for patterns that weren't there. This was pushing it.
I’d never realized how much more thorough prison security checks were for civilians than they were for officers. When we were on duty, all we had to do was check our weapons, verify our IDs, and that was it. Our guns stayed locked up in the precinct when we were off duty, so that wasn’t an issue today. We stepped through the metal detectors, filled out half a dozen forms, went through the metal detectors again.
The clerk made me leave my jewelry with him. I didn’t mind giving him my earrings, a cheap pair of fake pearls. Even if they got ‘misplaced’, they weren’t worth much. My necklaces and rings, on the other hand, were. The clerk raised his eyebrows at me in a silent indication to hurry up, and I reached up under my hair to unclip my three necklaces: two gold chains, one with a blue stone painted with a white and black nazar eye and the other with a gold cedar tree, and a silver chain with my name in Arabic. I took each of my rings off, counting them so I knew how many I should have when I came back for them. Most of my jewelry was gold, and I only owned a few pieces of pure silver.
For some reason, silver disrupted Middle Eastern magic. I kept that fact as close to my chest as I could. Traditionally, having magic or being parahuman was associated with the higher class, and being able to wear silver meant someone was likely lower class. The tradition still persisted, even though it wasn’t always smart to advertise being different. But I liked the way silver looked, and I wasn’t as hung up on tradition as some people. As long as I painted the insides of my rings with nail polish, I barely even noticed I was wearing it.
When the guards were done checking us for contraband, they sized us up for iron wristbands. The weight of them on my wrists was uncomfortable. Worse was the numbness in my bare fingers. Despite being fully dressed, I felt naked and empty. It was worse for Rowan.
Iron disrupted magic. I didn't know what it was about it that did it. There were a number of working theories. Whatever the reason, iron and silver dampened magic. Despite popular belief, iron wasn't always the best thing but since it disrupted European magic, it was what got used here. I still felt it, though. There was something about iron that still dampened my powers, though it didn’t stop it. For human witches like myself, iron more of an annoyance than anything. Magic was something we had, not something we were. At least, from a biological sense. Psychologically, I didn’t know what I would be without my powers. For something like Rowan, it could be outright painful. It was also necessary sometimes. Iron rings weren't just for engineers.
Rowan rubbed his wrists, almost pushing his thumb beneath the manacles to put som
e space between the iron and his skin.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “I can handle this myself if it’s too much.”
“No, it’s fine. I can take it.”
The correction’s officer, a tall, scrawny man whose name tag read Higgins, led us to the visitor’s room. We sat at an empty table near the corner and waited for Terrel to be brought out. It was clear the moment he stepped into view. Rowan's entire body went rigid, and he held onto the edge of the table with such force, I thought he was going to break it. I touched his leg as gently as I could.
“You don't have to be here. You've done enough,” I told him.
“I'm not leaving you alone with him.”
I wanted to point out that I wasn't alone, that we were surrounded by guards and other guests and inmates, but Terrel was only metres away. As he approached, I noticed the tattoos around his neck weren't of barb-wire like I thought, but thorned vines. Maybe Rowan was right, maybe he did know something about the nightshade who had attacked Cerys Rees. The tattoos curled around his biceps and disappeared beneath his orange jumpsuit, but I suspected they covered the bulk of his body.
The officer shoved him into the seat opposite us and walked back to the wall to observe.
Terrel was a tall, thin man whose gauntness seemed to be more a product of malnutrition than natural slimness. Heavy bags shadowed his eyes, giving him a hooded look. When he grinned, it was with missing teeth and when he spoke, it was with an Eastern European accent.
“Imagine my surprise when they tell me my cousin is visiting me today, when I don't have a cousin in this country. Not one who is alive. So what does that make you? Cops or prostitutes?” He turned his blue-green eyes to me. “I know which one I'm hoping for.”
For a moment, I lamented my temporary lack of powers. But I didn't need to create a barrier to put this guy through a wall. Before I could say or do anything, Rowan snorted.
