by Lyra Evans
Haze filled Oliver’s mind, his only clear thought that they should shift, get more comfortable. Connor groaned softly and lifted himself off Oliver. He moved to the side, shifting Oliver as he did. Oli turned to face Connor sliding up the couch so they took up the length of it. They entwined their legs and arms, Oliver’s forehead pressed to Connor’s collarbone. Connor cradled him close and hummed into his hair.
Distantly aware of where they were and for what, Oliver let his eyes slide shut, his body yearning for sleep. Oliver muttered, “We only have drinks and deli meats at our wakes.”
Chapter 8
A distant tapping played insistently against his skull. His limbs were sore, painful, stuck at awkward angles, and the fingers in his right hand seemed to be tingling. Oliver cracked an eye open, gazing blearily around himself to discern the source of the noise that woke him. He also meant to figure out where he was and why he was in such pain, but as soon as he saw Connor’s face barely a hair’s breadth from his own, he remembered. Oli’s face flushed red as he realized he was still naked, entwined with Connor on the sofa in his basement.
The music had died away, replaced by the soft sounds of sleeping Wolves. Oliver shifted himself, trying to extricate himself from Connor without waking him, but it was no use. The distant banging was apparently making it through the haze of Connor’s sleep too. He blinked awake, his expression somewhat confused for a moment as he studied Oliver, awkwardly trying to lift himself up without the use of his right arm or his legs.
“Who’s knocking?” Connor asked, his voice low and rough from sleep. Oliver blinked, looking uselessly up at the ceiling in the direction of the front door. It took him a moment to realize Connor was right; the sound was someone knocking.
“We should probably go find out,” Oliver answered, finally managing to get up when Connor moved to let him. Oli stumbled off the sofa, nearly stepping on a couple of Wolves lying on the floor naked and just as twisted up together as Oli and Connor had been. He caught himself and moved around them, pulling pieces of his discarded clothing from wherever he found them. Only the clothes were beyond usage; they were torn to shreds.
“I’ll replace them,” Connor said, getting to his feet. He looked worn but completely unrepentant for having destroyed Oliver’s clothes. “I’ve got clothes for you upstairs.”
Oliver pulled a face, unable to muster any kind of real anger at Connor. Though he felt embarrassment burn his cheeks at what they did last night, in front of the whole pack, he still couldn’t manage to be angry. The desperate, starving desire that drove both of them to what they did made Oliver feel, at least somewhat, as though maybe his fear of commitment and the poorly timed Daily Spell article weren’t really the problem he thought they were. Maybe Connor didn’t care about the article, and maybe he wasn’t as hurt by Oliver’s dismissal of his request to go public with their relationship as Oli had thought.
The knocking grew more insistent, and Oli began to feel a throbbing inside his skull. He hadn’t had any alcohol last night to warrant a hang-over, but he thought the lack of significant sustenance and the high stress load were probably enough to cause headaches of their own.
Connor pulled up his own pants, which were completely intact, and began up the stairs. Oliver stood a moment, his mouth open and his expression incredulous, before calling to Connor to stop.
“Wait!” he hissed, trying not to wake the pack sleeping in piles of people around the basement. Connor turned to him, his expression questioning. “Am I supposed to go up there naked?” Connor blinked, let his eyes rove over Oliver’s bare body once or twice, then smirked. “Connor.”
Rolling his eyes, Connor said, “yes, fine.” He gestured for Oliver to follow him up the stairs. At the main floor, he made a motion for Oliver to wait while he ran up to the top floor, presumably toward his bedroom. Standing naked in Connor’s entry hall was hardly something Oliver felt comfortable doing, particularly with the increasingly urgent banging on the front door. Oliver backed against a wall and covered himself awkwardly with his hands, thankful that the glass of Connor’s front door was heavily frosted.
Connor finally reappeared with clothes and handed them to Oliver. He’d managed to find himself a new shirt as well, already donned and buttoned. Oliver pulled on the clothes he’d been given while Connor moved toward the door. He opened it just as Oliver managed to pull the fine cashmere sweater over his head.
