by Lyra Evans
“Fucking Ash, Starla,” he snapped, clicking the safety on his gun and resetting the holster. “I did not give you that key so you could squat in my living room and drink all my coffee.”
“Please, you don’t even drink coffee,” she said, sipping from the large grey mug in her hand. It was Niko’s favourite mug. Apparently, it was Starla’s too. “Don’t know why you even buy the stuff if you don’t want me to drink it.”
Niko eyed her sidelong, kicking off his shoes and making his way to the refrigerator to get a drink. “Yeah, well, then steal the coffee and drink it in your own apartment. Or have you moved in without telling me?”
Starla ignored him. “If I recall, you set me up with a place in your building and gave me a key to yours so that I could help you on your ridiculous quest to dismantle a secret cabal that, if memory serves, was already dismantled three months ago.”
The stacks of papers on the coffee table in front of her were arranged in a fanning array, highlighted portions connected through colour coded and strategically placed sticky notes. All across the floor, boxes upon boxes were stacked, some half-open and spilling out more files and plastic baggies with red tape marked evidence. The dates and case numbers on the boxes appeared random to any unknowing outsider, but Niko was almost certain they were all connected. He just hadn’t quite figured out how yet.
Niko surveyed the contents of his fridge, remembering he still hadn’t gone grocery shopping. He’d meant to do that four days ago. There were a couple bottles of magically enhanced soda, a jug of filtered water, and a carton of milk he was certain had gone off a week earlier. Shutting the door, he opened the freezer instead. He scratched at his chin then reached into the cloud of cold and pulled out a frosty bottle of clear alcohol. He absolutely hated the taste of it straight, but his day had gone about as badly as was possible to imagine, so he decided he needed the awful burn.
Pouring out probably more than was reasonable, Niko set the frosted bottle down on the counter and knocked back the drink in one swift motion. The bottle he’d frozen was of average quality at best, and the booze seared at his throat as it passed. With a bitter aftertaste left in his mouth, Niko made a disgusted sound, grimacing at the label, then poured out another glass.
“That bad, huh?” Starla asked, peering at him with an expression of concern and sympathy. Niko took the glass with him and went to sit down on the couch next to her, pointedly ignoring the question.
“Found anything new?” he asked, gesturing toward the files with his glass. He slouched back in the couch and brooded over his drink.
Starla watched him. “You mean did I find anything connecting these disparate and closed cases that numerous other trained detectives have somehow missed?” Niko glared at her. With a shrug, she pushed a stray lock of coral hair back behind her ear. “Not really, no. Nothing new since the last time we looked at these files. Yesterday.”
Niko downed his drink in one gulp and set it aside atop a stack of unstable boxes to his left. Leaning over the coffee table to better survey the documents, he shook his head.
“There has to be something here. I know it,” he said, picking up the police report on a domestic disturbance at the Shady Cove Estates approximately a year ago. The case was closed, the responding officers apparently having found it to be a misunderstanding. Some of the serving staff, housed in an adjacent coach house, called when they heard their employers screaming. The cops arrived to find no one injured and no fighting. Apparently, one of the family members was playing a video game too loudly, and the serving staff misconstrued the sound. All members of the household were accounted for save one who was reported to be on holiday in Nimueh’s Court.
It all seemed in order on the surface, but Niko knew the list of residents of Shady Cove Estates, and he knew the lengths to which they went to keep family business just that—in the family. A separate file Niko had attached to the case report indicated the serving staff involved in calling the police had all been let go the following week.
“You don’t, though,” Starla said. “You can’t know there’s something here. You’re just basing this on one single, offhand remark a madman made just before he died.”
Niko shot her a look, picking up another file instead. “The final proclamation of Vermillion Oak was hardly ‘offhand.’ He said, ‘One tree hardly makes a forest.’ That’s not an accident. We thought he was running the Woods, but what if he was just one branch? What if the Woods is still operating, just without the Selkie Auction? I need to know. I need to find out.”
