by Lyra Evans
“Yes,” Sky said softly, and Oliver thought he’d imagined it. “You should never have trusted me with your heart.” He pulled away from Oliver as though fighting a magnetic force. “You gave yourself to me and I—” He shook his head. “I—just walked away.” He fought to swallow, the effort visible in his Adam’s apple, in the slow, struggling bob of it at his neck. Oliver remembered running his tongue over that neck, tasting the sweat on Sky’s skin after a long day training. He remembered biting into Sky, desperately for him, when Sky was buried deep inside Oliver and pushing him insistently over the edge. Oliver felt a different kind of biting urge then, staring at the spot he’d decided, all those long years ago, that was best for nibbling. The best way to get Sky to yield to him, to become pliable in his hands.
Pushing the thought from his mind, Oliver didn’t answer Sky, only let his eyes rove slowly over the planes of Sky’s face, of every fine detail of his beauty. Sky’s hand slid down Oliver’s back, his palm pressed to the base of Oli’s spine, just above the curve of his ass. Oliver shivered despite himself. Oliver leaned in an inch, and Sky watched him come closer.
“I hurt you,” Sky whispered, watching as Oliver breathed in the air around him, smelling invisibly. “And I’ll never forgive myself for it. But now, you’ve been hurt again, and I swear to all the old gods, I will make Connor pay for—”
“I need to find him, Sky,” Oliver heard himself saying, his voice quivering more than it had been but still steadier than his heart. Then the distance between Sky and Oliver was different, longer and with the distinct chill of a shock.
“You need to find him?” Sky asked, as though he could barely believe his pointed ears. Oliver set his jaw, tightened it, and looked down, his eyes travelling over the width of Sky’s lap. “After what he’s done?” Sky shook his head, pulling back further. His chest tightened visibly, his shoulders stiff. “Is he even worth the trouble?”
Every fiber of Oliver jerked to attention, urging him to answer emphatically, to yell and scream and paint it across the snowy grounds of Logan’s Court. But he caught himself, tamping down his feelings and making the struggle look like a fight about something else. Oliver shook his head. “It’s my job.”
There was a hint of regret in his words, an undertone of frustration and condemnation. And Sky’s hand was on his, pressing Oli’s palm into the mattress as he approached Oliver slowly, his lips slightly parted. Oliver breathed in. “I need your help,” he added, their lips barely an inch apart. Sky’s warm, sweet breath ghosted over Oliver’s face, and he breathed it in. It took him back to mornings in bed, wrapped in one another, Sky waking him with slow, open-mouthed kisses and a hard cock pressed between his legs. And Oliver pulled back, his heart pounding, his chest filled with ice. Sky’s expression was surprised, disappointed, and Oliver needed a recovery. He pressed a palm to his own forehead and got to his feet, hoping he looked as shaken as he felt, for once. “I just don’t understand these killers the way you do,” he said to Sky, thinking of the killer’s psychological profile. Narcissist. Psychopath. “No one does.”
Sky smiled at him, a slow, upward curl of the lips, and Oliver exhaled. “I gave you my thoughts on the killer,” Sky said, shrugging. “I don’t know what else I can say. Nothing has changed in that regard.”
“Of course it has!” Oliver said, waving around the room. He spotted his pants off to one side and decided now was a good time to dress himself. He couldn’t stay naked forever. Pulling on the pants, he said, “You told me the killer was probably after me, that I was the ultimate intended target. Then why go after Connor? Why take him, when I was lying just as helpless and vulnerable as he was?”
Sky’s dark eyebrows knitted together, his eyes sharp as they raked over Oliver’s half-dressed body. Oliver searched around for a shirt to give himself something to do. “You still think Connor didn’t go of his own volition?”
