I feigned innocence as I took a sip of my own coffee.
He surveyed the parking lot where I’d asked him to meet me. “Because you live over in Queens and this is Spring Garden. So what do you want, Lanard?”
Fine. Small talk wasn’t exactly my strong point and neither was subtlety. “Do you happen to know a Detective Noakes?”
Rutherford shrugged. It was effective. The man was the size of a telephone booth and about as friendly. His shrug was a mile high and spoke volumes.
“He wrote up a crap report on a dead journalist. I wanted to get your take on him.”
He snorted. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.” I took a sip of my coffee and set it down on the newspaper stand between us. “Isn’t it protocol to at least do a basic Google search before you blame something on drugs and move onto the next crime?”
Rutherford looked down and I caught his glance. I locked eyes with him and wanted to yank the answers out of him. “What is the policy protocol on dead bodies?”
“Call in the M.E. Get the body picked up, and get back to the living criminals.”
I stealthily slipped my notebook out to capture his answer. “So what would indicate a drug overdose?”
“Anything. Paraphernalia, bad teeth, rotten smell.”
I scratched down the notes in my pad, breaking my gaze with Rutherford. So a body in a funky position wouldn’t be enough to make it into a report, but the severe weathered conditions of the body would. Made me wonder what other suspicious things omitted from the reports.
He scoffed. “Scribbling away. You know all this stuff is always off the record. You got to go through the PR officer to get the real information.”
“The real information is here, on the street corners. It’s not behind some podium.”
Rutherford nodded. “So you’re back on the job?”
“Yep.”
“Good. I heard the meter maids could you use again. Why don’t you bother them?”
I knew what he wasn’t asking me about, and I knew I wasn’t ready to answer it yet. He of all people knew what being partners with someone meant; he knew the loss. I’d written the article about it. Almost made me appreciate him for about three seconds before I got back to work. “I really should get a badge with all the crimes I’ve solved.”
“And all the crimes you’ve pulled? Is it three or four B&Es now?”
“Only three, thank you. The other one was a criminal mischief.”
Rutherford shook his head. “Why are you chasing a dead body case?”
“Because there are ties to Ethan.”
He choked on his hot coffee. “What? How do you know? What did you see?”
I waited for him to recover. “You know this town as well as I do. It’s all connected. Every single pill and player in this city has got to be connected, and I’ll hunt down every lead to get me closer to his killers.”
Rutherford wiped his mouth with a handkerchief from his pocket and set his coffee on the newspaper bin. “I don’t know, Lanard. You’re pretty good with a headline, but there are things in this city that would eat you alive.”
He surveyed the park across the street again, growing quiet for a moment, and so still he could have been made of stone, if it wasn’t for the wild processing happening behind his dark eyes. “Noakes didn’t do anything wrong. We’ve been told to wrap up cases faster. There are too many to get ahead of.”
“So two dead bodies and—”
“Two?” Rutherford asked.
I nodded. “John Mitchell, a reporter for The Teller, was found in the same condition as Tiara Henderson from Saturday.”
“And how do you know what the Henderson body looked like? You said you could smell it from outside.”
I pressed my lips together. I didn’t want the foul taste of a lie to get in the way of the sweetness of the coffee that I really needed to get into my system to keep going for the rest of the night.
“Damn it, Lanard.”
I distracted him with the rest of my story. “Natasha over at the ME said she mentioned it the detective who brushed her off. So, I’m wondering why two bodies under similar strange circumstances would get stuffed?”
Rutherford bit down hard on his lower lip. It was his nervous tick. I had seen it only a few times in the two years I’d known him. Had it only been two years? It felt like Ethan and I had been working crimes for ages and Rutherford was always our first contact, the unfriendly face we could count on to do the right thing.
“When was the first time we met?” I asked.
Rutherford frowned and picked his coffee back up. “Some gang shooting, I think. Couldn’t keep you on the right side of the police tape.”
“Right. I think you called me a hair ball?”
“Angerball,” he corrected. “Why’d you ask?”
I shook my head and finished my coffee. It was growing chilly and I shivered, even the coffee not enough to keep me warm. I needed a scarf. “You know how it goes. I’m reevaluating my life, things, moments to make sure I know the truth about what went on.”
I stared down at my empty coffee cup. Where did that confession come from?
“I got you. If it makes you feel any better, half the force still thinks your kind are the scum of the earth, so not everything has changed.”
“And you, Julie? You on the side of the guys who would rather look away than take a stand and really try to help this city?”
“I don’t think you’re scum, just more like an annoying little dog with a bone.” Rutherford took a long swig of his coffee before tossing it in the trash. “I know firsthand you’ve saved some people with your stories, but your methods are going to get people killed.”
I gulped.
“Maybe they already have,” he continued. “You are not the only person who is trying to protect this city from itself. Saving it is not a one-man job. Think on that the next time you decide to accuse a police officer of not doing his job or hell, help him out. Give someone else a chance to do some good.”
Rutherford turned and walked toward the group of boys loitering in the park.
