by Lyra Evans
The body was hanging from both trees, arms spread wide and bound to high branches by gleaming rope. Oliver followed the line of one arm, pulling awkwardly at the shoulder to accommodate the span of the entry point. The man’s head hung limp to one side, partially obscuring the black collar around his neck. He was otherwise naked, his pale body shining blue in the cold, the marble skin bisected by a trail of dark red. Blood drew a river down his chest and waist and leg, frozen before it dripped off his toes. The source of the blood was a circular set of holes in his chest—bullet wounds over his heart.
Oliver stood frozen as the victim, his eyes taking in all he could of the man hanging before him. He had roughly cut, messy brown hair, and his still-open eyes gazed unseeing toward Oliver below him. They were a shining honey colour. Oliver shivered again.
“Who is the victim?” he asked, looking away from the honey eyes of the dead Wolf.
“Malcolm Ryan,” Connor said, stepping forward. Oliver felt the warmth of him, the smell of him wafting around Oliver and soothing his tension. “He was one of mine. Twenty-one years old. A Beta.” His words were clipped and cold, a mark of how affected he was. Connor cut his words when he thought his voice would waver.
“I’m sorry,” Oliver whispered to him, fighting the urge to reach out and take his hand. “Do you know time of death?”
“Has to be between three and five a.m.” Connor said. Oliver took the opportunity to look away from the victim and gave Connor a questioning look. “Closing staff left Hunt at three a.m. and the opening shift is at five. Kim was on closing last night and said there was no one around for miles. Dermot was opening today. He’s the one who found Malcolm.” Connor gestured behind him to a young man with fluffy brown hair, green eyes, and a spray of stubble across his chin. He wasn’t as bulky as the bartender Oli had met, but Dermot definitely looked as though he could hold his own. The notion was vaguely undermined by the wounded-puppy look on his face. Clearly his first body.
Oliver turned to him, pulling out his coded notebook to take down the details. “When did you arrive?”
“Four fifty-five,” he said, trying to perk up at being addressed, but there was fear lingering behind his eyes. He wanted more to flee than fight.
“Do you open often?”
“It’s my usual shift,” he said, and Oliver watched his eyes, but Dermot wasn’t involved. Oliver knew it in his gut.
“Are you always here by four fifty-five?” he asked.
“Earlier, usually,” Dermot answered. “I try to get in around four forty-five, if I can, in case there’s stuff to clear out of the entrance. Sometimes small animals get caught in the wards on the perimeter or in the threshold. They get nervous and confused from the magic. But I was late getting up this morning, and when I got in there was no animal, just—” but he broke off, unable to finish the sentence. Instead, his eyes were drawn back up to Malcolm Ryan’s hanging body, surveying the group below with accusing eyes.
“It’s all right,” Oliver told Dermot, trying to soothe his terror. “Did you touch him at all? Disturb anything?” Dermot shook his head, and Oliver nodded. “Thank you, Dermot, you can go now.” Estelle took the cue and led Dermot away, gently coaxing him with a hand on his back.
Oli turned back to the hanging man and considered everything again. There were no footprints in the snow beneath the body, just as there had been no footprints behind Oli on the path. There was also no blood anywhere but on the victim. No drops in the snow, no smears on the trees.
“Has anyone else touched the body? Or the trees?” Oli asked.
Connor shook his head. “The scene is completely untouched but for us standing here. I made sure no one disturbed anything until you arrived.”
“Connor informed me of the dangers of contaminating the evidence,” Logan added, his eyes trained on Oli. “It is of the utmost importance every possible measure be taken to identify the murderer.”
A trace of desperation played out in Logan’s words, and Oli realized he was the first cop on scene. There were no other Wolves present but Logan, Connor, and Celeste. No police, no medical examiner, no one.
“Where are your local police?” Oliver asked, hoping he didn’t sound accusatory. “How are these things usually investigated in your Court?”
Logan seemed confused. “There are no police,” he said. “Any crime committed by a Wolf is addressed by the Alpha of the respective pack. The Alphas punish each Wolf according to their crime. There is no need for other forms of law enforcement.”
Stunned, Oliver turned to Connor. “So how have you investigated murders before?”
