The Association

by A. K. Caggiano

  “They’ll have the write-in line,” Mrs. Jiang said, her arms crossed. “I know they’ll be upset, but if they can rally together it should be just as good as having someone directly on the ballot, no?”

  “They’ll certainly say no.” Alastair was rubbing his temple. “What an absolute idiot. With the amount he drank…”

  They stood around in silence a few moments longer. Calla had been suspiciously quiet, and Ivy tried to watch her from the corner of her eye. The whole thing felt so off, but then she was likely trapped in a room with a murderer, and that certainly was making her perception wonky.

  Or making it sharper.

  Tharman sneezed, and they all jumped. “Geezy Pete!” He wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve. “Jumpy bunch.”

  Ivy bustled around the clubhouse that day with Safiya, fielding calls, answering questions, and trying to get on with things. As the afternoon passed to early evening, the guilt in Ivy’s stomach at blaming Evan didn’t lessen, though logically she knew it wasn’t impossible that he had murdered Rufus and then taken his own life. Again, there was no sign of foul play, no wounds, no blood, and no one had reported anything out of the ordinary after the party. Neighbors kept stopping by to confirm what had happened, and Ivy used the opportunity to sneakily ask how late they left Evan’s shindig the night before. No one admitted to being the last one there.

  Ivy suggested they organize something nice for the Vlcek family, what was left of them, and the other lycans. A memorial at the clubhouse seemed repetitive, but the idea shook Safiya from the distant staring she kept losing herself in all day. Robotically, she shifted into organizer mode and decided on a candlelight vigil in the forest. Safiya contacted one of Evan’s more distant cousins—his parents had apparently passed a few years prior in an actual accident outside of Avalon—and started putting things together. While she made the call, Ivy manned the main room of the clubhouse, blessedly empty until the door opened and Sunglasses Greg made his entrance.

  “Ms. Sylvan.”

  “You can just call me Ivy, Greg.”

  He paused, looking her over. It would have been creepy had it been anyone but Greg, but the security officer clearly had other thoughts about Ivy. “Got something for Ms. Hakim, but she said it was okay to deliver to you.” He was carrying a thick envelope and held it out. She went to take it, but Greg held tight to the other end. “I don’t know what’s going on, Ms. Sylvan, but I do know something ain’t right. If something else goes squirrelly, know this,”—he lowered his sunglasses and two golden pupils stared back at her—“I got my eye on you, Cinderella.”

  She gave the envelope a tug, and he finally released it. Greg backed away from her, never breaking their gaze, and she squinted, trying her damnedest not to blink. He bumped into the door, and it didn’t budge, but he also didn’t look away, throwing an arm blindly around behind him looking for the handle.

  “It’s locked, Greg,” Ivy sighed, giving in and blinking. “You gotta—no—the other one.”

  Greg fumbled with the doors without looking until one finally gave way. “Aha!” He pushed it open and continued to back out just as slowly as before, sunglasses locked on her. He stood still on its other side as the door swung shut, watching her through the crack until it fully closed. God, he was weird.

  Ivy turned the envelope over in her hand, heavy with something loose inside. She could hear Safiya just getting off the phone, and went to her office, pulling the door shut and handing over Greg’s delivery.

  Safiya slid out the contents, a stack of photos that made her gasp, the watch that Rufus had been wearing when he was found balanced on top. The lycan looked much worse on the cold metal table, staring up blankly at the ceiling, bare-chested, but there wasn’t anything that extraordinary about the autopsy photos. The notes marked on the bottom of each were plain descriptors of what was shown, the body part, bruising and the possible reasons why.

  Safiya flipped through them carefully, both looking and not, until the last. It was up close to a wide patch of skin, indiscernible what part of the body was being photographed, but the wounds there were clear: two marks, equal in size, perfectly round, a short distance from one another. Ivy had only seen it in movies, but it was undoubtedly the result of fangs in flesh.

  “Calla!” They both said at once, hearts leaping into throats.

  “I can’t believe…” Safiya placed the other photos on her desk, marveling at the one. “So careless.”

