by Sarah Biglow
The flurry of follow-up questions turned into white noise as Taggart turned from the podium. As his hands lifted from the edges of the podium his jacket sleeve rode up and I caught something smudged and dark on the soft flesh of his left wrist.
“Do you see that?” I asked. I immediately snatched the phone and tried to zoom in, only to remember it was a live feed.
“See what? A half-assed press briefing that is only going to send the public into a panic and inundate us with false leads for days?” Jacquie quipped.
I gave a noncommittal sound as I tried to commit what little I’d seen on his arm to memory. I’d only caught the faintest edge, but it looked like the whorl on the bottom of the Order’s brand. So far he hadn’t given me any reason not to trust him, but if he was with the Order, there was no telling what he’d do to throw us off the real scent of our killers.
Seventeen
With a few swipes, we had Kevin’s ex-girlfriend’s address and were on the road, heading back toward my own stomping ground. If the information we had was accurate, she was in a fourth-floor walk-up out near Boston College. We pulled into a free spot and, armed with Kevin’s file, we rang the buzzer. No one came on over the intercom system, but we got lucky and an older gentleman came out of the building a few minutes later. He gave us a courteous nod and held the door open for us.
Déjà vu hit me as we walked upstairs. It wasn’t the same as notifying Mrs. Cho of finding her husband’s body but the trek up to question a potential witness filled me with the same nervous energy. I reached the apartment door first and banged hard twice. I heard footsteps from within and took a step back, reaching for my badge, when the door swung open with enough force to send it slamming into the opposite wall.
“What do you want?” a guy in his thirties with a scraggly beard and buzzcut demanded.
“We’re with the police,” I answered and held up my badge.
His eyes went wide and he coughed. “The pot’s legal. I swear.”
“We’re looking for Gabrielle,” I said, ignoring his marijuana-fueled confession.
“She’s at work.”
“And where would that be?” Jacquie interjected.
“A little hole-in-the-wall Italian place in the North End.”
I tried not to roll my eyes. “You realize that describes almost every restaurant in the area. We’re going to need a name.”
Buzzcut disappeared into the apartment and appeared with a business card for a restaurant I hadn’t heard of. “Great. Thanks.”
“So, we’re cool about the pot, right?”
I smiled. “Have a good day.”
We were halfway down the stairwell when Jacquie asked, “How do you feel about an early lunch?”
Just before 11:30 we sat in the back booth of a cramped restaurant with sticky laminated tables. I wasn’t expecting greatness from the cuisine, but we’d specifically requested to sit in Gabrielle’s section so our trip was at least headed in the right direction. A busser brought by glasses of room temperature water before Gabrielle stopped by. Time had deepened the scowl lines around her mouth and her hair was shorter and done in a pixie cut, which mildly resembled Kayla’s, but it was definitely the girl from the photo. Despite the chilly weather outside, she wore a shirt that showed off her shoulder and the faded tattoo. The sight of the mark in person sparked panic, tightening my chest so it hurt to breathe. Almost on autopilot a burst of strawberry-scented magic erupted around me. The waitress’s nose flared and she took an almost imperceptible step away from me.
“Are you Gabrielle?” I asked before the girl could speak.
“Yeah. What can I get you?” The flatness of her tone gave away how bored she was standing there having to wait on us.
“A few minutes of your time to answer some questions,” I said, flashing my badge.
Her back went ramrod straight and her eyes darted side to side, as if to check if anyone had noticed. “I can’t really talk now. My boss can’t know you’re here.”
“We’re just patrons asking about the lunch specials,” Jacquie said in a soothing voice.
Gabrielle’s shoulders relaxed a fraction of an inch and she dug the tip of her pen into her pad so forcefully that I could see it pierce several sheets of paper. “Talk fast then.”
“We know you and Kevin Ellery were together a few years ago when he went missing. You were his girlfriend.”
“Ex. We broke up.”
I leaned forward a little. “Why?”
“He was getting too possessive. I told this to the police before like a long time ago. Why are you bringing it up now?”
“Have you seen the news this morning?” I prompted.
She shook her head. “Did something happen? Did they find Kevin?”
“Not yet. But he’s a person of interest in some pretty serious crimes. When’s the last time you talked to him?”
“Like five years ago when we broke up. If he’s mixed up in crimes, that’s on him. I don’t have anything to do with him anymore.” She craned her neck in the direction of the kitchen and then looked back at us. “Can you please just order something?”
I flipped through the menu and ordered the meat lasagna. Jacquie went with the chicken parmesan and I silently prayed we didn’t end up with food poisoning. As it turned out, despite the subpar décor, the food was pretty decent. As we ate, I glanced across the table at my partner, working up the courage to speak.
“We’re good, right?” Jacquie asked first.
The forkful of lasagna fell back to the plate as I stared at her. How had she known I’d been psyching myself up to ask the same thing? “I think so. I mean I assume you were the reason I had to pay a visit to the department shrink, but I get it. I was acting a little crazy. And I am working through some shit about my past. It’s a work in progress but I’m trying.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but I’d made the promise to Desmond that I’d try.
