The Association

by A. K. Caggiano

  “Are you drunk?” Ivy could smell the answer.

  “Tipsy,” she insisted. “I don’t get drunk.”

  Ivy laughed, and Oakley grinned, grabbing the hand she’d flung over his shoulder. “I like tipsy Saf.”

  Safiya looked him up and down. Her glasses were gone, but she’d still spotted them from across the room. She was wearing makeup too, smoky eyes and dark lipstick, her hair in soft, bouncy curls. Safiya looked out across the hall where Evan happened to be. He was for once not engaged in any conversation and just eyeing her. Then she smirked back at Oakley. “Tipsy Saf likes you too, Oak.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” Ivy ducked out from under her arm, taking a glass of particularly foul-smelling stuff off of her. She wasn’t even able to identify the last bit of liquor in the bottom of Safiya’s cup and made her way to the sink where she poured it out. The witch didn’t protest, but just leaned against Oakley as he followed into the kitchen. Ivy ran a finger over the other liquor bottles there, then diverted for an ice bucket full of soda, cracking one open for Safiya and another for herself. It was about to be a long night.

  “If it isn’t my favorite future colleagues.” Evan’s voice ran up Ivy’s spine like a winter wind.

  Safiya gagged audibly and threw back her soda, dribbling a little down her face.

  “You sure are confident,” Ivy said with a smile to dispel the tension. “Though it seems like you’re popular enough to win.”

  Evan winked at her. She didn’t like it. Safiya liked it even less.

  “All right, Saf?” He leaned in close to her to grab a beer off the counter she’d propped herself against while Oakley raided the nearest buffet.

  She watched him with a steady gaze, her mouth going slack like she forgot she was inexplicably mad at him or even actually there at all.

  Evan didn’t step away, hovering only a few inches from her face. “I was hoping we could talk a little about my campaign.”

  “She’d be happy to talk during work hours.” Ivy grabbed her wrist, waking her from whatever drunken daydream she’d been having while staring up at him.

  “Maybe later tonight?” he said as Celia came up and got herself a drink, greeting him.

  “We’ll pencil you in for next week.” Ivy gave Safiya a little tug, and the woman stumbled before righting herself with a huff, giving Ivy one bewildered look, then sticking her tongue out at Evan. The lycan laughed and walked off with Celia who’d begun talking to him at a rapid rate.

  “What’d he want?” Oakley asked through a mouth full of pizza.

  Ivy glanced at Safiya. The witch’s face was red, but when she saw the plate of food Oakley had brought over she seemed to forget what had just happened. “I have no idea.”

  From her spot near the sink, Ivy could see through the archway into the long foyer hall. As Safiya and Oakley bantered stupidly beside her, she caught a glimpse of someone going up the stairs. Without thinking, she sauntered down the hall, only a small group of guests conversing near the doorway and paying her no mind, and so she slipped up the stairs with all the silent confidence of someone who had done this once before and in the dark no less.

  At the head of the stairs, Ivy slowed. The form of a woman stood in the doorway to Rufus’s bedroom. Her hand was on the frame, and she was silhouetted by the light she’d flipped on. Ivy expected her to go inside, but instead Calla Bicchieri turned back around and asked flatly, “What are you doing up here?”

  I might ask the same, floated through Ivy’s mind before leaving completely with all of her courage.

  “You might do better looking after your little intoxicated friend.”

  Ivy stuttered, her mouth finally landing on something understandable. “Just looking for a bathroom.”

  “I think you, of all people, know exactly where that is.” Calla’s words bit into the air, and Ivy turned, hurrying back down the stairs. At the foot she glanced back up, and Calla was coming behind her but with slow, careful precision as if she were meant to be there all along.

  Hunter was coming in the front door, hands in pockets, awkwardly looking about. Ivy hustled down to him, and when he smiled the anxiety of having the vampire behind her melted away. Safiya and Oakley showed up in the foyer too, and feeling a little over-warm and overwhelmed, Ivy suggested they all go out onto the front porch, and she would meet them there. Calla seemed to have scared her into actually needing the bathroom.