Starla finished her coffee and laid back into the couch like Niko had been, scratching at her scalp beneath the messy bun at the top of her head. “Are you sure this isn’t more to do with finding a way to arrest all those well-to-do people who got away scot free in the aftermath of the Auction?”
Rankled, Niko shifted and studied another case for the sixtieth time, sure that this time he would identify what connected the theft of a classic art piece from a Maeve’s Court museum to the disappearance of a cleaning woman in the financial district.
“Those people were willingly engaging in the buying and selling, not to mention torture and murder of innocent people. They weren’t at the Auction by accident. Each of them is just as guilty as Preston and Oak, far as I’m concerned.”
Starla threw her hands up. “Ah, here we go again. I wondered when his name was coming up,” she said. Niko glanced at her. “Preston,” she said. “You mention him every damn day. So he got away with it. If he’s really into shady shit like the Auction, then he’ll crop up again in some other case. In the meantime, maybe you should be less obsessed with him and more interested in a different mystery.”
Niko set the casefiles down, interest piqued. “Another mystery? What happened?”
Starla stared expressionless at him. “The only fucking mystery that really matters to you,” she said. “The mystery of where the fuck Cobalt Sincloud went and why he hasn’t reappeared in three months.”
Shutting down immediately, Niko turned back to the files, brushing Starla off. “He went back to Azure’s Court,” Niko said. Voice clipped, the hole in his chest ever hollow, he wondered how much it was safe to drink from that bottle before he’d end up with a hangover in the morning. He didn’t feel it taking effect yet at all. “Mystery solved.”
Starla got to her feet, shaking her head. “You’re allowed to be pissed, Niki. He said he’d be right back and then vanished without a trace. Three months. No message or anything. What the fuck?”
“He said he would be gone briefly,” Niko said. “Brief is relati—”
“Oh, don’t bullshit me. It hurts, Niki,” she said, reaching for him a moment then immediately dropping her hand. Niko didn’t acknowledge it. “I know it hurts. You can’t keep that shit bottled up all the time. Disappearing into cases is fine and all, but now you’re inventing cases. It’s not healthy.”
“And you’re the authority on wholesome coping mechanisms?” he snapped. He regretted it immediately, but Starla was harder than that. She crossed her arms and glared at him.
“Sometimes it takes a sick person to recognize disease,” she said. But seeing Niko’s refusal to acknowledge her words, she shook her head and glanced at the clock. “Shit, I gotta get to bed. Working mornings is fucking killing me.” At Niko’s pointed look, she raised her hands in surrender and shrugged. “Not that I’m complaining about being out of the nightlife, I promise you.”
Grabbing her phone, she made her way toward the door. Niko realized as he watched her go that she hadn’t bothered wearing proper shoes to visit him. He supposed living only a floor apart meant she could make the trip in slippers without fuss. He meant to wish her goodnight, but the word dried on his lips when his phone buzzed. The sound stopped Starla too. It was late for a text, which meant it could really only be one person.
The number on the screen was scrambled as usual, marked only by a kind of glitched symbol Niko had come to associate with these messages. There was no tracin
g it; he’d tried. And no matter how piercing the concern at the back of his mind was, warning him the messages were traps or lies or some kind of trick, the information always checked out.
He swiped at the screen and read the text in slow motion. It took two or three tries before his brain managed to process the letters he was reading. His stillness alerted Starla, and she was immediately back on the couch next to him, peering over his shoulder to read the information herself.
“Fuck,” she breathed, but Niko barely heard her. All he could hear was the words echoing in his mind endlessly and the laughter drowning out his hope.
The Court has made its decision. They are releasing Sade Hemlock. Tonight.
Chapter 2
The winter season in Maeve’s Court meant little in terms of changing temperatures, but precipitation was a different story. While the days only grew somewhat milder, a steady rotation of clouds seemed to hover over the Court. Rain fell every day or every other day, if only for a few minutes, and ensured that nothing exposed to the sky would ever thoroughly dry until spring.
