“Haven’t decided yet. Let’s see how well you handle this newest mess. You completely failed your possessed-trees test.”
“And you completely failed a simple internet search. It wasn’t difficult to get any of this information. You’re just lazy.”
Dane frowned at that. So he didn’t like to be considered lazy.
“You need my information,” he said. “I know the ins and outs of all this shit.”
Sean snorted and dipped a fry in ketchup.
“Sure. Everything you told me I’d already inferred. Looks like you need me. You would have passed this up otherwise. Think of how many people you’d let get away with unwiped knowledge. And that moving magic zone you wouldn’t have been able to report. You don’t work well alone, Dane.”
“I fucking kick ass alone,” said Dane, growl to his voice.
“That’s why you need Ned to tell you when shit’s happening. This thing with Bethany? We’ve been doing all your work for you. And you’re the one with the business and stipend.”
“Fuck you,” said Dane, standing. “I don’t get any of Crypt Coffee’s profit.”
“Sit down,” said Sean in his best disciplinary voice. Dane sneered but obeyed, and he figured he should stop pressing the man’s buttons. Even if it turned him on a little. “Let’s discuss.”
“Discuss what?”
“Where to go from here,” said Sean.
Dane breathed out hard.
“Back to our own beds.”
“Not that. You want me to track down contact info for her family and friends? You’ll want to talk to them to see if they know about how she was growing her plants. I know I’m interested in what they know. Maybe someone wanted to kill her and take over her business. One of them is probably the murderer.”
“I don’t care about that. She. Passed. On.”
“Some of the trees she was growing were willows,” said Sean, but Dane stared at him like that meant nothing. “The bark has painkiller properties. Imagine a highly-potent all-natural painkiller. So it’s made from magic. What does the Order have to say about that?”
“That shit’s restricted. Can’t sell magically-enhanced items to the general public. They will track you down, and you won’t like what they’ll do to you. They don’t care if she didn’t know what she was doing.”
Sean paused, fry halfway to his mouth. He didn’t like the thought that came to him.
“Could they have done this and not told you? From what Ned described, it’s a good way to kill someone, get them to crash their car. Sneaky.”
“The Order’s cunning, not sneaky, and they would’ve told me about a simple execution.” Dane crossed his arms and scowled. “Yeah, get me those contacts. The more we talk about it, the more this sounds like some shit I gotta keep under control.”
Sean finished his burger and they paid, then he drove them back to Crypt Coffee. It was dark and Sean ought to get home to get to bed at a decent hour, but when Dane got out he lingered with the door open. Sean waited to be thanked for their time in the bedroom, some form of acknowledgement of what they’d done and that it had been good. That’s not what he got.
“Wanna check out Eliza with me?” asked Dane.
Sean turned off the car. That was probably as good as he was getting anyway.
He followed Dane directly out into the cemetery, the place illuminated only by ambient light from the rest of the small city. Headstones should have looked more intimidating in this light, particularly after Sean knew how dangerous the dead could be, but he didn’t feel particularly concerned. Dane had his gun, after all, and he’d gotten Sean out of that earlier predicament. Plus this gave Sean yet another chance to observe Dane in his element.
In Crypt Coffee, Dane looked good. He wasn’t bad with customers, either, considering. But on the trail of something paranormal, well—his eyes glinted, his posture turned to relaxed readiness, and he moved as though very aware of his body. Sean liked it.
The three pines were nothing more than smoldering lumps protruding from the ground when they reached Eliza’s grave. Dane kicked at a few pieces of bone, grumbling.
“Have to come back for these fuckers later. Burn them completely.”
“You think she’s not gone?”
“Probably,” said Dane, turning to glare around the scorched ground and kicking a few more bones into the pile he’d started. “S’enough to send most ghosts along. You burn the rest of it to make sure they can’t come back.”
“Yes, but Eliza was stronger than your typical ghost,” said Ned, suddenly behind them. He straightened his tie as he hovered. “There’s a chance that she hasn’t been dismissed.”
