“Olef,” I muttered. “His name was Olef.”
“Jessica was friends with him,” Tom said.
Andre grimaced. “Sorry, Jess. He’s already been taken away if that helps.”
I wasn’t sure if it did, but I couldn’t help but feel relieved not to see Olef lying dead on the floor. “How did he die?”
“I’m not sure what the official medical term will be, but my term would be a very hard blow to the head.”
“So over quickly? Good.” I braced myself and approached the doorway where Tom was standing.
Andre held up a hand before I got close enough to see past Tom. “Actually, I’m not so sure. Were you working on whatever case you think this is connected to?”
I glanced at Tom. “Yeah. Why?”
Tom inhaled sharply and darted inside the room. “I think Olef left you a message.”
Andre removed his hand, and I rushed forward, heart beating faster. Tape marked where Olef had been found, but even if it hadn’t, his location would have been obvious by the pool of drying blood near his desk. I closed my eyes momentarily, fighting to maintain my grip.
The room had been torn apart, like Andre said. More books were tossed everywhere, drawers flung open, and paper and pens scattered across a space barely big enough to hold three people. With shaky breaths, I knelt next to Tom. He moved aside so I could see he was looking at imprints of dried blood. They covered a spot on the bottom of the wall, right above the molding. Through the mess was a message, scrawled in an almost illegible hand.
JESS USE KEY
If Olef had time to leave me a message, he hadn’t died quickly. The dizziness washed over me again, and I waited for it to pass.
Focus, focus, focus, I demanded my brain. This must be important. I just wished I had a clue what it meant.
“Key?” I raised my eyebrows hopefully at Tom.
I could see his answer before he shook his head. His expression showed him to be as lost as I was.
Tom took out his phone and snapped a photo of the message, and I stood, scanning the room. So many books. What were the odds any of them held the answers we required? What were the odds that whoever did this hadn’t taken what we needed?
“So you don’t understand it?” Andre asked.
I wondered how much I was allowed to share. “Olef was researching stuff for our case. I guess he found some answers.”
“You tell us what you’re looking for, we can help you go through his belongings to see if we can find it.”
“It’s probably not going to be that simple,” Tom said. “But let’s start with what we do know so we can track down whoever did this. It’s possible the killer took the information we need.”
We made our way back into the living room. More uniformed Gryphons had arrived and were conferring with the remaining cops.
Andre pulled out a notebook, and we stepped onto the landing to get out of the newcomers’ way. “Here are the facts as originally taken by the PD before we arrived. Olef was found by his landlady when she went to deliver a package to him. She also saw him come home from work last night, which means there’s a good chance that makes her the last person to see him alive, but we’ll follow up on that. Landlady says she was home all day, but she was in her back room most of the time. So if someone came to Olef’s apartment via the front door, she wouldn’t have seen them.”
“How else could someone enter?” I asked.
“Fire escape.” Andre pointed toward the window. “There’s also a roof entrance—standard in The Feathers. And, you know, we’re dealing with magi. Olef’s bedroom window was open. Someone could have flown in.”
I crossed my arms. “If we’re dealing with a magi murderer.”
“True.” Andre gave me a pointed look. “I’ll get to that in a moment. But first, back to what I just said. The landlady claims she didn’t hear a thing all day except for the usual footsteps. That seem strange to you?”
I rubbed my sweaty neck. It was getting wicked hot up here with everyone roaming about. “But there was overturned furniture, and the books—shouldn’t she have heard that?”
“Exactly. You’d think anyway. So either she’s lying, or the mess upstairs was carefully and quietly staged.”
“To make it look like a robbery. Why?”
“Throw us off, perhaps,” Tom suggested. “Make us think this isn’t connected to the other case. Hide the fact that something we need was stolen.”
I groaned and turned to Andre. “You’re suggesting the cops think we’re dealing with a magi killer?”
It would definitely shake things up. I couldn’t believe for a second that Olef’s death wasn’t related to the prophecy, but there was no reason for another magi to have killed him in that case. Was there?
Andre flipped the page in his notebook. “A magi is possible at this point. The cops found a bright red feather under Olef’s body. It’s clearly not Olef’s.”
“Falcon shifters have red feathers.” They were the only magi with colorful plumage. “So do many harpies.”
Tom scratched his head. “Or it could mean nothing. Another fake clue to throw us off.”
“Yeah, well.” Andre stretched and stuffed the notebook away. “We’re sending the feather to the lab and hoping they can tell us if it’s magi or harpy in origin. Whether it’s just a red herring—er, feather—that’s another story.”
Tom got his phone out. “We’ll be here. Let us know as soon we can get in there and start taking control of Olef’s belongings.”
I collapsed to the stairs as Tom wandered off to make his call and Andre headed into the apartment. All I wanted was to run back to Shadowtown. To hold Lucen and make sure he was safe. And Steph. And my mother. And hell, add Devon to that list, and anyone else I remotely cared about.
Maybe whoever had done this was just trying to prevent us from learning what Olef found out, in which case the others were safe. Or maybe they were trying to keep us too distracted to stop the furies, in which case they weren’t. I couldn’t take the risk. If the furies were behind this—and I couldn’t believe anything else—then everyone connected to me and that damn prophecy might be in danger.
