by Amir Lane
I pushed my way into the apartment and positioned myself between Rowan and the woman. Renaud stood back in the doorway. The woman was tall, taller than both of us. Rowan was one of the shorter dryads I knew. Her long, black hair was a tangled mess. If she weren’t scowling and covered in coarse-looking bark, she might have been beautiful. A quick glance over her showed no injuries, at least none I could see through the bark.
“Did she do this to you?” I demanded, feeling suddenly protective of my partner. “Did you do this to him?”
The woman snorted. “If I wanted to hurt him, he’d be dead!”
Behind me, Rowan grabbed something from a side table and hurled it at the wall beside her.
“Get out!” he screamed, his voice raw either from being choked or yelling, or both. “Get the fuck out! You goddamn bitch!”
He broke off in that language I didn’t know again, and she responded in it. Part of me was glad I couldn’t understand them. There wasn’t a word exchanged that sounded polite. We had some colourful insults in Arabic, but they seemed to pale in comparison. Whatever Rowan said, it made the woman hold her hands up and say what sounded to me like the equivalent of, ‘You want me gone? Fine, I’m gone.’ She grabbed her jacket and stormed out, still shouting back at us.
“I didn’t tell no-one nothing about where you are, and you know it!” Her voice disappeared into the stairwell.
The entire time, Renaud stood back like it was his first call. Looking at him, I realized it could have been. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him around the precinct before, and he looked young.
Rowan pushed his hair out of his face, messing it up further. I’d never seen him without a beanie, even in the middle of summer. The sides of his hair were shaved down, and the back was cut short to blend into the top, which was long and wavy enough to almost be considered curly. I nodded for Renaud to leave us. He did, closing the door tentatively.
“Are you okay?”
That was a stupid question. Of course he wasn’t okay. He sniffed and rubbed at his throat, kicking over a piece of the broken coffee table.
“I’m fine,” he croaked.
He was fine, and I was Oom Kalthoum, the most famous singer in the Middle East. For a moment, I wondered if he hadn’t been lying about his cats to stay home without question, or if Sabine or Kieron had made it up. It seemed a cruel and stupid thing to lie about.
As I walked through the apartment, Rowan making no motion to stop me, I noticed the scratching post and cat toys, but no cats. The nausea I’d had when Kieron had first explained why Rowan wasn’t at work returned. I stepped into the small kitchen. The fridge was covered in notes and takeout menus. I turned my attention to the floor and found an overturned metal water bowl. As I crouched, the nauseatingly sweet smell of antifreeze hit me hard.
They hadn’t been lying.
When I returned to the open space that made up the living room, Rowan was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands. Though he made no sound, his shoulders shook. I kept my distance, though I strained to see if the marks around his neck and arms had those same punctures Cerys Rees had. I couldn’t quite tell from here, but it didn’t look like it.
“Rowan, what happened? Who did this to you?” When he didn’t answer, I continued probing. “Is it about the phoenix? Did you find something?”
Rowan’s head snapped up. His face was wet.
“Not everything is about your fucking phoenix!” he shouted.
I shrank back a little. That wasn’t fair. Was I supposed to think it was a coincidence he’d been beat up and his cats were killed at the same time we started digging into this? If he didn’t tell me, I was going to have to guess.
“Fine, it’s not about that. Then what—”
He stood and stepped toward me, jabbing a finger at my chest. If he came close enough to actually poke me, I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t hit him. Even if he was understandably upset, I did not appreciate being yelled at, especially when I had done nothing wrong.
“It’s none of your goddamn business, that’s what it is! We’re not friends, okay. You don’t have to stick your nose into every little thing that comes along.”
That was not fair. Even if we weren’t friends, we were partners. We were two of four in our precinct’s Special Crimes unit. It mattered to me that he was hurt, as much as it would matter if it was Kieron or Indira or even Sabine.
“If you tell me what happened, I can help you,” I said, even though I was starting to want to hit him myself right about now. “Rowan, talk to me. I am your partner. Let me help.”
Rowan pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a long exhale.
“Look,” he said. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you with this phoenix thing. I have bigger things to worry about right now.”
Clearly.
If he didn’t want me involved, I wasn’t going to make it my business. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be keeping an eye out for him.
Chapter Seven
Rowan wasn't at work the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. He was at least as much of a workaholic as I was, but even he wouldn’t be able to work with the shape he was in. He had more than enough vacation time and sick days banked to make a full recovery. In the meantime, I got shuffled onto Kieron’s break-in case. If Kieron wasn’t such a nice guy, I might have felt a little smug that he hadn’t closed it yet.
We got our first break talking to the fifth homeowner struck by these seamless home invasions. The pattern was the same every time: a dog followed a family home, they let the animal in while trying to find its owners, and they got robbed a few days later. With every family, the owner changed and none of the phone numbers on the dog’s tags were in service by the time the robbery occurred. The difference was that the owners of the fifth house had been smart enough to install what they called nanny-cams. Apparently, some people put cameras inside teddy bears to spy on babysitters to make sure they weren’t stealing. In fact, the first person they suspected was the babysitter.