Snatching a light cotton t-shirt from the chair, Oliver pulled it over his head. “I don’t know,” he said honestly, once the shirt was on. Running a hand through his hair, Oliver glanced around. “If he’s been cheating on me from the beginning with some Werewolf, then he’s very good at hiding it because I never noticed before. Which means the timing here is suspect. He would have been back by morning if he was that good. And the lack of sense evidence is pretty damning. Why would he get rid of his own trail throughout the entire house? His house?” Oliver shook his head. “So maybe he did go out to meet this Wolf, but why not come back then? Why not send a message to Donna?” Oliver paced until he was standing directly in front of Sky. “Maybe leaving the house wasn’t part of the ruse this time, but not coming back—it means something. It means Connor was taken. Which I don’t understand.” Falling to his knees in front of Sky, swallowing hard against the tension in his chest and throat, Oli held himself against Sky’s legs, his head tilted up at him. Eyes wide, lips parted, Oliver took up the pose Sky had always liked so much. “I need your help to figure it out. I—” he began, pressing his hand meaningfully to Sky’s thigh. Holding Sky’s gaze, Oliver continued, “I need you, Sky. I need you to help me solve this and find him. I need to be able to look him in the eye and tell him what a piece of shit he is. To his face.” Oliver felt the tears pricking at his eyes again, stinging and blurring his vision. Though he hadn’t meant to do it, crying seemed to help Oliver’s case, spurring Sky into action. He leaned over until his forehead was pressed to Oli’s, his hands on Oli’s shoulders.
“Of course,” Sky said. “I’m here for you, Oli.” He breathed in, his eyes closed, and Oliver took the moment’s reprieve to force down the rising bile in his throat. “But what I said before still stands. This is all about you.”
Oliver pulled back, looked up with wide, searching eyes. Sky met his gaze, the green of his irises as unyielding as ever. “How?” Oliver asked. “How does taking Connor—”
“Because he’s the only one in the way,” Sky said. “If this guy’s obsessed with you, in love, then he’d see Connor as the ultimate threat. As long as you’re with Connor, you’re beyond his reach. So he got rid of his last obstacle.”
Oliver’s mind raced, but he blinked slowly, his eyes still on Sky’s face. “Not the only one,” Oliver said, his voice barely louder than a whisper. Sky’s eyes widened.
“What?”
Oliver pressed his lips together, wetting them with his tongue, and said, “Connor’s not the only one in the way. Anymore.” The word rang out in echoes in Oliver’s mind, the air around them still. Neither moved for a moment, though Oliver’s heart pounded so hard against his sternum he thought it might break through, giving him away. Sky was the one who moved first, when the moment ended, and he leaned in, cupping Oliver’s face with his hands and tilting his head up. The air in Oliver’s lungs deserted him, a flare of panic lashing through his body. He gripped Sky’s wrists tightly, his knuckles white, and pulled away, shaking his head. “I can’t—not here. Not—yet,” he said, and Sky nodded. In place of the kiss he’d been after, Sky brushed his thumb over Oliver’s lips and even that seemed too intimate, too much like a kiss to Oliver. His stomach churned and guilt flayed him. But he was after something—he needed proof. He needed Sky to give it to him. “If the killer thought Connor was—the last—obstacle,” he said, trying to distance himself from the near-miss and regain control of himself, “then why not just kill him here and take me?”
Sky leaned back slightly, his weight settling differently as he studied Oliver still on his knees. With a glance around the room, Sky seemed almost reluctant to answer, but he could never resist explaining something no one else understood. “He’ll—” he paused, tasting the word on his tongue. “He’ll want to make it last.” A lightning strike of emotion bisected Oliver into disparate parts. One side of him was full of fury and rage, full of terror and panic at the truth of what that meant. The other side, however, was tinged with hope and a desperate need to move. If he wanted it to last, wanted to draw out the pain for Connor, that meant that Connor was s
till alive somewhere. Which gave Oliver time.
“So he’s keeping Connor alive?” Oliver asked, working to keep the high note of hope from his voice. “He’d have to be keeping Connor somewhere then. Which means he has some kind of secondary location to the crime scenes. But Connor’s properties have all been under surveillance and if there was evidence of him there, the Wolves would have found it by now.”
Sky nodded, his fingers rising to brush a stray lock out of Oliver’s eyes. Oliver let his eyes fall shut, an involuntary reaction to the gesture. It had been reflex, once, when Sky brushed his face or played with his hair. When he opened his eyes, Sky seemed pleased by Oliver’s reaction. “It’s about you, remember?” Sky said. “He won’t choose a place meaningful to Connor. He’ll choose a place meaningful to you. To you and him, anyway. Somewhere you shared something together.”
