by Sierra Dean
It was Mercedes who broke the silence. “Secret, we’ve asked you here because we know you and Mr. Keats specialize in more…unusual cases than most PIs in the city. What we’ve got on our hands right now definitely qualifies as unusual.”
“You want my help?” Considering just last night Cedes had rebuffed the offer, I was interested in what had happened to bring on such an official change of heart.
“Did you think we brought you in for something more sinister?” Tyler’s tone was sarcastic but maintained a note of genuine curiosity. I caught his eye and frowned.
“The invitation was a little mysterious.”
“I thought you liked to be cloaked in mystery,” he countered.
I snorted. “Am I here to offer a professional opinion, or am I here so you can get in a few long-awaited jabs at my expense, Nowakowski?” I felt bad for being so harsh, but I wasn’t willing to be dragged through the mud for something I didn’t deserve. He frowned and drummed his fingers on the table but said nothing.
“We’ve been trying to keep this case quiet for as long as possible,” Mercedes confessed. “But tomorrow the Times and Post are going live with a vengeance.”
She flipped open the folder, and a dozen glossy photos fluttered out across the table towards me. At first I couldn’t make sense of them, but when I picked one up to get a better look, my stomach clenched.
“Is that…?”
“That one was found on the desk of the Times editor.” She handed me another. “This one at the Post. And this one…” She put a third photo in my hands. “This one was delivered to my desk this afternoon.”
Each photo was of a cheery Christmas stocking, red boot with a fuzzy white trim, crammed full of body parts. And judging by the red-hued, ragged edges of the pieces, they wouldn’t fit back together all too cleanly. I shoved the photos into the folder and slapped it shut.
“Who delivered the packages?” I asked, trying to drive the images from my mind.
“That’s part of what’s so weird. There were no deliveries. The boxes weren’t mailed or dropped off. They just showed up,” Mercedes explained.
Tyler exhaled loudly through his nose.
“Is there any way to hold the press off?” This kind of story would create a frenzy in the city. People were already frantic this time of year. Throw in a serial killer who ripped people apart and shit would hit the fan.
Tyler spoke up at last. “The Post is shitting themselves. Can you imagine how long they’ve been waiting to use the headline Ho-Ho-Homicide? The Times won’t be scooped by the Post on a story this big. Especially when Ellen Klein has blood all over her editorial desk. No, we can’t hold the press off.”
I played with the edge of the folder, nervous energy rattling through my body. “What do you think I can do to help?”
“We know you and Keats have dealt with some strange customers…” Mercedes was trying to phrase things as delicately as possible with Tyler around. My guess was he’d insisted on sitting in on the meeting, not wanting her to commandeer lead detective on what might be the biggest case of their careers. I couldn’t blame him, but it made it difficult for Cedes to tell me what she needed.
“We’ve seen our share of mixed nuts, yeah.”
“With your experience, we hoped you might look through your old cases and see if any red flags popped up.”
“Check the records for someone who thinks they’re Santa?” I grumbled.
“At this point we’re willing to follow up on every lead. There’s more.” She placed another folder on the table next to the one we’d just closed, and I was hoping it wasn’t going to be worse. “We’ve been looking at this as a missing-persons issue until now, but today that all changed. Since we’re now dealing with one of the scariest mass homicides this city has seen in thirty years, we have to be prepared for the two things to be connected.”
“What missing-persons issue?”
“Three youths are missing, all under fifteen. And with this development, especially the stocking angle and the age of some of the other victims, there’s a chance this freak has taken them.”
“God.” I now regretted my Santa remark. “I’ll take a look at our case files. Keaty…Keats is out of town, but I’ll see if I can get in touch with him. He knows our past cases better than anyone. But don’t get your hopes too high. I can’t remember anything we’ve dealt with remotely like that.” I tapped the first file.
It was true I’d never known of a monster who delivered body parts in stockings before. But I knew there were monsters out there who targeted the young. Monsters the NYPD had no business dealing with. Which was probably the real reason Cedes had called me.
“Every little bit counts,” Tyler admitted. It must have pained him to be a party to asking for my help. Wounded male pride runs deep, and even a smart guy like him was no exception to that rule.
“What else can you tell me? Any connections between the kids and the other victims? Were any of the adult victims reported as MIA before their bodies showed up?” In another life, I might have made one heck of a detective. As it was, I had more than enough mysteries to solve.
Mercedes finally opened the second folder and laid three photos out in front of me. These were not at all grisly, but somehow they made me feel worse than the crime-scene snaps. A trio of smiling school photos beamed up at me. They looked to be from thirteen to fifteen, judging by the grade-level markers on each photo, and there was no trend otherwise. One was Hispanic, one East Indian and one white. The group was split between the sexes—two boys and one girl.
“They went to different schools,” Cedes explained. “Lived in different neighborhoods as far out as Queens. We don’t know for sure if they’ve been taken by this son of a bitch, but we’re running on that assumption right now. They all disappeared in the same three-day period earlier this month, and none of the families have been contacted for ransom.”