It seemed ridiculous to me. If you couldn’t trust someone with your belongings, how could you trust them with your kids?
“Lots of parents do it,” Kieron said as we walked the camera-stuffed bear, sealed neatly in an evidence bag, to his car.
“Do you have a nanny-cam?” The word felt awkward in my mouth.
“I have a gun and a badge, and access to full background checks.”
I snorted. “You run background checks on your babysitters?”
“I have a young daughter with very little fear of strangers, and a nephew with poor impulse control. I run background checks on the postman.”
Part of me wanted to ask if that wasn’t a little excessive, but I thought better of it. He would know better than I would whether or not that was excessive. My father would probably do the same if he could.
We made our way down the street, little traffic slowing us down until we pulled off the residential side-streets and onto the main road. Daytime traffic almost made me miss night shifts.
I had met Kieron’s nephew and his daughter for the first time at last year’s Christmas party. She had walked up me, told me the officer ‘with the funny-looking moustache over there’ thought I was pretty, and asked if I could braid her hair. She’d been thrilled to meet another lady with big, curly hair like hers. The next day, I’d sent Kieron a link to a for-dads hairdressing course. Growing up, my mother had been the one to deal with my hair. Hers was the same texture as mine, so she’d known all the tricks. Kieron had done his best, but neither he nor his boyfriend had that advantage. For weeks after, I’d wondered if I’d come across as passive-aggressive or a busy-body until he told me what a difference it made in Gwendoline’s mood. He’d never realized how much it bothered her, not having her hair taken care of right.
I’d never given much thought to wanting kids. It had always been expected that I would have them. Wasn’t that why God gave me
a uterus? The audacity of the assumption always made me snort. Ariadne and I still hadn’t decided whether or not we were going to have any — my vote was for no — and for now, I was more than happy being Auntie Fairuz.
“Can I ask you something?” I said as we waited at another red light.
“Course. Not like I can run from you. We’re going to be trapped here a while.”
His chipper accent always made it sound like he was joking, and I was glad he had that smile to confirm he was this time. I drummed my fingers against the door. My thoughts drifted to the bruises on Rowan's neck. Did I really believe this attack had nothing to do with us poking around? Could I put Kieron in that kind of danger? If something happened to him, what would happen to his daughter? Gwendolyn was barely eight, and Kieron was her only living parent.
“Fairuz? You all right there?”
“What? Yes, I'm fine,” I said, even as my heartbeat thudded in my ears.
“So, your question?”
Dad always said there was no such thing as knowing too much. Of course he would say that, he was a professor of mathematics. To him, it was true. There was nothing more noble and important than the pursuit of knowledge. For the most part, I did still agree with him, but I knew there was such thing as knowing too much. Knowledge was power, and it made people dangerous. In some cases, it made people targets. People were killed for knowing too much every day.
Kieron looked at me expectantly, his head half-tipped to keep an eye on traffic. One question couldn't hurt. He might not have even known the answer. Part of me hoped he wouldn't.
“You know about different things, right?” I winced at myself, struggling to translate my thoughts into English. Why couldn't Kieron speak Arabic? “I mean, things that are different.”
“I've seen some weird shit in my day. What kind of different are we talking?”
I licked my lips. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of my neck. I wasn't doing anything wrong, I reminded myself. There was nothing more noble than the pursuit of knowledge.
“Is there anything special about phoenix eyes?”
“Still on that, huh? I don't blame you. You're in luck. My nephew is obsessed with dragons.”
Dragons?
“Is this the same nephew who protested our Christmas party last year by introducing himself with police brutality statistics?” I asked.
“The same,” Kieron said, not without a hint of pride in his voice.
Kieron’s nephew had introduced himself to me as, “Thirty-two percent of parahuman inmates end up dying of iron poisoning.” It felt like it was too late to ask his real name at this point. I didn’t think anybody else knew it, either. Everyone either called him Kieron’s nephew or The Hex Witch. Whatever his name was, he had two reputations: one for being what Rowan called an eccentric weirdo, and one for being an encyclopedia of magic and parahuman knowledge. If any information came from him, I would take it seriously.
“What do dragons have to do with phoenixes?” I asked.
“Phoenixes aren't common, not by a long stretch, so the myths come a lot from dragons. Apparently, the original phoenix was called the archaeopteryx. It's the link between birds and dinosaurs. I dunno if it's true or not, but apparently they used to bathe in fire to regenerate. They were pretty well the only big thing that survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, and they evolved into the first dragons. Or at least, that's what they say. And by ‘they’, I mean my nephew.”
I nodded, though I still wasn't seeing the connection. Dragons had been extinct for centuries. Even if they weren't, they were reptiles. Phoenixes were mammals.
“Then you have the second type of phoenix, the kind you're thinking of. Back in the day, they used to say all magic came from that early phoenix and that the phoenix was born in Hell. It's partly why they used to burn witches at the stake. Only, people are dumb as shit.”
I wasn't going to disagree with that.
“There's a lot of really complicated genetics I'm not going to even pretend I understand involved. But from what I do understand, if you set someone on fire who has the potential for witchcraft but hasn't actually manifested, you can theoretically get your kind of phoenix.”