Jacquie set her knife and fork down. “I was just trying to look out for you. I get that it’s been hard. You’re young and you’ve made it this far by doing some good police work, but a promotion like this is a big change. I just don’t want to see you throw that away by being overzealous. I’ve seen up and comers climb too high and fall and I almost got taken down in the aftermath. I just needed to know I had a partner whose judgment I could count on.”
“I’m sorry. I … I didn’t know that.”
“No reason you should,” she answered and turned back to her food.
“I’m sorry about whatever happened.”
She gave me a thin-lipped smile. “It was a long time ago. Not long after I made detective myself.”
That confession only made things worse. I hated lying to Jacquie about the existence of magic. About this case, everything. Her fears about me losing my shit had been rooted in her own experiences, which only solidified that I couldn’t tell her now. She needed to believe I was okay. Maybe once this case was done, I’d tell her everything, magical secrecy be damned. Maybe then the guilt on my conscience would lessen.
I shot a look over to where Gabrielle stood, texting on her phone. “Do you believe her that she hasn’t seen Kevin in five years? And now she’s over there furiously texting somebody.”
Jacquie nodded. “She’s hiding something, that’s for sure.”
“How much you want to bet the person on the other end of that text thread is Kevin?”
“No way to know from here.” Her mouth hung open like she wanted to say something else, but she stayed silent and turned back to her meal.
She may not have had a way to tell what was happening with Gabrielle, but I did. Glancing over my shoulder, I spotted Gabrielle heading through the row of booths toward the front of the restaurant. Inhaling, I focused on her, sharpening my hearing and manipulating the soundwaves around me just enough to catch that she was going for a break. I watched as she stepped through the front door, took a few strides from the building and lit up a cigarette. I slid from the booth and started to follow.
> “Where are you going?” Jacquie asked, catching my left wrist in her outstretched hand.
Thinking fast, I spotted a dessert display case near the front of the store and said, “Checking out dessert.”
I weaved through the other servers and settled in front of the display. It was as good as I was likely to get cover wise and its proximity to Gabrielle meant I could expend less energy trying to spy on her. She paced outside, phone pressed to her ear, taking drags from the cigarette. The pendant around my neck warmed as I extended my range of hearing through the glass panel of the door and windows, pulling in the sound of her voice.
“Cops showed up at work asking about Kevin. What the hell is going on?”
Static and crackling white noise answered her, setting my temples throbbing. I massaged the spot right above my left eyebrow and waited for it to pass.
Finally, Gabrielle spoke again. “One of them’s got magic. I could feel it. Why are they looking for Kevin? What aren’t you telling me?”
More static and my vision started to blur. But by Gabrielle’s response I knew that she wasn’t working with Kevin. There was no reason she’d fake that kind of confusion on a phone call she didn’t know was being eavesdropped on. My heart sank a little at that realization. Here I thought we were getting closer to answers and we were just hitting more dead ends. Gabrielle ended her phone call and the buzzing in my brain dulled. She stamped out her cigarette and I darted back to the table, sliding on the fake vinyl seat just as the door closed behind her.
“See anything good?” Jacquie asked.
“No, not really.” Before I could say more, my phone buzzed in my pocket with an incoming text message.
Sliding the phone from my pocket, I took a cursory glance at the screen. A message from Desmond asking me to stop by the Authority headquarters as soon as possible. That couldn’t be good.
“Hey, I hate to do this, but I need to follow up on something.”
“Great, let’s go.”
“I need to do this alone. It’s an informant who gets jumpy if I show up with anyone else. And I don’t know if he’s even reliable. I don’t want to drag you all over the city if it isn’t going to pan out.” God, I hated how easily the lies came to me.
Jacquie stared at me for a minute and I waited for her to call me on my bullshit. “Okay. You’ll need to drop me at the morgue so I can get my car and then I’ll head back to the precinct and see if anything of note has come off the tip line. But you let me know the second you’ve got actionable information.”
“I swear, you’ll be the first person I call.”
Eighteen
A million different scenarios ran through my brain on the trip back out to Newton. Had they finished unscrambling the video files already or had they run into some unforeseen problem? Was Desmond going to try to recruit me back into the fold again? The uncertainty of what lay beyond the exterior of headquarters sent anxious jolts of energy through my body, making my skin prickle with electricity. I zapped myself twice on the door handle before I was even in the foyer.
Desmond waited for me in the hallway, a solemn look on his face. That wasn’t good. The last time I’d seen that expression was at my mother’s sham of a funeral when I learned no one was going to give her justice. I stopped a few feet from him, arms at my sides even though my instinct told me a fight was coming and I needed to protect myself.
“What’s going on? Your text was pretty vague,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral.
“The Council wanted to talk to you.”
