We swung by the college, picking up the ID crafted for me, and Knives drove us to the Edwards house, changed into jeans and flannel. Out of the city and into the Greater Richmond Area, and eventually to where we pulled to the entrance of a gated community, where a guard booth stood. Pulling up, we’d barely come to a stop when the man sitting there said, “authorized entrance only.”

  “State police, we’re here to ask a few questions,” I announced, trying to sound confident as I opened the false ID badge and passed it over. He looked down at it, seeming more than a little suspicious, and I tried to maintain my composure until he eventually passed it back. Trying to sound self righteous and a little rude, I asked him, “Is there a problem?”

  “You don’t look like the police,” the man muttered, glaring down at Sigyn specifically.

  “Never heard of plain clothes?” Knives asked, an obvious tone of annoyance in her voice, “goth’s with us, we’re just trying to find out if she recognizes anything around here. You want to be the reason the teen girl doesn’t get justice, we’re going to need to have a talk, you hear me?”

  The guard shook his head, letting out a small sigh as he opened the gate to the neighborhood and declared, “try not to take too long, and try to call ahead next time.”

  Knives thanked them, and I was handed back the fake ID as we drove into the neighborhood. Our destination a little ways away from the gate, we navigated the twisting suburbs until eventually pulling to a stop in front of one of hundreds of identical buildings. With an antique black truck with camper shell pulled in the driveway, I frowned as I thought it felt familiar and remembered the shadows trade.

  “To the one you left behind,” both someone I was supposed to kiss and someone who would be here, which probably meant the same person.

  It probably would have been a good idea to keep Sigyn behind, she was fucking grieving and I was dragging her around investigating the potential murder of her girlfriend. She was a half-one, not used to dealing with shit like this, and depending how things went I might have had to explain kissing someone here.

  This was going to be a fucking pain.

  Walking up to the door, Knives and Sigyn hung back a little as I rung the door bell and prepared my fake ID. Trying to look professional as possible, I knocked a few times and held it up even as I heard faint cursing. One deep gulp to gather my courage, I tried to sound as authoritative as possible as I declared, “State police, we’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  The cursing grew louder for a moment, and a moment later the door opened as the man and I let out a muffled, “fuck.”

  Percy stood there, looking for a moment dumbstruck as we stood in complete stillness. Wearing a pair of black slacks and a black button-down with a clerical collar, he looked completely out of place in the neighborhood.

  After a long moment, he swung a hand around to his back waistband, and I dove forward slamming my full weight into him. A fist slammed into my side, my hands gripped at his arms, and I tumbled around him as we scattered across the ground. He kept punching, and the wolf growled as I held the claws and teeth within as I was suddenly rolled onto my back.

  Percy straddled my waist, slamming my hands down above my head and leaning his whole weight onto them. I struggled in his grip, not wanting to start the shifting of forms, not wanting to kill him as much as the wolf was ready, and he drew a snub nose revolver from around his back he shoved under my chin with a deep growl of his own.

  “What the fuck are you doing down here now?” he asked, half-panting as he cocked the hammer back.

  My breath was shaking, each one too shallow too tense, every fiber of my being begging to throw myself at him. Claws were growing despite my best efforts, teeth turning sharp, and my voice sounded breathless as I forced myself to tell him, “we’re investigating a murder.”

  He paused at that, and a moment later Knives gripped him by the back of his head, tugging it back and pressing a pocket knife against his neck. They held it there for a moment and, barely looking over to me, asked, “someone you know?”

  “She kidnapped Hawk,” Percy growled.

  “We know each other,” I confirmed, pulling at the man’s grip on my arm, having surprising trouble moving in the one handed grip. My mind racing a thousand miles a minute, a few hundred sentences coming to me, I finally told him, “we need to work together. If you kill me now, you don’t get Hawk back, and you attract a lot of attention in a place that’ll be hard to escape.”

  Percy paused at that, tensing even more than he had when a knife was put to his throat, and with a sigh uncocked his revolver. Sigyn walked over at Knives’ instruction and took the weapon, awkwardly dangling it in the air, and only then did we all part and rise to our feet. Percy kept his eyes piercing my soul, and Sigyn passed the revolver off to Knives before quickly backing up.

