Out of the Blue

by Lyra Evans

  Starla considered, glancing now and again to Cobalt. The Selkie was very silent, and the flicker of a question in Starla’s eyes made Niko all the more aware of it.

  “Ran into him and a couple of his friends at another club I go to,” she said, eyeing Niko. He could tell she didn’t want to tell him which club, but he shot her a pointed look, and she sighed. “It was at Palm, okay?” She rolled her eyes. “He and his friends had thought it was beach themed at first, poor innocent things. Well, they were obviously surprised but seemed to take it in stride. They hung out for a while, trying out some of the things on offer. I made them for fish out of water the moment I saw them, little did I know just how right that was.”

  Cobalt shot Niko a look, and Niko chewed on his question a moment so as not to look too eager. “Indigo told you where he’s from?”

  Starla stared at him, deadpanned. “You mean did I know Indy was a Selkie?” Cobalt tensed very slightly, and Niko took note of it. Apparently giving themselves away was not part of the Landwalking tradition. “Yeah, I knew. Not at first, of course. Thought they were just particularly oblivious Wizards and Witches. Nimueh’s Court has all kinds. So many of them innocent as babes until they step foot into Maeve’s Court.” She shook her head with something akin to fondness. “Indy told me the truth a few weeks later, once his friends started disappearing.”

  “He told you his friends were disappearing?” Cobalt asked, studying her face closely.

  “It’s not like I didn’t notice,” she said. “Every time I saw him, he was with fewer people. I just figured they were going back home, not being kidnapped.” Niko opened his mouth to ask the obvious question, but Starla waved him off. “I’m not saying they were kidnapped, just that that’s what Indy thought. Said they weren’t answering his calls or messages. That they hadn’t been back to their apartments in days and days.” Starla shrugged. “I believed him at first. Told him to contact the cops or his home county Courtier or something, but he said he couldn’t. That’s when he told me.”

  “What did you do?” Cobalt asked, but Niko already knew the answer to that.

  Starla gave him a goggle-eyed look, as though Cobalt was mental. “What was I supposed to do? I told him I’d keep an eye out, but that if they were really in trouble, he either had to go to the cops or contact home and ask for help.”

  Cobalt radiated tension, but as best Niko could tell, it wasn’t aimed at Starla. “And did he say he would?”

  Starla shrugged again. “He said he’d figure it out, but that it would help if I spread the word about them.” She shook her head slowly. “I told him I would, but then I ran into a couple of his friends a few days later, and they seemed fine. Said they were happy and Indy was just having trouble accepting that.”

  “Where did you see them and when?” Niko asked. “Where are they now?” Cobalt straightened, his every muscle attentive to her answer. She watched him cautiously.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I saw them at the Wand that time, but I haven’t run into them since. When I told Indy what they’d told me, he seemed even more determined to find them. Said they would never just leave like that, without talking to him first, and that they’d never give their Stones away, but I think a lot of people fall into denial when their friends—”

  “Wait, what did you say?” Cobalt asked, interrupting her. Starla started slightly, and at that moment the waitress returned with Starla’s breakfast and their drinks. She set everything down, as the three of them waited in tense silence, and the moment she walked away, Cobalt leaned over the table toward Starla. “What happened to their Stones?”

  She pressed herself backward into the booth, as though afraid of Cobalt. And maybe Niko could understand why, if he allowed himself to examine the compassion for her he’d tried to bury. Cobalt was large and powerful and deeply magnetic. He shared some of those qualities with someone both Starla and Niko knew well.

  “I don’t know exactly,” she said, trying to regain her composure. She slid her fork off the table, taking it in hand to push her eggs around the plate. It was with false disinterest that she began eating. “I just know that when I first met them, they all had these weird, shiny stones set into their skin, at the collarbone. That’s why I thought they were from Nimueh’s Court—Wizards and stones and all—but when I saw them after they ‘disappeared,’ they didn’t have the stones anymore. There was just a mark on their skin where it had been. I don’t know what that means, but Indy was real upset by it.”