  Ivy wandered back through the kitchen and to the other hall. It was empty, both a blessing and a curse. The light was on in the bathroom at the hall’s end, door open as if to be inviting for guests, but no one was lingering near the place where Rufus had been found. Maybe Ivy had underestimated these people, and she walked a bit more confidently down the hall.

  The study door was open too, if only halfway, and Ivy slowed when she reached it, peaking inside. This room had largely been left untouched, curtains still drawn with only the hall light shining in to illuminate it. Just inside the door was a cardboard box sitting atop a chair, the one new addition. Ivy glanced back down the hall, but no one was coming, so she reached around and flipped up its top.

  Inside was an assortment of officey-things, a plaque of some sort, a framed diploma with Evan’s name on it, a different fancy pen holder than what was already on Rufus’s desk, but a colorful blotch deeper in stood out. Ivy pushed aside a photo of a rowboat to see the little felted decoration better. Like something for Halloween, the green-skinned witch was wearing a pointy hat and held a pumpkin in its lap. A sort of silly thing, especially for someone living the reality, but Ivy let the photo slide back down over it and continued on to the bathroom unseen.

  She’d never peed so fast in her life.

  Ivy held on to what she’d seen upstairs, deciding to tell a sober Safiya later. Instead, she went out to the porch and took a seat on the wide steps leading up to the house, Hunter falling in beside her, the warmth off of him cozy against the chill of the night. Safiya plunked herself down at the foot of the steps and leaned back, looking up at Ivy with a dumb, tipsy grin and asked her if she could help her remember something. What, exactly, she never specified, but Ivy’s confirmation seemed to appease her. Oakley brought out extra drinks and an intact pizza for them, though Ivy suspected he meant to keep the whole thing.

  For the next few hours she sat with the three and they just talked. Not about murder, not about death at all, not even about the association. The conversation meandered, and looking back there was no subject Ivy could really remember clearly, but she knew it had been pleasant, and even on the stoop of the man’s house who she had seen dead on his toilet just two weeks before, she felt for a moment like she was home.

  Chapter 26

  The party had gone late into the night, and Safiya fell asleep on the front steps long before it was over. Ivy and Hunter walked her to her condo a few buildings down from Hunter’s while Oakley headed back to Ironwood Place with another full box of pizza for the road.

  Hunter offered Ivy a small vial of “rank-tasting stuff” but if she could get Safiya to drink it, she’d feel a lot better in the morning. Ivy took Safiya upstairs and managed to get her to take maybe half the thing mixed with some orange juice before the witch promptly passed out, and Ivy, exhausted, curled up on her couch. She sent off a message to Oakley that she wouldn’t be home that night, and a last text from Hunter came in offering his help if she needed anything since “I’m just a couple doors down.”

  “Tempting,” she said to herself, eyeing the door, but she pulled one of Safiya’s well-placed, fuzzy throws down onto her instead. She’d left the sachet back at home anyway. She was fast asleep moments later.

  Ivy woke to the sound of the front door opening and light streaming in. She sat bolt upright in the unfamiliar place and mumbled a few words that might have been English.

  “Shit, sorry, sorry!” Safiya hurried to close the door behind her, juggling her keys, a set of drinks, and a paper bag. She had her hair tied back, her clothes changed to a black turtlenec
k and leggings, but her makeup was still on if very smudged behind her glasses. She carried over the cups and set them on the coffee table, and Ivy was hit with the smell of warm, fall spices. “Hot apple cider and doughnuts from Pauline’s.” Safiya tipped her head to the side. “I figured she’s not poisoning the stock at the bakery.”

  “Hell yes.” Ivy dove into the bag and pulled out a sugary ball of fried dough that went instantly into her mouth. Safiya took a seat beside her, surprisingly composed. “Hunter was right about that hangover stuff,” she said with a full mouth. “You recovered well.”

  “Oh, yeah.” The witch’s cheeks went red. “I’m sorry about last night. I never drink like that, and I really thought I was being careful, but I must have lost count or something. I hope I wasn’t too embarrassing.”