I restacked the photos so all I was left with was the grinning face of a shy-looking brown-skinned boy, then I pushed the pile back to the detectives.
“Is that everything?”
“That’s what we know.”
“It goes without saying we would appreciate the utmost discretion in this matter,” Tyler said, his voice loaded with warning.
Me, be anything less than subtle? What a shocking allegation.
“My name is Secret, Detective Nowakowski.”
His mouth formed a thin line, but there was a light in his eyes I hadn’t seen in a long time. To counter the rising tide of mirth, he lowered his thick black brows into a scowl.
“We appreciate you coming,” Cedes said, and offered me her hand. We shook politely like professionals, and then Tyler and I did the same.
“Whatever I can do,” I promised. “I’ll help you find this monster.”
Chapter Five
Back at my apartment, visions of sugarplums were no longer dancing in my head. Instead I was having a hard time shaking the images of the smiling young teens in those school photos. I’d dealt with a lot of nasty crap in my time, but it took a real monster to snatch kids.
Scratch that. Most monsters I knew were too principled to do something so despicable.
Mercedes wanted to believe this was a paranormal killing, because the only other option was to think a human being was capable of dismembering people and snatching teens for the same nasty fate. Unfortunately, in my experience, I found humans were just as able to do monstrous things as the real monsters were.
I kicked off my boots and padded around the apartment. Desmond wasn’t home. He’d called from work while I was at Keaty’s to tell me about some sort of lobby disaster in the plans for Lucas’s new hotel in Singapore. Apparently redesigning the columns was going to eat up a good chunk of his evening, which left me all alone with my dark thoughts.
On the living room floor, Rio the kitten was having a blast with a strand of tinsel. She was no longer the tiny ball of fluff Brigit had brought home. In six months she’d grown into a sinewy w
hite rope of cat with a diamond starburst of gray on her forehead. She looked more like a little fur demon than ever and acted the part. Kicking at the tinsel with her back legs, she teased it with a menacing, “Brreow.” Then she began to gnaw on it.
“Oh, Rio, no.” I snatched the tinsel away from her, making a face at the slobbery wetness, then disposed of it in the kitchen trash. The last thing I needed to be festively adorned in this apartment was the cat’s poop.
With the tinsel gone, she took up her favorite hobby—attempted manslaughter. She weaved between my ankles while I walked, trying her damnedest to make me do a face plant into the Christmas tree. When I picked her up, she began to purr loudly.
“You’ve won this round.”
A knock at the door interrupted a world-class belly rub, and I got the evil cat death stare from hell when I put her back on the floor. If anyone doubts me when I say cats are demons, they’ve never owned one. I avoided her retribution by stepping over her and pulling the door open.
She got one look at my visitor and vanished under the loveseat with a hiss.
“What did I ever do to her?” Holden asked.
“Beats me. I can’t even blame it on you being a vampire. She loves Brigit.”
“I bet she likes your pet dog, too, so there’s no accounting for taste.”
I wrinkled my nose at him but stepped aside so he could enter the apartment.
“Speaking of dogs,” he continued. “Where is yours?”
“Desmond is working late.” I shut the door behind him, and we stood close together in the front entrance.
Holden was busy assessing the new décor of my living room. “Dear God. FAO Schwarz’s window display has exploded in your apartment.”
I held back a laugh because his reaction was so similar to my own. Instead I chided him. “Don’t be such a Grinch.”
He gave me a quizzical look. I was always astonished at how a two-hundred-year-old vampire could be so out of the loop on pop-culture references. The Grinch wasn’t even modern pop culture.
“A Scrooge,” I said, finding something more his century.
“Ah.”
“Thanks for coming so fast. It’s not like you to actually check your voicemail.”
“What can I say? I’m at your beck and call now.”
“Jump,” I said with a smirk.
“What?”
“You’re supposed to say how high?”
Holden didn’t look amused. He buried his hands in his coat pockets and stared at me. Ever since I’d saved his life, his moods shifted from teasingly cheerful to downright sullen at the drop of a hat. I was used to the brooding side of Holden. It was the turn towards the manic that tended to throw me. Could vampires be bipolar?
“You said you needed me for something.”
“I’m going hunting.”
“Secret…”
“As long as I have someone from the council with me, Sig can’t complain about it. And I’m not hunting vampires.”
“What are you…we hunting?”
I told him about my meeting at the police station and the details Cedes and Tyler had provided me about the murders. Holden was as stony as ever, but he didn’t interrupt me at all, which meant he was at least taking me seriously.
“Does it sound like anything you’ve ever heard of before?”
“When I still lived in Dorchester, before I came to America, there was an Irish family living in the village.” He leaned against the wall and removed his hands from his pockets. “This was when I was still human. The mother would tell stories some nights, and if you were quiet enough, you’d be able to hear her clear across town when the windows weren’t shuttered and the wind was low.”
Vampires never got straight to the point. Their stories tended to be Dostoyevskyian in length, and even the most trivial tale could be drawn out for ages. I bit the inside of my cheek and resisted the urge to ask him to get to the point. He noticed my reaction and sighed.
