by Gina LaManna
“Dani—”
“I suppose in a way I was happy. Not that really carefree, true happy you see when a couple is absolutely, totally in love, but happier than when I’d been wallowing in the months after Matthew and I broke up.”
“You didn’t wallow. You went through a grieving process. You and Matthew dated for two years. It’s fair for you to have a few months to grieve.”
“We both know that I was desperate,” I said. “By the time I met him, I just wanted anyone to love me.”
“You’re the least desperate person I know,” Nash said. “You opened yourself to love, and you fell for the wrong person. It could’ve happened to anyone. That’s on him—not you. Risking your heart for love is one of the greatest things you can ever do—one of the bravest. And when it works, it pays off for you.”
“How do you know?” I snapped. “I don’t see a ring on your finger.”
Nash straightened. “Just because I haven’t found the right person doesn’t mean I’ve never been in love. I’ve been burned, and I’m sure I’ve burned others. Yes, it sucks. But I never thought you should have let it affect your job. You are the best Reserve the borough has ever seen.”
“I’m not the best if the murderer is sharing my bed at night and I didn’t even know it!” I snarled the last words, but it sounded like a roar in the silence of night.
We both stopped moving, and luckily, the world seemed to be empty. A full moon could do that. Save for the distant howls from The Depth and the creaky sounds of late night life shifting and settling, the world was quiet.
“I don’t know what more to tell you.” Nash said slowly. “Nobody believed you to be at fault—of anything. Trenton Brimstone killed two people of his own accord. Most of the force agrees that he targeted you before the murders so that when they happened, nobody would look twice at him. It was a cold, pre-meditated strategy of the worst kind.”
“Great. He preyed on the weakling. How does that make me feel better?”
“So what you have a weakness? We all do. It’s the part that makes us human. That gives us a soul. That separates us from animals.”
On cue, werewolves sounded in the distance, and I was reminded of the bloodthirsty look in the wolf’s eyes earlier tonight. That was all animal, I thought. Humanity burned off into instincts.
“Nobody is faulting you for opening yourself up and falling for him,” Nash continued. “He was a charmer, a con man, a psychopath.”
“How could I not have seen the psychopath?” I felt my legs beginning to crumble. Nash must have realized this because he gathered me up and led me to the nearest bench beside the dusty dirt road that led toward the pizzeria. “That’s my job—my life, Nash. I studied killers. Learned their ways, their movements, their habits. If I’d just looked closer at him, I could’ve seen...”
“You did see. In time to stop him from killing again.”
“That’s not good enough.”
I sank my head into my hands and let the moonlight wash over the back of my neck. I didn’t cry—crying was for sadness, for sympathy, for pity, and I wanted none of that. The guilt sometimes felt like too much to bear alone.
Nash was right. It wasn’t my fault, but it sure as hell felt like it.
And the day I’d realized it...the day I’d looked over at his face and the truth had snapped into place—the day I confronted the man to whom I’d just said ‘I love you’ hours before—that day had ended my career. Because if my instincts weren’t good enough to recognize the man I had thought I loved as nothing more than a monster, how could I trust myself to do my job?
I stood. “Let’s go.”
The conversation was over, and we moved more quickly toward the pizza parlor. Nash watched me, but there was nothing more interesting than the kick of dust at our feet for him to study, so eventually, he turned his gaze forward.
“The HoloDisc,” he said. “You have it?”
“Planning to take another look when we get home. Hey, have you put out an alert on Grey yet?”
“Yes. I initiated one at the hospital. Not a single ping has come in yet,” he said. “Then again, I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. If he’s one of the pack, he’ll be running around The Depth tonight and good riddance to him. We’ll nab him in the morning. It’s too much of a hassle to take down a fully transformed wolf.”
“Speaking of...” I licked my lips and asked the question that’d been hovering on the horizon. “What happened to the one tonight? The wolf your men chased away from Lorraine?”