  “How did we miss that?” Ivy thought hard back to finding Rufus. “I even touched his neck!”

  “Oh.” Safiya’s voice hitched as she shoved the photo back at Ivy. “Read that.”

  At the bottom of the page, the notes read, Unidentified incisions, approximately 2.58mm in size, and 3.7cm apart. Location: left, inner thigh. She gasped. “Whoa, Calla!”

  “I know!” Safiya’s eyes were closed.

  “But they didn’t think it was significant.” Ivy looked at the photo again, cringing a bit knowing where it was.

  “I guess not.” The witch absently picked up Rufus’s watch, the glass on the face missing.

  “Man, this is damning.” Ivy sat on the edge of the desk, crossing her arms. “Calla’s the scariest one.”

  “But with Rufus—and now Evan—gone, she’s got a good shot at the presidency. She’s convinced a lot of people to like her.”

  “What do we do?” Ivy was afraid of what she might say. “Do we confront her?”

  Safiya squeezed the watch in her hands. “We have to be absolutely sure. This report doesn’t mention him being drained. I mean, look at the bruises from his body sitting after he died. You don’t get bruises without blood.”

  Ivy shivered at the thought of not just losing enough blood to die, but having it sucked out.

  Safiya set her jaw hard and blew out a long breath. “We need more evidence, and we need to tie up the other loose ends. We need to get into that box.”

  Chapter 28

  Ivy carried on with her tasks over the next few days on high alert. With every mailbox she checked for wear and tear, she looked over her shoulder for oncoming cars, and every gopher hole she discovered she was weary of a planted creature ready to inject her with some kind of venom. But nothing extraordinary happened save for the rescue of another of Rufus’s escapee hens.

  Leaves turned yellow to orange to red around her, and shades remained drawn, the neighborhood mourning in private as fall settled in. When the day of the vigil came, Ivy was almost glad if only for the fact there would be some sort of activity in Avalon Estates where she wouldn’t be quite so alone.

  Ivy was just returning from Ogden Bluffs on a last-minute run after Safiya had come to her on the verge of tears. She’d completely forgotten to order candles, and how the hell were they supposed to have a candlelight vigil in the forest without fucking candles? Ivy remembered the little shop she’d been in what felt like ages ago that sat beside Pauline’s bakery. The bobble-headed woman who ran the place was wearing a crocheted shawl that day that smelled heavily of nag champa. She was over the moon to sell out her beeswax and soy collections.

  While Ivy had waited for the woman to ring up each candle individually, she took a look at her other wares. Beside the checkout counter there was a display of healing crystals and jewelry that boasted other magical properties, and she thought about how Hunter had said the place wasn’t run by anyone from Avalon Estates. There was also a row of used books, each unique and worn, and she read the titles in her mind. They were mostly new-agey how-tos on meditation and spiritual enlightenment, but one stuck out.

  She pulled the journal-sized paperback from the row to be sure she’d read the title right. The Human’s Handbook of Nether Creatures and Other Monsters. Ivy flipped through some of the pages, worn and covered in drawings with printed descriptions beside, then held it up. “Could you ring this up for me separately?”

  When she made it back, Ivy employed Oakley to help her set the candles up on a few folding tables at the forest’s e
dge from where the walk was planned to begin. She pulled out a lighter, looking over the sea of wicks with a sigh. Safiya walked up and distracted Oakley by requesting he grab her bag from her car, and with the swipe of her hand, she lit the entire table.

  Most of the neighborhood showed that night, taking the glass jars and remarking on how bohemian they’d gone as if it were planned. They carried the scent of patchouli out amongst the trees as they went. There were, however, a few notable exceptions to the guests, specifically every member of the board. The residents filtered into the woods as the sun set, taking a slow, long walk up toward the field that lay just before the cemetery. It would be better out there, and the lycans had agreed as the clubhouse was simply too close to where Evan had died.

  As night fell, those gathered spoke in whispers, and the forest filled with the sounds of shuffling feet over crunching leaves and hushed voices. Hunter came too, milling around the table until all the residents had been seen to. He took the last of the candles and went along beside Ivy into the darkness, the tail end of the procession. A quarter moon hung in the sky, soon blotted out by the trees.

