Monster

by Jennifer Blackstream

  “No wonder Mia hates him.” Peasblossom studied the trophies. “Ha! This one’s from Pee-Wee Football!”

  “He saved every award he ever got, and took the time to display each one of them.” I walked the perimeter of the room, ghosting my hand over a solid oak credenza burdened with more tributes to the great and powerful Oliver Dale. “There’s not a single picture of anyone else anywhere. No family, no friends. Nothing.”

  “You already knew he had no family, and by now you should guess he had no friends.” Peasblossom squinted at the label on a plaque. “This one’s dated last month.”

  A bookshelf near the far wall caught my eye, and I strode over to it. The first shelf bowed under the weight of yearbooks and school mementos, including a stuffed eagle with a football sewn to its foot. I pulled a yearbook out at random and opened it up.

  As I’d expected, high school had been a grand time for Oliver. There were pictures of him everywhere, most of them featuring a handsome youth in a football uniform. Oliver scoring a touchdown, Oliver celebrating a win surrounded by screaming fans, Oliver half hugging a cheerleader as she draped her scantily clad body around him. Arrogance filled his features, screamed out of the image in the jut of his chin and the fact that in none of the pictures was he smiling at anyone else. No, Oliver’s attention remained on the camera. Posing as if he already knew he’d be keeping that photo forever and he wanted to capture as much of his glory as possible. The final picture showed him hefting a college sweatshirt into the air, but I couldn’t make out the whole name.

  “The Golden Boy of North Olmsted,” I murmured. I glanced at the trophies again. “He rode his fame till the end, didn’t he?”

  On a whim, I flipped through the photos, looking for Stephen Reid. No luck. I tried the other yearbooks, accounting for a possible difference in age, but still no Stephen. I looked around for a college yearbook, but couldn’t find one. That seemed strange.

  “He was a jerk as a kid too,” Peasblossom said from her perch on my shoulder. She pointed to the pictures. “He drew wings on a lot of them. Is that supposed to be some creepy ‘I wish they were dead’ thing? Like giving them their wings?”

  “No, I don’t think so. The school’s mascot is the eagle. Those wings are printed around certain pictures to indicate those students participated in the athletics program.” I arched an eyebrow at some other pictures. “Those notes, however, are handwritten.”

  Oliver had not been any kinder back then than he’d been at the time of his death. Several of the girls’ pictures had…well, Oliver’s “thoughts” on how the ladies had…performed. Romantically speaking. Some girls had Oliver’s helpful comments about what they needed to make them “layable,” and most of the boys’ pictures had his estimation of their shortcomings and why they weren’t as wonderful as Oliver himself.

  “What does that word mean?” Peasblossom asked, pointing to a word above a picture of a particularly well-developed young lady.

  My cheeks warmed, and I slammed the book shut, missing Peasblossom’s outstretched hand by a hair. “Never mind. The point is, Stephen didn’t go to school with Oliver.”

  Peasblossom glowered at me, the hand I’d nearly missed crushing tucked against her body. She gave me one last dirty look, then flew off in a huff. I should have felt bad. She was older than me, and by all rights, I shouldn’t treat her like a child. But she was just so innocent sometimes, so childlike. It was hard to remember how old she was. I glanced at the book and my cheeks burned. Besides, there were some words that just weren’t appropriate. For anyone.

  Shaking off the slimy feeling induced by Oliver’s high-school vocabulary, I reached for my magic and threw it outward in a thin silver net. The magic tingled against my senses, probing the room for any sign of magic.

  Nothing. Not a glimmer or a sparkle, nothing to suggest Oliver had anything even as simple as a lucky charm.

  For a while, I stood there, staring at the wall of Oliver Worship. A light weight landed on my shoulder, tugging on a lock of my hair. “What’s wrong?”

  “Why did she assign me this case?”

  “What?”

  I glanced at Peasblossom and nodded toward the yearbooks, the wall. “Everything we discover about this man, this victim, paints him in a horrible light. He loved himself and hated everyone else. He was cruel to animals and unpleasant to anyone who crossed his path.”