“Long story short, she would tell her children that if they weren’t good, a wicked fairy would come and take them away in the night.”
“But fairies don’t eat children. And they certainly don’t chop them up. Not to mention the current corpses are adults.”
“True, but most humans don’t know the difference between a fairy and other low fae. I wouldn’t put it past a troll to snatch kids.”
“A troll wouldn’t have the finesse or presence of mind to send body parts to the cops. And I’ve never seen a troll, let alone one in Manhattan. I doubt there’s one lurking under the Bow Bridge, smacking his chops for tourists in rowboats.”
Holden frowned. “Have you considered the obvious?”
“That it’s a human?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the most sensible answer, actually. My biggest question is how a human could get the stockings into a busy newspaper office or drop one on a desk in the middle of a police station.”
“A witch, perhaps?”
“Maybe. I’d need to see the stockings to know if there was any lingering magic smells on them. And after so long, even that wouldn’t guarantee a solid answer. I only know what Grandmere has shown me, and she doesn’t use black magic. I don’t know if I’d recognize it.”
“So, if we don’t know what we’re looking for, what are we hunting for?”
“Answers.”
He snorted. “Good luck finding any of those in this city.”
I slipped my boots back on. When I stood we were almost eye level and he was closer than I remembered him being before. My breath stuck in my lungs. He caught the sides of my jacket at my waist, and with aching slowness did the zipper up one metal tooth at a time. When he reached my breasts, his upwards journey came to an abrupt end. I placed a hand over his, and we stood staring at each other.
“I’ve got it,” I said, hating how breathy my voice sounded.
For a minute he refused to let go of the zipper, until I pried his fingers loose. His hand hovered before he dropped it and took a step backwards.
“It’s cold outside,” he said.
“I think maybe that’s a good thing.”
He looked up, perhaps searching for something to say, and laid eyes on the dangling cluster of mistletoe Desmond had hung in the entrance. Before Holden could get any wise ideas, I grabbed his wrist and hauled him out of the apartment. Maybe the mistletoe wasn’t such a great decorating touch after all.
Chapter Six
Holden and I walked south from Hell’s Kitchen, through Chelsea, until we were in the West Village. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I’d called Nolan, and he was searching through Keaty’s computer files for me. Now I had nothing to do but search my memory and wander aimlessly until something became clear.
I hated having no plan.
That was what brought us—after a long stroll—to Battery Park and the southernmost tip of Manhattan. The trees were bare, giving the space a ghostly, skeletal-limbed eeriness. We walked through the park to the riverside path, and I leaned against the railing. The city lights turned the sky a bruised purple color.
“Now what?” Holden asked.
Turning, I propped my elbows on the railing and met his questioning gaze. He’d been politely silent while we’d walked, giving me time to mull over my thoughts, but now that we’d stopped moving he was expecting me to have reached some mental conclusion as well.
I guess my contemplation had drawn on too long, because he persisted with a, “Well?”
“Okay, well, we know it’s not a vampire because there didn’t appear to be any blood taken. We know it’s not a shifter, because none of them would be stupid enough to make such a public display.”
Holden gave me a tight-lipped frown as if to doubt my certainty. “That leaves us where?”
“Human, fae or other.”
“Other?”
“I don’t know. That’s the point. Alien? Poltergeist?” When I said this, he rolled his eyes, so in spite of my sincere desire to hunt o
ur monster of unknown origin down, I added, “Wookie?”
“Wookie.” He looked dumbfounded by my stupid suggestion, but it seemed like he’d seen Star Wars because he didn’t ask me to elaborate. “I more or less wondered what we were doing here, specifically.”
“Since I don’t know what to look for, I guess I just figured we’d start at the bottom and work our way up. See if we find anything. See or smell anything out of the ordinary. Talk to people who might know.”
Holden stared at me. “Surely you can’t be suggesting we cover the entirety of Manhattan on foot looking for nothing in particular.” His emphasis on the last three words made it sound like he was speaking to a child.
If I knew where to look or what to look for, I’d be on my way with a weapon in hand to dispatch the evil bastard who was doing this. That was how I worked. But I needed somewhere to start. And here seemed like as good a place as any.
“Did you have something better to do tonight?”
Four hours later I was walking back to my apartment with a surly vampire. We’d covered the area from Battery Park to Gramercy Park and in spite of our combined network of sources and our preternaturally heightened senses, we’d come up with nothing.
Well, not nothing, but nothing much.
When we’d stopped into a loathsome little vampire bar called The Ruby Slipper on our way out of the financial district, there’d been rumblings of something nasty that was capable of taking down an adult shifter. But since shifters weren’t known for sharing weaknesses with vampires, I was sure it was just the underground rumor mill.
Nevertheless I’d called Nolan back to ask him about his case and find out if anything new had come up. A missing teenage shifter, dismembered bodies and a trio of missing youths? And now the rumblings of a big bad? Terrible things happened here all the time, but this was too many at once to ignore the likelihood of a connection.