  The residents were spread out before them, making their way in a wide row up through the forest, their forms moving shadows amongst those already cast by the trees, and their candles danced like fireflies dotting the fiery colors of the autumn wood. Ivy would have remarked how beautiful it was if it weren’t so somber. In fact, she would have remarked anything, the silence of the walk wearing on her.

  Finally, Hunter’s low voice sounded at her side. “It’s just so weird.”

  Indeed, it was weird, all of it, but Ivy wasn’t sure what it Hunter was referring to, and she turned her head up to him.

  “Now Evan’s dead too.” He was frowning, eyes following the ground. “Like someone has it out for the Vlceks.”

  “Yes, exactly like that,” she said a little more enthusiastically than she meant.

  He slowed as Safiya got ahead of them a bit, walking more quickly with Oakley flitting around beside her. “I just feel…unnatural about it.”

  You should, Ivy urged in her mind. “Me too.” She watched the flame dance around the rim of her candle’s jar.

  “Listen, Ivy.” Hunter stopped and turned toward her. “I wanted to talk to you this week, but I didn’t know if it was okay after, you know, and I know this is going to sound kind of strange with everything else going on, but I…really like spending time with you.”

  “You do?” She smiled even though she knew it was really strange that now, of all times, he’d choose to say this.

  “I just wanted you to know because…” He didn’t finish the thought. The candlelight lit his face from below, leaving dark shadows in the hollows of his cheeks, darkening his brow.

  Ivy swallowed. “Because why?”

  “We don’t always get as much time as we think we’re going to.” He looked at her earnestly, leaning in so that his whisper could be heard over the whine of the crickets. “And I just thought you should know.”

  Ivy pushed herself up onto her tiptoes and pressed her lips against his. She stunned him, she realized, when he did not move, but she persisted gently, and he melted against her. When she finally pulled away, she immediately felt guilty. “Sorry, I just—”

  “Don’t be.” His lips tried not to smile. “Don’t be sorry at all.”

  They caught up to the others at the far end of the forest where a lone voice was addressing the crowd, gathered in a half circle against the tree line. An older woman with white hair piled on top of her head was telling a story about ancestors and coincidences, and how everything that happens on this earth is, in fact, meant to be. Lycans were no stranger to death, and this was only a bigger part of life. Her voice was heavy and hoarse, and Ivy shivered, her back to the dark, open forest.

  Something like an owl called from behind Ivy. No one else seemed to notice, and when she looked into the darkness she saw nothing, but the moment she turned back to the sea of heads and the speaker, she heard it again.

  Again she turned around. Something was there, but it was not a bird. The form shifted far back amongst the trees, and she knew without knowing that it was trying to get her attention.

  She glanced over to Hunter, a long, sad look on his face as he listened to the woman. Safiya and Oakley too, and the others, sharing that look, were drawn in with hypnotic gazes. When Ivy took a step backward, no one noticed, but the sound of the old woman’s voice up front went fuzzy in her mind. She took another step back, leaves crunching underfoot, the others completely undisturbed, and she slipped away.

  The soft call came again, much more clearly a voice this time, and her feet took her on their own. She held her candle out, a flickering light that just reached branches and brambles before her face did, until her slow walk took her to a little clearing. Ivy stopped and looked up over the candle out into the darkness. “Hello?”

  “You came.” The voice floated out to her. “I’m pleasantly surprised.”

  Ivy’s light only illuminated a bit of the open space before her, though she could feel the figure beyond it. “Calla? Is that you?”

  The voice chuckled. It was. “We need to talk.”

  Ivy’s muscles tightened. She got here the same way she’d gotten to Calla’s front steps which was not entirely on her own. An image of Rufus’s bite flashed through her mind. “What do you want?”

  “I want, I believe, what you want.”

  The presidency? Her heart sped up. No, she was definitely wrong about that. “I didn’t come to Avalon to be president. I didn’t even want to be on the board. I—”

  “Not that.” Calla took a step forward, her figure clear now, if dark against the shadows. “I want to find out who is doing this.”