  Peasblossom stroked the shell of my ear. “Isn’t it important to solve murders even when the victim is a bad person?”

  Peasblossom’s voice lacked judgment, but the words still stung. “It’s not that. Look at our suspects. Three of the four are human. And then there’s the investigation. So far, everything we’ve accomplished could have been achieved by a human investigator. Even the victim was human. If Liam’s right, and Stephen is innocent… I don’t understand why she wanted me working this murder.”

  “Beats me,” Peasblossom said. “Who can say why that daffy witch does anything?”

  I dismissed the spell with a wave of disgust and left the apartment, locking up behind me. “There’s got to be something I’m missing.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  I startled and glanced to the side. Rosie, Anthony’s neighbor, stood outside her apartment with her arms full of groceries.

  “Were you talking to me?” she asked.

  I gave her a weak smile. “Sorry. No, I was just talking to myself.”

  She smiled. “I do that all the time.”

  I returned the smile and took a few steps toward her. “Can I help with those?”

  She glanced at the paper bag of groceries in one arm and the three plastic bags hanging from the other, weighing down the hand trying to put the key in the lock. “If you wouldn’t mind?”

  I took the bag and stood beside her as she shifted the other bags in her grip and slid the key into the lock. The door swung open, taking her keys with it, and she grunted in frustration.

  “Thank you.” She stumbled inside, leaving the keys behind in the door and trudging toward the dining table with a little more momentum than she’d intended. She eased the bags down, careful not to smash any fragile contents, then accepted the last bag from me before retrieving her keys and closing the apartment door.

  “You’re welcome.” I paused, watching her inspect the bags before unloading the contents onto the table. “Could I ask you a question?”

  “Certainly. Can I offer you a drink?”

  “No thank you.” I took my cell phone out of the side pocket of my pouch and tapped a few buttons before holding it up to Rosie. “Do you recognize this man?”

  She looked at Stephen’s picture for a moment, her brow furrowed, then shook her head. “I’m sorry. Should I?”

  I sighed and replaced the phone. “I guess not. I was just wondering if he was a friend of Oliver’s.”

  Rosie snorted and lifted a tub of chocolate ice cream out of a damp plastic bag. “Not likely. He didn’t seem to have any friends.”

  “Well, he’s a police officer too. Is there any chance he responded to a complaint? Maybe Oliver met him that way?”

  “Not that I saw.” She paused with the freezer open, the tub of ice cream forgotten in her grasp. “Wait a minute. Oliver might have had one friend. At least he said he did. A cop.”

  “Did he mention a name? Stephen Reid?”

  Rosie shook her head and put the ice cream on the top shelf of the freezer. “He never gave a name. Just liked to brag about it. Any time someone threatened to call the cops on him the way he did on everyone else, he’d laugh and say go ahead, that his ‘friend’ would take care of it. He bragged that he hadn’t got so much as a speeding ticket since college.”

  My pulse skipped a beat, and I leaned forward. “Can you remember anything else he might have said about this person, anything that might help me find them?”

  “No.” She closed the freezer and returned to the shopping bags. “I wish I could be more help. I don’t even know if he and the cop were really friends. To
be honest, it’d be easier to believe he was blackmailing someone.”

  “Blackmailing a cop?”

  She shrugged and carried a bag of cherries to the fridge. “He wouldn’t have been above something underhanded like that. A man down the hall moved out a few months ago. There was a rumor that Oliver caught him violating his lease. Something stupid like letting a friend stay with him for too long. Supposedly, Oliver threatened to report him to the landlord if he didn’t give up his highly coveted front-row parking space. That’s not the same thing as blackmailing a cop, but…”

  I didn’t disagree with her. Generally speaking, someone willing to resort to blackmailing someone else didn’t discriminate. If Oliver would blackmail someone in the building, there was no reason to think he wouldn’t blackmail a cop, given the right leverage. So Oliver had a connection with someone on the force, and it could have been blackmail.