“Or that she’ll come back, I know,” said Dane, sounding irritated. “You’re not telling me anything new, Ned.”
“I’m telling you to be careful. I didn’t want to get near her, and you know how I feel about them.”
Sean opened his mouth to ask what that meant, but Ned had vanished. He looked to Dane, who motioned to him with a hand. Sean followed.
“Ned’s not as scary as he looks,” said Dane. “Ghosts can fuck each other up pretty badly. Ned’s been dead for well over a hundred years so he’s seen a few of them. Knows how to take care of himself. If he’s hesitant to engage, it means he thinks he’s going to get hurt badly, which is a bad sign for us—that’s a powerful spirit.”
“Us?” asked Sean before he could stop himself, then, before Dane could tell him to go fuck himself, “Over a hundred years old? He talks like us.”
“He keeps up with us, too,” said Dane, stopping and pointing to a headstone that had been hacked apart. Sean stared at it, horrified. Someone had completely chiseled out the original name and then chipped in ‘Ned’ in what looked like a child’s handwriting but was more likely poor stone working skills. “He’s trans. Knows new words, swears, even some pop culture.”
“What happened to his stone?”
“I fixed it for him,” said Dane, sounding proud.
Sean stared at him.
“You couldn’t just get him a new one?”
“No, I couldn’t get him a fucking new one,” said Dane, not looking at Sean.
“So that didn’t occur to you.”
“Fuck off. Weren’t you going home?”
Sean sighed, wanted to grab Dane’s shoulder, turn him around, and kiss him goodnight, but Sean had a feeling that would be unwelcome.
“Yeah,” he said instead, and got a few feet away before turning back. “Hey, I’ll need your number.”
“Nice try. Just call Crypt Coffee.”
“You want me leaving contact info for Bethany’s friends and family with one of your baristas? Just give me your number, Dane.”
Dane pulled his phone out of his pocket and tossed it over. Sean nearly missed the catch, but it only took a few moments to enter his number in Dane’s phone and put Dane’s into his own. He walked the phone back.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t say it,” said Dane, snatching his phone back and glaring. “You might be too old for casual sex, professor, but I’m not.”
“You should call me Sean. Then I won’t get you confused with a student when we’re on the phone. Good-night.”
He left Dane gaping after him, but if he was going to call Sean old, Sean would tell him he was practically a kid. Asshole. Sean wasn’t even forty. Not that that was the threshold for being old, but really it wasn’t as though Dane had been picky when they were fucking earlier.
Sean spent the rest of the week watching his bruises slowly fade and going through the churn of classes. He was tempted every night to call Dane and ask him over for a bit of that casual sex he insisted he was into, but balked every time. Somehow, putting it into terms like that solidified it to Sean. Like maybe if they were ever in a situation where they wound up fucking again, that would make it more real.
So he left Dane alone the rest of the week, and looked up what he could on Bethany, and tried not to think about his empty bed.
His phone rang again, and again Dane dumped it to voice mail. Sean could leave him another fucking message. He took a drink from a skull mug, the plain coffee and whiskey going down easy, and went back to the map on his Order-supplied tablet. He flipped back and forth between map view and satellite, trying to figure out where he should tell them the magic nexus point had moved to. Closer to the house on the map, obviously, and out of the creek. But the Order liked precision.
Dane took another drink and gave his best guess. He saved to a USB drive, sent a text to his contact he’d have something for the Order at their drop point in a day, and declined another of Sean’s calls. He’d left three messages Dane put off for later. He had an overdue report to draft up.
He fucking hated paperwork. Someone else was paid to handle most of that for Crypt Coffee, but there was no out for Dane when it came to Decrypter work. He was stuck writing up what had been going on here and trying to make it not look like a fifth-grade book report.
