by Alex P. Berg
The Captain passed his hand through his thinning hair. “This is crazy. How did Bellamy not recognize his abilities for the black magic they are?”
“He’s pretty far gone in his delusions,” said Steele. “Not only did he plan to resurrect his wife’s year old corpse, but he thought she’d be fine. And I don’t just mean that she’d remember him and forgive him and reconvert to his religion. He thought she’d be, you know…in one piece.”
“As in not a rotten mass of bones and hair,” I added.
“Thanks for the visual imagery, Daggers.” The Captain eyed Steele. “And as our resident expert on all things magical, do you put your stamp of approval on this?”
Shay nodded. “Yes, sir. Bellamy admitted to as much, and necromancy is the only theory that explains the quirks regarding the scenario under which we found the dead homeless man this morning, not to mention how the body of our first victim escaped the morgue and made it to Cornelius Vo’s office—who, by the way, Bellamy also admitted to murdering, through Lanky. He blamed Tabitha’s death in large part on him and his fatalistic religion.”
“Wait a second,” said the Captain. “We lost a body from the morgue?”
Steele eyed me sideways. “Daggers, didn’t you tell the Captain?”
“Uh…I was going to,” I said. “As soon as I figured out who’d stolen it. Turns out nobody did, unless you consider Bellamy dropping by and forcing it to walk out under its own power a theft. So…case closed.”
The old bulldog’s jaw clenched, and I could tell he wanted to chew me out, but at the same time we’d just solved a murder that had become far more complicated and disturbed than anyone could’ve ever predicted. Instead, he settled for a snort.
“Alright,” he said. “Good work, detectives. I’ll send out runners to alert the bigwigs about this one. We’ll get some serious magical backup to deal with Bellamy. In the mean time, I suggest you head home. It’s late, and you both deserve some sleep…assuming you’re capable of getting any after this fiasco.”
The Captain headed in the direction of the police wagon, and I turned to face Steele. She looked back at me with soulful eyes, her hands stuffed in her pockets for warmth, and I got the distinct impression she was waiting for me to say something, but what? The day had unfolded like a rollercoaster, with surges and dips, twists and turns. My body ached from the encounter with the undead, and my brain felt like jelly, drained by the day’s mystery and Shay’s outbursts and my far too early wakeup call. I wanted to please her. I wanted to say the right thing. So why couldn’t she give me a clue, rather than piercing me with those beautiful, azure doe eyes of hers?
I cleared my throat. “So…hell of a day, huh?”
Shay opened her mouth to respond, then paused before closing it with a slowly exhaled breath. “Um…yeah. See you tomorrow, Daggers.”
She turned and walked away, and all I could do was stare.
That wasn’t how the day was supposed to end, without so much as a ‘Would you mind walking me home, Daggers?’ or a ‘Goodnight, Daggers’ or even a less welcome but still optimistic ‘Why don’t we talk, Daggers?’ It was supposed to end with a laugh or a hug or a drink shared over a small table at a café. I’d even settle for an awkward high-five, but this? A simple ‘See you tomorrow?’ That was nothing. Purgatory. Indecision at the mouth of a stairwell that only went down.
But it didn’t have to end that way. I possessed free will, and conversations could be initiated by either member of a pair. All I needed was courage and an awareness of self.
I darted after her, past the mass of bluecoats and around the corner where I’d seen her vanish. There I spotted her, twenty paces ahead of me and disappearing into the fog.
“Shay! Wait!” I called.
She paused and turned, and I closed the gap between us.
“Yes?” she said.
I took a breath to still my nerves. “I’m sorry.”
44
Shay’s eyes narrowed.
“Yes, you heard that right,” I said. “I’m sorry. For being such an asshole.”
“Did Quinto put you up to this?” asked Shay.
“What? No,” I said, my heart racing. “Look, I’m trying to open up to you here. I’m sorry for being such a curmudgeon sometimes, but it’s ingrained in me. It’s like a splinter that’s stuck underneath the surface of my skin and won’t come out. Sometimes it pokes through and it hurts and it makes me angry and then my flesh swallows it back up again. Yesterday was one of those days where the splinter jabs me, as was much of today. When I saw you and Agent Blue, a dark part of me came out, and it’s a part that’s hard to control. So I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have treated him the way I did. It was wrong and rude and childish, but I just…I don’t know. I felt threatened. I lashed out.”
Shay tilted her head, her brow slightly furrowed. “But Daggers, why would you feel threatened by him?”
“What do you mean, why?” I asked. “Because he’s smart and charming and has commendations plastered across the walls of his office. Because he wears a snappy uniform and his smile could blind birds and cause them to fly into windowpanes. Because he’s an elf and you’re a half-elf.”
“I’m also half human.”
“I know that,” I said. “Look, it’s not rational. I felt threatened because…because I like you, ok? I like you. And I don’t want to lose you. I mean, lose what we have. You know.”
