by Amir Lane
Rowan’s shoulder tightened, and he snorted. “Our guy wasn’t a shade. This was probably his first time even trying anything with spirits. Fucking idiot.”
“I’m not saying he was. But shades happen when necromancers go too far, yes?”
“I really don’t think a shade is involved here.”
I hesitated. There was no denying it anymore; I was obsessed. All I could think about was the phoenix case. It was a problem for Homicide or Guns, Gangs, and Covens, if anyone. Hell, it might have even been a problem for Organized Crime. But I couldn’t trust it to them, not when it had been made very clear no-one else cared enough to do anything about it. After all, the murdered siren kid had been deemed an accident, and nobody had bothered to so much as investigate Cerys Rees’ attack. I crumpled my sandwich wrapper into a ball and tossed it into the trash. Rowan handed me his, and I did the same with it.
“A shade attacked Cerys Rees, remember?” I said slowly.
He stopped walking. “Solanace attacked Cerys Rees. He confessed.”
“She described a shade.”
“He said he did it alone. Since when do you even know what a shade is?”
“Ariadne told me about it. You believe him? Are you really that naïve?”
Rowan was actually slightly shorter than me but when he stepped toward me with his shoulders pulled back and his jaw squared, he did it in a way that almost made me forget it. It spoke to a lot of practice making himself seem bigger than he was. For a split second, I almost laughed at how it was the exact opposite of what Kieron did. The urge died before it really came to life as Rowan got close enough for me to see his pupils dilating in anger. The muscle in his jaw twitched, and his neck tensed. His brow creased in something that wasn’t quite a scowl.
I did nothing but exhale slowly and let my skin burn with the barrier forming beneath it. If he hit me, it really would hurt him more.
He didn’t hit me, though. After a moment, he stepped back, his breath shaking. That was it? I expected more of a fight. Not that I expected him to actually hit me, but there should have at least been some more yelling.
Something about this was wrong. So much about this was wrong. That anger on his face almost hadn’t even looked like anger.
“It’s not naïve to know when to leave well enough alone. Come on. Crime scene should be ready for us by now.”
He turned and began walking back in the direction of our possible necromancer’s apartment. Watching him walk away broke something inside me. I’d seen the tension when I brought up the shade. I’d seen the bruises around his neck that day. I’d gone to the precinct that had supposedly arrested his attacker. Why couldn’t he just trust me? After all the times I’d been expected to trust that he had my six, why couldn’t he trust that I had his?
“I know you lied about who attacked you.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew they were true. I hadn’t wanted them to be. This was it, though. There was no other explanation.
Rowan didn’t move, didn’t react at first. He just stood there, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice came out strained and deeper than usual.
“You know damn well what I’m talking about!”
He whirled around, his jacket flapping around him. Reflex kicked in and I threw my hands up. The electricity that ran through my hands solidified in front of me and kept him from getting in close. He jabbed his finger into it. The translucent purple wall rippled but didn’t give, though I felt the pressure against my palm.
“I have been with you every step of the way, Arshad. I risked my life bringing you to Lucas Terrel. I’m the one who led you to Solanace. Now, I’m trying to protect you. So don’t you fucking dare accuse me of lying.”
What I should have done was nod and apologize. His words were only partly true, we both knew that. I could have even believed them if not for the wild panic in his eyes. It should have made me sympathetic. From anyone else, it might have. But he was lying right to my face. He was standing a foot away from me and lying. I could see it in the tremble of his hands and the bark edging down his forehead. He was afraid. I could help him, I knew I could, but he wouldn’t let me. He wouldn’t trust me.
I dropped my hands, and the barrier with them, and closed the gap between us. I stretched myself to my full height to force him to look up to meet my eyes. It made the inch between us more obvious than it ever had before.
“You took an oath to protect the public. Is this how you’re going to do it? By letting people be killed and scrapped for parts? Teenagers, Rowan. You owe it to them.”