Saturdays sucked. No, all days sucked. Bleu Falls sucked. Back in Minneapolis he got to hunt down overgrown rats, a juvenile basilisk, and even a werewolf once. Here was ghosts, and pigeons possessed by ghosts, and trees possessed by ghosts. He was balls deep in ghosts and he was not having fun.
His contact texted the letter Y, and as he was setting aside his phone, another came in from Winter.
Man here to see you.
Dane scowled and finished his whiskey-with-coffee. Sean just needed to back the hell off. He’d thought the fact Sean hadn’t called for a few days meant the man had gotten the hint, but apparently not. He could sit up there and rot in one of those booths; Dane was busy.
Are owls allowed in here? He won’t take it out.
For a moment Dane stared at the text, then things clicked into place in his mind.
“Shit,” he muttered, standing. He pocketed his phone, grabbed his empty mug, and went up to meet his visitor.
“The table in the corner,” said Winter as he passed her. He didn’t need the help, though—John was a man who stood out, what with hauling his familiar around everywhere. It was easy to spot him feeding bits of cornbread to his owl, looking right at home on one of the coffin chairs. John was black, wore dreads down past his shoulders, and never took off his trench coat. Well, unless he was having sex. Dane had seen him out of it a handful of times before, but they were close more because they’d saved each other’s asses more than once.
Dane slid into the seat across from John and leaned back.
“Hah! You are here,” said John, looking up briefly from where he was feeding the owl. An empty coffee cup sat in front of him. “Good to see you again, Dane.”
“You, too. It’s been a while. Over a year.”
“I saw you seven months ago,” said John, then paused as he calculated and realized Dane wasn’t talking about the last time they’d gone after a rat king. He grinned and rolled his eyes. “You’re a horny bastard. Is this your way of asking me to spend the night at your place?”
“When have you ever spent the night?”
The owl hopped toward the end of the table and peered around at the customers, who gawped. Dane couldn’t remember what its name was, but he knew it was doing more than being cute. It was searching for threats, information, whatever it could get.
“Could you imagine what they’d do if they found out?” John shook his head. He was talking about the Order, but anyone overhearing would probably assume they were both cheating on partners. Dane shrugged.
“C’mon, everyone does it. Better others like us than anyone not involved. We already know the risks. We’re already in it.”
“Well, they don’t tend to take action unless it leads to something fucking bad happening, anyway. But I’m going to have to turn you down this time. I’m only passing through.”
Dane wasn’t sure if he was disappointed he couldn’t use John to get Sean to back off a little, or relieved because he was beginning to want another round with the professor. John was just dropping by; Sean lived here and would be a convenient person to call on when the need arose.
In any event, he was disappointed John had what had to be a more interesting assignment.
“Passing through? What for?”
“I’m hot on the trail. Something big.” John grinned and leaned forward. “Pity you couldn’t come along for the ride.”
“Fucking—” Dane stopped short of calling the Order out by name and pulled out his ringing phone. Sean again. He dumped him to messaging.
“Saw you were here on the map so I decided to drop in. Decent coffee. I like the atmosphere. What’re you out here for?”
Dane almost admitted he’d screwed up, but remembered what Sean was helping him look into.
“A lot of magical nexus points here, and they’re moving.”
John shot him a skeptical look.
“What’d you do?”
Dane scowled, looked away, and spotted Sean entering Crypt Coffee. Shit. Now Dane would have him to deal with, too. Saturdays sucked.
“Look, it was a minor thing. They completely overreacted.”
“And sent you to butt-fuck nowhere? To bullshit me with stories of moving nexus points?”
“They are moving, and it was minor.” Dane lowered his voice. “I accidentally offed a familiar.”
The owl turned at that and gave him an unblinking glare. To make matters worse, Sean was standing at the end of the table now, and he did not look pleased. Dane tensed in his seat. John looked up at Sean and they stared at each other for a moment before the professor turned back to Dane.
“Answer your fucking phone,” he said. John’s eyebrows shot up and he laughed. He pointed a thumb Sean’s way.