  Still, that could be a coincidence. Just because one of my suspects was a cop didn’t mean he was the one Rosie had mentioned. For all I knew, Oliver had been lying about his supposed cop associate. Or he may have had a friend in the local police, unrelated to the rangers. I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. I needed more information.

  I needed to talk to Stephen.

  I opened my eyes and smiled at Rosie. “Well, I should be going.”

  She gave me an apologetic smile and leaned against the fridge. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

  “You’ve already been a big help, more than you know.”

  I waved goodbye and let myself out. Peasblossom waited until we were in the hallway before speaking. “How can we confirm if Oliver was blackmailing Stephen?”

  I tripped over the last step, my heart leaping into my throat as I pinwheeled my arms in a desperate attempt to land on my feet. Peasblossom clung to my hair like a heavy barrette, growling at me when I regained my balance.

  “Slow down before you get us killed.”

  “You can fly,” I pointed out for the millionth time. I put a hand over my racing heart, relearning how to breathe. I needed to watch where I was going.

  “You can drink water,” she responded. “Doesn’t stop you from guzzling Coke.”

  I ignored the jab and continued down the stairs. “We’re going to see Stephen.” I exited the apartment building and headed for my car.

  “He won’t let you in,” Peasblossom said. She jumped to the passenger seat as soon as I sat down, turning on the GPS even as she disparaged my plan.

  “Oh, yes, he will. I’m done letting werewolves shut me out of this investigation. He’ll talk to me, or he can bloody well wait for someone else to take that collar off.”

  “Liam will be cross.” The GPS beeped as she called up Stephen’s address from the list of recent destinations. “The one thing he’s been crystal clear about is that he doesn’t want a witch interrogating his wolf.”

  “Well, he had a chance to be present when I talked to him and he passed, so he can live with the consequences.”

  I held on to that confidence on the drive to Stephen’s, but all the same, I was relieved to find his driveway empty. I’d been fairly certain Liam would still be questioning Anthony, but I’d had no guarantee. There’d been a significant chance that the alpha would be here, telling Stephen they had a suspect. And Peasblossom was right: if Liam ever suspected I would question Stephen, he’d be here to stop me in a heartbeat.

  I knocked harder than I’d meant to, the adrenaline pumping through my system acting in much the same way as too much espresso. The door swung open. The werewolf in question towered over me, still wearing the rumpled T-shirt and jeans he’d worn yesterday. He hadn’t combed his hair, and it hung haphazardly over his head, giving the impression he’d just woken up. As soon as he saw me, Stephen’s jaw tightened.

  “Sergeant Osbourne told me not to talk to you.”

  It didn’t take a witch to see he was upset, and in pain. It was to be expected when he wore that collar, especially given the circumstances under which he’d come to put it on. The fact that, despite his obvious distress, I couldn’t feel the hum of his aura, couldn’t feel his energy at all, made my stomach twist.

  “You have a lot of nerve looking at me like that when you’re the one that put this thing on me.” His voice was a low rasp, almost a growl. He tightened his grip on the doorframe until his knuckles turned white. He looked like he wanted to say more, but he swallowed it back.

  I found my voice just in time. “I know about Oliver’s ‘friend.’”

  Stephen froze, the door halting a split second before it would have clicked shut. Stephen pulled it open, and when he looked at me this time, his face was a blank mask.

  “Oliver’s friend?”

  I nodded. “We need to talk.”

  He shifted from one foot to another, his hand braced on the edge of the doorframe. “Liam doesn’t want me talking to you.”

  The words lacked the ring of finality they’d had the first time. It felt like progress, so I stood straighter. “Your alpha is very protective. But I assure you, I’m not here to manipulate you, or magically bully you into a confession. I’m here for the truth.” I met his gaze and held it. “You and I both understand it would behoove you if we spoke privately before Liam figures it out.”

  An eerie quiet settled over his body, and he dropped his arm from the doorframe. “All right. Come in.”