“What is it?” Connor asked the people at the door. His expression and tone were even, though Oli could tell that from the sight of the Wolves on his doorstep he knew something was off.
Estelle stood just beyond the threshold, accompanied by their border-guard supervisor, Jackson Racer. Racer was tall and lean with roan red hair and a keen face. He stood like a soldier, shoulders squared, hands cross behind his back, feet shoulder-width apart.
“There’s been another murder,” he said, and the weight in Oli’s stomach was back. He’d hoped that the burning hot sex with Connor from the previous night would be enough to dispel it, to let his worries die, but it wasn’t. The guilt and the shame were back full force. Someone else was dead, and on Oliver’s watch.
“Where?” Connor asked, his tone brittle now. Oli stepped up behind him, fighting the urge to touch him and comfort him. Racer glanced over at Oli, then looked back at Connor.
“Black Moon,” he said. Oli shut his eyes.
“When?” Connor kept asking questions, the questions that needed asking, but Oli heard the jagged thing in his voice, the thing that suggested questions were the only reason Connor was still upright. Without the questions, the endless questions, Connor might have already crumbled. But as long as he had answers to find, he had purpose. Oli knew the feeling.
“Only a few hours ago,” Estelle said. “Can’t be certain, but there’s a very short window during which the club was unguarded and unoccupied, between three fifty and four twenty-five. We found the victim and came directly here to tell you.”
Oliver looked at the two of them. “Is anyone still at the scene?”
“Celeste is there,” Estelle answered. “To protect the body and the integrity of the scene.”
Oliver nodded, thinking quickly.
“Who?” Connor asked, the question undercut by the tentative hope in his voice. Estelle shook her head.
“Jamie Grace,” Racer said. Connor grimaced, his fingernails scraping roughly against the wood of the door he was still holding. So another one of their pack, Oliver surmised.
“Can you tell how he was killed?” Oli asked.
Estelle gave him a severe look. “Same as Malcolm Ryan it seems. Won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but—”
“Can’t be a coincidence,” Racer said. “You’ll understand when you see.”
Connor nodded. “I need to inform Donna. Come in a moment, and we’ll go together.”
They did as asked while Connor disappeared downstairs to find Donna. Oliver searched out his coat and boots, pulling them on while his mind raced through possibilities. Body thrumming with a burst of anxious energy, Oliver laced his boots, realizing he hadn’t felt this way since the Thistledown Thrasher case that had made him a household name. Hardly interested in more notoriety, Oliver knew it was more important than ever they find a viable lead on the case.
Or two cases, he reminded himself. Just because Racer and Estelle thought the two cases were the same, didn’t mean they were. They were, by their own admission, not trained investigators. Though investigating two disparate murders wasn’t a particularly good option, it was a hell of a lot better than the alternative.
Connor returned with a remarkably put-together Donna. Taking his own coat and boots from the closet, Connor shrugged into his coat and stepped into his boots.
“Let’s go,” he said, and they did.
It was cold outside, colder than early spring had any right to be. The air wicked moisture out of Oliver’s face as it washed over him, and his eyes stung from the sudden drop in temperature. But the sun had
not yet risen on the horizon, the edges of the trees just barely crowned in pale blue and purple.
“How did you get here?” Words turned into wisps of cloud on the frigid air as he spoke. The only car in sight was Connor’s, clean and warm from the garage. He never fully explained to Oliver how it was his car was always ready for him when he wanted it.
“We ran,” Racer said, as though it was obvious. “We’ll meet you there.”
Then he and Estelle made off for the tree line around Connor’s home, their bodies shifting like mirages on the air as they transformed. After a moment, Oliver only saw two Wolves running off in the distance, one jet black, the other roan red.
“They ran?” Oliver asked as Connor gestured him into the car. Oliver took his seat, his hands already bitten from the cold. He rubbed them together before plugging in his seatbelt. Connor settled in next to him, slipping the key into the ignition.
