by Gina LaManna
“Yeah, well a vampire showed up ten minutes later. Sounds like the start to a bad joke, doesn’t it?”
Matthew conceded her point. It irked him that his influence over Dani extended only as long as she was on the clock, and not a second further. Later, he’d have a long think about whether he could continue with their partnership. Already, Matthew had crossed a line by having any sort of reaction at all over Grey. If the chief heard what had happened, he’d tear Matthew apart for interfering on an officer’s private time.
Matthew gave himself a shake, the frustration not quite out of his system, but controlled. He blinked, took a breath, and felt as human as a vampire ever could.
Dani had continued past Matthew while he gathered himself, so he followed her into the morgue and found her leaning over the front desk. Ursula, the unidentified monster who worked as the receptionist, was pouting with an extremely fat lip.
“Sienna’s busy today,” Ursula said. “What’s this about?”
“She’s got two elves,” Dani said. “We need to see them.”
Ursula heaved a huge sigh that sent her purplish skin rippling in strange ways. She jiggled all over when she stood, then continued jiggling as she lumbered back to call the medical examiner.
Sienna appeared out front a few minutes later, walking with an annoyed clip to her step. In a way, Sienna resembled a rebellious teenager. She often had changing hair color and black pants ripped in all sorts of places. Often, her shirts had vulgar words or leather straps affixed to them, and she had piercings from her nose to her ears and likely places Matthew had no interest in knowing about.
“What do you need?” Sienna snapped her gum. “I’ve already had several officers stop by. I thought it was their case, not yours.”
“We’re hoping it’s not our case,” Dani said. “But I’m starting to doubt it. We have a missing person, and we think she might be linked to the elves on your table. Have a minute?”
“For you?” Another pop of her bubblegum. “I’d rather not, but whatever. Follow me.”
Sienna adjusted the rose-colored headphones as she spun on a heel and headed back toward the lab. Judging by the bobbing of her head, she’d resumed listening to whatever music she liked at a decibel that would destroy her hearing.
Dani shot Matthew a look that said this was about as good as they were going to get. On a good day, Sienna was tolerable. Friendly wasn’t in her vocabulary.
Then again, she was a necromancer through and through—and necromancers weren’t exactly known for their hospitality. Whatever fragile bond Matthew, Dani, and the necromancer shared, it tended to hang in a precarious balance.
Dancing along with the music, Sienna pushed open the door to her lab and proceeded straight to the wall where corpses were tucked away to rest in drawers. She let her fingers rest on two different drawers and simultaneously pulled them open.
Matthew and Dani inched forward to look for themselves. Matthew knew better than to dive in with his questions. Sienna would talk when she was ready. Matthew wasn’t sure what she was waiting for—the end of her song, maybe?—but he knew enough to keep his mouth shut.
“Cause of death?” Dani hesitated as she scanned the bodies. “I don’t know. What do you think, Matthew? They look...worn.”
Matthew studied the two young elves, taking a moment to process the frustration that came along with senseless deaths. Two young women, plucked from their lives, gone from this world all too soon. In his own way, he grieved for them, albeit briefly. Once the tender moment passed, however, he was all business.
“They look drained,” he said. “Drained of what...it’s hard to say.”
“Life force.” The necromancer popped off her headphones and moved closer to the bodies, gracing Matthew and Dani with her attention. “Strange, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean life force?” Dani asked, her eyes fixed on the women. “They’re so small, so thin. What did they do to them?”
“This is what it looks like when the life force is sucked out of you,” Sienna said. “We all have variations of magic within us, yes?”
Dani’s eyes flicked toward Matthew, and she nodded. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“Well, imagine a medical procedure similar to extracting bone marrow, or draining someone of their blood—” Sienna’s gaze landed curiously on Matthew—“No offense, Captain.”
Matthew clenched and unclenched his fists. “None taken.”
“A similar sort of thing happens when a power is isolated and drained from a user. In this case, it killed the girls.”