“One-woman job,” I yelled out after him. Or I had wanted to yell out after him.
The truth of it stuck in my throat like a vitamin too big to swallow. He was right. He didn’t have to be such a bastard about it, but I had dragged Ethan out that night. Mystical war or not, werewolves or not, I was responsible for him being there.
And now the entire world was turned on its head; my brain hurt when I thought about it sober. I had put Ethan in danger with my focus, my obsessive need. I needed to be the person to solve this, to fulfill my blood-soaked promise.
I was going to have to call MacCallan.
CHAPTER FIVE
I ran my fingers through my curly hair and pulled it back into a messy bun. I second-guessed my jeans and changed into nicer boots. I made sure my eye makeup wasn’t completely smeared and my breath didn’t smell like Jack.
Just an hour earlier, when I’d finally sucked it up and called, MacCallan told me he was about to leave for the theater downtown. We arranged to meet at the coffee shop that doubled as the theater’s concessions. Theaters were a little nicer than the usual dark corners and crack houses I was used to, so I wanted to dress nice. I didn’t want to feel as exposed as I had at the funeral.
The lobby was full of people milling about during the intermission, but his wide blue eyes caught mine the moment I walked through the door. MacCallan stood and gave me a half wave from his booth in the corner.
I pressed through the crowd to find that he had already ordered a coffee for me.
His dress slacks and button down with the quintessential tweed blazer fit the part of the professor, a little different from what he’d worn during our last meeting. And he smelled nicer. He was here as part of an extra credit assignment for one of his classes, a theatrical reading of Chaucer. He blended in seamlessly with the crowd, whereas my attire was still a bit more leather and grass stains t
han was probably appropriate.
He extended his hand, as if we had never met before. “Miss Lanard.”
“Professor.…” and I trailed off as I touched his hand and was met with warmth, a soft intimate brush of silky fur against my neck. I inhaled and braced myself against the table.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
I could still feel the heat of him down the entire length of my body. With a deep breath, I slid down into the chair and regained my wits.
“Fine,” I finally managed.
This particular lie tasted like mealy worms in a dirt pie. Why was he reaching out with his animal to greet me? To remind me who I was dealing with?
I had a bag full of pictures to remind me there were darker things at work in this city than I could have imagined. But I was once again struck with the realization that I was sitting across the table from a werewolf. Neither of us was to be trifled with.
I tried to keep my eyes on the coffee, on the table, on the cute playbills framed on the walls, to keep my mind focused on work and not the fact that my body still hummed with something other than my need for the truth. I cleared my throat. “How did you manage a seat?”
He sat gracefully in the seat across from me. “Threatened to fail a few students if they didn’t give me their table.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Right.”
He folded his hands on the table between us.
“Are you sure you want to do this in public?” I asked as I pulled out the folder of pictures and the sketch of what could possibly be the magical something that MacCallan felt on Tay-Tay’s body.
“Thousands of years of hiding, Miss Lanard. In public is the best place to do it. No one will think twice at two people on a date.”
My hand paused at the mention of the d-word. This wasn’t a date; this was work. All work and no play is how you get inches on the front page.
I reached into the folder and only pulled out the rough sketch of the emblem. “I went to the M.E.’s office. There was another body. Another journalist. When I compared the two bodies, they were both in this position.”
I put it on the table between us and waited, leg bouncing. The truth was, I wanted this to be weird or just coincidental, though in my line of work there was always a cause and effect. But I didn’t want this to get darker, get weirder, and I wanted the angles of the bodies to just be the angles that dead bodies fall into.
MacCallan frowned as he studied at the figure. He spun it around on the table between us, and his face became a scene out of a gothic novel. His eyes went from the teal blue of the Aegean to the dark gray sky over an English moor.
My stomach sank. This was magical and it wasn’t good.
“The symbol is magical, isn’t it? Is it related to Warlocks?” I leaned forward and lowered my voice. More than he knew balanced on the edge of my next question. “Does this mean there are Warlocks in Philly again?”
MacCallan looked up at me from the pictures. A shiver skittered down my spine as if I’d jumped into the icy blue ocean of his eyes.
“I can’t believe I didn’t see this when we were with the body.”
I fought a gasp. “What does it mean?”
“Sacrifice.”
My skin goose bumped. I didn’t know if it was his meaning or his brogue, but I curled my hands around the warm coffee to chase it away. “Sacrifice to what? For what? By what?”
MacCallan shook his head. “I don’t know.”
I hated that answer so I pressed on. “Is it a spell? What else could mummify a person in under four days?”
He only shook his head again. “With the pattern, I’d say each body was part of a spell, but I’m not sure to what end.”
I looked into those blue eyes, watched his calm hands hold the picture that would have rattled anyone without complete conviction. The realization washed over me again. Magic was real and there were Warlocks in my city, hurting my people. But that was going to stop now.
“What do we do next?” I asked.
MacCallan leaned back in his chair. “I take these to the pack to prove that we are not as safe as Levi thinks we are.”