“Not a chance in hell.” I did an about face and was two paces from the door when I felt an invisible hand grab me around both wrists and yank me backwards, spinning so I was facing Desmond again.
“You aren’t running away from this, Ezri. You may not like them and that’s fine. But things are happening regarding the Prophecy and they need to know what you know.”
I pushed a little of my own will into the mix, breaking his hold on me and sending him staggering back a couple paces. “You mean you haven’t told them everything I shared with you? I assumed you were their spy in the department.”
Anger flashed across his face. A rare expression that darkened his normally handsome features. “Grow the fuck up, Ezri. We all have to do things and deal with people we’d rather not. And you might be surprised. They have some suggestions that might help your case.”
“Just so you know, my partner was already suspicious of me running off. I had to lie to her to get here. If they jeopardize my relationship with her, I’m going to be pissed,” I snapped. Even more pissed. I had taken one step toward the spiral staircase when he caught my left arm and guided me toward the library. My brow furrowed at the change of venue.
“They aren’t meeting upstairs?”
“For this, they felt the library would be better suited.”
Great, a lecture.
I managed not to roll my eyes as Desmond led me into the room with its two walls of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Photographs of past generations were peppered among the shelves, propped up by the spines of pristinely kept tomes. The faces were just a blur as I took in the floor-to-ceiling tinted windows.
The last time I’d been in this space, the handful of tables had been placed evenly in the center of the room with their little green-shaded lamps situated dead center of each table. Today, the lamps sat unlit and the tables were pushed together to make one long rectangle. Thirteen chairs wreathed the table.
I counted only eleven people sitting in the room. They were all faces I recognized from my youth. Raymond Wallace—a slender man with a full salt and pepper beard and sharp brown eyes—had been the one to come to our apartment when my mother died. He’d shown little sympathy for our loss. It took all the willpower I possessed not to send him flying through the windows behind him and out into the street. J.T.’s mother, Bethany Somers, sat in one of the seats. She wouldn’t meet my gaze.
Desmond sat down in one of the remaining chairs and it became clear that the last one, at the head of the table, was for me. The moment I sat in that seat, the Council would be complete again. They all stared at me expectantly, as if the prodigal daughter had finally returned home, ready to forget the sins of the past. Well, I wasn’t ready to bury any hatchets or share conciliatory hugs with anyone.
“Ms. Trenton, thank you for coming on such short notice,” Wallace said in his scratchy tenor voice.
“It’s Detective,” I said through clenched teeth. I refused to sit.
“Of course. My apologies. It’s just we don’t use such formal titles here. As you may recall.”
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer you stick to the formal title.”
He nodded and looked around the table. “We’ve been keeping an eye on the deaths in the city of late. And after the press conference by the FBI we felt we needed to speak with you directly.”
“I’m listening.”
“Please sit down.” Belladonna’s calming voice drew my attention. I hadn’t noticed her sitting in one of the chairs.
I tasted cinnamon on my tongue and grit my teeth, trying to fight her magical nudge. Knowing that arguing would only prolong things, I sat on the very edge of the chair, ready to make a speedy exit if necessary. Wallace retrieved a thick volume from somewhere out of view—a side table or bag I couldn’t see—and slid it across the table to me. I caught it and noted the page about one third of the way through the tome, marked with a red sticky tab. All eyes followed me as I turned to the marked page on Gargoyles. A quick skim of the entry confirmed what I’d at least suspected about Kevin. Gargoyles were usually the result of overuse of magic but could also be the result of a dark practitioner’s curse. Super strong, they typically moved freely under the light of a full moon. If the curse was placed on them by another, they could be controlled by that spell caster. The sketch beside the entry depicted a man frozen in stone but with exquisite detail of the clothing and facial features.
“Kevin Ellery is a Gargoyle,” I
said to no one in particular. It explained almost everything about him. Why he’d gone missing five years ago. Someone had either cursed him or he’d done something so bad to land himself encased in stone and it also explained why he was resurfacing now. If he’d been cursed, someone could be reanimating him outside of the full moon to do their bidding. He may be an unwitting participant in all of this.
“We suspect he may be involved with the Order,” Wallace said.
“He’s definitely got a history of magic. And his ex-girlfriend was a member.” There was something else that my brain was trying to connect to this new piece of the puzzle.
The Public Gardens!
“Where do Gargoyles usually end up in the city?” I asked, turning my attention away from Wallace and on to Belladonna.
“Public spaces mostly. It’s easier to fit in with other statues. I’ve seen a few near the Copley branch of the Public Library.”
“This is actually helpful. I think I have an idea of where he might be.”
“Perhaps you should focus on where he will strike next,” Wallace said.
“If I can find him before he attacks, then it doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Except you know he’s working with someone else. You said there were two magical signatures at the scenes,” Desmond interjected.
“Find the fifth location and stop them there. Maybe I can catch both of them before they can finish whatever it is they’re planning,” I said, following what I guessed was my cousin’s logic.