“He got away—had too much of a head start by the time we arrived,” Nash said with a grimace. “We followed the blood trail as far as we could—Matthew really nailed him with that injury—but it’s like he vanished. Just disappeared at one point, and we lost all scent. It’s bizarre, Dani. I don’t know what to make of it.”
“He wasn’t like any werewolf I’ve ever seen,” I said. “I still wonder if that’s truly what he—or she—was.”
“It has to be. The strength, the build, the look.” Nash contemplated. “It must be.”
“But the Residuals.”
“Don’t underestimate the horrors and wonders of drugs,” Nash said, his own past flickering behind his eyes. “Over the years, I’ve seen things I thought impossible happen when someone has been using—gnomes casting spells, humans defeating vampires, the strongest of wolves dying from a cut in their paw...there’s no predicting whether it’ll make the user the strongest creature in the world or kill them. And there’s rarely an in-between.”
“I’m just saying that we can’t know whether it was a true werewolf or some variation,” I said. “We have to keep our mind open to the possibility of a new breed.”
“I’ve never seen a werewolf affected by drugs while they’re transformed,” Nash admitted. “Usually, if one of the shifters is on SpellHash before the full moon, the drugs burn through their system by the time they change, like most spells. It’s a defense mechanism. I’ve never seen one last, and that’s the part that scares me to death.”
I nodded as we came around to the pizzeria. “You coming inside?”
He gave a shake of his head. “Jack’s probably already asleep, so he can be your bodyguard for tonight.” Nash winked, knowing how much I hated to be babysat. “Enjoy.”
“Are you going back to the hospital?” I knew my brother well enough to know he wouldn’t be going to an empty house to sleep. If there was work to be done, he’d take a quick nap and get back to it. Like I used to do.
“Might as well.”
“I need you to do me a favor.” I faced him, looking straight into his eyes as I spoke. “There won’t be any Residuals left from the original crime scene at this point. None on the murderer’s hands, either. I would like to turn my badge over. I’ll still help on the case, but...I can’t be considered a Special Consultant any longer. My skills are rendered useless.”
Nash watched me, his eyes flicking between mine for a long moment as he waited for a punch line. When none came, he threw his head back and laughed.
I crossed my arms. “What’s funny about that?”
“You weren’t brought back only because of your Residuals ability. I mean sure, that’s part of your talent—like Matthew is ridiculously fast and can hear a ghost fart from three towns over, but that’s not why we have him on staff, either.”
“But—”
“If I accepted your badge and presented it to Matthew, I’d have fangs in my neck before I could explain.” Nash gave me a smile that wasn’t meant to be patronizing but came off that way. “I’m sorry, I can’t accept.”
“Special Consultant means that I have some sort of special consulting skill I’m offering to the department.”
“Get some rest. You’re talking crazy.”
“Nash! Don’t pretend this is cute with me. They’re paying me.”
“Yes, and what a generous salary us cops make,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “It’s why we all do it, don’t you know? For the money.�
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“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” I pulled the badge out of my pocket. “Just give it to him, will you? I’m still going to work the case.”
Nash kept his hands in his pocket and the amusement drained in his voice. “No offense, but shut up, Dani. Matthew came to you because you’re smart, talented, and perceptive. We didn’t only need your ability to spot Residuals on the case—yes, it’s an amazing talent—but that’s not why he asked you. You are a good cop. I know it, Matthew knows it, and deep down, I think you know it too, and you’re disguising it with this.”
He threw his hand up at the pizza parlor that I’d spent eight months working to perfect. To hone the level of cozy meets family, to secure the right depth of pizza crust and the widest array of toppings. To create a business plan that would lead to affordable meals for people in the borough and still turn a profit that’d allow me to survive. At the time, it’d felt like a passion project. Now that it was done and running...I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s all it had been. A distraction.
“Goodnight,” I said to Nash. “Tell Matthew I’ll hand it in tomorrow—or don’t. I can tell him myself.”
“I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have said that.” Nash reached for me, pulled my arm back. “Come on, it was supposed to be a pep talk. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I never wanted you to leave the force. The only person who fought harder than me to keep you there was Matthew.”
