The Association

by A. K. Caggiano

  Chapter 14

  How, Ivy thought, did I end up here?

  She stood on the back porch of Rufus Vlcek’s house, key in hand, darkness all around. She’d walked there, not on the pristine sidewalks that bordered the roads of Avalon Estates, but on a narrow, dirt path through the wood that crossed behind Ironwood Place and wound its way along the edge of the trees to the arch of Alder Crescent where 760 sat.

  She’d taken care not to be seen, though stealth was easy under the shadows of the trees as the sun set, and truthfully she was more concerned with what might be lurking deeper in the woods, watching her, but the trek had been quiet, dark, and uneventful. The moon was blessedly bright, waning away from how full it was less than a week prior.

  Safiya assured her that no lights would come on when she popped out of the tree line into Rufus’s backyard near the chicken coop—the last bulb had gone out sometime that summer, and Rufus had been lax to replace them. Similarly, no one in Avalon Estates had security cameras. “Against the charter,” Safiya had said. “Can you imagine if one of us were caught on camera casting or changing? It would ruin us.” Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched and tried to make herself as small as possible as she stood in the shadow of the massive, dark house.

  Hovering the key outside the lock, she told herself there was still time to turn back. She could tell Safiya it was too risky, or that she just didn’t want to do it, but since she’d spoken to Tharman that afternoon something had changed. People had wanted Rufus dead, and now he was, yet everyone ignored the fact they might have a murderer in their midst. If she were going to stay here—and according to that document she’d unwittingly signed, she apparently had to—a killer on the loose made her feel unsafe, and she’d really like to be as safe as possible even if she was surrounded by wizards and werewolves.

  Ivy looked up at the house again, the whitewashed brick reflecting the moonlight breaking through the night’s clouds. The place was so big for just one man, and though Safiya was sure the entire pack would be at the funeral, she couldn’t imagine it empty. If whoever had killed Rufus was capable of taking down a man who could transform into a wolf in his own home, then how easy would she be to pick off?

  Then there was a sound, a low baying that sailed out from the forest. A second joined in, and then a third, and Ivy gasped, plunging the key into the door and slipping inside. She pulled the door closed behind her, harder than she meant, the sound thumping through the house, but she needed to put something between herself and the howling that filled the night air outside. The funeral had begun. And she was in.

  Ivy pressed her back against the old wood grain of the door, listening. There was nothing for a long moment, then just the muffled call of the lycans somewhere far off and away. She needed to get started. She wiped her shoes on the already dirtied mat and checked that she didn’t leave prints as she crept out of the mudroom into the house proper.

  The kitchen was just as they’d seen it before. As Safiya had said, it looked like the lycans took the sanctity of the place where Rufus had died seriously and touched nothing. Guilt slithered into Ivy’s stomach—what she was doing wasn’t decent, but especially not to these beings whose ways were still foreign to her. Yet there was a possibility—one that grew with everything Ivy learned—that Rufus had been murdered, and the justice he deserved proved more important.

  Ivy pulled out her phone and held the screen as low as she could at her side, the dim light hidden from the windows but enough to see where she was going. If only she knew where to go.

  Clues. Clues for murder. Her brain ticked away, but nothing popped up. She needed something that implicated someone. She imagined for a moment that she was Rufus, coming down to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee, which he had managed to do before dying if the mug sitting on the little kitchen table told her anything, so she started there.

  She stepped up to the counter island and picked up the bag of grounds that Oakley had sniffed when they’d been there days before, but she was surprised to feel its heft, finding it unopened. She brought it up to her nose, recognizing the smell from her visit to Calla’s house; apparently she and Rufus had the same taste.

  She shined her light in the trash bin beside the counter, popping open the lid with her foot, but it was nearly empty, just a takeout container from a place called Enrico’s slightly open to reveal a bit of pasta at its bottom. She gagged at the old, garlicky smell, but was surprised to not find an empty bag of coffee grounds alongside it.

