by Lyra Evans
“So what are you saying?” Cobalt asked.
Niko wasn’t entirely sure. He was raw from his experiences throughout the day. His body felt as though it had been worked over with coals, and his mind was strung tight.
“I’m saying there’s a slight chance that one of the Selkies on this trip was involved.”
Chapter 13
Niko leaned back against the side of his car, arms crossed in front of him and fighting off a yawn. He watched, his eyelids heavy, as Cobalt stepped out of his boots and into the surf. Niko had taken them to a small cove with a somewhat pebbled beach. It was the closest ocean access to his place, and he didn’t have the energy to drive back to Sickle Beach or anywhere else for Cobalt to send a message back to Azure’s Court. The small cove wasn’t even named, largely ignored by the surrounding homes that had beach access of their own, and so it wasn’t the type of place they would run into curious passersby.
Cobalt waded into the water up to his waist, completely ignoring the way his pants soaked through as he did. Niko frowned, vaguely miffed at Cobalt’s lack of concern for his car interior. They still had to drive back to Niko’s apartment, and somehow he doubted top brass would be particularly understanding if it came out that Niko forced Cobalt to run behind his car because of soggy pants. Just as Niko was about to say something, to urge Cobalt to get on with it, Cobalt disappeared into the water.
Niko started, blinking through his exhaustion as if he might have missed something. Leaving his car behind at the edge of the road, Niko rushed across the narrow strip of beach to the water’s edge and searched as he could. The sky was slowly lightening, but even that wasn’t enough to see through the depths of the water. Niko felt in his pocket for his cellphone, meaning to turn on the flashlight, when he was struck by something…beautiful.
The sound played in his chest, in the very strings of his heart. The tune was low and pointed, almost irritating to the ear but for the sheer melody of it. Pain pressed subtly beneath the experience of the song, and Niko felt something release in his chest and his mind. He felt awed, calm, serene… and drawn. He wanted to follow the sound, to step into the water, to travel beyond dimensions to wherever that sound came from. He wanted to fall into the current of the music and be enveloped by it. And then it stopped.
Niko was standing in the surf, his boots wet with the shifting waves. He looked around, unsettled. There was a hollow in his chest where the music had been. Some part of him knew that the hollow had always been there, that the music only filled it temporarily, but now he was aware of it. And that thought, more than anything, left him silently terrified.
Cobalt reappeared, waist-deep in the water and studying him curiously. Niko set his jaw and glared at the Selkie.
“Where did you go?” he asked, his words rougher than he intended.
“Into the water,” Cobalt said, as though it was rather obvious. “I had to call a cephalopod to carry my message to the King. They don’t hear outside the water, so it was the only way.”
Niko stared, only dimly aware that Cobalt was already drying in the warmth of the night. His hair, light as moonlight and just as ethereal, swayed on the air, as though no water weighed it down. But he’d only just emerged.
“You called… an octopus?” Niko asked, feeling like he was walking through some drug-addled dream. Cobalt nodded.
“Yes,” he said. “They’re incredibly intelligent creatures. We’ve been training cephalopods as messengers and couriers for centuries. They can get through almost anything and have a better control of tools and objects than many other creatures. Dolphins were an early test run, but they were far too mischievous, and the lack of limbs to grasp items was somewhat problematic.”
Niko shut his eyes, pressing a fingertip to his temple. “Did you make that noise, then?” he asked. Cobalt studied him more closely.
“You heard me call the octopus?” he asked.
Niko stared back at him, equally cautious. “I don’t know,” he said. “I heard something. My question was indicative of the fact I don’t know the source of the sound.”
“Describe it,” Cobalt said, and Niko bristled at the order.
Rolling his eyes, he said, “It was like music. A melody like I’ve never heard. Low and smooth and painful, all at once. Like it was inside me.”
At first Niko thought Cobalt had frozen in time, so motionless was he. But the reaction was entirely in his eyes, sparkling with interest and excitement like Niko hadn’t seen before.
After a moment, Cobalt finally said, “Cephalopods can only hear certain frequencies. I had to call it with a specific song it would both hear and understand. I apologize if it caused you any discomfort.”
Niko nodded once, turning away and back toward his car. He felt Cobalt watching him as he walked, but he was more interested in shaking off the feeling of loss in his chest from the lack of song. He got into his car, slamming the door once he was seated, and waited for Cobalt to join him.
The files from the landlord of Indigo’s building were piled in the backseat, and Niko tried to force his mind back to those details and the case rather than the strangeness of his Selkie partner. When Cobalt finally settled in the car, Niko noticed with a glance that his pants were completely dry. Was that some Selkie trick or some characteristic of the Fae-made fabric Niko wasn’t aware of?
“We’ll need to check back here later today,” Cobalt said, buckling his seatbelt. Niko nodded. “What’s our next stop?”
Niko cast him a sidelong look, turning the key in the ignition. “Sleep,” he said. “We’re going back to my place to sleep. A few hours rest, and by the time we wake in the morning the forensics team should have something to go on.” He sighed inwardly, feeling a mite guilty for dragging them out of bed to work the wee hours. They’d get overtime, though. He pulled out down the street and turned the corner toward his apartment building. “You do sleep, don’t you?”
