A Study In Shifters

by Majanka Verstraete

  I didn’t need to throw up again. I blamed that first time on the sour smell of rot combined with the shock that had soared through me after finding the note.

  I glanced at my reflection in the bathroom mirror while I leaned on the washbasin for support. Mannix had sent the note. Of that, I was sure. He always signed his notes with an M, and besides, I knew no one else who would even use that initial.

  Finding cryptic messages in libraries was one thing. Finding a message in a corpse’s fist something else.

  I couldn’t trust him. If anything, my last case had proven that. Even if just reading his name brought back all the memories of when I’d once loved him.

  I couldn’t trust him. Last time, I had, and the consequences had been horrendous.

  Now, his name showed up on corpses. I couldn’t forgive him, couldn’t move on, couldn’t rely on any of the information he provided me with.

  Considering what had happened the last time, I should tell Indra about it. She was my supervisor, after all. If he had come here, if he was stalking me, then the Conclave should know before anyone else got hurt.

  Before anyone else died.

  My jaguar shook her head, telling me not to, but I couldn’t trust my instincts. Telling Indra was the safe choice, and besides, she deserved to know.

  Fat tears dangled from my cheeks, and sobs rocketed through my body. I hadn’t even realized I’d started crying, but I was now, shaking back and forth as I tried to steady myself. Slowly, I let go, slumping to the ground until the cold floor touched my legs.

  The last case I’d worked on, the case that almost got me kicked out of the Conclave, involved a warlock who was killing people in horrendous ways, trying to summon an ancient demon. He carved up their bodies with special markings of great power.

  During that case, I met Mannix. He introduced himself as another agent of the Conclave. He knew everything about the Conclave, from hideouts to passwords, to the names of the members, and he knew everything about rituals, too, had even written a book about it.

  Eighteen years old, an intelligence and wit matching my own, extremely good looking. The other Conclave members thought he was on the good side, too. He had all of us fooled, but me most of all, because I fell for him, heart and soul.

  I’d never been in love before, and he made me feel things I’d never felt before.

  I told him my darkest secrets, about how obsessed I would get with cases, so obsessed that I couldn’t let go, no matter what. About the hours I’d spend with my nose buried in forensics books, staring at dissected bodies because I needed it for my cases. I told him about this dark side of myself, so obsessed with the dead that I could sometimes barely focus on the living anymore. I even told him, a whispered confession on a dark night after he’d read me the poem, “The Tyger” by William Blake, that I was afraid I wasn’t worthy of the jaguar throne. My deepest shame I laid open for him. I let him in, where before I’d kept everyone out.

  Now he knew all about me, and I had thought I knew all about him, but I was wrong. So horribly wrong.

  We figured out the case. We tracked down the warlock, a deranged man named Wallek, and stopped him before he could complete the ritual to summon this ancient demon. Four people he had killed; one more needed to die.

  I escorted Wallek to the Conclave myself. They tried him in front of the Grand Jury, and he was sentenced to be incarcerated for life.

  I watched as guards pulled him, kicking and screaming and shouting out curses to no avail, into the dark dungeons below the catacombs of Paris.

  No one escaped the Conclave prisons.

  Yet, a day later, the trial all done and Wallek safely locked up, we found another body carved up in exactly the same way with identical markings. The last body needed for the ritual.

  Luckily, it turned out, both Wallek and his copycat had messed up one of the markings, which should’ve been carved to the left and not the right. It was a translation error that occurred when the book was first translated from ancient Sumerian, the language in which it was first written, to ancient Greek. Thus, the demon never showed.

  But with Wallek secured inside an impenetrable prison, that left the question as to who had tried to complete the ritual.

  It had been Mannix. I didn’t want to believe it at first, my mind going to all sorts of places—from Wallek had an accomplice to a real copycat of some sort—but the answer, the plausible, logical answer was in front of me all along.

  The man I’d fallen in love with was a criminal. And an innocent man was dead because I’d failed to see it.

  It had nearly cost me my career. It should’ve ruined my career, but friends in high places and the fact that the Conclave had very few people with a mind like a Holmes, had saved me.