  Ivy went over to the mug she had assumed he used that morning, the liquid inside completely dried up now leaving only a bit of grit on the bottom. When she leaned down to inspect it, she got a whiff of something sweet, but decidedly uncoffeelike. Curious, she crossed to the refrigerator, but when she opened it, she nearly fell backward from shock.

  Stocked full of meats—steaks, pork chops, bacon, whole chicken—the man clearly had a very specific diet. She swallowed, bending down to see if there were anything else liquid hidden inside, but save for a few sports drinks, a bottle of wine, and an entire crisper drawer absolutely jam-packed with eggs, it was just meat. Besides the occasional pasta takeout, she supposed that was all a wolfman needed, but as she shut the door she wondered if he may have had a heart attack on the toilet after all. There wasn’t much fiber anywhere in that kitchen.

  Ivy took a quick picture of the cup and the kitchen at large then continued on down the hall toward where the bathroom was. With careful, nervous steps, she went along, but before she got there, she stopped at the open door to Rufus’s office. Again seemingly undisturbed, she shined her light across the floor of the room. The desk was at the room’s center, facing the door. Why he worked with his back to the window, she didn’t know, but she was thankful for the heavy drapes shutting out most of the moonlight now.

  She went around to the back of the desk and looked out at the room, imagining Rufus coming in and preparing for the day. Glancing down, she saw it had the normal accoutrements, a fancy pen holder, a paper weight that wasn’t actually weighing down any papers, a coaster with an old water ring stained into it. More interesting was the small stack of papers in a tray, but they looked to just be utility bills with paid dates written at their heads. Beneath this was another tray with more paperwork, but these ones were addressed to Alpha Grooming Incorporated, the business Rufus had left behind to his nephew along with this monster of a house and presumably a whole boatload of cash. She laid out the pages on the desk and snapped a photo.

  The flash lit up the corner of the blue box she’d seen before, angled on the desk’s corner, and a gold nameplate that uselessly told anyone who had been invited, presumably by President Vlcek himself, that this was President Vlcek’s desk. She rolled her eyes and focused on the most interesting piece on the desk: a small book with a soft leather cover and an elastic strap to keep it closed.

  After a quick listen to the continued silence in the manor, Ivy scrambled to open the book, finding the pages were filled with calendars, monthly and weekly. Rufus’s handwriting proved to be adequate enough to make out his appointments: a lot of board meetings, both for Avalon Estates and Alpha Grooming, and a fair number of personal meetings too. He was a busy man, right up to the day he died, apparently, as Ivy found the unfulfilled plan for his last day. Her own name was marked down in the slot under the header “Approval Meeting,” slated for just an hour after he’d been snuffed out. He’d go to the gym after, then there was a long block where “Family Meeting” was meant to take place, and that evening, in pencil, a messy, upside down triangle and a question mark beside it.

  Ivy turned the page back to the day before. “Gym” was marked down in the morning, followed by a side note that “Allyson: Cleaning” would show up while he was out. There were some calls to be made for Alpha Grooming in the afternoon and one with a double underline to a Mr. Faulkner at the Sylvan Society. Then there was “Dinner, Enrico’s, Sonny” at five. Beneath that an appointment at nine, marked simply with a
nother triangle, had been crossed out, and scribbled in the small space left above it was simply “VJ” in pencil. Ivy took a quick snapshot of both pages before flipping the book closed and securing it exactly as she’d found it. She knew one person who fit that naming convention, but she’d have to confirm with Safiya.

  The office spent, she sneaked back to the hall and the bathroom, but stopped. No, he hadn’t started his morning there, that’s where it ended, and she quickly turned and headed for the stairs. Ascending into an even darker darkness, Ivy’s steps slowed until she came to a stop at the upper landing. She glanced down both ends of the hall at the head of the stairs, listening and hearing nothing, feeling the staleness of the slightly warmer air there.