  He held the door open for me, but he didn’t step back more than a foot. His position and the narrow doorway forced me to brush against him as I entered. His chest rose and fell as he inhaled deeply. Scenting me. Probably to see if I was lying. Or nervous.

  An abrupt sizzle of energy erupted where our bodies touched, the hum of his aura seething against the barrier of the collar’s binding. My nerves spasmed, and I pressed against him before I could stop myself, chasing that energy. As soon as I realized what I was doing, I overcompensated and leaned away.

  It would have been too much to ask that he not notice my reaction. I felt his scrutiny on me as I passed him to enter the room, the weight of an assessing stare. Great. All I needed was another werewolf convinced I was trying to siphon off his lifeforce. Or flirt with him. I smoothed my hands down my coat, straightening the collar. Well, at least that answered my question. It was shifters in general, not just Liam.

  I jumped at the ominous sound of the deadbolt sliding into place.

  “You shouldn’t have let him get between you and the exit,” Peasblossom whispered, once again using my ear as a microphone. “No one else knows you’re here!”

  My stomach dropped, but I forced myself to stand tall and turn to meet Stephen’s gaze. “He can’t hurt me. The collar would send him into unconsciousness if he tried.”

  I didn’t bother to whisper, since he’d hear me anyway. Just as he’d heard Peasblossom.

  “And besides, I’m here to help. Isn’t that right, Stephen?”

  The bound werewolf stood in front of the door, watching me. Now that I’d brushed against him, I couldn’t get rid of that sensation of his aura against mine, the chaotic heat of his beast trapped inside him. Liam hadn’t been kidding when he’d said requesting the collar had been serious. I couldn’t imagine it was having the best effect on Stephen.

  “I heard about your deal with your mentor,” Stephen said finally. He stalked around the grey couch, moving with a predator’s even grace. He sat down on the section between me and the door. “I can’t think of anything a witch—or any other creature—wouldn’t do for an unlimited, unqualified favor from Mother Hazel.”

  Fear made way for anger, and I snapped my mouth shut, swallowing a sharp retort as I reflected on the gossipy natures of werewolf packs. Worse than kindergartners. “If you understand my mentor at all, then you’ll know what she would do if she suspected I’d sacrificed my principles to get that favor. She doesn’t want just any answer. She wants the right one.”

  Stephen drew a finger down the arm of the couch. “Is that why you’re here? You want me to give you th
e answer?”

  “I think I already know the answer,” I responded evenly. “I’m here because I want to give you a chance to provide…context.”

  He fell silent, but he didn’t look away from me. Over and over, he drew his finger over the surface of the couch arm. Something about the movement, the drag of his fingernail over the material, made me imagine a claw on that hand. It provided images of what that claw would do if it were dragged down something softer than the couch. Meatier. Something that bled.

  His brown eyes remained plain, ordinary brown, no hint of wolf gold, but that wasn’t as comforting as it might have been if he hadn’t been wearing the collar. “Did your mentor specify an outcome?”

  I tore my attention from the couch. “Specify an outcome?”

  “Does getting that favor require only that you figure out how Oliver Dale died, or did your mentor specify you need a conviction? Did she dictate a specific punishment?”

  He’d said “how Oliver Dale died” not “who killed Oliver Dale.” He wasn’t admitting anything yet, was waiting to see how much I knew.

  I circled my end of the sectional couch to sit opposite him with the coffee table between us. I hadn’t been lying when I told Peasblossom he couldn’t attack me with that collar on—the magic would disable him before he could raise a hand to me. But just because my brain knew that, didn’t mean my instincts weren’t calmer with a piece of furniture between us.

  “Mother Hazel would never do that,” I said. “She knows, perhaps better than anyone, that there are always circumstances to consider. One punishment does not fit all.”

  Stephen tilted his face up, and his nostrils flared. Scenting whether I was lying.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened,” I said, “and we’ll go from there. Give me the story—your story.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you think happened, and I’ll tell you if you’re right?” he countered.