  Ivy swallowed. “You sort of hit on Oakley—which, ew—and also kind of made eyes at Evan, but he was definitely being the weird one last night. And that reminds me: I think Evan’s the murderer.”

  The witch froze under her words, mid-reach for a cup. “Evan?” She shook her head, grabbing up a notebook and pen from the table instead and said quickly, “We need to make a list. Everyone we think who did it and why.”

  It seemed grim, but Ivy couldn’t disagree. She had a lot of thoughts and they needed to be organized. “Evan first,” she said, taking a sip of cider.

  Safiya’s hand hovered over the page a moment before she carefully wrote out his name in her neat, blocky text.

  “He seemed like he cared about Rufus at first, but now he’s got his house, his business, and soon enough he might have the presidency. He gained the most from Rufus’s death. Plus I just think he’s an asshole.”

  Safiya noted the reasons next to his name in bullet points, nodding, “Well, all that is accurate, but being an asshole doesn’t make you a murderer.” She wrote it down anyway.

  “Maybe not, but they went to Enrico’s the night before, and Evan even said they had a little argument. I wouldn’t put it past him to have poisoned the leftovers. Just like he could have poisoned me at the board members’ dinner.”

  Safiya looked up from the paper. “Poison. That note you got did say that’s how Rufus went. But I’ve still got my eye on Calla.”

  “Calla!” Ivy grabbed her arm as she went to write the name. “I saw her last night, up in Rufus’s room. It was very weird. And I’ve been thinking—she did something to me that day I went to interview her. She really confused me, like sort of got into my head.”

  “She did?” Safiya pursed her lips. “Usually vampires can’t do that to other charmed folks.”

  Ivy’s eyes widened. “So she might know I’m…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  “Add on family feuding and losing the presidency two decades ago, and you’ve got the makings of a murderer.”

  “That’s a long time to hold a grudge.”

  “She’s a vampire; all she’s got is time.”

  Ivy cocked her head. “What about Tharman? He was not happy about getting his shop shut down, but he does seem awfully happy about Rufus’s death.”

  Safiya was scribbling away. “Not a lot of nuance to that one, but he might just be really confident he won’t get caught.”

  “But no record of him seeing Rufus before he died. Not like Evan. Or Mrs. Jiang who, by the way, was almost certainly the last person to see him alive. I mean, who has a meeting at eight at night?”

  “Not Pauline, the good baker, who gets up earlier than everyone else around here, while it’s still dark with plenty of time to off the man she holds responsible for scarring her baby.”

  “Pauline?” Ivy shook her head. “You know, when I met Penny I didn’t think her face looked that bad.” When Safiya squinted, she recanted, “I mean, it’s not good, I was just expecting something much worse.”

  “You’re kind.” Safiya scribbled next to Pauline’s name. “And keep in mind she could have poisoned you just as easily as the rest of them.”

  “And the Proctors,” Ivy said quickly. “Mae gave me some kind of potion when I met her. Haven’t used it, don’t plan on it. Since it clearly didn’t work, she or Alastair might have taken advanced measures. Also Mae was really aggressive at that party last night.”

  “And speaking of the Proctors,”—Safiya marked down Hunter’s name below his parents—“Your boyfriend.”

  “It was one date.” Ivy leaned back into the couch and pouted. “Also, he had the chance to do much worse, and I’m still here.”

  “Listen, I get that you’re bewitched by him or whatever, but I’m not. Hunter’s on the list. I mean, the damn box is in his house.”

  “I gotta get that thing open,” Ivy whispered under her breath and finished off the cider.

  Safiya copied the list onto another page and handed it to her. “Keep it, study it. We’ll figure this thing out. When you get the contents of the box, let me know. Greg is also supposed to get me the coroner’s report on Rufus. I don’t expect it to be much, but who knows?”

  Safiya drove her home that morning and went on to the clubhouse herself. Ivy cleaned up at Ironwood Place, and though the house was empty, wished Edna a farewell when she left on foot, trying to clear her head. The sky was grey and cloudy, and leaves had blown out over the road, summer forgotten overnight.