  It cost me my innocence, however, and it cost me my heart. But worst of all, it had cost Amaranth her life.

  Now Mannix was back, and my troubles were just beginning.

  “Argh!” I cried out, slamming my palm against the tile floor. “Argh!” The screams wrecked through me as powerful as the sobs had.

  I’d trusted him again. When he sent me the message about the snake, I hadn’t reported it, although I should’ve. I wanted to believe something inside him was still good. Was still worth saving.

  That I hadn’t fallen for a complete monster.

  But now, the note in the hand of a dead person… If he’d been there, he could’ve tried to stop it. Hell, he might even be the one behind these murders.

  As soon as the thought popped into my mind, my stomach turned again, and I rushed to the washbasin to pour out the contents of my stomach for the second time. Not much more than acid came out, making my throat hurt in agony.

  “Hey, hey.” Indra stormed into the room, her face a mask of concern. She started caressing my back while I heaved through the last few waves of nausea.

  “Are you crying?” She pushed a loose strand of hair behind my ear and then turned my chin so I would look at her. “Marisol, what’s going on?” From the tone of her voice, I reckoned she knew a lot more was going on than just me being upset over seeing a dead body.

  I swallowed hard and forced myself to meet her gaze as I said, “I know who killed them.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Despite my jaguar’s insistence on not doing it, I told Indra everything, from the first note I’d received to this last one. When I was done, we were still sitting in the bathroom on the cold tiles. Since the police had locked up this floor for their investigation, forbidding other students from entering, nobody came in, and I was thankful for that.

  It was hard enough to tell her either way. While I was speaking, Indra’s face went through myriad emotions, from shock to fear to anger to sadness.

  She crawled closer toward me and put an arm around my shoulders.

  “There, there.” She held me close as the sobs racked through me. “It’ll be all right.”

  “How can it be all right? If Mannix is behind it, he could’ve killed Aria. Maybe Aria killed Elise, and then he used Aria’s own murder weapon against her. Or maybe he killed both of them. But he came here because of me. Me, Indra. I’m sure of that.” I looked at her, my face stained with tears that I felt running down my cheeks. “It’s all my fault.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Indra softly patted my back like a mother comforting a child. “Whatever he did are his actions, not yours.”

  “What if it’s even worse?” I asked, growing more and more worried with every passing minute. “What if he set it all up just to get me here?”

  “Aren’t you going a little overboard now?” Indra asked, her tone still kind. “I can believe he came here to stalk you, but to go through this trouble…”

  “He would.” I nodded vigorously. “He would. This is all a game for him. That’s what he said, too, last night in his message. Let’s play. He thinks this is a game. He doesn’t care if other people get hurt.”

  “Okay, okay,” Indra said, interrupting my rant. “So maybe he set it a
ll up. It’s a possibility, and we’re not dismissing it, but Keira Sampson saw a woman in the woods that morning, remember? And Mannix gave you a hint with the Calliophis message, didn’t he?” She lowered her voice to a softer tone. “I’m not trying to play devil’s advocate here or defend the guy—he’s a killer, and the Conclave ought to catch him and put him where he belongs. But maybe he was trying to help.”

  “He would never just be trying to help.” I scurried away from her and scrambled to get up. “You don’t know how dangerous he is, Indra. How manipulative.” I shook my head. “Just helping us, with nothing in return? He would never do that. He’s been leading me on; he’s been—”

  “Okay.” Indra got up and held her hands out in a soothing gesture. “I’m just saying that not all the evidence points to him. We have to keep an open mind, all right? Someone else might have done the killing, and he just wanted to mess with your mind a bit.”

  “Fine.” I wasn’t convinced entirely—the message had me pretty much on board with the whole “Mannix is behind everything” idea, but she did have a point. Keira Sampson had seen a woman. And Mannix wouldn’t be the type to steal a bracelet as a memento of a murder. He didn’t steal anything with his previous kill.