The questions started to stockpile in my brain, like traffic on a rush hour highway. The itch, the anxiety crept up my shoulders and seemed to squeeze my lungs. “And then what?”
“You move on to another story and leave this one to me. That was the agreement.”
A laugh boiled up from the tension in my chest. “My ass. The agreement was about Ethan. We can’t be sure that his death and these are even related. This is still my story.”
“You don’t know what you’re dealing with here.”
“You don’t know who you are dealing with, Professor.”
I snatched the photos and headed for the exit. How dare he think that I couldn’t handle this, that I couldn’t protect anyone? I stormed through the door and into the cold night air.
I nearly made it to the nearest crosswalk when a strong hand gripped my upper arm. Adrenaline flowed through me so fast that my vision went dark and couldn’t catch up with my actions. I swung my fist at whatever was attacking me. It smacked hard against a face. The hand dropped from my arm and the shadow stumbled back.
When the adrenaline finally stopped, the tunnel vision opened, and I saw MacCallan holding his chin as he leaned against the theater’s gaudy facade.
“I think I know who I’m dealing with now.” He tested his jaw. “You’ve got a hell of an arm.”
I looked down at my hand. No blood. There was no blood this time. Everything was okay. People had stopped and were watching, talking about the couple fighting in the street. The last thing I needed was someone calling the cops, especially with this folder of photos on my person.
I had to take a few deep breaths before my heart stopped racing, before the adrenaline subsided and let me think in a straight line.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Fine,” he said as he pushed off the brick of the building. “Would you like to continue our conversation or just punch me again?”
“I’m sorry.” The words fell out of my mouth. I never apologized for anything, so why was I now? It was strange, but this had been a strange evening—finding out there was a string of deaths and magic was the culprit.
He tested his jaw one last time. “It’s my fault. I didn’t think. You were attacked, and here I am grabbing you in the darkness. Of course you were going to react.”
When he spoke again, his tone had changed. It was softer, like he was charming a jumpy horse and not a jumpy journalist.
“We agreed.” He started. “If it was magical, I would handle it. If it wasn’t, you would.”
“That was about Ethan’s death. This is bigger.”
“Exactly. This is bigger. This city still needs you to investigate injustice, missing girls, new drugs, but you’re out of your depth with this one. Hell, I might even be out of my depth on this one.”
The cool air pressed against my fevered cheeks. “I have to know what is responsible for Ethan’s death.”
“You know I understand that.”
He stepped closer, and his warmth, the same warmth Ethan used to have, seeped into me – a reminder that I was not the only person grieving here. We really were in this together, the pain of loss and the answer that would ease that pain. Neither of us was going to solve this alone. He just needed to be reminded.
“In the few days since you’ve told me about magic, I’ve already uncovered more than anyone in the pack has. More than you did by yourself.”
I watched the press of his lips. He wanted to tell me something. I didn’t need a special magical power to tell me that.
I continued. “I need more to see the big picture, see all the cogs in action. See what lives in the gaps between the stories.”
There was a flash of recognition in his eyes at the words. “Appealing to my literary sensibility isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
But it would. The fight within him was lesse
ning.
“You need me to help investigate. It’s what I do. Ask questions. It’s all I can bring to a magical fight, if that is what this is. You know one side of the city, I know the other. You’re the one who said we have to work together on this to see the whole picture.”
He let out a deep breath. The fight was over. “You make a very convincing argument, Miss Lanard.”
Relief washed through me. We might actually be able to find out who killed Ethan. I might be able to sleep again. Plus, I was playing nice with others. Ethan would be so proud.
Rafe looked down at this watch. ‘The reading is starting again in two minutes. Let’s go back inside. We can finish those coffees with less people listening. Take a better look at the photos. Plan our next steps.”
“Thank you, Professor.”
We settled into the coffee shop again and he got us two new coffees. To the outside world, it probably looked mundane enough—but I was preparing to have my world shaken up like a snow globe. Again.
Rafe sipped his black coffee. “What do you need to know?”
I had a million questions that were all swirling around. Magic, Shifters. Warlocks. Spells. One, though, an older one, a stronger one, beat the rest to the front of the glass and got my attention. “Why was Piper so important to Ethan? What is a Den Mother?”
He adjusted in his chair. “She is a fount of Shifter energy and links us all together, keeps us safe.”
“Who is ‘all of us’?”
“Every Shifter across the world.”
Whoa. “So what kind of shapeshifter is she?”
“She’s technically human. She doesn’t shift. But she can control the magical energy within any Wanderer—not just shifters.”
“So she keeps you safe like she’s a super, kick-ass Warlock fighter?”
Rafe chuckled. “Nothing of the sort. She’s more like a spiritual Mother to us. Supports us, nurtures us.” His smile faded. “Saves us from ourselves when we need it.”
My mouth formed into an O, surprised. “But Levi is the pack leader, the Primo right? So if you took this information to Piper, it’s like going above him.”
“Levi won’t listen. But Piper will listen to me, especially about this.”
The Truth About Night Page 9