  “You find me at a bit of a disadvantage,” Percy muttered, slowly moving to his back against the wall, patting his pockets. “Three werewolves on an unarmed man, now that’s not fair.”

  “Two werewolves,” I corrected, frowning as I walked over to Knives. Taking the revolver from them I checked it was actually loaded with silver and held it out to Percy. The man staring at me like I’d just grown two more heads, and I half-waved the gun in the air as I reminded him, “you kill me, or anyone here, you don’t get what you’re looking for. If you’re here I feel like we’re looking for the same thing, which means I feel like we can work together for a minute now.”

  The man nodded, shook his head, and took the revolver, shoving it in his back waistband without any sense of what emotion he wanted to show as he said, “I do wish I could tell you what exactly I’m looking for. You might find me at a disadvantage there as well, if we’re gonna be honest.”

  I nodded, taking a long moment to take in the room around us as I tried to think of what to say. A rather simple looking living room, not much to say beyond that, there felt like there was something off about it. Too clean, everything looking too in its place, like it was set out for an open house and not a place someone lived. No ghosts, not a surprise though for this sort of place, and below cleaners and other scents of living was something…rotting.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “Someone’s dead?” I asked, knowing the rotten mold hadn’t smelled this strongly anywhere else.

  “The parents, I found the bodies in their room with an empty bottle of sleeping pills between them,” Percy confirmed, surprising me slightly in a depressing way, “their dogs on the back porch, but he’s fine enough. Just a puppy, but had a dog door to get into the backyard and a couple of those automated bowls, my guess they knew someone was stopping by sooner than later.”

  “I can try and ask him if he saw anything,” I admitted, getting a confused look from Percy, “I talk to animals, don’t worry about it.”

  The man nodded, looking ready to comment on it before he shook his head and instead told us, “I was looking through their journals when you came in, things are…what brought you here, if you don’t mind me asking? Not exactly the Purists' thing to go investigating a human dying, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  “We’re not Purists,” Knives countered, folding their arms in annoyance, and Sigyn looked between the two of us as she asked, “what’s a Purist?”

  Not wanting to let him get a chance to explain, I quickly told him, “The Lady’s got some interest in this, we’re investigating it for her. People are going missing, have been for a while, and then people who knew them are…they’re forgetting the victim. Phillip’s roommate helped file a police report, the guy had his stuff in the dorm, and the guy still justified it all somehow.”

  “Explains what I found,” Percy agreed, pointing to the coffee table with two journals on it, “people forgot their fucking kid, had enough sense to realize something was wrong. They had a room for a teenager with personal items, talked about a teen in their journals, had payments and all that going on. I guess…well, I imagine having all that and no idea why, that’s a tough sell on someone, you know?”

  I nodded, having some idea what he meant even as that raised a few more questions. A little curious, I asked, “how did you know this was worth looking into? I got my hands on the police report and realized something was off after looking into it, what got you here?”

  Wordlessly fumbling his pockets, Percy eventually pulled out a thick fold of paper he passed over to me, which I unraveled to reveal a few sheets stapled together. An essay of some sorts, it was marked up in red ink with a few hastily scribbled notes, and the name Phillip Edwards written along a date, teacher, and class name in one corner.

  Tapping some note about a thesis on the paper, Percy explained, “I’m in this class, this is my handwriting, I have no fucking idea who this man is. I found this in the folder I use for class work last week, and the teacher had no idea either. I snuck into an administrator’s office, looked it up, found the address, and came here to check it out.”

  “Lots of work for basically nothing in evidence,” I admitted, frowning as I passed the paper back, “I kinda need to appreciate it though, this case is dangerous. We’re talking about more than a hundred people dead in the last five years, and not many real leads. You manage to dig up anything else?”

  “I was about to head to the kid’s bedroom when y’all decided to show, you wanna join me?” Percy asked, and then didn’t wait as he walked past me.

  Left alone with my original companions, I felt my mind racing a thousand miles as I tried to decide what to do.

  I was supposed to kiss him of all fucking people, but that wasn’t important at the moment and could hold off. What was important was the fact Sigyn was here, Knives was here, and Percy had no idea who I was. He thought I’d kidnapped myself, was fucking dating myself, and now-

  “Whose Hawk?” Knives asked curiously, “and who’s the priest? Knew Misha managed to get you in a fight, but never thought I’d see you get laid out like that.”