Cobalt smirked. “I do,” he said.
Niko ignored the pleased way he answered. “You seem remarkably full of energy considering the hour.”
Cobalt glanced at the clock and then the sky. He leaned back against his headrest. “Ocean water is particularly refreshing.”
Niko arched an eyebrow but didn’t ask. He pulled in to his parking lot, his body sensing the closeness to his bed. The elevator ride up to his room went in silence, Niko holding the files from the apartment building. Inside his apartment, he dropped them unceremoniously on the countertop, his keys next to them. When he turned, he found Cobalt locking the door behind him as he entered.
“The bed’s all ready for you,” Niko said. “You can use whatever you want in the bathroom. There’s an extra toothbrush in the cabinet, if you need.”
Cobalt toed off his boots next to the pull-out bed. “What happens in the event the forensics team find something time-sensitive?”
Niko pulled out his cellphone and displayed it to him. “They’ll call me,” he said. “Then I’ll wake you. Simple.”
Cobalt stepped closer to him, moving slowly and deliberately. Niko didn’t step back, didn’t move, as Cobalt crowded him in. He felt himself sway into Cobalt, into the scent of him and the warmth of his body. Cobalt let his tongue flick out across his lower lip, and Niko’s eyes followed it. He no longer had control of himself. He felt his lips part, as if in anticipation of Cobalt’s mouth, as though he expected to taste him.
“Are you certain you’ll wake for that?” Cobalt asked. He was leaning in close to Niko, barely an inch from him, and Niko felt himself moving to mirror Cobalt, to fill the negative space of his movements. And then his question snapped Niko back to attention.
Pushing Cobalt back with one hand, Niko showed him his phone screen, pressing the buttons on the side to turn up the ringtone volume to maximum. “Satisfied?” he asked, his tone implying he really didn’t care about the answer.
Cobalt nodded once. “Are you?” he breathed, and Niko felt captured in an undertow. He blinked and shook off the tiredness, lo
oking Cobalt straight in the eyes. Did he imagine the question? He wasn’t sure anymore.
Swallowing hard, Niko made his way to the short corridor and his bedroom door. “Goodnight, Sincloud,” Niko said, trying to put as much distance between them as possible.
Cobalt smirked. “Goodnight, Detective,” he answered.
Niko lingered momentarily before his bedroom door, unsure of why. Something tugged at him, and he turned only to find Cobalt, on the other side of the pull-out bed, removing his pants. Niko’s mouth fell open, his eyes trained on the curve of Cobalt’s exposed ass, the miles of his smooth, dark skin. He set the pants carefully to one side and removed the leather shoulder holster. Then, without concern, he climbed into bed completely naked.
Too tired to fight off the way his cock grew hard at the sight of Cobalt completely nude, Niko shoved past his barn-style door and dropped into bed. His mind swirled with vivid images of Cobalt at the end of his bed, pushing his legs wide and standing between them. He could almost feel Cobalt tearing his pants open, yanking them down, and exposing his hard cock. Niko felt the wispy breath of a moan at the back of his throat. His hands worked at the choker around his neck, tearing it off and dropping it on the floor. The Cobalt in his mind pushed his knees up and back, his fingers pressing to Niko’s entrance. But before anything else entered his mind, Niko felt himself slip into unconsciousness.
***
Niko woke with a start, a shrill ringing piercing his eardrum. He lurched around the bed, limbs flailing and completely disoriented for a moment. Blinking away the sleep in his eyes, he caught himself, settled in the middle of his bed on top of the comforter, and found his cellphone near the edge of the mattress. He swiped blindly at the screen to answer the call, pressing his other hand to his eye socket and willing the strain behind his eyes to vanish.
“Spruce,” he said blearily into the receiver.
“Shit, Nik, I woke you?” Uri’s voice came through. Niko groaned inwardly and pulled the phone away from his ear to check the time. It was after ten. For Niko, sleeping in meant rolling out of bed at seven and spending an hour at the gym training. “Are you all right?”
Niko gritted his teeth, leaning over his legs, his eyes closed as he tried to even out his tone before answering. “Fine,” he said. “Late night. Is there a reason you called?”
The hurt in Uri’s voice was immediately apparent, but Niko couldn’t bring himself to care just then. “Yeah, there was, actually.” He stopped, possibly licking his wounds or trying to overcome his pride to just tell Niko. “The forensics team you said couldn’t wait until morning found something.”
Perking up, Niko slipped to the edge of the bed, planting his feet on the floor. He made to get to his feet but couldn’t quite manage the balance yet. Falling back to a seated position on the bed, he noticed his pants were undone at the fly, though he didn’t remember trying to remove them.
“What is it?” he pressed, harsher than he meant to be.
Uri’s voice faltered slightly. “Relax,” he said. “It’s not the murder weapon or anything.” Niko frowned, wanting to throw the phone across the room. Uri had a habit of simultaneously puffing up and playing down information.
“Uri,” Niko said, warningly.
“I mean, it’s still something you didn’t have before…”
“Uriah,” Niko snapped.