So as much as I wanted to run home, I didn’t move. I had to get my hands on Olef’s research. I had to find out what this mysterious key was. And I had to make sure Olef didn’t die in vain. It was the best I could do to protect everyone.
Chapter Twelve
It was late by the time we called it quits for the day. Tom and I had boxed up every promising book and scrap of paper Olef had accumulated over the years. We’d even obtained the package his landlady had tried dropping off earlier. Alas, the package only contained tea he’d ordered.
Andre was reluctant to give us first crack at going through Olef’s computer, but he’d been forced to relent because Tom outranked him. He was smart to realize, however, that Tom didn’t share his investigative background, and Tom’s interest in catching the murderer was only secondary to some other interest in Olef’s files.
I tried to explain to Andre that everything was related, but by eight o’clock I had a pounding headache. I gave up on talking to anyone and kept to myself, organizing Olef’s books and choosing any that looked promising to take to Headquarters to study.
I was pumped up with painkillers, uptight because of copious quantities of coffee and vaguely aware I was starving when I returned to Lucen’s. He yanked open the door before I could fish out my spare key.
“Why didn’t you call before you left?” He pulled me inside. “You have no bodyguards.”
Though I’d been fretting over his well-being all evening, I was also cranky, and his tone didn’t improve my mood. “I’m fine. No one’s going to attack me on the subway.”
“In Phoenix, you were attacked in a moving car, and you think someone can’t hurt you on the T?” He crossed his arms.
&
nbsp; I grumbled something that didn’t even make sense to me because he was right. “I’m sorry. I’m tired, and once we got everything, I just wanted to go home.”
Lucen ran his hands through his hair in obvious exasperation. “I want to keep you safe, little siren.”
“I know. You do tend to be a little overbearing about it though.” I wandered into the kitchen for a glass of water.
Lucen followed me in. “Overbearing?”
“You’re doing it now. You’re hovering.” I turned around with my glass in hand to make my point. He stood only inches behind me, a solid satyr wall. Protecting me from what—his pet dragon?
“Sometimes you like me close.”
I poked him in the chest to get him to back up. “When you’re not being overbearing, and loud, and doing things like threatening to lock me up for my own good.”
“When have I ever done that?”
I sat at the table with my water, wishing for that spiked coffee I never had. “There was a time, if you’ll recall, when we were hunting Victor Aubrey.”
Lucen must have read my thoughts because he set two glasses and a half-full bottle of wine on the table. “I don’t quite remember it like that, but if you’re referring to the time you ran headfirst into a fury bar, you could have gotten yourself killed. It was not one of your best moves.”
“And you yelled at me in the middle of the street. Not one of your best moves either.”
“I didn’t yell at you.”
“You got agitated and loud.”
He glared at me. “You ran. Into a fury bar. Chasing a serial killer.”
“And survived.”
Lucen shoved the wine bottle toward me. “Forgive me, Jess, if I’m the only one who realizes that might not always be the case.”
I poured myself a glass while he stormed into the living room. I love him, I reminded myself. Was that why we were both acting irrational? “Do you want some?”
“No. Yes. I think you’re driving me to need some.”
I emptied the rest of the bottle into the second glass. “What happened after we left?”
Lucen had flopped on the sofa. “Not much. The news spread, and the meeting dissolved pretty damn fast. Fair to say, expect tomorrow to be a regular shitstorm if anyone bothers to show up.”
“Damn.” I handed him his glass and sat.
“What did you find at Olef’s?”
Wearily, I filled Lucen in on my past few hours. Whether it was exhaustion or the lack of food, the wine was going straight to my head. Alas, it wasn’t giving me a happy buzz, just cloudy thoughts and a dreary outlook.
“You’re sure it’s the furies?” Lucen set his glass down.
I yawned. “Who else would it be? Olef doesn’t strike me as the sort to have enemies, and he scrawled my name on his wall.”
“The message could be unrelated to the cause of his death. It could simply have been his last attempt to convey information he thought you needed.”
I put my glass next to Lucen’s and pulled my knees in. “Possible, but you can’t really believe that. He’s dead because of me.”
“Not because of you.”
“Yes, it is.” My inebriated brain pulsed with the logic headache. “It all goes back to me. I should have figured things out sooner. I should have stayed away from the furies way back when. This is all my fault.”
Lucen pushed hair out of my face. “You’re not making sense anymore. The only fault here belongs to the people who are orchestrating bad things. You, apparently, are part of the key to stopping them.”
JESS USE KEY
I winced. Olef, what the hell did you mean?
“Tom suggested Olef might have been killed because he knew stuff, or simply because whoever did it knew it would disrupt our momentum.”
Lucen continued to play with my hair, draping it behind my neck. “Could be.”
His touch felt so good that my eyes closed involuntarily. “If the furies are interested in me, and they want to torment me, they could come after other people I care about next.”
“I thought the cops were keeping an eye on your family.”
“They are, but no one’s keeping an eye on you.”
“I can take care of myself.”
I grabbed his hand, and he let go of my hair. “So can I.”