“Border guards need to know the lands better than anyone else,” Connor said. “They only use vehicle transport in exigent circumstances. They picked you up in a car yesterday because of the murder. But most days, they’ll just transform and run wherever they need. It keeps them in peak physical form and always connected to the land.”
His explanation was clear and useful but somehow less yielding than usual. His sentences were clipped in a way they usually weren’t when he spoke to Oliver. Even his gestures seemed jerky, as though Oliver was watching Connor through a strobe light. They sped off quickly, more roughly than Connor usually drove, but Oliver said nothing.
When they arrived at Black Moon it was to find Celeste standing outside the door. She had much the same soldier stance as Racer, but her sister tended toward a more relaxed positioning. Perhaps that was how Oliver learned to tell them apart so quickly. He couldn’t quite name the thing that made him sure this was Celeste, without speaking to her. Maybe it was his other senses picking up on something he wasn’t consciously aware of. Connor told him Wizards often ignored the full power of their other senses, cleaving so determinately to sight before all else.
Stepping out of the car, Connor nodded a greeting to Celeste. “Has anyone else been by?”
She shook her head as Oliver closed the car door behind him. “No one. We passed by here around four thirty, on rounds like you ordered. The door was slightly ajar so we went in to check. Found him then. Last we were by here was around three fifty, so it had to be somewhere in that time frame.”
Tension radiated from her as she delivered her information to Connor and Oliver. Oliver studied her a moment.
“Were you waiting inside before?” he asked, and Celeste stared at him.
After a long moment, she nodded once. “Had to get out of there,” she said. “Estelle and Jacks are in there now. But—”
“It’s okay,” Oliver said. They went inside, leaving Celeste to the fresh air and early morning.
Oliver was familiar with the urge to run from death, the need to look away, to keep it behind you, away from you. As though it wasn’t a part of you. But it was. It was a part of everyone. That reality was something he’d had to face pretty early at the Academy. Every new recruit did. The only way to do your job as a police officer was to face death down and acknowledge it, to keep staring into the void and see what matters.
But as Oliver followed Connor down the nearly pitch-dark corridor of Black Moon, he realized that he was tired of staring into the void, tired of staring at death and not allowing himself to react the way normal people did.
The star-speckled ceiling of Black Moon was the only lighting, usually, but in the distance beyond the mouth of the hallway, Oliver saw another light source. As they broke out onto the dance floor, Oliver realized Racer and Estelle had turned on the bar lights to give themselves a clearer view of the crime scene. Even that was minimal lighting, but it sufficed to tell Oliver what he needed to know about the murder.
It was definitely related to the Malcolm Ryan murder.
Connor and Oliver stopped a few feet short of Jamie Grace’s feet, standing opposite Racer and Estelle. The four of them all looked down on Grace’s body, lying spread-eagled on the matte black floor of Black Moon. The low light of the bar and the tiny speckles from the ceiling draped his naked body in heavy shadows, inked like bruises on his skin. The shadows pooled around the base of his body, in the crevices of his face and neck and groin. His hands lay open to the sky, as though welcoming some gift from the heavens. Around his neck, a black leather collar was tied, just like the one given to Malcolm Ryan. Five rubies edged in ash seemed placed on his chest, just over his heart, but they weren’t stones.
The bullet holes were crisp, barely powder burned, and the blood in them had hardly run out. The wet blood glistened in the weak illumination, and Oliver felt, for the first time in many years, like vomiting.
The only difference from the first scene, other than the location, was that Jamie Grace was not bound to the floor by ropes. He wasn’t bound at all. Instead, a thick, silvery-black blindfold covered his eyes, the strap of it disrupting his messy, dark brown hair.
“Now you see,” Racer said without a trace of smugness. “Has to be connected to the other murder.”
But Oliver and Connor were more concerned by something else. Oliver kneeled down next to Grace’s body. Casting a gentle spell to lift the blindfold without disrupting any of the other evidence, Oliver peered into the dead eyes of the victim. They were a shimmering gold, nearly the exact same colour as Oliver’s amber irises.