He leaned up until his face was barely an centimetre from mine. I could smell his aftershave and that sweet, sharp smell underneath almost like root beer, of all things. What was that smell?
“I paid my debts,” he hissed. “You want to get yourself killed being a hero? Fine. Leave me out of it. In the meantime, we’ve got an actual case to close.”
We were both still angry when we returned to the crime scene. The short walk had done nothing to quell that. At least the medical examiner had taken the body. I had assumed the heavy weight in the apartment had been from the corpse, but even with it gone, I had the feeling something wasn’t right about this place. Spirits or not, there was something here.
I reached under the neck of my jacket for one of my pendants, the dark blue glass bead painted like an eye set in silver. It was one of the only silver pieces I owned. Back home, we believed in the Evil Eye; in the idea that jealousy and ill intent could be strong enough on their own to cause harm to someone. This charm was supposed to ward off that dark energy. I gripped the nazar pendant in my hand like a cross as though it could protect me from the presences in the room. Evil was evil, wasn’t it?
The discomfort in my stomach grew until I almost needed to double over. I pressed my hand flat against my abdomen the way I would with period cramps, but it did little to alleviate the pressure. I turned to Rowan, an excuse to leave the apartment already rising in my throat. I wasn’t prone to claustrophobia, but the walls were closing in around me and I needed to get out of here now.
We needed to get out of here now.
Without the body and entrails taking up so much space and most of the First Responders gone, I could make out a large, black circle peeking out beneath the pools of blood. Symbols like the ones on the walls lined the inside and outside of it in a symbol-circle-symbol sandwich. What had Rowan called the symbols in the victim’s arms? A summoning beacon? Maybe that was what the circle was for. The evil seemed to be emanating from it, soaking in the blood from the carpet.
An offering.
Rowan was looking at the wall as he walked right in the direction of the circle. He didn’t see it, didn’t know it was there, and by the time I noticed him stepping into it, it was too late to warn him. As soon as his foot stepped over the black line, all the heat left the room.
“Rowan!”
My breath fogged in front of me with my shout.
Thin, wispy shadows rose like smoke from the symbols. My stomach clenched. Had I brought them here? Were they a manifestation of my desire to club him over the head for being so difficult?
Who cared what they were? They were going right for him, and I had to get to him first.
I crossed the small apartment in three long strides and reached out to him. I wasn’t fast enough. The shadows swarmed and rushed right through him. His body went rigid, his skin turning pale before dark, papery bark spread over his skin, too late to offer any protection. I grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the circle and out of the apartment. The damage was done. He trembled against me, gasping for air. His cheek, pressed against mine, was cold through the bark. I hooked my arms under his to keep him upright.
“I need some help!” I shouted. “Can somebody get me some help, here?”
Rowan was going to be fine. I drove him to the hospital, my siren wailing the entire time as he shivered in my passenger s
eat. They got him warmed up and got some fluids in him. The doctor wanted to keep him overnight for observation just in case. Nobody was expecting there to be any long-term damage.
I wanted to stay with him. It was my fault we were at that crime scene in the first place. I should have noticed him heading to the circle sooner. I shouldn’t have been so angry with him.
I should have been faster. Better. My whole purpose was to protect people, and I hadn’t even been able to protect my own partner with the powers I had sitting right under my skin.
Regrets wouldn’t change anything. I left him with my Evil Eye necklace, since I had more at home anyway, and promised I would come see him after work, provided I survived the ass-kicking Sabine was going to give me.
The back corner of the floor was quiet when I got there. Indira and Kieron didn’t so much as look up at me when I walked in. My entire body went cold with the feeling that something was terribly wrong, every nerve in my body freezing over. I tried to shake it off as a lingering effect of whatever had been in that room with us. Sabine’s office door swung open before I even reached my desk. She stepped out, her face somehow so much stonier than usual. She nodded for me to go in.