  I felt disgust at the name, wanting to banish it to somewhere in the void and hidden away forever. It wasn’t a real fucking name, it was the name someone who never actually existed had had. Someone I wanted to never be the same again, even as much as I sometimes wished I’d never had the life I had.

  Shaking my head, I whispered to Knives, “please say that name as little as possible for me? That guy’s Percy, he was…we grew up together. He was sort of like a brother I didn’t have, best friend, you know all that?”

  Knives snorted at that, tilting their head, “what’s wrong with Hawk? someone you-” they caught on, and with a quick nod said, “I’ll forget I ever heard it.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, speaking up as I told them, “I trust this guy, I’ll explain why later. For now I want to get a look around, I’ll join him in the bedroom. Sigyn, how about you go make sure the dog is okay around the back, Knives, can you take a look around the house and tell me if you see anything weird?”

  “Are you sure you’re good?” Knives asked, raising their brow at the request.

  Shaking my head, I let out a sigh and admitted, “no idea,” before following after Percy, stopping only to tell them, “I was holding back for the first part, couldn’t throw my body weight around for the second.”

  The man had left a door open for me when I did find him, and was in a bedroom that looked rather fit for a teenager. Posters on the walls, random trinkets scattered about, a guitar in the corner, and a rather messy organization to everything that made me think the owner alone knew where everything was. It smelled of weed and incense, with plenty of sweat and other such body odors deep below that.

  The mess was a problem for us yeah, but it was nonetheless a good enough sign that there was something to be found.

  At the moment Percy was digging through drawers, and I went straight to the desk where I started flipping through papers. Some old schoolwork, rough drafts, a sketchbook of surprisingly cute looking animals, but nothing that stood out.

  Picking up a piece of plastic with a clip and screen, I turned it over in my hands and asked, “what’s this supposed to be for?”

  Percy glanced over, looking rather bored, and shook his head as he told me, “instrument tuner, not a music person?”

  “I prefer fiber arts,” I admitted, spotting the corner of an instant photo tucked under some items. Pulling at it, I looked down at a photo of a younger looking man and Percy posed on the library steps, on the back written Shady #9.

  Fuck, that explained a good bit.

  “You know a guy called Shady?” I asked, trying to not sound too knowledgeable as Percy looked over, “you both knew Phillip from the looks of things.”

  The man looked ready to complain, storming forward as he snatched the photo from me and looked down in confusion. A series of confusion and disgust going through him as he seemed to be trying to figure out if the picture was real.

  In the brief reprise I appreciated the smell of nature and metal on him, tinged with sweat and other scents and only tainted by an acrid deodorant. Scents I’d barely ever paid attention to in the past, scents that I couldn’t have picked up on, and now carried some strange comfort. A weird sense of home to them, with the sinking fear in my chest only coming back as I realized it was the smell of home.

  “This thing’s dangerous, and we don’t know how it’s killing,” I pointed out, watching Percy look up at me with a mix of emotions. No idea who I was, he thought I’d kidnapped someone he knew, he’d never listen. “Let’s work together. It’s going to go a lot more smoothly if we both have some idea what we’re working with.”

  Percy nodded, to my slight surprise, looking almost angry even as he told me, “just because you’re working for The Lady doesn’t mean I trust you.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “And just because you’re fucking Hawk doesn’t mean anything either,” he added on, disgusting me a little at the use of the name. I was tempted to tell him the truth then and there, get it over with, and I held my tongue as I finished, “I do have something that might help though, if you’re willing to share information. Now that I’ve seen this picture? I think I have a video of Phillip getting taken at home.”

  That was tempting, a video of the attack would potentially show us what we were dealing with. It could have been a final piece in finding this out, and maybe getting a better picture of what this thing was.

  “We’ll follow you in our car,” I told him, hoping this wasn’t some form of trap.

  “No, just you, you ride with me,” Percy commanded, and I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  Then again, nothing was going well for me this week anyway, what extra risk was there in this? I had to roll the dice sometimes, and this wasn’t the worst bet on my life I’d made.