  Although the whole idea of taking a jaguar’s claws, of drenching them in snake venom… That sounded totally like Mannix.

  My jaguar threw her head back and howled, almost sounding like a wolf. She sent me a mental picture of tearing Mannix’s heart out, and I couldn’t agree with her more—I wanted to rip his heart out, too.

  “So, let’s look at this objectively. Without considering Mannix,” Indra said. “How would we go about investigating the murder of Aria Forbes?”

  “Well first, the kill method is identical to the one used on Elise Felton.” Indra’s technique of making me think about the case logically was helping me calm down and helping me get into Sherlock Mode. Using intelligence rather than emotions had always been my strength, and it came in handy now.

  “So, either Aria was killed as revenge for what happened to Elise Felton, by someone who found out before we did that Aria Forbes was the killer. Or my idea that Elise Felton was killed by Aria Forbes is completely wrong, and someone else killed both of them.”

  “Which brings us back to square one?” Indra sighed.

  “Not exactly.” A small, tentative smile crept across my face. “Because whoever killed both of them, they still needed that snake venom. And the only snake in this school with that exact same venom is Aria Forbes.” I scrambled to get up from the floor. “I know what we need to do,” I said as I hurried toward the exit. “We need to investigate that snake’s room.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Per my suggestion, Indra and I headed to Aria Forbes’ room. Police had evacuated the entire school while an ambulance arrived and cleared out the library, and forensics investigators started mapping the crime scene and documenting the evidence.

  While the other students were gathered outside, the principal explaining to them what was happening, Indra and I were on the second floor, a little farther down our own hallway, armed with gloves so that we wouldn’t leave fingerprints that would mess with the police’s investigation later.

  Luckily, the human police forces and the Conclave worked closely together, or events like this would turn into catastrophes.

  “We don’t have much time. We have to get back down as soon as possible so nobody notices us missing,” Indra said as she pulled open a drawer on Aria’s side of the room. Aria had taken up the left side of the dorm, judging by her name written in calligraphy on an art print behind her bed.

  “All right. Let’s just do a quick sweep.” I started pulling open drawers, rummaging through clothes, taking books off the bookshelf and putting them back.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Indra asked.

  “Any lead is a good lead at this point. Snake venom is stuck in a snake’s glands and fangs. To get the venom on the claws, it would have to be extracted somehow, especially in the second attack where Aria’s own venom was used against her. I’m looking for a device of some kind that could extract a snake’s venom.”

  “A device of some kind. Noted,” Indra said with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

  We scoured through drawers, dressers, even looked underneath her bed and mattress, and we didn’t find anything.

  “I’m giving up,” Indra said. She sat on the floor, surrounded by opened drawers, her hair a complete mess as it had gotten twisted out of her ponytail. “We’re not going to find anything. This is a dead lead.”

  “Fine. I just want to try one more thing.” I laid flat on the floor on my stomach and shone a flashlight down over the floorboards.

  “What the hell are you doing? You look like a worm wiggling from one side to the other.”

  “I’m looking for cracks under the floorboard.” I stopped moving when I saw the beam of light pierce through one of the floorboards. “Ta-da.”

  “You found something?” Indra came over, her brow creased.

  “Pry it open, will you? I found it, so maybe you can make yourself useful, too.”

  Indra glared at me.

  “I’m just joking,” I said, even though I wasn’t really, but my jaguar pacing around impatiently was making me short-tempered. I helped Indra pry the floorboard loose. We put our hands on each side and inched it back and forth. The floorboard groaned and eventually gave way, revealing a secret compartment underneath the floor.

  “Good hiding place,” Indra said. “Loose floorboard. That’s like the number one hiding spot in every movie, and of course it’s the last place we looked.”

  “We can’t always be perfect,” I continued sarcastically. I reached my hand into the secret hiding place, grabbed the small wooden box inside, and pulled it out.

  Indra crawled on her knees until she sat next to me. I waited for her to sit still and then opened the wooden box.

  Twenty vials of venom were inside, stacked neatly row by row, all of them filled to the rim with the deadly venom that had killed Elise Felton and Aria Forbes in seconds.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “She was sick.”