  The largest room was at the hall’s end. This was where Rufus had woken that morning, she presumed, and found the bed made, tucked in with hotel-like tautness. Fastidious, Ivy thought, noting how vacuum marks were still covering the far side of the room in her dim light, though thankfully there were tracks in the plush floors toward the bathroom that she could step into to make her way across. As if by fate, her feet matched them perfectly.

  She passed through a closet, the flicker of plastic hanging over a set of suits fresh from the dry cleaner just at the front. Rufus’s shoes, half glossy leather Oxfords, the other sporty white sneakers, were stacked in their own cubbies running from floor to ceiling, but as she ran her light over them stopped, seeing a small black rectangle. Ivy grabbed the phone and fumbled around with the buttons, and though it was locked, noted the ringer was turned all the way up. Would they have been able to hear it all the way downstairs that morning? The battery was very low, and the lock screen read only one missed call, but Safiya had called him a number of times, she thought. She contemplated taking it with her for a moment, then put it back begrudgingly.

  The en suite was also in impeccable order, the faucet free of spots, mirror unsmudged, though when she caught sight of her own reflection in the dark, her heart jolted. Taking a steady breath, she gave the vanity drawers a tug to reveal an impressive set of shaving tools, all branded with the word “Alpha” and a claw mark logo ghoulishly similar to the one on Penny’s face. Ivy took a quick snapshot of the drawer’s contents and moved on to the medicine cabinet.

  Pain killers, but nothing illicit, allergy medication, more grooming supplies—god, he was kind of boring. Ivy’s eyes trailed over Alpha Grooming’s rum-scented lotion, alpine-scented deodorant, and a container marked “ball deodorizer.” She grabbed that one, snickering at the “woody notes” the bottle claimed to leave its user’s “meat locker” with. Well, if she died suspiciously at least someone would get a good chuckle out of the hemorrhoid cream in her own bathroom that she used for under-eye circles.

  Then there was something like a pop, a sound Ivy couldn’t place exactly, but as the air around her sizzled in an unfamiliar way, her eyes snapped open wide, and she froze, listening. It was an eternity before she heard the next noise, but when it came, she knew she was no longer alone in the deceased Rufus Vlcek’s manor.

  Ivy closed the cabinet with painful slowness. Her heart pounding so loud she almost couldn’t hear the shuffling downstairs. It was quiet, but it was definitely there, the sound of shoes on floorboards. She pocketed her own phone, plunging herself into complete darkness.

  Taking careful steps, she made her way out to the bedroom, only knocking her foot into the post of the bed once painfully albeit silently, and to the doorway. Glancing out, she could see where the staircase was along the hall but was surprised to not see any light coming from downstairs, everything as dark as she’d left it.

  She crept along the back wall of the hall toward the stairs and stopped just at the head. The foyer at its foot was illuminated only by the moonlight filtering in through the tall, narrow windows beside the front door, and though she saw no one, she did hear a set of footsteps walking quickly away.

  Ivy took a silent breath. The front door was at the stair’s end, and she supposed she could risk dashing out it if she wanted to run, but then she’d have to speed across the open front lawn, exposing herself down at the road to anyone who might be driving by, including funeral goers. She might get lucky, might manage to be quiet enough, might avoid the motion-censored flood lights aimed at the front drive, might see no one at all, but even if she managed all that, she still knew she left the back door unlocked when she came in, and if someone found that, there would definitely be questions. Questions that might implicate Safiya who still had keys.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she raked her face then steadied herself. The safest way was the one she’d come, and she had gotten in, so she certainly could get out.

  Thanking whatever old-fashioned nonsense possessed Rufus to leave carpeting on the old staircase, she made her way down toward the foyer. Looking over the edge of the banister through to the kitchen at the back of the entry hall, all of the lights were still off. It was lucky that Evan or another Vlcek had come home and not flipped on a single switch, leaving a darkened path that could easily be bolted down. Too lucky, really.

  Ivy stood a tiny bit straighter, narrowing her eyes at where the back door would be in the darkness. She wasn’t supposed to be here, but the funeral was supposed to be a few hours long, and no one else was meant to be here right now either.