“I know. But that wasn’t your choice to make.” I gave a quick smile. “Goodnight, Nash.”
I let myself into the pizzeria and shut the door behind me. I leaned against it, my heart still pounding as I waited several minutes for Nash to leave. I never did hear the retreat of his footsteps, but I glimpsed the shine of moonlight against his hair as he strode away from the shop.
He’d meant well, but it still hurt too much to hear the truth. Whether or not Trenton had been my fault, whether or not I should have quit the force—I’d made those choices, and they were done. I was the owner of DeMarco’s Pizza and a former cop. That was all.
I’d turn over my badge in the morning and assist on the case as needed—just like all the other hard-working detectives. I locked the door with a huff. Life was unfair.
I hadn’t asked to be born a Reserve, and I hated that the skill was wasted on someone as ordinary as me. I was the almost-youngest of five kids. A daughter. A sister. A friend. A woman. A cop. But that was it—everyone could be those things. Why the gods had hit me with the Residuals stick as a baby was a mystery to me, and sometimes I thought life would be just a little bit easier if I’d been born normal.
Once Nash had disappeared from sight, I allowed the thoughts to slip from my mind—a skill I’d perfected over the last year. I stood in the silence, thinking nothing—absolutely nothing—for one blissful moment.
At this hour, the pizza shop had gone dark. Most nights, we stayed open until the late hours of the morning. On full moons, everything closed early. No shop wanted to be the only one with their doors open—serving the bedraggled werewolves as the moon’s spell lapsed and they wandered back to town, exhausted and irritable and still on edge. Though probably, I mused as I headed to the kitchen and studied the sheen of cleanliness there, it would be an excellent business model. The wolves had to be starved after a night spent traipsing the woods.
Or, I thought as a sickening sensation hit my gut, they might not be hungry at all. I’d never asked a wolf how he fed when transformed, but simple evolution and biology was probably a good enough indicator as to how they took care of that basic need.
“I’m sorry, but I heard everything.” The voice came from the darkness, a pale whisper of apology. “I’m really sorry, Detective—I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but the window was open, and there was all this howling, and I couldn’t sleep.”
“Willa?” I pressed a hand to my chest and flicked on the light. “You scared me! What are you doing here?”
“I hope you don’t mind, but your brother is a real macho man and insisted I not walk home tonight alone,” Willa said. “I Commed my mother—she’s fine without me, so I took the bench.”
With the light on, I took a few deep breaths to calm my racing nerves and studied the room in better detail. As expected, Jack was there sleeping, dead to the world. Willa’s head poked up from a nearby bench where she’d apparently set herself up with a makeshift bed.
Once the shock and annoyance had faded, another round of frustration set in as I caught sight of Willa wearing the same clothes she’d worn during the day, minus the outer layers. She had on a thin tank top that showed off the soft curve of her shoulders, and she’d piled her blond hair high on her head in the cutest of messy buns. On me, it’d all look ridiculous. On her, it looked both in vogue and adorable.
Jack had so graciously—insert eye roll—offered her a skimpy bedsheet he must’ve pulled from the closet in the upstairs hall and a pillow from my couch.
“I’m so sorry, Willa,” I said. “Jack is a huge idiot. He’s a full-grown man, but I swear, he’s still a child inside.”
“I knew this was a horrible idea.” Her eyes widened as she scrambled to her feet, revealing she wore nothing but boy shorts. “I shouldn’t have stayed. I told Jack it was dumb, but he insisted, and you know me—Dumbelina over here just listened to what he said. I’ll get going now.”
“Put some clothes on or you’ll freeze!” I averted my eyes, but apparently, it wasn’t needed as she began dressing while still holding my eye contact. I knew most women were more open with nudity than I was, but I hadn’t prepared for this. I liked Willa, but I wasn’t sure I liked her that much. “I didn’t mean he was an idiot for letting you stay; I meant he was an idiot for thinking it was acceptable to give you the bench. Come on upstairs—I’ll get you some real pajamas and you can stay on the couch.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I have a bed of my own at home. I’ll just be going now,” she gushed. “But thank you so much for the opportunity to work here. I loved it. I hope Jack thinks I did a good job; I think we sold a bunch of pizza, and we were busy all evening until closing, so that’s good, right?”