Niko lingered against the window of an electronics repair shop, sheltering himself against the pissing rain beneath a black umbrella. Sure, there were charmed clothing items produced in Nimueh’s Court that could have more effectively kept him dry, but an umbrella did the dual duty of shielding him from both the rain and from sight.
He shifted from one foot to the other, holding his phone against his ear with his shoulder awkwardly cocked as he pretended to rummage through his pockets looking for something. Eyes trained on the door of a hardware store across the street, Niko barely blinked as cars sloshed passed him and people scurried by, desperate for the shelter of the bus stop or some store. He was close enough to the packed bus stop that he could easily have been waiting for the next one, but his car was parked two shops away.
“No, no, I’m just out picking up some food,” Niko said into his phone, only vaguely aware of what Uriah was going on about on the other end.
“Groceries?” Uri asked, and Niko hedged his bets.
“Ah, no. Just dinner,” he said, aware that if either Uri or Starla happened to check his fridge later that night, they’d find no groceries and out him as a liar. The door to the hardware store opened, the shop beyond it hazy in orange light that didn’t quite make it to the grey street. Niko perked up, relaxing only when a woman with grey curls emerged with a brand new squeegee in a plastic bag.
“What’re you picking up?” Uri asked, and Niko frowned.
“Come up with your own dinner ideas,” Niko shot, and Uri’s momentary sigh indicated they both knew what he was doing.
“Just promise me you’re actually out getting dinner and not doing anything stupid,” Uri said. Niko’s eyes flashed when the door to the hardware store opened again. A man with lilac hair and a scar across his face emerged, the duffel bag slung over his shoulder much heavier and fuller than it had been when he’d gone in.
Making a show of checking his watch, Niko looked both ways down the street, then shook his head and made his way toward his car. He hopped into the driver’s side, his attention still on the lilac-haired man getting into his own big, dusty blue van. The colour was not improved by the rain in the slightest.
“I’m not doing anything stupid, Uri,” Niko said, tossing his closed umbrella into the passenger’s side foot well. Key in the ignition, and the sound of his car coming to life played into the phone. Niko frowned, watching the van pull slowly into the flow of traffic.
“Oh? Already done dinner then? Where’re you headed now then?” Uri asked pointedly.
“It’s just takeout,” Niko snapped, but Uri wasn’t buying it.
“Takeout to take with you as you surveil someone?” Uri pushed. “Because that would be stupid, Nik. Surveillance without a warrant or case to go with it is called stalking.”
“Thank you, Uri, I know that,” he said. Two cars had passed after the van, and Niko pulled out smoothly before another managed. There was residue of an old business decal on the back window of the van that stood out amidst the other cars on the street, and Niko kept it in his sights at all times.
“And of course you know that Sade Hemlock is not a suspect in an ongoing investigation, therefore there is no legal reason to be following him,” Uriah said rather than asked.
“I’m aware,” Niko said, speeding up just slightly to make the light about to turn. He passed the intersection just as the light turned amber.
Uri sighed on the other end of the line, as though he knew Niko was lying to him. “I know it’s bullshit, Nik. I know it’s fucked up. But the Court made its decision, and now we all have to live with it. That’s how the justice system works. He’s on a short leash, you know. And whatever else he is, he’s not stupid. He’s not about to go buy guns and kidnap people when he’s only just been given his freedom.”
You don’t know Sade.
But Niko said nothing, maybe because Uri didn’t even sound convinced of his own argument. It had taken a bit, but Uri had managed to transfer his hurt and disappointment in his failed relationship with Niko to the actual culprit responsible—Sade. He’d joined Niko and Starla in their deep loathing, but Uri would never understand Sade’s evil the way Niko did. Even Starla only understood some of what Niko went through from the Court reports. Sade had favoured Niko so heavily he’d started exploring all sorts of new ways to torture on him. Niko had never been rented or sold to anyone else. He had been Sade’s claimed plaything for—he couldn’t even remember exactly how long.
Niko followed the van at a distance through the ebbing traffic of rush hour toward the outskirts of the professional part of the city. As the number of vehicles on the road began to dwindle, Niko kept a greater distance, turning as late as possible down an empty road the van had already driven. He had an idea of where they were headed but not a specific location. He’d been following Sade since the moment he’d been released back into the public, and Niko had a strong sense of what Sade was after.
