by Amir Lane
I tucked my phone back into my coat pocket as I made my way up the steps to the townhouse. My foot slipped on a patch of ice, and I managed to catch myself on the railing to keep from falling backward. For a moment, I thought I could actually taste my heart.
The doorbell didn't make a sound when I pressed it, so I settled with knocking. A young man wearing a dark blue Ryerson University hoodie and a backward baseball cap opened the door. His eyes flickered over me and widened when he saw my badge. I really wasn't in the mood to waste time. He held his hands up in the universal, ‘I did nothing wrong’ motion.
“Look, whatever Jesse Mills says I'm selling, he's just pissed I won't sell him weed anymore. That's all I'm selling, which is totally legal now.”
I didn't roll my eyes, no matter how much I wanted to.
“It's legal to smoke, not grow and sell it. I'm looking for Brett Lindon Al-Amin and Smith Summers. Are you either of them?”
He shook his head.
“Brett’s in class but Smith’s here. Smith! There's a chick here to see you!”
I didn't appreciate being called ‘a chick,’ but I wasn't sure Smith wouldn't bolt if he knew a cop was looking for him so I didn't complain out loud. Smith Summers ran down the stairs, looking like he'd just woken up despite it being late in the afternoon. Given what I remembered of university life, it seemed likely. He slowed when he saw me and frowned when he saw my badge.
“Uhm—?”
“You and your friend helped a faerie girl being attacked the other day. I'd like to go over your statement, if you don't mind.”
I made it clear with the firmness of my voice that I wasn't giving him an option. I scribbled on the top corner of a clean page in my notepad with my pen until the ink ran, my eyes never leaving Smith’s. To me, he looked like any other university kid. There were shadows under his eyes, his stubble was uneven, and there was coffee on his breath. When he lifted his arm to rub the back of his neck, I almost balked at the smell. It was worse than the ladies’ locker room, both at work and at the gym.
“Me and Brett were walking back from the bar. It was, I guess, one or two or something.”
“Which bar?” I asked.
He gave me a crooked, sheepish smile. “I don't really remember. We went to a few.”
“Do you have any receipts or card statements that might say?” He shook his head. So much for figuring out when and where. “So you left the bar around one or two. What next?”
“We cut through the park, and we saw these two guys holding someone down. We thought they might have been, you know, raping that girl so we ran over yelling and shit. I thought the one dude was gonna try and fight us, you know. Brett’s a werewolf so we were totally ready. But he just… fanned out and disappeared.” He spread his hands to demonstrate. “Then the other guy booked it. We were gonna follow, but the girl was all cut up and bleeding real bad, so we called 9-1-1.”
I paused my pen, frowning. “Fanned out and disappeared?” I repeated.
“I know what you're going to say. We were drunk, probably seeing things. That's what the cops who showed up said. But we know what we saw. He stood up, looked right at us, and spread like some kind of blob or a— a—” Smith snapped his fingers.
There was a twist in my stomach. I wasn't sure what he was describing, exactly, but I had a few suspicions. None of them were good. Few things had the power to do what Smith was describing. While I wasn't sure I believed the shadow-thing had actually disappeared, I believed whatever he saw did something similar enough for all intent and purpose.
“Like a shadow?”
Smith nodded.
“Did you notice anything else about them? Any distinguishing features? Did they have anything with them?”
He hesitated, looking away from me. “It was dark, and I… well, I was drunk. We were more worried about the girl, you know. The one guy had this bag with him. It kind of looked like one of those old-timey doctor bags, you know, and another bag like the kind artists put drawings in. He was putting something in it when we saw them.”
Cerys’s wing, maybe. I flipped my notepad shut and pushed the pen through the metal rings. The implication of Smith’s words made me feel dizzy and suddenly glad I didn't need to drive myself home. I thanked Smith for his time and left him my card for Brett to call me with his version of the story. I doubted it would differ, but he might have remembered something Smith didn't.