  Without looking at him, Niko slid his hand carefully to Cobalt’s thigh beneath the table, squeezing purposefully. The heat of his body beneath the Fae-made fabric was like fire, as though Niko were holding a flame in his palm. It sent a shot of something through him, but Niko ignored it. Cobalt, meanwhile, took the hint and leaned back, giving Starla some space.

  Taking a slow and calculated sip of his coffee, Niko studied Starla over the edge of the mug. “So what did Indigo do then?” he asked, giving her a moment to eat and breathe.

  She eyed him suspiciously, as though she knew every move he made was planned, controlled, and wanted to see what an uncontrolled Niko actually looked like.

  “I didn’t see him for a while,” she said, making headway into her eggs. “I worried about him, sure, but a girl’s got to eat. So I kept an eye out for him and his friends, but mostly I just kept about my business. Then he shows up one morning at my apartment, looking like he hasn’t slept in days, and says he needs me to help him become a freelancer.”

  Cobalt’s expression narrowed, and Niko interrupted, “An independent escort.” He hesitated on the word ‘prostitute,’ knowing Starla’s thoughts on it. With no intention of antagonizing her further, he went with the safer option.

  “He wanted to prostitute himself?” Cobalt asked, his expression caught in horrified confusion. Starla bristled, as Niko knew she would, but as Cobalt was what she would call a tourist, she let it pass. “Why would he do that?”

  She shrugged, trying not to look offended. She speared some bacon on her fork and crunched into it. “Lots of reasons people turn to this line of work, but most of them are desperation.” Her eyes passed from Cobalt to further down the diner and back, then she took a long sip of her drink, making them wait. “But from what he told me, he had a lead on where his friends ended up. Said he needed an ‘in’ to their world.”

  Niko took a bigger sip of coffee. It wasn’t the worst he’d had, but it was close. “Are you saying his friends had become freelancers?” It was a term used by non-union prostitutes to describe themselves, and Niko had gotten used to the word.

  Starla shrugged. “Seems like they were involved in something like that, anyway,” she said. “Indy was convinced of it. So I taught him the ropes,” she said, eyeing Cobalt carefully, but the Selkie made no move against her. The look on his face wasn’t happy, but Niko thought he might be objective enough to see Indigo’s behaviour was hardly her fault. “I took him out and helped him get some interest. Well, it wasn’t hard to get people interested in him, but I taught him how to get the right kind of interest.” She spread some tuna salad on one of her pieces of toast and took a bite. “He got the hang of it quickly. He only spent one night partnered with me, then I didn’t see him until that night at the Wand…when you said we were arguing.”

  Her expression turned dark, sorrowful, as she finished off her tuna salad and started in on her pancakes. With slow, almost disconnected movements, Starla stared into the middle distance as she ate. If she was involved in what had happened to Indigo, she was genuinely regretful about it. But Niko couldn’t quite label her a murderer. Not even an accomplice. Even as he tried to pretend he didn’t know her, she wasn’t the type to fuck over someone she cared enough about to take under her wing. If he thought hard about it, he didn’t even believe Starla would ever fuck him over, and he’d already done enough of that for the both of them.

  “So what were you arguing about?” Niko asked without preamble. Starla’s eyes flickered, a
s though she’d forgotten he was there.

  She shook her head. “We didn’t argue,” she said. “Not like you think, anyway.” She took another drink. She wouldn’t look directly at him now, and for the first time, Niko thought she was ashamed. “He showed up at the Wand after weeks. He was thinner and paler, and he looked scared. Really scared. Said he’d found his friends, or most of them, and he needed help getting them out. Said he could come back and deal with the kidnapper once they were safe back in his Court but that they were the priority. He couldn’t do it alone. Said I was the only one he knew he could trust. That he didn’t know who all was involved.”

  Her words rattled around Niko’s mind, trying to fit themselves into place in the puzzle of the case. “Who was involved in what?”

  Starla stared at him for a long moment, her eyes searching his as though she couldn’t quite believe the question. But before she could answer him, Cobalt interrupted.