Dani audibly swallowed. “I’ve never heard of power draining before.”
“Me neither,” Sienna said. “But it’s my job to explore every possibility, and while I’m not one hundred percent sure that’s what killed them, I’m very close to proving it. That’s my best working theory.”
“What other theories do you have?”
“Not much.” Sienna tapped a pink lacquered nail against her headphones and bit her lip in thought. “They weren’t strangled, poisoned, shot, stabbed, cursed, hexed, or any other manner of regular old murder. These elves just seemed to shrivel up, and when they didn’t have enough left to go on, they passed.”
“That’s awful.” Dani shuddered. “How long were they tortured?”
It was Matthew’s turn to wince when Sienna guessed the girls had been drained for over two months. “So, it began shortly after they were taken,” Matthew said. “A few weeks to a month later.”
“I’m sure whoever took them had to perfect their procedure,” Dani said with a grimace. “Can you tell what sort of power was drained?”
Sienna shook her head. “I’ve been reading up on elfin magic, but it’s a very secretive subject. They have all of the standard supernatural magicks—great eyesight, hearing, sense of smell, that sort of thing.”
“But there’s more,” Dani suggested. “A big secret.”
Sienna studied the bodies. “I believe so. One that’s not written in any text book. If you want my opinion, Detective, the elves have a secret form of magic they’ve been keeping quiet for centuries. You find out what that is, and you’ll find out why someone wanted them.”
“That won’t be easy.” Dani groaned and looked to Matthew for confirmation. “So far, everyone has lied to us. Including the missing girl’s father. He’d let his daughter die before he expunged the secret elfin magic.”
A shadow darkened Sienna’s face. “There are ways to make people talk, Detective.” The necromancer flexed her fingers as if itching to be let loose. “In the Dead Lands, we—”
“Absolutely not,” Matthew said sharply.
Instead of looking chastised, Sienna gave a playful sort of smile. “Just offering my services, Captain.”
Matthew ignored Sienna’s cockiness. He needed her—the department needed her talents—but damn if she didn’t make for one difficult employee.
“We’ll find her with or without the elves’ cooperation,” Matthew said. “There must be another way to find Linsey. What can you tell us about these girls? They were kept for three months...”
“They were well cared for,” Sienna said. “No blatant signs of abuse of any variety, though I can’t speak to their mental state. Of course, that’s not including the draining of a certain mystery magick.”
“So, these girls were taken because they had something special,” Dani said. “Maybe not all elves have the gift. Maybe it’s only certain ones.”
“I would agree with that,” Sienna confirmed. “I don’t think their captor took pleasure in their pain. If you look here, their nails are manicured—no signs of a struggle. Their hair has been washed recently and is clean. No grit or grime on the girls anywhere; they might have been kept hostages, but it appears they were well cared for. Again, excluding the fact that they’re dead.”
“Sort of a big exclusion,” Dani said. “I wonder if it hurt.”
“Imagine someone sucking the ability to see Residuals from you,” Sienna said.
“Yes, I think it would be painful on multiple levels.”
Matthew watched a pained expression flash across Dani’s face. Being a Reserve was a part of her—a part of her very core. She’d been able to see traces of spells since she was born. He could tell she was imagining what it might be like to have that power taken away from her, extracted without permission.
No doubt, it would feel like losing one of her senses, or a limb. It would be like Matthew losing the ability to hear whispered words or see delicate details or move at great speeds—he’d feel crippled.
The room descended into a more somber tone as Sienna watched over the bodies like their last guardian angel. Then, in her usual fashion, she gently stroked a finger down each of the girls’ cheeks with a special sort of reverence and pushed the drawers back into their resting places.
“In conclusion,” Sienna said, “we had two bodies dumped in a back alley in the Goblin Grid. They were last seen alive three months ago leaving a grocery store. Their cause of death is to be determined, but preliminary findings suggest the extraction of a certain life force. Their bodies would have gone into shock over time as it drained, eventually causing their systems to shut down.”