Images of places tumbled through Oliver’s mind, a flipbook of locations and events that seemed from another life. So many of the places he’d gone with Sky he never returned to after their break-up. Then there were the places that were unlikely—the Police Academy, the precinct where they worked the Thrasher Case, the café they frequented on late nights after work and training. They were all too public, too open. No way he could keep Connor there. The only place that came to mind that could—maybe—fit the description, was the apartment Oliver had found for them. Back when he still thought they would be together, that they would be bonded. They’d visited once, and Sky had pressed him against the wall of the bathroom during the open house, while other prospective buyers examined the place, and fucked him. He’d had to bite down on a hand towel to stop himself screaming, to stop the cries as Sky pounded into him, desperate to make him come in “their new place” and christen it before they’d even put down an offer.
“Nimueh’s Court,” Oliver said, his cheeks slightly flushed. Sky quirked a brow. “If this is some crazed one-night stand, then the place would have to be in Nimueh’s Court. I didn’t pick anyone up in Logan’s Court, and even when I fucked Fae, they took me to places in Nimueh’s Court. We never crossed a border.” He wasn’t sure how he was going to get Sky back to the apartment without alerting him. Maybe he’d say one of the other blind fucks he’d had lived in one of the adjacent rooms. But the prospect of a real lead was spurring Oliver onward. He could do it. He could find Connor alive. He could fill the aching hole in his chest that yawned open the moment he’d woken alone. He could take on Sky.
He could take on Sky.
“We’ve got a date with the border guards, then,” Sky said, getting to his feet. “If he took Connor last night, he would have had to cross again. Maybe he made a mistake this time, forgot to erase something.” Oliver nodded.
He picked up Connor’s phone and pocketed it along with his own, making for the door. He stopped suddenly, Sky nearly walking into his back, and turned to face his ex. From this close, Oliver could see all the fine details of Sky’s face—the thin, white scar over his left eyebrow where he’d caught the edge of a broken beer bottle taking down a bar brawler; the thick, dark red of his lashes that looked black only from far; the slight crookedness of his mouth that Oliver had always tried to kiss away. Oliver’s heart was in his throat.
“What is it?” Sky asked, hands hovering at Oli’s waist, the heat of them heavy as it burned through the fabric of his pants.
“You go collect your things,” he said, his tone breathless in the face of all the things he’d once loved about Sky. “I’ll meet you outside.” He pulled Connor’s phone from his pocket. “I should give this to Donna, just in case.”
Sky nodded, his lips parted in a silent bid, beckoning Oliver closer, inward, as though the eventuality of a kiss was undeniable. Oliver forced his own head down, and Sky sighed softly. Instead, he pressed his lips to Oliver’s hairline, the gesture searing his skin with every minute area of contact.
Sky walked around him, down the hall to his own room, and Oliver pressed his back to Connor’s bedroom door and did what he should have done the moment Sky walked into Black Moon. He closed his eyes and sensed for Sky’s magical signature. It was difficult without the intended source in the room, but Oliver strained his magical senses to the breaking point. He shut out everything else, all the other information bombarding his brain from his ears and nose and fingertips. He forced away the fear and rage, the desperate hope, and focused instead on the single thread of magic that tethered Sky to the world, just as it tethered everyone. Only as he pushed, and as his head began to throb with the effort, Oliver found something he didn’t expect.
Sky’s magical signature had been breathless running and the flash of light on a knife blade and the burn of alcohol against your throat and the smell of burning coals and sandalwood. Oliver was familiar with it as he was familiar with his own, a signature he knew from the inside out. It was a signature he felt in his heart and found without trying. But this time, as he looked, what he found was—nothing.
No sense of anything, no taste or feel of the magic in Sky. Only a deafening, empty buzzing of silence.