“I told you I couldn’t protect you,” she whispered as I moved past her.
I knew what was happening here. All my mistakes had led me to this point. Still, I pretended I didn’t know what was going on, as though telling myself nothing was going to happen would stop it from happening.
I recognized the man behind Sabine’s desk as Inspector Earl Vance, Sabine’s boss. Though I had never met him before, his picture was on the wall with the other superior staff. He stopped twirling his fingers over the plastic bottle on Sabine’s desk, making the water move around in an unnatural way, and looked me over from toe to head in that way that suggested my face was the least interesting part of me. Could I possibly be in more trouble if I kicked his teeth in?
“Let’s get one thing clear, Miss Arshid—”
“Arshad.”
“—the only reason I'm am not firing you is because Internal Affairs is still looking into what happened to your partner.”
I realized, as he spoke, that he had nothing. He could suspend me for damn near anything if he really wanted to but firing me was above his pay grade, especially since Rowan wasn’t even that hurt. He hadn’t been maimed or killed, and he would be back at work in a day or two. If Vance had any real case against me, I wouldn't have been able to set foot back in the precinct.
“What happened was—”
“What happened,” Vance shouted, slamming his hands on the table, “is you went off into another precinct and poked your nose where it didn't belong.”
Somebody was pulling his strings, putting him up to this. Why else would he be here? Yes, Rowan had gotten hurt, but that wouldn’t be enough to drag him all the way here. There was more at play here than the alleged ‘interpersonal differences’ he had with Sabine.
He could be the prince.
Inspector Vance may not have been the top of the food chain, but he certainly had enough power to keep some cases from becoming cases. But Vance wasn’t a dryad, he was a nymph. There was nothing to suggest any nymphs were involved. A nymph certainly wouldn’t be considered a dryad prince.
I clenched my teeth together. My throat itched, but I refused to let myself cry. A suspension wasn't the end of the world. It wasn’t even a suspension; we needed a hearing for that. It was a strongly suggested vacation. It wasn’t a big deal at all. I would absolutely not cry in front of him.
I didn't hang back longer than I had to. I didn't say anything to Kieron or Sabine or Indira, and I barely said two words to the clerk I left my gun and badge with. It seemed ill-thought to let me get so far with my gun. Enough cops were unstable enough, it would have been the first thing I'd done if I was the one in charge. But I wasn't the one in charge. Until further notice, I wasn't even a cop.
It wasn't until I got home that I remembered I was supposed to go see Rowan. Exhaustion flooded me, and I didn't care. I had enough to think about now.
“You're home early,” Ariadne said. The chipper tone left her voice as soon as she saw me. “Baby, are you okay? What happened?”
I looked at her. Her damp hair was tied up in a loose bun, strands falling over her neck and shoulders. A pale blue apron covered an old grey University of Toronto Medicine sweater. The white patches on it looked like flour. She blurred in front of me as my eyes watered. Once the tears started, they wouldn't stop. Her arms came around me, and she nudged my head into the crook of her neck. The somehow comforting smell of formaldehyde surrounded me.
“I fucked up,” I said between sobs. “I really fucked up.”
Chapter Thirteen
One, two, three, breathe. One, two, three, breathe. One, two, three, breathe.
I repeated the words to myself again and again as I pulled myself through the water, rotating my shoulders for more momentum. My braid hit my shoulders with each turn of my head. The girl sharing the lane with me rushed past, her long, silver-scaled tail barely causing any waves. When she reached the pool wall, she flipped over and moved back without raising her head for breath. She could have been an Olympic swimmer if there weren’t restrictions on fins and tails. I couldn’t pretend to be anywhere close to fast enough to compete on that level, but I had the endurance to make up for it.
There was something relaxing about being in the pool. Whether it was the coldness of the water lowering my blood pressure or the sounds around me being muffled, swimming always calmed me more than any other sport. It was easy to lose myself in the familiar rhythm of one, two, three, breathe.