  “Where were his friends? Where did he ask you to go?” he asked. Niko shot Cobalt a look, but the Selkie’s pale eyes were full of determination and intent, and Niko wasn’t sure what that intention meant.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, again full of shame. “He didn’t say. I—I told him no.” She dropped her head just as Cobalt’s fists clenched in his lap. When Starla looked up again— her personality demanded she not bow her head to anyone for any reason—Niko saw the tear streaks down her face. “He came to me for help, and I refused. And now he’s dead.” She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Indy.” The last was a whisper, barely audible at all, but Niko felt it like a soundwave to the chest. Like he was the one with a gaping hole in his middle, not Indigo.

  “Why did you refuse?” Cobalt asked. The scent of him changed suddenly, very slightly. It became sharper, edged with steel where before it was pure and open. Niko watched as Cobalt breathed in and out very slowly and carefully, reaching for the glass of ice water on the table and downing it in one go. Then, with the same careful control, he poured out another full glass from the pitcher the waitress had brought him, and he downed that one as well.

  Starla wiped at her eyes, ignoring the way her makeup blurred across her face. Mascara and foundation mixed on her skin to make it look as though she’d been beaten and covered it badly. “I was scared,” she said, and the tears began to flow again. “When he told me who he was involved with, who he wanted to save his friends from—I panicked. I just—”

  “You know who took them?” Niko asked, less interested in her reasoning. “Who was it?”

  Starla grabbed the napkin from the table and wiped at her face more before blowing her nose loudly into it. “I don’t know.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I mean no one knows,” she said. “Not really.” She stopped for a moment, swallowing hard against the build-up of shame and pain in her throat. “It’s just a code, you know? Or a what’s-it-called… a fake name…”

  “An alias?” Niko asked. She nodded

  “An alias.” She pushed the rest of her plate away, leaving only pieces of pancake soaked in syrup. “He said, ‘The Woods have them, Starla. I’ve got to get them out of the Woods.’”

  Cobalt and Niko shared a look, but neither of them seemed to recognize the name at all. Something distant, in the farthest corner of Niko’s mind, seemed to catch on the name, but as he scrabbled to find a link, it slipped away.

  “The Woods?” Niko asked. “What is it?”

  Again, Starla looked at him with the disbelieving expression. “I thought everyone knew the Woods…”

  Niko gritted his teeth, his hackles rankled at the prod. She didn’t seem intent on poking at him but did nonetheless.

  “What is it, Starla? What was Indigo involved in?”

  Cobalt’s hands were flat and forcibly still on the surface of the table, but he looked as though he could bolt or attack at any moment. Like a lion about to pounce. Niko drew his attention back to Starla, trying to ignore the way his own tension rose when Cobalt was on edge.

  Something clicked for Starla, and she gave him, infuriatingly, a pitying look. “Oh, Kiki. You didn’t think you’d wiped it out for good, did you?” Niko froze, his eyes widening as a shard of cold ran down his spine. She shook her head. “You should know better than that. Where there’s a hole in the market, someone will eventually come to fill it. And sometimes, removing the cat just means there’s room in the pond for a big fish.”

  Niko felt his hand fisted around his napkin, crushing it to nothing. Jaw tight enough to make sand of his teeth, Niko stared her down. She seemed to take no satisfaction in being the one to break this news to him, but the anger in him, the fire hot as the molten core of the sun, would not abate.

  “When?” he asked. “How?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know when the Woods became a thing,” she admitted. “But I’m sure someone does.” She caught his eye then, and without names he knew her meaning. “As for the how…I’m afraid you might be somewhat responsible for that.”

  Niko very carefully took out his wallet. He pulled some bills from the fold and laid them on the table. Calmly urging Cobalt out of his seat, Niko got up, walked down the aisle of the diner and out the door. Once he was outside, he found his way to the alley by the diner, standing next to a dark green dumpster. One breath, two, three. Then—

  “Fuck!” Niko screamed, throwing his arm back to punch the dumpster’s side. He kicked it and hit it, again and again, ignoring the pain that radiated through his limbs with every assault. When he started waning, he threw himself back against the wall and slid down to a crouch, head in his hands, pulling at his own hair.