“You and him? Shit, Dane, you give your number out, you have to pick it up.”
“I wasn’t calling for sex,” said Sean. “Move over.” When Dane refused to scoot on the booth Sean sat anyway and shoved Dane with his shoulder. Dane prickled with irritation and something else, something carnal that made him want to shove Sean down and take him roughly. John shook his head.
“Right. I know what he gives his number out for.”
“Why, he give it to you?” asked Sean. Dane was uncomfortable where this was going. John laughed.
“Don’t worry, I’m not planning on letting him pick me up today. I’m just passing through. John.” He stuck out his hand. “You’re new. Not even on the database yet.”
“I’m not with the Order.”
John’s mirth disappeared and his owl peered at Sean now. Dane groaned.
“You’re a fucking idiot, professor.”
“You’re either going to report me and have my mind wiped or you’re not. What do I care? You don’t want my help, you don’t answer my calls, I figure forgetting it all can’t be much worse than this.”
“Phew,” said John, standing. The owl hopped up onto his shoulder. “I don’t want to get in on this. Good seeing you again, Dane. Professor, I…you, too.”
“You’re not going to report him,” said Dane as John turned to go. As far as he was concerned, it should be his call to make, and he didn’t want anyone, not even John, deciding for him when to send the Order after Sean. John grimaced.
“Has to be done. Ideally you would…” John shrugged. “I don’t want to do it. Call me when you do.”
He left and Dane glared at the half-eaten slice of corn bread drizzled in honey. Fucking Saturday.
“Move,” Dane said, and when Sean didn’t he turned and kissed Sean. The moment their lips touched, Sean had his ass out of the seat and was moving to sit across from Dane, flush creeping up his neck.
“One of my students could have seen that,” he hissed. Dane crossed his arms, finally feeling like he was in control again. “Don’t look so smug. I bet you slept with him, too, didn’t you?”
“John? A few times. Jealous?”
“You didn’t listen to any of my messages either, did you? Shit, Dane, you’re like the worst student I’
ve had.” Sean paused, looked thoughtful a moment. “Almost.”
“I hope I don’t have too much further to go.” Dane leaned forward. “I like being the worst. Especially if I can make it up with extra credit.”
“You’re flirting? Now?” Sean shook his head and changed the subject. “Killed a familiar. Like that owl?”
“No, it was a rat. A wizard’s rat. A very fucking powerful wizard-in-a-huge-guild’s rat. She was pissed. Now I’m here. Can we move on so you can get out of here and I can get back to my shitty paperwork?”
Sean stared at him a moment, looking like he had questions. To Dane’s relief, he kept them all to himself and instead pulled the corn bread to him. Dane blinked as he started eating it.
“What? I’ll eat anything slathered in honey. You know how long it’s been since I’ve had one of Crypt Coffee’s baked goods?”
“Since Wednesday.”
“Well, they’re that good. Which bakery do you use?” Sean licked the fork clean. “I especially love the pies, when you have them.”
“They’re my recipes,” said Dane, laughing as Sean choked. “Anything else I can surprise you with?”
“Investigating Bethany’s death with me,” said Sean, and Dane groaned. “Don’t be such a lazy asshole.” Dane prickled at that, but Sean talked over his objections. “Since you didn’t respond to anything I left you, I assumed you weren’t going to bother to interview anyone. So I located some of the people who knew her and asked a few questions. Want to know what I found out?”
“She never went out drinking with friends?”
Sean kicked him under the table and Dane grimaced.
“Bethany seemed to know something was different with her herbs. Makes sense—she must have been moving them regularly to that spot out in the woods. But she didn’t tell anyone what that was, as far as I can tell. Just mentioned she had a new way of growing them that was making her products better than ever. Any of the samples she gave family and friends, or full-sized items they bought, did work better than normal. It was noticeable to them, but apparently she didn’t let them in on it.”
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