Chapter 16
The road was a silent strip of gravel stretching out toward a place Oliver once called home. The border was ahead of them, growing ever closer as Sky drove them in a borrowed car, but as they approached, Nimueh’s Court felt less and less like home. He realized he had little to go back to there. His career was in shambles thanks to the Daily Spell article and his colleagues’ vitriolic reactions. His Captain would protect him, when he returned, but putting her in that position made Oliver’s stomach clench. The only person Oliver was really close to there was Rory, and she was only in Nimueh’s Court half the time. More and more, Oliver realized his idiocy at delaying his answer to Connor, at suggesting it was too fast, too abrupt, too—wrong. Logan’s Court had become home to Oli so quickly. But he’d forgotten what home really looked like. He hadn’t known a stable, loving home since—since his parents.
And now what had become of his home? Marred by murders and bloodshed, tainted with a hateful kind of magic, all in his name, in hopes of garnering his attention. Oliver didn’t think he deserved to be allowed into Logan’s Court. He brought death and desecration with him. The image of Malcolm Ryan, strung up in that ancient wood, the sacred wood grown old since before the Three Courts, intruded into his thoughts. He couldn’t shake it, the horror he brought with him. And now Connor—
Oliver had brought Sky into Connor’s life. Twice. He brought Sky in when he refused to speak of his ex, to tell Connor about his past, and then again when he called the Special Investigators. He’d known, really, that it was going to be Sky. Just as he knew that keeping the truth about Sky from Connor could only end badly. But Oliver’s desire to push Sky far into his past meant that his present had become uncertain.
Another image popped into Oliver’s head then. Connor, unconscious and monitored by medical spells, lying in a hospital bed. He still had the scar—from Daniel Brown’s attack. Brown had meant to kill Oliver, but Connor jumped in front of him and nearly died for his trouble. Oliver had promised himself, then, in the hospital as he sat vigil, that nothing would ever endanger Connor again. He promised himself he would never let anything or anyone threaten Connor’s life. But Oliver had failed in his promise. He’d failed in trying to protect Connor. Oliver was, instead, sitting next to Connor’s probable kidnapper, running down leads Oliver knew would direct them to nothing. And Connor was still somewhere unknown, possibly hurt, possibly dying.
His head pounded from the exertion of sensing Sky’s magical signature. Oliver was still unsure of what it even meant. Did Sky have no magical signature? Had he somehow gotten rid of it? Or was it that his signature had changed to be nothing. Was it possible to have a negative magical signature? Oliver didn’t have answers for these questions. There were none. No one studied magical signatures anymore. Oliver wasn’t even sure it was possible to change a magical signature. He’d been under the impression they remained the same for the duration of a life. But Sky’s was defin
itely different.
The nothingness—it permeated Oliver, sinking into his bones and soaking through his soul. It called to him and scared him away, like an abyss that draws you down into it, despite how little you want to go.
The forests bordering the road were thick with tree trunks and underbrush, but now and again, as Oliver watched, he’d see darting flashes of a shiny coat, or the flick of a tail. The Wolves were out and about, searching every inch of Logan’s Court for Connor. Only Oliver wasn’t certain they’d find anything. Even if Connor was still in Logan’s Court, it was possible there were enchantments or bindings on the location, ensuring no one could wander in unexpected. It was the kind of keen thinking that made Sky such a good investigator. And murderer.
You still have no proof. A magical signature—or lack of one—doesn’t mean anything to anyone anymore.
Which was true, of course, and frustrated Oli even more. He needed to collect better, more viable evidence against Sky to even begin to entertain the idea of arresting him. First, however, he had to wheedle out Connor’s location from Sky.
“You seem far away,” Sky said, and Oliver was struck by the timbre of his voice. It was warm and familiar, like the Sky he’d met at the Academy, the one who’d gathered Oli into his arms and kissed him slowly, deliberately, with agonizing tenderness. And for a second, just a second, Oli wondered if he’d got it all wrong. If maybe Sky wasn’t the killer. Maybe he was the man he’d always been, the one Oli fell in love with, all those years ago.
But then the way Sky had said he was worried about Oli, back at the Black Moon, and making jabs at Connor for being unable to protect his Wolves, hit Oliver square in the chest. He’d been so adamant that Oliver needed to find safety with someone other than Connor. Because he meant himself. He wanted Oliver to stay with him while the case was ongoing. He wanted to control the situation. Like he always did.