“Look at this place—it sparkles!” I gave her a broad smile. “Willa, relax. Come upstairs. You’re welcome to stay with me, but I refuse to let you sleep on a bench.”
Willa’s eyes shifted to the corner of the room to where a sleeping bag shifted in the booth. “What about—”
“Eh. My brother deserves the bench. Let him stay.” I waved at Jack, who must’ve been too lazy to walk home again after closing. I really should look at putting an extra futon somewhere so that he had a relatively decent place to curl up, since I didn’t see his laziness going away anytime soon.
“He’s really nice,” Willa said, gathering the sheet around her body and tiptoeing across the room. I grabbed her purse and a few other things and led her to the stairs. “He showed me what to do, and he was so generous—except, you should know I did tell him off.”
“I heard.” I laughed. “I like you more for it. I’m sorry I didn’t warn him to keep his hands and eyes off you beforehand.”
“Oh, it was totally innocent, and I didn’t mind at all. I just—I don’t want to sabotage this job, Detective. I really think I’m going to like working for you.”
“Call me Dani and consider your job permanently un-sabotaged.” I couldn’t help but grin at her. “I’m just glad I didn’t have to arrest my brother for bothering you.”
Willa blushed and muttered something about Jack being cute. I pretended not to hear it because my brothers were never cute, in my opinion. I fluctuated between feeling annoyance toward them and a genuine fondness. That was about as big of an emotional spectrum as I could muster for the DeMarco boys.
I showed Willa the bathroom, the towels, the workings of the shower, and told her to make herself at home.
“Oh, thank you,” she said, taking a towel and holding it to her cheeks. “I love the smell of pizza—just not on my face, you know? Also, is i
t totally rude of me to say I’m hungry? I mean, Jack gave me pizza, but I guess the adrenaline of the day just wore on me. Shall we order takeout?”
While she showered, I yanked open my fridge to look for food. Most takeout wouldn’t be available due to the full moon. So, we were stuck with a smorgasbord of whatever I could find between the fridge and the cupboards.
“Gentle, gentle,” Fred warned as I grasped him by the handle and yanked. “What the heck are you thinking, woman? You just about tipped me over.”
“Why aren’t you more interesting?” I snapped at the fridge. “Why can’t you be filled with dainty little pastries and delicious things?”
“Because you didn’t put them in me, asshole,” Fred said. “And it’s not like you need them, anyway. I’ve seen the way you plow through a box of donuts when left on the counter. It’s better not to have that stuff lying around.”
“I just wanted a fridge, not a counselor.”
“How’d your night go, dahlin’?” asked Marla. “Did you see that fabulous vampire?”
“Yep, and a dead body,” I said. “Romantic.”
If a coat rack could scowl, she would have scowled. “What happened to etiquette? To ladies being home in the kitchen and raising cherub-faced babies, and letting the men do the dirty work? I loved those days. They really loved me too, you know. All these dinner parties—I had the most handsome of coats thrown on me in those days. Now, all I ever get is a spare set of keys and your ugly leather thing.”
“It’s not ugly!” I couldn’t believe I was defending my clothing choices to a coat rack. Then again, my life wasn’t exactly normal. “It’s in style these days.”
“Sure,” she said, and I could hear the impossible eye roll. “Whatever you say, darling. Now, do tell us who the delightful young woman is who just trounced through here? She does seem like a party to me. Quite sunny, don’t you think?”
Willa could absolutely be described as sunny. Bouncy, perky—nice. Willa was nice. Pleasant. Wonderful, really. It was amazing she hadn’t gotten sick of me yet, what with my crass attitude and underwhelming personality. I had no problems with my personality, I just wouldn’t qualify as...delightful.