The cold air helped clear my head as I stepped outside and walked back along the sidewalk I had originally come down. A phoenix, a siren, and now a faerie. It would be careless to assume there weren't more victims out there. We'd been wondering what anyone would want with a phoenix's eyes but maybe it wasn't just about the eyes. All our victims were missing organs, but the faerie had her wings removed, and the siren’s teeth had been pulled out. That left me with two questions:
What was the shadow Hanna, Cerys, and Smith had described?
And what was so special about phoenix eyes?
Chapter Six
Ariadne wasn't thrilled at me for getting home so late four days in a row. Even though we didn’t live together, I always let her know when I got home as a courtesy. I didn't really blame her for being upset. When we'd started dating, I was still working Homicide. I cancelled a lot of dates at the last minute. When I transferred to Special Crimes, it was understood I would keep a better schedule.
And I meant to, I really did. In the ten months since I'd transferred, this was the first time I worked this late more than once or twice in a row. I didn't see it as a big deal, but Ariadne saw it as a slip into old habits. “Some people drink, some people work,” she had once said. She was worried about losing me to my workaholic ways. How could I fault her for that? And yet, at the same time, I couldn't feel bad about the late nights. Some cases were time-sensitive. It was part of the job. If she couldn't handle that…
I didn't want to think about it.
I started making up for my late arrival by washing the dishes after dinner. It was a small thing, even I could admit that, but the chore we hated most was washing dishes. It was even worse than folding laundry. The sacrifice of my nails was a small start, but it was only the start.
“What movie do you want to watch?” she asked as I struggled to scrub the second pan clean.
Maybe I should get her a one-pot cookbook for Eid this year. It took me a moment to process the question. Shit, was today Wednesday? I was an idiot. She wasn't upset with me for being home late so many days in a row, not entirely at least. She was upset because I was late to our official date night. Why couldn't she just say that?
In my sudden annoyance, one of my nails broke through the yellow rubber glove.
“Fucking—”
That wasn't fair of me. I was the one who'd been losing track of time.
“You pick, habibi.”
The truth was, I hadn't even begun to think about what I wanted to watch. Still, her face lit up, and I wondered why I ever picked the movie.
Ariadne had a bad track record for boyfriends and girlfriends. Most of them had been mean enough that letting her pick a movie to watch made me the nicest person on the planet. It almost made me feel guilty, how little effort it took to make her happy. At the same time, that smile warmed by heart and made me feel even guiltier for freezing her out, even though it had been far from intentional.
She picked a horror movie I didn't recognize. It may have seemed like an odd choice for a date, and it probably was, but I didn’t mind. Movie night started back when we were first dating. She would come over Wednesday nights to watch a show I’d never enjoyed enough to remember the name of, but I pretended I liked it as an excuse for her to come over. We realized there wasn't much we could both enjoy. She couldn't watch medical dramas and I couldn't watch cop procedurals, which ruled out just about every show on air. Then Ariadne got Netflix, and we started showing each other our favourite movies in a back-and-forth of, ‘You know what we should watch?’ I would look forward to those Wednesday ev
enings when we would curl up together on her couch with a bowl of microwave popcorn all week.
She made the popcorn while I put the dishes away. Somewhere along the way, sharing a single bag had turned into making an entire box. I didn't mind at all. Microwave popcorn was one of my favourite snack foods. I kept a box in the bottom drawer of my desk at work.
I barely made it through the opening credits set to eerie music before my mind started to wander. I tried to pay attention, I really did, but I couldn't help it.
My first thought had been that the shadow Cerys Rees and Smith Summers described was a djinni. They were certainly powerful enough to make someone seem to disappear into thin air, or to appear to disappear themselves if they weren't bound with iron or silver. Djinn mostly lived in caves and ruins in the Middle East or other warm places, but it wasn't unheard of to find them in large cities. I knew of two who had passed through. One was my ex-girlfriend, a Syrian diplomat. The other was the suspect Rowan had involuntarily shot and killed on our first case together.