  “What is going on?” Cobalt asked, his voice even, slow, and dangerous. Niko looked up at him through his fingers. Starla stood next to Cobalt, arms crossed over her chest and looking with disinterest off to the side. “What is the Woods, and what was Indigo involved in?”

  Niko set his jaw, staring in fury at the wall on the other side of the alley. “Sex trafficking,” he said, his voice gruff and distant. “The Woods is, apparently, a sex trafficking ring. And the MCPD didn’t even know it existed.”

  Cobalt straightened, nodding steadily. “All right. What does that have to do with you then? Why—this?” He gestured to the alley and the dumpster Niko had attempted to beat into submission.

  “Oh, didn’t the decorated detective tell you?” Starla asked, finding her disdain again. “He single-handedly took down the largest web of sex trafficking rings in Maeve’s Court history. The papers said he ‘defeated’ sex trafficking.” She favoured him with a flat look, and Niko forced himself up to his full height. “Only he didn’t.”

  Chapter 11

  The drive toward Indigo’s apartment building was silent but for the soft grumble of the engine. The darkest part of the night was upon them, painting the city in inky shadows that seeped into the brick and stone and asphalt. Cobalt had said nothing since the alleyway. Instead of speaking, he sat in pensive silence, staring out the window of the car at the darkened shapes beyond. Niko hadn’t quite gotten the hang of reading Cobalt’s expressions yet, and it just got a lot harder. Something about the information closed Cobalt off, and Niko cursed inwardly.

  Starla, meanwhile, was lounging in the small backseat of Niko’s car, looking bored and picking at her nails. She had agreed to show them where Indigo had lived, having settled down now she’d gotten her jabs in at Niko and his so-called reputation. In fairness, he had never dubbed himself the vanquisher of sex trafficking. Various news outlets had sensationalized the story—including him—and the police department, not always on the right side of the news, took the win. There was a brief surge in support for funding of the department, and no one was turning that down, whatever the cause.

  The reality was Starla was right. It was naïve to believe that his last major case meant the end of sex trafficking in Maeve’s Court. But a part of Niko, a part larger than he wanted to admit, had believed it would be the end at least for a while. But that ca
se ended only a matter of months ago, and based on Starla’s information, it was likely the Woods were already operating before then. Niko swore to himself again, wracking his brain for any shred of information he might have missed in the first case. How had he not known? How had none of the MCPD known?

  They pulled up to a cluster of aged apartment buildings that seemed to share a central lot. The number on the worn sign out front indicated this was the right place, so Niko turned into the drive. Everything about the complex was broken down, as though buckling under the weight of the sky. The individual towers rose only about half as high as newer buildings, and the brick and concrete that made up their skeletons was tinged beige and brown from years of dirt. The windows hadn’t been washed possibly ever, and the pool that sat in the centre of the lot dried up years ago. The paint cracked and peeled, the deck chairs rusted at the corners, and the ‘no diving’ sign had been torn from the fence and repurposed in someone’s window.

  Niko parked and emerged from the car, Cobalt and Starla following suit. The air around these buildings smelled of gasoline and the faint remnants of smoked drugs. Niko wrinkled his nose slightly, and Starla seemed to catch it.

  “Not up to your standards, Detective?” she asked, as much disdain in her voice as she could manage. Niko shot her a look.

  “Which apartment was his?” he asked, ignoring the question. She closed the car door behind her and looked around at the buildings.

  “That one,” she said, pointing to the far right one. There was little to differentiate it from the others except for the spray-painted graffiti on the front doors that read ‘weasels get needles.’ Niko rolled his eyes. It was a pathetic threat, which meant it was likely a bunch of kids who had scrawled it across the doors, rather than any real criminal, but it was an old saying in Maeve’s Court prisons. Fae who snitched on their fellow inmates were marked as rats and weasels, and if caught, they’d pay the price. Usually that meant a violent death and the title tattooed across their forehead.