As they drifted into the manufacturing district of Maeve’s Court, passing the newer factories and fully stocked warehouses, Niko scanned around for possible parking locations. Sade had been in the market for a new property, out of the way and easily overlooked, from the second day he was free. He’d spent the first in a brothel. Niko hated to think what had been done to the workers in there that night.
“You need to move on, Nik,” Uri said, a tinge of sadness in his words. Niko tried not to think about what specifically Uri meant him to move on from. Probably everything.
“I’ll move on when the appeal goes through,” Niko snapped, and he hung up without much ado. A twinge of guilt struck him, but he buried it under his focus on the van ahead of him. Uri was only worried about him. Just like Starla. Just like the Captain, frankly. But Niko didn’t need worry. He needed help proving his case.
The van pulled up to a metal-link gate held closed with a heavy chain and lock. Sade emerged from the driver’s side, and Niko pulled in to a warehouse parking lot on the opposite side of the street, turning his lights low so as not to attract attention. He parked quickly in a spot with a reasonable view of the gate and the door to the warehouse beyond it. By the time he’d turned off the engine, Sade had managed to unchain the gate and swing it open for his car to pass through. He left it open behind him as he drove up to the mouldering warehouse.
The outer walls were corrugated steel over concrete, and parts of the roof looked as though they might be rusted away. Compared to the other places Sade had checked out, this one was by far in the worst repair. But Sade always did like things broken and dirty.
Niko shuddered as he watched Sade’s lilac head disappear beyond the door to the warehouse. He waited a few minutes, then pulled the hood of his sweater up over his hair, made a trade to turn the soft cotton fabric to a waterproof cloth, and jumped out of the car. Running across the street to the edge of the warehouse plot, he walked along the edge of the fencing, searching down either side of the perime
ter for possible exits.
Rain pattered down hard against his hood, the street, the steel warehouse, drowning out any other sound. The tinny echo of water against the steel played a strange tune on the evening, and Niko inhaled a deep breath of the wet asphalt and iron scent of the neighbourhood. He couldn’t get into the adjacent properties to search the fencing for faults or breaks, so instead, he ran back to his car and pulled out his phone. With one eye on the warehouse door, he plugged in the address and searched the ‘street view’ maps of the area. From what he could tell, the fencing at the back of the building was intact. The road behind this row of warehouses and factories was a dirt stretch that barely accommodated one car across. Behind that was the very edge of the jungle-forest of Maeve’s Court.
Leg shaking as he thought, Niko considered the possibilities. Sade was not a wilderness person. He was born and bred in the city and responded best to concrete and metal. Niko couldn’t see any reason he’d abandon his van in front of a warehouse only to jump a fence and disappear into the trees. Chances were he was scoping out the warehouse as his new base of operations. Maybe he’d already purchased it. Niko couldn’t quite gather that information without using the department’s system, and doing that would certainly alert the Captain to what Niko was up to. If he didn’t already suspect. But knowing was a different thing entirely.
A loud and angry growl came from Niko’s stomach, its contents—or lack thereof—churning unpleasantly. He regretted not actually picking up a real meal like he’d told Uri he had. It had been days since he’d eaten anything more substantial than a protein bar. Cursing himself, he reached into the plastic bag in his backseat and pulled out another ‘meal replacement’ bar. It was packed with protein and nutrients, but it tasted like cardboard. He peeled away the wrapper and chewed on the end of it, never looking away from the warehouse door.
If Sade was only scoping out the property, he should only be inside a few more minutes. If he’d already purchased it, though, he could be inside for a while longer. Niko wasn’t sure. He did a quick search on the property on his phone, the protein bar sticking unpleasantly to his teeth as he chewed. Search results told him the warehouse had, at some point, been used as a refrigerated storage facility for commercial meat. It may also have been storage for lumber prior to that, but that seemed to have been years and years prior.