If someone wanted to find one, they had to work for it. Only people stupid enough to think they could outsmart a djinni or desperate enough not to care about the consequences tried finding them. If the dryad had found one and was commanding it, I doubted he would be faring much better than a human. Besides, djinn were notorious for twisting wishes into backfiring. A person could ask to win the lottery, and the ticket would come from their dead brother. Djinn were like Monkey Paws in two ways: they still had to obey the natural order of the Universe, and they were never worth the trouble.
They probably also weren't what I was looking for.
It could have been a dybbuk. Malicious spirits were a dangerous thing, and I'd heard stories of people possessed by them being granted superhuman abilities until the dybbuk’s goals were met. I wasn't going to start chalking things up to angry spirits until I was completely out of options, though.
Then there were daeva. They were rare but dangerous sons of dogs, a particularly intense form of demon. I’d heard them called shadow people in English. It lined up with what Cerys and Smith described, except for the fact that they were only supposed to be seen from the corners of the eyes unless they wanted to be seen otherwise. Maybe that didn’t always apply, or maybe they did see it from the corners of their eyes. Or maybe it wanted to be seen. I was still waiting to hear from Brett Lindon Al-Amin.
It took me longer to notice the movie had stopped, and I turned to look at Ariadne, her expression caught between a pout and a scowl.
“You're still at work, aren't you?” she asked, though it didn't sound like an accusation. She let out a sigh and rested her head on my shoulder. “What's going on? Talk to me, Fairuz.”
Hearing her say my name always made me melt, even after all this time. My hand found hers, and I ran my thumb over her knuckles. I needed to talk to someone, to figure out what the hell was going on, but I didn't want to drag her into something so ugly.
“What about our no-shop-talk rule?” I asked hesitantly.
She shrugged. “If something is bothering you, I'd rather we talk about it. Even if it's work.”
Sometimes, it physically hurt how much I loved this woman. I told her everything from the phoenix to the shadow. There wasn’t much to tell. She listened patiently, a small frown on her face as she nodded.
“That sounds like a shade,” she said. “When necromancers get in too deep, they sometimes… It’s like they become part spirit.”
It was my turn to frown. “That can’t possibly be right.”
“I don’t know how else to describe it. But a shade would probably be able to do what you’re saying.”
“Are shades common?”
Ariadne laughed. “No. No, definitely not. I’ve only ever heard of a couple. Most people don’t even think they’re real. Most people don’t believe phoenixes are real, either. I didn’t, but if you say you saw one, then maybe shades are real too.”
So if there was a shade around, it could definitely be the one who’d attacked Cerys. I was going to have a lot to talk about with Rowan in the morning.
Rowan was supposed to meet me for breakfast. I might not have liked Tim Horton’s coffee, but their breakfast sandwiches were pretty good. It was one of the few places with breakfast that didn’t include sausage. Even though I wasn’t a practicing Muslim these days, I’d never developed a taste for it. But half an hour and two calls later, there was no Rowan. I sucked it up for one more watery coffee and twenty more minutes before I had to get to work.
I left him another message as I walked back to the precinct, having parked there and walked to Tim Horton’s. He’d probably forgotten we were supposed to be meeting and had gone right to work.
Only, when I got to our corner of the floor, he wasn’t there. Neither was his jacket or any other sign of him. I turned to Kieron for a rational explanation that would settle my spiking nerves.
“His cats died,” he said without prompting, his accent making it all sound like one word.
“Both of them?”
No, that wasn’t suspicious or concerning at all. Kieron shrugged.
“Apparently they got into some antifreeze. Shame. He loved those cats. I can’t imagine what kind of person would leave antifreeze out for a cat to get into. I hope he figures out who it was and kicks their ass.”
That didn’t make any sense. Rowan lived in an apartment building. How would his cats get into antifreeze? He wouldn’t be irresponsible enough to leave it out himself.