The sadness in Connor’s eyes was more visible now, shining like a cloud against the blue of his iris. “There hasn’t been a murder in Logan’s Court before now.”
Oliver felt his mouth fall open slightly, his mind unable to process the statement. That wasn’t possible. Every Court had murders. Nimueh’s and Maeve’s Courts both had dedicated local police, not to mention the Special Investigations Unit, responsible for serial crimes, war crimes, and cross-border crimes.
“This is why we need you,” Logan said, sweeping Oliver’s stunned thoughts away. “You have at your disposal anything you require for your investigation. Connor will see to it everything is provided. Manpower, tools, information—whatever you need. Logan’s Court cannot abide a murder of one of our own.”
Oliver nodded and Logan returned the gesture. He nodded then to Connor and Celeste as he departed. The cold beginning to bite at his parted lips, Oliver shut his mouth and turned back to the body.
“We need to get him down to examine him,” he said. “Then you’ll need to do an autopsy to confirm cause of death. I’d guess the wounds are from silver bullets, but we need to be sure.” Oliver raised his hands and wordlessly cast a spell to hold Ryan’s body in place. Once it was secure, he cast another spell to untie the ropes from the trees. Oliver felt the magic vibrate softly at his neck, warming his skin beneath the obsidian collar, and the ropes dropped, limply hanging from Ryan’s wrists. Oliver lowered Ryan slowly to the ground, laying him gently in the snow at the base of the entry point to Hunt.
It was difficult to watch, even for Oliver. Ryan’s body was frozen in position, so he lay in the same way on the ground as he had hung by the trees. His head propped awkwardly against his chest, hovering above the ground. Oliver felt Connor twitch next to him, perhaps in an urge to reach out to Ryan, to adjust his head and lay him flat, resting and peaceful. Celeste began pacing behind him, apparently unable to keep still.
Oliver summoned evidence bubbles and let them float empty on the air as he undid the ropes from Ryan’s wrists. When they were free, he popped them in the bubbles, sealing them with his thumbprint and containing any attached evidence. But he couldn’t find any by sight or superficial spell. The ropes were perfect, shimmering in their silvery fibers, and Oli recognized them as Fae-made. Only their threads would remain pristine without fraying against the bark of the tree or the pull of Ryan’s body against them.
Kneeling down in the snow by Ryan’s body, Oliver hovered a hand over the bullet-holes. He cast a mimicking spell and the tunnels the bullets carved into Ryan reproduced, translucent, in the air along with the bullets at the base of them. There were five of them in a circle, and the bullets clearly shone silver even in the reproduction. And silver bullets were only produced in Nimueh’s Court.
“I need to get the collar,” Oliver said, his words quiet. He knew how difficult it was to touch a body, particularly when it belonged to someone familiar. But Connor didn’t hesitate. He kneeled down next to Oliver, and Oliver took his hand, squeezing it briefly before guiding him. They placed their hands on Ryan’s chin and at the crown of his head, and Oliver whispered another spell, thawing the tissue of his neck under stasis to adjust the position. They moved him slowly, Ryan nodding backward at the sky as they did, and laid his head in the snow. Connor released him quickly, his eyes focused on Ryan’s, while Oliver studied the collar.
It wa
s made of leather and edged with tiny stones that gleamed black. Oliver guessed hematite stones, common in Logan’s Court and rarely used by the Witches and Wizards of Nimueh’s Court because of the fraught political relations between the two kingdoms.
“Are these common?” Oliver asked, pointing at the details on the collar.
Connor drew his eyes down to Ryan’s neck slowly and nodded. “That is a traditional mating collar. Many Wolves go a custom route now, designing their collars themselves, or sometimes making them, but these can be purchased at a number of jewelry shops throughout the Court.”
“So this was made here?” Oli asked, and Connor nodded. “That makes one item from each Court.”
Connor stared at him. “What does that tell you?”
Oli shook his head. “I’m not sure yet.”