  A blip of shimmery green darted across the street then, and Ivy went after it at a run. She couldn’t let the cockatrice get away this time. It skittered to the edge of the trees that ran along the outside of Gingko Loop then stopped, looking back at her. Ivy stopped as well, a few yards away, her hand extended to the weird lizard-rooster hybrid.

  “Well, hey there,” she said carefully, wiggling her fingers in its direction as she knelt down. “We didn’t end on great terms last time, but I think we’re past that now.”

  The cockatrice jerked its head and squatted low, flaring out its wings.

  “Wait, wait!” She held up a bit of doughnut leftover from earlier. Despite wanting it quite a bit herself, it was probably worth it. “You must be kind of hungry with no one to bring you corn or whatever every day, huh?”

  He hopped in place then, tucking his wings back and craning a long neck toward her.

  “That’s right.” She shook the sweet then tossed it between the two of them. “Come and get it.”

  The cockatrice eyed it and then her, and she held up her hands. He made a jerky step forward, and in a flash the creature darted out, grabbed up the doughnut, and shot back toward the trees. Ivy dove, but missed him completely, and the cockatrice vanished before she lifted her head off the ground. “Bastard.”

  Oakley was already out shaping a hedge in front of the clubhouse when she finally got there, and she stopped to watch him. The garden out front was in full bloom despite the sallow weather, and she wondered how she hadn’t noticed how amazing it was before.

  She stared for a long moment, taking in the blues and pinks and purples of the flowers, the fullness of the greenery, and the smart layout of the plants in general. Her brother killed the hedge trimmers and gave her a wave. “Oakley, did you do all this?”

  “Uh…” He looked lazily at the front of the clubhouse, the flowers sprawling, a Japanese maple swaying in the gentle breeze. “Yes?”

  He doesn’t even remember, she huffed in her head, then patted his shoulder. “You’ve found your calling. It’s amazing.”

  “Well,”—he scratched the back of his neck and wiped some sweat off his brow—“It’s not exactly all me. The plants do a lot of the work, and, um, there are other things…”

  Ivy watched his brow knit while he took a deep breath. He was holding something back, and just like she was looking at her ten-year-old, little brother again, she saw him working out in his mind if he should tell the truth or not. But before he got the chance, a scream cut through the mid-morning air.

  The two took off in the direction of the voice, rounding the clubhouse and sprinting through the gardens behind it, trees and hedges obstructing what lay beyond. They skidd
ed to a stop just at the entrance to the pool, the gate wide open, a young woman standing there with a unicorn-shaped innertube slung over her shoulder. Her face had gone starkly white, and though her eyes were obscured under sunglasses, Ivy knew they were unblinking and horrified, focused on the body floating motionlessly in the water.

  Evan Vlcek had drowned.

  Chapter 27

  “Wow.” Ivy stood back against the pool railing with Safiya at her side. Ogden Bluffs’ PD, the same crew that had collected Rufus, dotted the pool’s perimeter with the same disinterested expressions. Ivy kept her voice low, her hand over her mouth. “I guess we can take him off the list.”

  “You don’t suppose he…he killed himself? From the guilt?”

  Ivy glanced down at Safiya, her back against the fence, knees drawn up at her chest. There had been a tremor in her voice just then.

  “He didn’t exactly seem like the kind of person who had that feeling.” She bit her lip, remembering how strange he had been at the end of the board members’ dinner, but didn’t want to bring it up. She reached down and touched her shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?”

  As if she’d been slapped, Safiya looked back up at her then nodded quickly, wiping at her eyes behind her glasses. “Fine. Totally.”

  Again, the blonde cop questioned Ivy. Short inquiries with even shorter answers. Again, it was immediately ruled an accident, and the pool was roped off, broken by the “wolfies” just like Penny had said. In short order, the rest of the board members showed up as a meeting was immediately called. Surely the lycans would be pissed about losing their candidate on the ballot. But there was no way to add a new one now; the rules—the enchanted rules—were very clear about this.

  Ivy watched them bicker, standing about a disused desk in a small, closed-off office for privacy. But a man had died, she thought, another man. And no one was questioning it.