“What about the eyes?”
We were approaching the precinct now, and running out of time. Sabine couldn't know I was still fixated on this.
“Well, dragon’s eyes used to be used in telescopes. They'd dry out the lenses and use ‘em instead of crushed glass. Presumably, they could also use the old kind of phoenix’s eyes. They’re also supposed to be iridescent, so you could maybe use them to see in the dark somehow. If you're assuming new phoenixes still have the same characteristics…” Kieron trailed off with a shrug.
My stomach lurched. Surely technology had progressed enough that that wasn't necessary now? I chewed the corner of my lip between my teeth. I wondered…
“What would you use siren teeth for?” I asked quickly.
We were running out of time.
“Knives, tools. They're sharper than most things, and harder than steel.”
“Faerie wings?”
Kieron scowled at that one. Unease knotted my lower intestine. Of course that one would upset him, his boyfriend was a faerie.
“I've seen them used in luck spells.”
Telescopes, knives, luck spells. On paper, there was no overlap. But these were specific parts for specific purposes.
“So why take the organs…?” I mused.
I hadn't meant to say it out loud, but I was glad I did. Kieron gave another shrug.
“Could be to throw us off. Could be that they’re after the organs all along.”
Three different precincts, three different species. If Oscar hadn't been looking for something weird for me, I might never have made the connection. As it was, I almost wondered if I wasn't drawing lines where there weren't any, seeing what I wanted to see, like a confirmation bias.
But the faerie girl’s organs had been removed first, before her wing was cut out. Why would someone go for the organs first if that wasn't specifically what they were after? That was the only thing that seemed to make sense. I couldn’t say anything about the phoenix, since he burst into flames before we could properly account for which organs were missing, but Cerys and the siren kid were missing different organs. Did that make it more, or less likely?
Worry crept up my spine at the sight of Rowan's empty desk. I had texted him once as his partner to ask if he needed anything. He'd said no, and I left it at that, but I wished he would let me help him.
Indira pulled his headphones down as we approached.
“Sabine’s mad at you,” he said.
Part of me hoped he was talking to Kieron, except he was looking right at me. My jacket was barely over the back of my chair when Sabine emerged from her tiny office. She barked my name and retreated back in a silent order to follow. Indira held both thumbs up at me, and I gave a weak smile in return. In the back of my mind, I imagined myself working as a mall security guard. That couldn’t be the worst thing in the world, could it? What was that English expression Oscar liked to use? You can't make your bed without lying in it?
Sabine motioned for me to close the door.
Maybe mall security wouldn't be so bad. I liked malls.
“What part of ‘leave it alone’ did you misunderstand?” she demanded in a gravely French. Oh, she was definitely mad. When I didn't say anything, she continued. “You're going around interviewing witnesses in other districts in closed cases now?”
Anger flared up inside me. My nails bit into my palm.
“I'm in trouble for doing my job?” I asked as evenly as I could, trying to keep my temper under control.
That was what it was coming down to, wasn’t it? Cerys Rees’ attack wasn’t closed, there wasn’t so much as a suspect in custody. Officers in the other districts weren’t doing their jobs, so I had to do it for them.
“I know what’s going on, Arshad. The walls have ears.”
Her ey
es bore into me. Through the hardness of her face, I saw something. A warning. Maybe my job really was on the line. A more reasonable person might have taken the hint.
I was not a more reasonable person.
There was a lot more paperwork involved in being a police detective in real life than there was on TV. Part of me had believed, or at least hoped, that when I graduated from patrol officer to detective, there would be less paperwork. I couldn’t have been more wrong. At least I wasn’t stuck watching hours of nanny-cam footage like Kieron. Every now and then, Indira would kick his desk to jolt him back awake.
I was starting to fall asleep myself. It was approaching the 2 PM crash. No matter how much I tried focusing on the screen that froze every time I clicked something, all I could think about was how much I wanted a nice, big, hot mug of Turkish coffee.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one feeling that way. Sabine stepped out of her office and scowled in my direction until I looked up at her.
“I’m going to get some coffee. Walk with me.”
In that moment, I would have traded anything to look over security footage instead of walking with Sabine. Everyone knew that from her, walk with me was code for I’m not going to scream at you in front of everyone. She would chew us out whenever she needed to, but the humiliation of being on the receiving end of her actual anger was saved for private. I opened my mouth to tell her I was in the middle of something, but her scowl deepened and I grabbed my jacket. She was angry enough. I didn’t need to make it worse by being difficult.
Sabine walked quickly down the hall, fast enough that if I didn’t have such long legs, I would have fallen behind. Walking right behind her, I realized how much shorter she was than me. She always seemed so tall, but she couldn’t have been more than 5’5”. I hated that I had to look down at the back of her head. It felt wrong.
Sabine didn’t say anything until we rounded the corner.
“Listen carefully, Arshad, because I’m only going to say this once,” she said, still in French. “If you keep looking into things that aren’t any of your business, I can’t help you. I want to help you, believe me. You’re not the only one seeing the pattern. We’re seeing at least three or four cases like this a month, each one getting brushed aside like it’s nothing.”