  Ivy’s mind screamed, You are! But the claim caught in her throat, and she swallowed it down.

  “When you came to see me, you had your suspicions that I’d done something untoward, and that was,”—she groaned—“fair, I suppose. I knew Rufus well. Very well. I didn’t want to believe his death was calculated, but time and consequence have proved otherwise.”

  Ivy couldn’t believe the woman. If she’d gotten in her head—and she’d certainly just demonstrated if not plainly admitted it—she might know she was one of Ivy’s main suspects. And yet, they were standing in the middle of the forest, all alone, and she hadn’t moved to drain Ivy of her blood. “Calla,” she began carefully, “Not to be…rude, or anything, but I—”

  “You think I did it,” she said, shifting in the darkness. “No, it’s fine. I get it. I didn’t, of course, but what’s the word of a vampire when someone’s been killed?”

  Ivy scratched her head. “It’s not because of what you are,” she half-lied. “Everyone says you’ve been at odds for years, since you lost to him two decades ago, and you said yourself you’ve been feuding with his family for even longer. Now you, what, want to find out who killed him? Avenge him?”

  “I…cared about Rufus.” Calla took another step forward, and Ivy did her best to stay still. The vampire was looking down at her nails casually. “We were friends.”

  “Friends?” Ivy shook her head. “No, you said you weren’t. You said it was—”

  “Complicated.” She rolled her golden eyes so hard Ivy could see it in the low light. “Yes, yes, very. You know sometimes things are tricky with men.”

  Ivy grunted in agreement. She’d just kissed someone she thought, if only very slightly, might be a murderer. Then she inhaled, remembering the bite again. “Calla, are you saying—”

  “If I must be crass about it, then I will. We were fucking, all right?” The vampire’s face was lit by the candle now, and she smirked. “Just ask your little friend; the lycans make exceptional bedfellows. After years of bickering every damn day and watching him go for a shirtless run every bloody evening it just sort of…built up, you know?”

  Ivy’s mouth hung open. “You…you kept it a secret?”

  “It wouldn’t do for the others to know.
Our families wouldn’t have been very happy. And it didn’t really matter, I mean, we weren’t in love or anything.” Calla tousled her hair and looked at the ground. She was frowning, and for a moment Ivy thought she saw her wipe at her eyes. When she looked back up, though, she flashed a pointy-toothed smile. “I’m just very disappointed he was taken away from me. We only started giving into our carnal urges a few months ago. His blood was particularly savory, and he was quite the athlete, so in the bedroom—”

  “I get it!” Ivy put up a hand to stop her. “Wait, his blood? So you did bite him?”

  “Of course. It’s very romantic if you don’t intend to kill, and killing Rufus would have been such a waste.”

  Ivy let her mind wander to the bite once more, then shook her head before an image could form. “Fine, let’s say you’re not lying. Then who do you think did it?”

  Calla arched a brow. “Well, that’s why I came to you, isn’t it? I’m just not sure. Tharman, Alastair, any of us, really. I even thought his little prick of a nephew did it for a few days, but then when I saw him in that pool I thought, no—this is much more serious than that.”

  Ivy blinked at her. Almost the same list. “When I was at your house you said specifically you thought it was Alastair.”

  “I did—they hated each other—but things just haven’t quite added up. I followed Alastair after the party and did a little spying. He and Mae stayed up much of the night fighting. There wasn’t time for either one to sneak out and off Evan.” There was a sound then, voices rising up from the edge of the woods where the crowd was gathered.

  “Fighting? About what?”

  Calla twisted her lips. “I don’t want to go about telling anyone else’s secrets, especially when it could hurt an innocent.” She glanced beyond Ivy into the dark woods behind her. “But I can tell you one thing for sure. The killer you’re looking for is not Pauline Carter.”

  “Pauline?” They hadn’t even mentioned her, the woman hadn’t even crossed Ivy’s mind. She glanced over her shoulder where she could see the tiny dots of light from the candles still gathered together. They were singing. “Why would I think—” but when she turned back, Calla was gone.