  With a more confident step, Ivy slipped around the stairwell into the kitchen and pressed herself against the wall to gaze down the second hall. She caught the tail of a moving shadow as it disappeared into the study. Rufus isn’t even in the ground yet, she thought with less self-actualization than appropriate. What could they be doing?

  Muscles tensed, Ivy eased herself down the hall to the edge of the study doorway. The less-quiet steps of someone else were crossing to the back of the room, and she almost huffed at their audacity, then she froze. This was an intruder, no doubt, but the fact it was also likely Rufus’s killer slapped Ivy right across the face.

  Petrified, she was glued to the wall, the thought of running just holding her tighter to the spot. Papers shuffled in the office, and Ivy knew she needed to make a decision, but before her brain could suss out the best course of action, her hand slid back into her pocket and pulled her phone back out. She could catch them—maybe—and leaned toward the doorway, twisting to look inside.

  A cloaked figure was hunched over the desk, their back to the door. She flicked on her camera instinctively, holding her phone just at the edge of the doorway. She waited for them to turn to blind them with the flash, peering into the darkness but making out nothing about the figure. She leaned in further, trying to discern a height or a build or any feature at all, but then she slipped, catching herself on the threshold with a gasp.

  The figure spun around, and Ivy’s heart shot into her throat. This was it, she’d be found, and if this was a killer, she was done for. But as the figure turned, its cloak splayed out around it, swallowing up the slight bit of light in the room and creating a blackness so deep it became nothing more than a void. In an instant, the room filled with a hazy greyness, smoke pouring from the void within the cloak, and then it was gone, the smoke, the cloak, and the intruder.

  Ivy took sharp, staggered breaths, holding onto the door frame with fingers suddenly slick with sweat. No, no one was there, her eyes pinging across the room for the form, and she pulled herself to her feet, legs shaking. Just to be sure, she snapped one last photo of the empty room, the flash lighting up the wisps of smoke left in the air, and then she turned and fled 760 Alder Crescent.

  Chapter 15

  “Yup, that’s magic all right.” Safiya pushed her glasses up her nose and stared hard at Ivy.

  Ivy’s heart was still thumping despite that it had been hours since she’d made it back to 210. She was curled up on the couch, an old quilt of Edna’s wrapped around her shoulders as she finished telling Safiya exactly what she saw in Rufus’s study. Anyone else would have told her she was crazy, but not a witch who could conjure fire out of thin air.

  “So you
can all just…disappear?” Ivy gulped, squeezing her knees tight against her chest.

  “Hardly.” Safiya laid back against the couch and crossed her arms with a yawn. The funeral had gone long into the night, but she went straight to Ivy’s after, still dressed in black with her hair pulled back in a somber braid. Her eyes behind her glasses were puffy and red. “But Calla, Alastair, Tharman? They’re all powerful, and if they have the netherlight fragment…” Her voice trailed off.

  “And Evan?” Ivy tried to catch her eye.

  Safiya shook her head. “He was at the funeral the entire time. All of the lycans in the community were.” When she flicked her eyes over Ivy, she sighed. “I’m not saying this rules them out, and if the killer already has the orb, I don’t know why on earth they’d risk going back.”

  “So it could be something else entirely?”

  Safiya stared back at her for a long moment. “You look like you need tea. Mind if I make us some?”

  Ivy took out her phone while Safiya went to the kitchen and filled up the kettle. She flicked through the photos for only a second before popping up from the couch. “Tea!” Ivy slapped a hand over her mouth, listening for Oakley, the quilt sliding down her shoulders and into a pile on the floor, but when nothing stirred upstairs she sprinted to the kitchen and held her phone out for Safiya to see. “That’s what it has to be,” she said as she pulled up the photo of the empty mug.

  Safiya looked down her nose at the screen as the burner sparked to life with a wave of her hand. “You took a picture of a cup?”

  Ivy was entranced by the magicked fire for a minute, then she blinked back up at Safiya. “Yeah. I just thought it was weird.”