Shay tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear and glanced at the ground furtively. “Daggers, I… Look, I like you, too. I told you as much earlier today. But we’re not even a couple.”
“You think that makes it easier?” I passed a hand through my hair. “Let me tell you something. I come into work each morning—late, always, because its in my nature—and do you know what the first thing I see is? Your smiling face. That’s the best part of my day. That’s my sunrise.”
Steele’s face softened, and the corner of her lips curled up. “Daggers…”
“I’m not kidding. It is. And when I saw Blue coming on to you…well, I went a little crazy, ok? I saw things in my mind. Changes, and not good ones. I mean, you know me. I don’t deal well with change. It’s why I acted like such a horrible person when you started working with me this past summer. And it’s no wonder. For me, change is my mom dying. It’s my brother learning to hate me. It’s my wife divorcing me. It’s my son growing older and not knowing who I am. Never mind the change that brought you to the 5th Street Precinct is the best thing that’s happened to me in the past three years. I saw another bad change and I lashed out. And I’m fully aware I did it in a way that pushes you away from me. I know it and I did it anyway. It’s that damned splinter I talked about. I’m in a masochistic feedback loop, and I want to bash my head into a wall every time I do it!”
Shay looked at me, concern in her eyes, but clearly without any idea of how to respond.
I forced myself to calm down. “I think what I’m trying to say is, I’m not perfect. I know it. I’m a work in progress, and I have things that need fixing. But thanks to you, I’m figuring out what those things are, and slowly but surely, I’m patching myself up.
“You asked me earlier if I knew what it was you liked about me. I didn’t at the time, but it wasn’t that hard to figure out. You like the stuff in here.” I jabbed at my heart. “Not the dark stuff, the nasty I’m trying to purge. You like my heart. That’s what made you pause when I told you I’d gone to check on Allison this morning and brought her food. It’s what made you smile when I told Drake and Kelly to skip town and never come back. Not because it was right in the legal sense—it wasn’t—but because it was the right thing to do. The right thing for them.
“There’s a lot of good in me, Shay, and I want to let it out. For me. For you. For my son and Quinto and Rodgers and everyone in my life. I want to beat back the demons, and I know I can. I just need a little patience.”
I’m not sure if I expected Shay to cry or to kiss me or to walk away, but she did none of those
things. She merely stood there, looking at me, considering what I’d said. Seconds stretched into what seemed to me an interminable silence.
“For what it’s worth,” I said. “I’m also sorry I spoke of that ragtime musician of yours with such disdain.”
Shay smiled a bit. “Apology accepted. So, what do you propose? As far as dealing with the…dark things, I guess, inside you.”
“Way to serve me a slow pitch to start.” I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve always bottled everything up. Kept the hurt deep down inside and prayed for it not to spray out following an emotional gut punch, but I don’t think that’s worked out so well. I guess I need to…confront everything. Be honest. Open. Acknowledge when I have a problem, and when I need help. Take things one day at a time and work on bettering myself.”
Shay’s smile didn’t disappear, but it didn’t grow either. Eventually, she nodded. “Ok.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Ok?”
“Yeah. Not yes, or no. Just ok.”
She lifted her hand and trailed her fingers along the length of my jaw to my chin, looking me in the eyes as she did so. My stomach fluttered, and she pulled her hand back.
“Goodnight, Jake.” She turned and began to walk into the night.
I stood transfixed and blinked. “Wait…do you want me to walk you home?”
“Not tonight,” she called over her shoulder.
Though an improvement over where we’d left things at the end of the Captain’s recap, this still wasn’t how I’d hoped the night would end.
“But…where does that leave us?” I asked. “You know. In our relationship.”
Shay turned her head and smiled at me—a warm, genuine smile, but one that held something back. “We’ll just have to take it one day at a time. But it’s a start. We’ll see how it goes.”
It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of our possible future together, but I could live with it. For now.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hi. I’m Alex P. Berg, a mystery, fantasy, and science fiction writer and the author of Fine Blue Steele. If you enjoyed this Daggers & Steele mystery, be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the next novel in the series, Crucible Steele, in which secrets from the past lead to smoldering discoveries.
Want more exciting adventures, head-scratching mysteries, and snarky dialogue? Check out two of my other series:
*The Tau Ceti Transmutation (Rich Weed #1): Follow private detective Rich Weed and his trusty android sidekick Carl in this pulp-inspired science fiction mystery set in the year 3330.
*The Black Mast Murder (Driftwood #1): Mystery and intrigue rule the high seas in this Pirates of the Caribbean-style adventure featuring constable John “Driftwood” Malarkey and his supernaturally-gifted wife, Gwen.
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For a complete list of my books, please visit: www.alexpberg.com/books/.
Table of Contents
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
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
About the Author
Table of Contents
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
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
About the Author