“If the cases are related,” Dani said, “that would mean Linsey has this exceptional quality too. How does the kidnapper know who has it and who doesn’t?”
“I don’t know, Detective, but if you want to save Linsey’s life, you’ll have to up the stakes. You need to find that secret or you’ll lose her, too.”
“Nobody’s talking,” Dani said, torn between fury and resolve. “We can’t torture them.”
Sienna examined her nails as if she disagreed.
“Who the hell would have any idea how to go about finding out?” Dani muttered. “Even Grey didn’t have insights.”
Matthew stirred at the name. “You discussed a case with the wolf?”
“No,” she said shortly, but Matthew sensed a lie, and she continued. “Fine, a little bit. But I just asked him what he knew about the elves.”
“In the future, please refrain from discussing your caseload with outsiders,” Matthew said. “I thought that was a given.”
“A woman’s life is at stake,” Dani argued. “He already knew Linsey was missing and surmised that I was on the case. I just asked if he knew anything about the elfin secrets.”
“And did he?”
“Not much,” she admitted. “But he has a source that saw the girls leaving a club on Silver Street the night before they were taken in sort of a rush.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know,” Dani said, “but Silver Street isn’t exactly the ritzy side of the Golden District. Maybe the girls got in trouble at the club, or they met an unsavory type. They could have gotten away, and he chased them down the next day. Maybe it was the same location where Linsey was the night she disappeared.”
Matthew saw where she was going. “You think our kidnapper scouts for talent at this mystery location, then hunts them down later.”
“If that’s what you want to call it,” Dani said, her voice energized. “We know Linsey has been sneaking out. Harry said she likes to dance. If she did go to a club, that could be our link between them!”
“It’s possible.” Despite Dani’s excellent theory, Matthew didn’t let his hopes rise. He knew better than to let his emotions get involved on a hunch. “There’s one girl alive who might know where these women were the night before they were taken.”
“The survivor,” Dani said. “The one with them when they were snatched.”
“Comm me the second you discover anything further,” Matthew instructed Sienna. “Dani, let’s go. And that new dress you have? Keep it. We might be needing it. I have a feeling we’ll find ourselves at a club in the Golden District again before this case is over.”
Chapter 9
I was still grumpy as we loped across town.
“I can’t dance,” I told Matthew. “In all the years you’ve known me, have I ever suggested we go dancing?”
Matthew gave a thin smile. “It’s an order, Detective. I don’t care if you’re good at it or not, but if we find the name of the club that Maybelline and Lillie went to the night before they were taken, we’ll need you there to watch for Residuals.”
“Residuals at a club?” I wrinkled my nose. “Talk about a mess. I tend to avoid crowded places throbbing with music and sexual tension and shady types. That is a recipe for disaster, especially when you can see everyone’s spells. The amount of Testosterone Throttles and Pheromone Potions will be enough to make me sick.”
“You have a strong stomach, Detective. It’s good for you.”
“So, where does this woman live?” I asked, changing the subject. “If we don’t have the name of a club, we won’t be staking out anywhere. One thing at a time.”
“It’s just, so...” Matthew leveled his eyes at me. “Red.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The dress,” he said. “Is your date with the wolf?”
“Captain.” I spoke sternly. “This is considered on-the-job time. My date is my personal business.”
“It is so long as you’re not discussing your cases with him,” Matthew said. “Because if that becomes a regular thing, it’ll be my business. As your captain, of course.”
I rolled my eyes and followed closely on Matthew’s heels. It wasn’t as if he didn’t stretch the limits of the law when it suited him. Frankly, if Grey’s tip helped crack the case, both Matthew and I would owe him.
The day had turned into a beautiful one. The sun shone through a cloudless sky, and the temperature had risen to a pleasant low seventies hum. The borough smelled like freshly cut grass, and the sounds of baby witches and sorcerers playing all nature of games filtered through the residential streets as we strolled through them.