There was minimal physical evidence here. No signs of a struggle on Ryan’s body, no indication of clothing or travel. There was no sign of another person, though there must have been. There was no gun. Oliver sighed and shut his eyes, focusing on the senses beyond the usual five. He searched beyond the crisp smell of ice and Connor’s skin, beyond the cold biting his face and hands, beyond the quiet of the forest, to find the magical signature of the crime, the thing left behind by every killer.
But he felt nothing. He searched harder, forcing his mind beyond its comfort, beyond his usual effort, and felt a throbbing in his skull as he urged himself to find the signature. But only a dull, echoing silence came to him. No signature, no feeling or smell or sound. Nothing.
Oliver’s eyes snapped open, goose bumps rising on his skin. His heart beat hard against his ribcage. That wasn’t possible. There was always a signature. Always. It was magical law—every magical creature has a magical signature and residual echoes of it are left behind anywhere that person went. Whatever they touched or did, the magic of them left a mark behind on the world. There were no exceptions.
“I’m guessing you felt nothing,” Connor asked, and Oliver stared wide-eyed at him. He looked crestfallen, a flicker of anger following quickly after his words. “I was afraid of that.” Oliver shook his head in question, and Connor’s shoulders tensed. “I didn’t get anything either. There’s no smell on him. Nothing at all.” He swallowed hard. “As if he was killed by a ghost.”
Chapter 5
They rode in silence. Chest tight and mind traveling well-trodden paths, Oliver stared out the window as they drove. Connor didn’t seem to mean to break the silence at all, and though they rarely were silent together, Oliver was glad to find it was more comfortable than he expected. They were both elsewhere, their thoughts caught up in the horror of what had happened, in the mess that was that day.
They’d left Celeste with a team of Wolves called to help deal with the body. Connor had called on the best doctors in his pack to handle the autopsy, and they willingly acquiesced. Oliver took the collar in an evidence bubble and drew up a sleigh-like stretcher to help them move Ryan to another location. They had no vehicle equipped for that—not in Logan’s Court where there were no murders and no need for police. Connor’d suggested they go speak with the victim’s family, and Oliver agreed. He’d been paying attention to Oliver’s procedure, it seemed. Or else he spent his time away from Oliver reading up on police procedure.
The evidence bubble for the collar was smooth and cold in his hand, the magic of the stasis tingling against his fingertips. He looked down at it, every so often, and found the image of Malcolm Ryan’s unseeing honey eyes surfacing in his mind. They could have been brothers, really, Malcolm and Oliver. Even he could see it. Only Oliver had no siblings, and neither had Malcolm.
“And your Wolves definitely searched the surrounding area carefully?” Oliver asked, his thoughts circling the missing evidence, the missing leads. This crime scene was too clean, too posed. There had to be another scene somewhere, where the killing actually occurred. There had to be blood, clothes, something.
“Yes,” Connor said, his patience wearing. The edges of his words were raw now, and Oliver saw, in the angled light of the car, that Connor had dark circles under his eyes that were never there before. “And even if they hadn’t searched manually, they would have been able to smell it. But I made them scour two square miles of that forest, and there was nothing. Not even a branch out of place.”
Oliver nodded, trying to remember that though they weren’t police, the Wolves of Connor’s pack were well trained in many of the behaviours. They could act with the unity and fluidity of military when they needed to, and this was certainly one of those circumstances.
“Why are there no footprints?” Oliver asked, unable to look at Connor for long. He spent his time staring at the passing trees instead, as though they might answer him. “The snow just—fixed itself—after we passed over it.”
Connor sighed. “We’re not certain,” he said. “That is, we don’t have an academic answer. But that forest is the oldest and largest in all of Logan’s Court. Many believe that it is from the heart of the forest that Wolves were born, emerging from the hollow of a tree when a wolf entered it in search of shelter to birth her litter during a Full Moon.” He turned the car down a hidden road into another set of trees. “The emerging creatures were both upright and four-legged, both furred and fur-less. We are made of flesh and wood, they think, and every Full Moon must return to our roots as the creatures seeking shelter. That’s why Logan’s symbol is a golden branch.”
As he spoke, a watercolour story played out in Oliver’s mind, and he finally said, “That’s beautiful. But it doesn’t really explain the footprints.”