“So we’re back to this?”
I didn’t have the energy to respond, so I settled into the cushions. Olef was dead, Lucen was being a stubborn pain in the ass, and I should not have had that glass of wine no matter how badly I wanted a drink. I’d been reduced to an emotional disaster. All I wanted was to curl into a ball and wish for everything to go away.
In a way, I got part of my wish. Unfortunately, the bit that disappeared was my hope—hope of accomplishing much at the meeting the next day.
I’d slept poorly and spent the morning paging through the books we’d collected from Olef for anything about a key, but I discovered nothing. My mood was as dark as the sky when I arrived at the hotel.
Peeling off my rain-soaked windbreaker, I clomped down to the meeting room with the other Gryphons. The preds had all beaten us there today, which was a relief after Lucen’s worry that people wouldn’t show up. Eyff had come alone this time, and Devon was missing, taking care of other business for Dezzi.
“How do we proceed at this point?” Ulan asked. “Without this magi who supposedly had all the answers, it doesn’t seem we have much to do.”
I flung the windbreaker down on a chair. “We find the answers he left us clues about. Olef must have gone through a great deal of trouble to write something about a key. Does that mean anything to anyone?”
Judging by the blank faces, the consensus was apparently no.
I rested my head in my hands. “Does anyone know anything, or did you all just show up here to antagonize each other?”
Ingrid cleared her throat. “Jessica, perhaps you want to let someone else do the talking today. You are still upset.”
No shit. I bit my tongue.
“We came here to discuss information and credible theories,” the goblin said. “I’ve yet to see sufficient proof that would induce us to share anything.”
I raised my head. “One person’s been kidnapped. Another murdered. You don’t think that’s proof enough that something is up?”
The conference room door flew open, and an irate Xander stormed in. Every tiny feather on his head stood on end, and his gold eyes shimmered with emotion. “Why has she been released?”
His question was directed at the Gryphons, and I frowned in confusion.
The answer to Xander’s question, however, came not from the humans but from Eyff. “Because she’s innocent.”
“None of you are innocent, harpy.”
Xander’s language was so similar to what he’d once told me in regard to my magic that I almost snorted. Perhaps luckily, I was too confused to find his comment funny.
Lucen took my hand under the table, questioning me with his eyes, but I could only shrug.
It was Tom who finally answered, cutting off Eyff and Xander’s verbal sparring. “She was brought in for questioning only. There’s not sufficient evidence to hold her.”
“Hold who?” I demanded.
“Lei.”
Xander pointed at Eyff. “That monster’s lieutenant murdered Olef.”
Eyff’s feathers were as ruffled as Xander’s. “If you had any proof of that, she wouldn’t have been released, would she? Her feathers are the same color as yours, magi. Take a look in the mirror. Maybe it was you who killed Olef.”
“You’re going to turn this around on me?” Xander laughed incredulously, and his thugs shifted position uneasily behind him. “Lei was seen in The Feathers yesterday morning. Now, I ask you, why would a harpy be out so early in the day, and why would she be in The Feathers
unless she had a nefarious purpose?”
Eyff took a couple calming breaths. “Why would she be so stupid as to allow herself to be seen if she were there to commit murder, you idiot?”
I glanced between the Gryphons, who were trying futilely to calm everyone down, and the satyrs. Eyff’s logic was sound, and goodness knew Xander had a history of baseless accusations, but they both raised good questions. Why was Lei in The Feathers?
Also, why had no one told me she’d been brought in for questioning?
“Eyff, let him rant,” Dezzi said in her typically soft but firm way. “You accomplish nothing by slinging insults with him here.”
I heard the slight emphasis she placed on “here” and winced internally. Dezzi might argue for better sense to prevail, but far be it from a pred not to seek retaliation for a believed wrong or slight. I’d known today wasn’t going to be easy, but my control over the meeting was more fleeting than I’d feared.
When Dezzi’s subtle suggestion was ignored and more insults went flying, I couldn’t take it any longer.
“Enough!” I raised my hands in exasperation, for all the good it did. It required several more attempts by multiple people before Xander quit ranting. “We need to move on and start considering how we might find the remaining Vessels before the furies get to them.”
Xander sat, glaring at me. “This isn’t over. You of all people should be aware of what was lost with Olef’s death.”
Mental note: next time, bring a hip flask to this meeting.
“Oh, I’m sure it’s far from over,” Claudius said, far too cheerfully. “As Jessica has pointed out, one abduction and one murder so far. I’m sure we have much more—dare I say it?—foul play to look forward to.”
I slammed my hands on the table. “Are you seriously making jokes about this?”
Xander, Eyff and Ingrid were all on their feet again, but it took me a moment to realize the screaming I heard was my own. The thread of composure that had been holding me together had snapped.
“A good, intelligent person—which is obviously more than I can say for you—is dead.” My hands trembled, and I balled them into fists. “Hundreds of people died right in this damn city. Thousands in Buenos Aires. Maybe thousands in Sydney too. And who knows how many more will follow if we can’t find a way to stop what’s coming—something we needed Olef for. So if you’re not going to contribute anything useful, then you can get out.”
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