Sabine didn’t give me much time to worry about it. Before I was settled and used to the warmth of the building, she had me out to investigate cinnamon theft, of all things. I told myself I got the ‘dinky case’, as Ariadne would describe it, because I was on my own today but I noticed she sent Kieron on his own to look into the possibility of a shapeshifter being involved in a string of robberies. He did have more experience, I reminded myself as I grit my teeth and made my way back out into the cold.
My car was still mostly warm when I got in. I let the engine run for a minute. Over the radio, an Abdel Halim song played. One of the strangest things I'd noticed about North America was how songs would be considered ‘old’ after only a year or two, and almost never played on the radio after that. Abdel Halim died in 1977, but he was still played on almost every Arabic music station I found. The music was pretty much the only thing keeping me from losing my temper. I was barely down the block when my phone started ringing. Expecting it to be Sabine, I answered and hit speakerphone without glancing at the caller.
“Fairuz speaking.”
“Detective Arshad? This is Constable Charles Renaud.” He spoke with a French accent thicker than Sabine’s, pronouncing his name like Sharl Ruh-no. “I'm responding to a domestic call at Rowan Oak’s apartment. I wanted to give you a call as a courtesy.”
As soon as he said Rowan's name, I flipped on the light sitting in the front and back windows, and merged into the left turning lane. I'd known something was up with him but I'd trusted him when he told me not to worry, that it was nothing. Did that make me the idiot, or him?
“Can you hold off on going in until I get there?” I asked. “I’m only a few minutes away.”
It was unprofessional, but so was calling me in the first place. Constable Renaud hesitated.
“Only if it doesn’t sound like anybody is being hurt,” I added quickly.
Of course if someone was being hurt, even if it was Rowan doing the hurting, it needed to be taken care of right away. But if not, I wanted to see what was going on myself.
With the siren on, I sped through what little traffic there was at this hour. I had plenty of time to ask Siri to call Sabine. I was thoroughly relieved to get her voicemail, robbing her of the chance to yell at me in real time. By the time my phone started ringing again, I was already pulling into the parking lot of Rowan’s apartment building. Sure, I was going to get in trouble for ignoring her — not that she could prove it — but having my partner’s back was the most importa
nt thing, if not to the department then to me.
It wasn’t a particularly nice building, and I had to take the stairs to the fourth floor since the elevator was out. I didn’t need to look at the numbers on the doors to find Rowan’s. Constable Renaud was standing outside it, TASER in hand, looking nervous. Up close, he looked much younger than I expected.
Even if Renaud hadn’t been here, I could hear the shouting as I made my way down the hall. None of the neighbours were outside, and I had to wonder if this was a regular occurrence or if Renaud had already shooed them back into their respective apartments. I banged my fist against the door. I had responded to enough domestic disturbances in my days as a patrol officer to have a barrier ready to go, the ends of my fingers tingling.
“Toronto Police,” I shouted. “Rowan, open the door.”
The sound of shattering glass was followed by a string of what sounded like Russian curses passing through the door.
“Rowan! Open the door or I will open it.”
A woman screamed something that might have translated to an insult. It didn’t sound to me like anyone was being hurt. The next crack of glass made me decide I didn’t care. I stepped back to kick the door in, but it swung open on its own.
Rowan had seen better days. His hair was a mess, and dark bags hung under his eyes. Two dark lines ran across his throat. He was wearing nothing but a pair of dark blue boxers, and I couldn’t stop myself from glancing down. I had seen the scars on his forearms around the twin tattoos, but I hadn’t expected there to be more. The two on his chest from breast reduction surgery didn’t surprise me, he’d mentioned he had them once in passing early in our partnership, though I couldn’t remember the context. It was the rest of the scars, long white lines and tight red knots, that made my stomach lurch. They looked old, certainly older than the blue and dark purple bruises covering him. With that colour, the bruises couldn’t have been older than a day or two.
Someone had beat him up. Bad, and recent.