By the time I finished, I’d done almost two kilometers in an hour. That might have been my best time. Anger might have given me an edge tonight, but I’d exhausted it in the workout. It took more effort than I was willing to admit to pull myself out of the pool. My arms felt boneless, and my legs nearly gave out from under me. The girl next to me didn’t seem to have the same problem. The silver scales pulled back into her legs as she left the water. I wondered what happened to the tail, but I didn’t want to look too closely. Even though we had been swimming in the same lane four times a week for the last few months, I didn’t even know her name. I’d never asked, and she’d never asked for mine. Still, she smiled at me as we walked toward the women’s locker room.
“Good swim,” she said.
“Good swim.”
Swim nights were the only ones when I washed my hair with shampoo. It was a cleansing shampoo to get all the chlorine out. I probably could have saved myself a few hours a week by just chopping my hair off, but I liked it long. The process of washing and drying my hair wasn’t bad enough to warrant it yet. Maybe one day I’d try it but for now, it was fine the way it was.
By the time I got all the suds out, the mer-girl was almost done getting changed. I lifted my eyes to the ceiling politely and turned my back to her so as not to accidentally see her naked.
Sometimes, I wondered how it had taken me so long to realize I was a lesbian.
“Nice ink.”
I turned my head to look at my reflection in the mirror behind me, momentarily forgetting what my tattoos looked like. They were both visible around my sports’ bra, the trees spread across the backs of my shoulders. I smiled at her.
“Thank you.”
She touched my bare arm in a casual but definitely not flirtations motion as she walked past me.
“Have a good night,” she said with a bright smile.
“You too.”
I was really going to have to learn her name one of these nights. It felt far too late to ask, though. Maybe somebody at the front desk would know. Would it be weird to ask them?
The door closed behind her, leaving me alone in the locker room with only the classic rock radio station from the speakers overhead keeping me company. I pulled my t-shirt, jacket, and boots on and took my gym bag from my locker. Making sure my keys were in my pocket and my lock was fastened to
one of the straps of my bag, I shut the locker door.
Without the water drowning out my thoughts — no pun intended — the solace I’d found while swimming left and the reality of my situation began to close in on me. My chest tightened around my lungs, forcing my breath to come out shaky. I squeezed my eyes shut against the tears and pressed my forehead against one of the lockers. The coldness against my skin couldn’t numb the pain. I had read somewhere once that anger was a secondary emotion, which meant it always came in reaction to a deeper, more base emotion. Was pain an emotion? Betrayal?
How had I fucked everything up so badly?
My fingers curled into a fist and without fully meaning to, I slammed it into a locker. Pain radiated through my knuckles and up my wrist. It felt good. I screamed and hit it again, then again. The screams echoed through the locker room, drowning out the thuds of my fist hitting metal and the radio broadcaster’s traffic update. Heat pooled in my fingers, a familiar burn travelling through my arm as I unintentionally pushed a pulse of power into the hit. The metal door warped and stuck inside the locker.
I moved back to lean against the closest wall, inspecting my handiwork. I pressed the back of my hand flat against the drywall to soothe the burn in my knuckles. Satisfaction at the damage was immediately replaced with guilt.
Oops.
If my fingers were broken, I deserved it. I should have known better. I did know better.
Even though the gym closed at 7:30, they kept the doors open until everyone left. The girl behind the desk smiled at me. She didn’t appear to notice anything odd about the hand I cradled against my chest or my expression.
“I may have broken a locker. Bill me for the damage.”
Her smile wavered into confusion. I didn’t wait for her to ask for an explanation. It was late and I was tired.
And I had to walk home with a broken hand.
My fingers weren’t broken, thankfully, just sprained.
“What did you do to yourself?” Ariadne whispered as she wrapped them. She looked up at me with her honey-brown eyes in that way that made me feel short of breath. “You aren’t spiralling, are you?”