“They researched the locations your vic plotted on the map,” he said. “Not a whole lot tying them together. They all seem to be owned by different people or companies, some with ties to other Courts, some based here, and they’re all different in purpose. Some are residential, some corporate, small businesses or larger. One of the locations even seems to be a defunct old theatre.” Niko pushed to his feet and shoved off his pants, the cellphone awkwardly clutched to his ear by his shoulder. He rifled through the clothing in his closet for something clean and debated taking a shower.
“So what do they have in common?” Niko asked, trying to get to the point.
“Well, not all of them, but a number of them seem to have been put on the market.”
Niko paused, holding a pair of dark jeans. “You mean for sale?”
“That’s what ‘on the market’ means, isn’t it?”
Niko glared at nothing. “All at once?”
“No,” Uri said. “All different dates. One or two locations have already sold, it seems, but others have been up for sale for up to a month. And one location was put up for sale yesterday.”
Niko considered this. The timing did seem suspicious, but it could also be coincidental. That so many of the lots on Indigo’s list were put up for sale was interesting, but on its own, it wasn’t much. People were allowed to sell their businesses or homes.
“Is that everything?” he asked, a headache beginning to set in at his temples.
“Well, all the properties seem to be represented by the same realty group,” Uri said.
Niko tossed the jeans onto his bed and pulled out a t-shirt. “That’s not that surprising. Seaside Realty basically own the real estate market in Maeve’s Court—”
“Nope,” Uri said. Niko’s frown deepened.
“What do you mean ‘nope’? They do—”
“It’s not Seaside.”
Niko stopped, staring at the door to his bedroom. “Deal Thirteen Properties?”
“Nope. Not them either.” Niko could almost feel Uri smirking through the phone line.
“Then who?” He couldn’t think of another large enough real estate company to make sense of the situation.
“Red Horizon Real Estate,” he said. “They’re a boutique agency. Been around for a few years now, but they don’t advertise. They apparently work exclusively through referrals. That’s what the website says, anyway. Something about breeding trust and partnership with their clients. I don’t know.”
Niko pulled a bath towel from the hook on the wall. “Have you ever heard of them before?”
“No,” Uri said. “None of the forensic techs seem to have either. Nor the Captain. Seems like a pretty exclusive company.”
“The location that was put up for sale yesterday,” Niko said, his mind working the connections, “where is it?”
“About ten blocks from Sickle Beach,” he answered. “And they’re having an open house today. Might be worth checking out, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, thanks, Uri,” he said, his mind already checked out of the conversation.
“Any time, Nik,” Uri said, his voice softening. “You know, if you need to talk through—”
“Sorry, Uri, I gotta go,” Niko said. “Gotta update Sincloud.”
He hung up before Uri had a chance to answer. It pained him to do, but he couldn’t let Uri have a shred of hope for them, for a future together. Niko couldn’t give that to him. He just couldn’t.
Wrapping the towel around his waist and grabbing his clothes, Niko made his way out of his room and into the short hallway. He made for the living area, intent on delivering his information to Cobalt immediately, but when he made it to the end of the glass wall, he found the place deserted.
His entire being immediately on high alert, his nerves and muscles buzzing with tension, Niko stepped carefully through his own apartment. He scanned the small nooks not immediately visible from his previous location, anywhere Cobalt may have unwittingly been hiding, but still nothing. A quick look back to the bathroom confirmed Cobalt was nowhere in the apartment. Tossing his clothes on the pull-out bed, Niko walked around to the side where he’d seen Cobalt remove his boots and clothes the previous night. The outfit from the previous night was there, but the boots were not. Some of his other clothes seemed to be missing as well.
A thought struck him hard, and Niko spun to the counter where he’d abandoned his keys the night before. They, too, were missing. Panic edging into his mind, Niko tried to force it down with sheer will and the blunted hammer of rage.
Had Cobalt really taken Niko’s car and gone off on his own? Did he really think he could g
et away with stealing from the MCPD? From a Detective, no less? What the fuck was he thinking? What was he up to? Niko made a move to grab his phone but stopped. What was he to tell the Captain? That he’d lost the ‘consultant’ on his own case? That he’d been robbed by the first Selkie to make official contact with their Court? That would play well, surely…
Niko scrubbed at his face with his hands, his teeth grinding together. He’d trusted this complete stranger in his home, with his things, and this was the thanks he got. Of course it was. Fuck. What had he done?
Remembering the files they’d collected from the landlord at Indigo’s apartment, the ones regarding the other Selkies, Niko froze. His skin felt suddenly chilled. He’d told Cobalt there was a chance one of the Selkies had been in on the kidnappings and, by extension, the murder. The murder of the Selkie prince. The one Cobalt named his best friend. What if he’d gleaned something from the information he hadn’t told Niko? What if he was gone to find the culprit and—and what? Exact revenge? Who knew what his plans were.
Turning back to the counter, Niko rifled through the files quickly, but it didn’t seem as though anything was missing. It was only when he angrily slammed the top file down on the counter that he noticed the small sheaf of paper at the edge of it. A note.
Popped out to pick up some breakfast. Will return in a few. —Cob