“Here,” Matthew said, resting a hand on my shoulder as he steered me around to face a white-picket fence and a postage stamp front yard on the southern edge of the Goblin Grid. “This is the place. Survivor’s name is Cynthia Nealy.”
Cynthia’s house was utterly ordinary. It appeared to be one and a half stories, complete with a peaked, lofted ceiling that probably housed a quirky little bedroom on the upper level.
The gardens out front were neatly tended, and a few tomatoes and a mint plant bloomed beside the walkway to the house. A few flowerbeds shot bursts of color through the otherwise green yard, the grass just a little bit too dry under the summer heat. A bird chirped from an apple tree one yard over.
Matthew raised a hand and knocked on the door. A shuffling sounded inside, followed by a raised voice shouting words I couldn’t decipher. Judging by Matthew’s thin smile, he had made out what was being said, and it amused him.
“She lives with her mother,” Matthew murmured. “And her mother is nosy.”
“Go figure. A nosy mother.”
The door opened seconds later to reveal a pleasant looking blonde elf. She had Marilyn Monroe-esque features, toned down by a demure, blue-flecked apron and a bright and shiny smile. She wore a white cotton dress and had bare feet, and she looked expectantly at us. “Yes?”
“We’re looking for Cynthia,” Matthew said, hauling out his badge with a flick of his wrist. “I’m Captain King, and this is Detective DeMarco.”
“I’m Cynthia,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “What can I do for you?”
“Invite them in!” A ragged voice yelled from the house. “I want to see the guests, too.”
“Quiet, ma!” Cynthia called back. “You’re being rude!”
“Is it the vampire?” her mother asked. “I heard he was a looker!”
“I’m sorry,” Cynthia said, stepping outside and closing the door. “My mother’s not quite right. That’s why I moved in with her.”
“Is your mother also an elf?” I asked. “And your father?”
“No,” she said. “Well, yes, my mother is, but my father had goblin blood. Hence our home in the G
rid.”
“I hate to question you outside,” I said. “But we do need to have a chat. Is there someplace more private?”
“It’s just...” Cynthia lowered her voice. “My mom’s not exactly mobile anymore. And she’s not quite right in the head. I’d invite you in, but—”
“She doesn’t bother us,” I said. “We’ve got thick skin. If you don’t mind, maybe we can take this conversation inside.”
After a brief hesitation, she nodded. “Fine. Can I get you something to drink?”
Both Matthew and I thanked her and waved off her offers of hospitality. Cynthia led us through a cramped, albeit clean, kitchen and into a dimly lit living area.
A woman I assumed was Cynthia’s mother sat in a medical style chair in the corner, staring out a small window. Cynthia gestured for Matthew and me to take a seat, waiting near her mother while we settled onto a threadbare loveseat. The only other option was an armchair across the room, so Matthew and I opted to squish next to one another.
“What can I help you with?” Cynthia asked, resting her hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Is this about Linsey?”
“What do you know about Linsey?” I asked. “Do you keep in touch with anyone in Gilded Row?”
Cynthia barked a laugh. “No, not particularly. Sometimes my...” She hesitated, cleared her throat. “My work puts me in touch with people there, but that’s it.”
“And what work is that?” I asked.
“I clean houses,” Cynthia said, her gaze leveled fiercely on me. “For the wealthy.”
“I understand,” I said carefully. “Linsey is missing, yes. But you also might have heard we recovered the bodies of two elfin girls not much older than yourself this week.”
“Lillie and Maybelline,” she said, and her voice sounded thick with the effort of saying their names. “Yes, I knew them.”
“They cleaned houses with you?”
Cynthia nodded. “I began cleaning houses when my mother fell ill. I met up with Maybelline and Lillie—we often worked together, watched out for one another. We shared, um, clients sometimes.”