He looked back at Connor, who held his gaze, his expression closed, stony.
“No one moved him at all?” Oliver asked. “This is exactly how you found him?” Racer and Estelle nodded. A breath like daggers escaped Oliver’s lungs, his heart pounding like a club against his chest.
Oliver had been lying here, in Black Moon, barely twenty-four hours ago. Playing a stupid sex game with Connor, Oliver had been in this precise position, his eyes covered, his collar the only thing he wore beyond the magical bonds that held his hands and feet in place. As an afterthought, Oliver checked that Jamie Grace’s hands were, in fact, unbound. But there was no magic there, no trace of it.
A slow deep breath, forcing his heart to a more natural rhythm, Oliver sought out the magical signature of the scene, the signature of the killer, even just the signature of Jamie Grace’s last moments. Nothing.
There was no signature, no whiff of magic at all. Only the resounding silence of an empty space. Oliver gritted his teeth, his fingernails digging shallow graves into his palms.
“Did you find his phone at all? Anything?”
Estelle glanced at Racer. “We searched the whole club and the perimeter around it. No trace of anything. No smell, no footprints in the snow, nothing.”
Oliver got to his feet. “Is this wood part of the one around Hunt?”
Connor lifted his gaze from the motionless body of Jamie Grace. His eyes were icy cold, his pupils narrower than they should have been in such low light. “No,” he said. “This forest is made up of trees that have spread over from Nimueh’s Court. The same magic does not live here.”
Oliver pulled out his coded notebook, jotting down the details. “So the killer either didn’t leave any prints or got rid of them.”
“How?” Racer asked. “How can anyone get rid of footprints in snow? Make it as if they’ve never been there at all? Or take away the smell of a place? How is this done?”
Oliver didn’t look at him, his eyes trained instead on the blindfold around Jamie Grace’s eyes. The silvery sheen to the fabric was telling; the blindfold was Fae-made. It had the subtly imbued magic that only Fae can weave. And it was the only other difference from the first crime scene.
Shaking his head, Oliver sorted through the options. Even without the autopsy, the cause of death was clear. Five shots, silver bullets to the heart. Body posed and adorned with one item from each of the Three Courts. Both victims with tousled brown hair and amber eyes.
Oliver scratched more notes into his n
otebook, his mind racing. Two was not enough. It wasn’t enough to make a pattern. But there was clearly one emerging. And twenty-four hours was hardly a cooling-off period. By that rate there would be another murder—
Oliver walked over to Connor, the weight in his stomach having doubled in size. He felt as though he’d eaten something vile that hadn’t agreed with him, though he hadn’t eaten anything at all. The acid in his stomach churned and made the weight there burn uncomfortably. Swallowing hard, he made his decision.
“We have a problem,” he told Connor.
“Obviously,” Connor said, but Oliver shook his head. He didn’t want to think about the way the victim looked like him, or that he was positioned in the same way Oliver had been only yesterday.
“No, I mean,” he started, wishing he didn’t have to do it this way. But consulting on a case over kingdom borders was touchy, which meant procedure was all he could stand by. “I mean, this looks like it could be serial.”
Connor gave him a sharp look. “Serial? We don’t have—”
“Serial killers in Logan’s Court?” Oliver asked, eyebrows raised. “Well until yesterday you didn’t have murderers either, so I guess this is a case of firsts.”
His tone was harsher than he meant, like cold steel, and Connor tensed, his shoulders tightening. Oliver looked away.
“So what does that mean?” he asked.
Oliver heaved a sigh. “It means we have to call in Special Investigations,” he said. The darkness of the Black Moon club suddenly felt suffocating, like a heavy blanket falling over him, blotting out the air.
“Why?” Connor’s demeanour shifted, closed off, and Oliver tried to ignore it.
“It’s protocol,” he said. “Special Investigations specializes in these things. They have tools I just don’t. They’ll send someone to come consult. Just one person. They’re good.” Oliver shifted. “They were on the Thistledown Thrasher case.”