“It’s superstition,” Connor answered. “But we do return there, on the night of every Full Moon. We transform and run out the night, hunting as a pack, amid the trees of our most ancient wood.” Connor shrugged. “It calls to us then. That wood definitely has magic. It protects itself, somehow. I had to build Hunt by weaving the trees together, coaxing them to grow in a pattern that worked. Someone tried cutting down a tree once, and the next day it was back, fully grown. The wood cannot be disturbed, only adjusted as its will desires. I guess Hunt was something it wanted.”
Oliver considered this, thinking of how little blood there was, of the lack of clothes. “So the killer couldn’t have buried the clothing anywhere?”
Connor tilted his head, considering. The trees were thinning as they drove, giving way to small houses in cozy clearings. “I doubt it. Like I said, we searched. And I doubt the forest would agree to let something so vile root in its grounds.”
With a heavy sigh Oliver tried to dislodge the weight in his stomach, the tightness in his chest, but it wouldn’t go. After a few moments of silence, his fingers aching to reach for Connor’s, to grasp them and comfort him, to feel his skin and his heat, Oliver let himself talk.
“I know you’ve been busy since I left, what with everything that happened,” Oliver began, trying to force the words out before he lost his nerve. His heart was barely beating, as though his body meant to expire before he had a chance to face the fear looming at the back of his mind. “But there was an article—”
“I saw it,” Connor said, his tone clipped again. “We’re here.”
They pulled into a short driveway surrounded by small bushes and saplings. Connor parked and exited the car before Oliver had a chance to stop him, to say another word. His heart sinking, Oliver slipped the evidence bubble back into his pocket and followed after Connor.
The house was small and homey, with the look of something you might see in an illustrated fairy tale book. The front door was a large and arched, the small window in it ornately framed with swirling carvings that mimicked vines. The glass of the window was pebbled, and the doorknob was brass and heavy with fine detailing around the edges. The exterior of the house was of brown board, painstakingly cared for and cleaned, and the roof tiles were overlapped in the kind of whimsical way of old homes. A small box by the entrance was painted with flowers and birds and announced the home as belonging to the Ryans.
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br /> Oliver felt at once as though he was knocking on the door to a gingerbread house. The news he carried with him settled thickly at the back of his throat. Connor tapped on the door, and it opened immediately. A young woman with dirty blond hair and doe-brown eyes looked mournfully up at them. She bowed her head to Connor and nodded to Oliver.
“Charity,” Connor said to her, and Oliver took it to be her name as no other meaning fit. “How are they handling it?”
Charity paused, her eyes glassy. “About as you might expect. The shock still hasn’t quite worn off, but the grief is devastating. Their only son gone—and without a chance to defend himself, to fight for his life.”
“I know,” Connor said, reaching out to place a hand on her shoulder. He squeezed, and she sagged slightly, the tears spilling onto her cheeks. “We will find him. We will have justice. Oliver will help us see to it.”
Oliver straightened slightly, offering a sad smile and a nod when she looked up at him, her eyes already red.
“Thank you for your help,” Charity told him. “You’ve come to our Alpha’s aid, to our aid, once before, and now you do so again.” She fought back a sob, and Oliver shifted uncomfortably. “Our Alpha has found a truly worthy mate at last.”
Connor stiffened slightly, glancing at Oliver for only the briefest moment. Oliver was at a loss, unable to find the right way to answer that statement. The Wolves of Logan’s Court seemed to take no offense at the lies he may have told on his last case—only caring about how he cleared Werewolves of any wrongdoing where other Wizards had easily named them suspect.
“It’s my job to catch murderers and speak for the victims,” Oliver said, hoping the standard invocations of duty would be enough. Charity nodded and ushered them in.
The inside of the home was as small Oliver expected, but it felt wider than it was. Warm, welcoming, and full of the hallmarks of life, the house was a totem, and Oliver felt the weight of the grief wash over him. Photos on the walls were of Malcolm, smiling and posing, one wearing a medal of some kind, another with Connor where he stood tall and proud. There were several photos with Charity, both of them close, intimate. Mr. and Mrs. Ryan were pictured too, a handsome older couple with greying hair and laugh lines writing history on their faces.