  The voice startled me so much I almost jumped out of my skin. Indra leapt up right away and turned around toward the intruder.

  In the doorway stood Roxanne, the fox shifter, leaning casually against the doorframe.

  “Sorry to startle you. Guilty conscience?” Roxanne asked, tipping her head to the right. She had a curious smile on her face, almost a smirk.

  My jaguar was a bit wary. Tilting her head to the left, she seemed unsure what she thought of Roxanne.

  “What are you doing here?” Indra asked. “Everyone should be outside. The school is in lockdown.”

  “And yet, here you are.” Roxanne swept an arm across the room. She didn’t seem in the least impressed or even surprised about us being here, or about the twenty vials we’d just uncovered. “Don’t worry about me. I figured out you were working for the Conclave the moment you two enrolled here.”

  “What?” I got up, my legs a little weak—from shock or from vomiting out my lunch, I didn’t know.

  Indra gave me a threatening look, warning me to keep my mouth shut before she focused back on the fox shifter. “We don’t work for the Conclave.”

  “You do.” Roxanne pressed her lips together with a slight frown. “But you can deny it, if you want. Either way, I’ll help you out. Aria was sick, and that’s what the vials are for.”

  “Sick, how?” I asked, staring at the box of venom vials in my hands.

  “There was something wrong with her venom glands. They kept on making venom, rather aggressively. It should have only activated when she was attacking a prey, but especially during the night, she often made an excessive amount of it. Her parents took her to the doctor a few years back, and ever since, she had to wear a device that would shed off the excessive venom. Only at night, though. It would capture the venom and store it in a vial.”

>   “How do you know all this?” Indra asked.

  “I used to be Aria’s roommate. Back before the Feltons came and before she had to do everything she could to belong to the ‘cool girls’ in town.” Roxanne shrugged, but her eyes betrayed that Aria’s dismissal had hurt her more than she let on. “Anyway, she had to do it even back then, but she just threw the venom away, washed it down the drain. She was adamant it was too dangerous to keep around. Her venom is not only quite excessive in volume, it’s also excessive in strength. When the doctors had it tested, they said it could kill a person in seconds.” Roxanne shook her head, and her eyes teared up a little. “She was terrified it would hurt someone. She had to store it for weeks until people from a nearby lab came to destroy it. I think they worked for the Conclave too, scientists of some sort,” Roxanne said. “The doctors had said it was too dangerous for her to flush it through the toilet or anything else, and just throwing it away in the garbage bin wouldn’t do either—way too dangerous if someone fished it up.”

  From the way Roxanne talked about her, Aria hadn’t seemed so bad, a complete contradiction to the Aria I had met.

  I thought back to my first encounter with her in the bathroom, and a flood of shame washed over me. Sure, she had been rude to me. Hurtful, too. But I’d threatened her, and although what she could do to me was a lot worse and even deadlier than any jaguar attack, she never opened her mouth about it.

  She was afraid of the deadly potential she had.

  I’d threatened her, and now she was dead. I’d called her a murderer, and now she’d become the murderer’s victim. I felt a lot of guilt over that—another something to add to my already impressive “things-to-feel-guilty-over” list.

  “She’s dead, right?” Roxanne asked. “I couldn’t get into the library, but I heard all the commotion, and I didn’t see Aria downstairs with the others.”

  Indra didn’t reply, but I nodded, swallowing the lump in my throat. “She is.”

  “She never would have hurt anyone,” Roxanne said, and the moment she spoke the words, I realized I believed her. “Even if the venom had something to do with it, it wasn’t Aria’s doing. She was terrified of it herself. And she would never, never, not in a million years, hurt Elise Felton. Those two were thick as thieves.” She stopped for a moment and wiped her eyes. “So thick I couldn’t fit in anymore. Aria didn’t have time for me. Elise was all that mattered. And to Elise, Aria always came first, too. It probably drove all of us crazy sometimes—I know it upset Reyna, too. But Aria would never have hurt Elise.”