CHAPTER TWELVE || REED
“Why are you merely standing there?” Tamrand demanded, though the inflection of his voice didn’t change. “Sally has been taken. You must rally your pack and go find her.”
“Pack?” Harris demanded. “Who the hell is he and what is he doing here?”
“Both good questions,” I replied, eyeing the odd redheaded man on the porch. He was a total stranger—I had never seen him before. So how the hell did he know about us? Did this mean Sally knew what we were? “Who are you?”
“I’ve already told you,” Tamrand said. “I work at the bar and grill in town. I’m Sally’s cook. And she left in the middle of the night. The creature in the woods called to her, and she went away before I could stop her.”
“Called to her?” I demanded, trying to keep up. “What are you talking about?”
“It called out to her with magic and put her into a trance—its spell woke me from my slumber. And Sally went into the woods before I could shake her out of it.”
I studied him, trying to make sense of his presence here. “Is this a trick of some kind?”
“It’s not a trick,” Harris said from behind me, lowering his weapon. He was staring at Tamrand. “Holy shit—Sally wasn’t kidding, was she?”
The strange redheaded man tilted his head quizzically at that.
I realized his blue eyes were slightly too vivid to be human—almost as if they were faintly glowing.
And his heartbeat sounded different, too.
Slower than a regular person’s. And his scent was all wrong—lavender mixed with petrichor.
It wasn’t human and it didn’t have the chemical twang of body wash or cologne to explain it away.
Harris’s words suddenly clicked into place, and I remembered Sally joking with us that she had a faerie in the kitchen. With a lurching in my stomach, I realized Tamrand wasn’t human at all. He was something else entirely.
“You’re fae,” I breathed, staring at him. I’d heard stories about the faeries in the Otherworld, but I’d never actually met one before.
Tamrand inclined his head by way of reply.
“Holy shit,” Harris breathed. “Well, now I’ve seen everything.”
“Does Sally know?” I asked, fascinated. That explained how he knew to come to us. The fae could spot other supernatural creatures from a mile away, without fail, regardless of how human they seemed.
“She knows about me and she has for many years. It wasn’t my place to tell her about you and your pack.”
“Thanks for that, I guess.”
“Listen to me. I will keep any secrets you wish, but you must help,” the fae man said, locking eyes with me.
“You and your wolves are duty-bound to protect the innocent of this land. And Sally is an innocent.” He paused and swallowed, a flicker of genuine fear crossing his expression. “And she is my friend, Reed.”
* * *
“You should call your pack and search the forest,” Tamrand suggested, glaring at Harris and me.
It was less than an hour later and the sunrise was turning the sky a kaleidoscope of blues, pinks, and gold that settled atop Tamrand’s head like a halo.
“We have no need to search Sally’s home. We know she is not here.”
“But we need to know why she was selected by this monster,” Harris said firmly. “That might give us a clue as to what it’s after.”
“The monster is a killer, Harris,” I replied, halfway agreeing with the faerie. “That’s what it’s after. Death and mayhem.”
“Then why go after Sally?” Harris demanded. “It could have taken anyone else. Someone less involved, more on the fringes. An easier target. You said it yourself—Sally is deeply connected to this town.”
I pursed my lips, considering his words. He had a point. If Sally went missing, the entire town would search for her in the woods.
Harris raised his eyebrows. “Why her?”
I nodded to Daniel, who stood next to us, looking sleepy and disgruntled that we’d gotten him out of bed so early. I didn’t blame him. It wasn’t even six in the morning yet. “We need a spell to unlock her door.”
The warlock sighed, giving Tamrand a sideways look, and incanted a spell under his breath, causing a swirl of golden-white light to encase the doorframe.
I wasn’t worried about anyone else being able to see it—wolves could see magic, even if other people couldn’t.
To everyone else, it probably looked like nothing at all.
Then, with a flourishing motion of his hands over the doorknob, there came a click as the lock opened.
“I’ll see if I can do a revealing spell on any magic that might’ve been used,” Daniel said quietly. “I might be able to get a trace on it.”
“I’ll remain out here,” Tamrand said. “I’ve promised not to go into Sally’s space unless specifically invited.”
“The fae can’t break their word,” I explained to Harris, who was giving Tamrand a baffled look. Then I turned the knob and pushed open the door. I went in first and Harris followed.
The back door led into the kitchen. The house was dark and quiet.
The kitchen lights were off, but enough light from outside filtered in through the window over the sink that we didn’t need to turn them on.
The air smelled stale—not rotten or foul.
Just… old. Like it had been sitting too long without anyone opening a window.
Harris paused inside the doorway, his posture shifting almost imperceptibly. His shoulders squared, his gaze sharpening as it swept the room, as though assessing a potential crime scene. I was forcefully reminded that Harris was a detective. This was what he did for a living.
I followed his gaze, but I doubted I saw what he did.
The counter was cluttered with unopened mail.
Dirty dishes sat next to the sink, stacked neatly, but unwashed, as though Sally had given up halfway through.
On top of the fridge, I was startled to see a collection of half a dozen liquor bottles, most of them at least halfway gone. I hadn’t known Sally was a drinker.
Harris moved first, crossing the kitchen without a word. I followed him, suddenly very aware of the sound of my boots on the floor. The house was so quiet it seemed to swallow noise.
“She always keeps the restaurant immaculate,” I said quietly.
Harris nodded, but he looked as troubled as I felt by the incongruity. He opened the fridge.
Inside, there was food. Nothing spoiled, but it was sparse in a way that made a knot of dread tighten in my gut. Half-used condiments. Takeout containers from the restaurant pushed to the back. A carton of eggs with only two left inside. Milk, unopened—still good, but only just.
“She was eating,” Harris said, more to himself than to me. “But… not much. And it doesn’t look like she was cooking anything for herself.”
He closed the fridge and moved on. I followed him into the living room.
The curtains were drawn but not fully closed.
Dust motes hung in the air, drifting lazily through thin bars of early morning light.
The couch cushions were sunken in the middle, as if someone had been sleeping there instead of in the bedroom.
The television remote sat on the coffee table beside a paperback book, its spine cracked.
Harris picked it up, flipped it over, then set it back down exactly where it had been.
“She didn’t finish it,” he murmured. “There’s a layer of dust on the cover. It’s been sitting there awhile.”
He drifted toward the hallway. He stopped at the bathroom first, reaching in and flicking on the light. The sink was clean. The mirror had been wiped down recently. But on the counter, tucked carefully to one side, were pill bottles. Several of them.
Harris leaned in, reading the labels without touching them. “They’re prescribed,” he said quietly. “Antidepressants. Anti-anxiety meds. Looks like she’s been on them awhile.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t mean anything by itself,” he agreed immediately, his expression unreadable. “A lot of people take these.”
He moved down the hall toward the bedroom. The door was open.
The bed was made—but only just. The bedding was disheveled, as if the bed had been slept in and then hastily straightened.
The nightstand held a glass of water and another bottle of pills, this one nearly empty.
Several piles of laundry were heaped on the floor, untouched.
There was an empty bottle of flavored vodka lying on its side next to the bed.
“None of this is recent. She’s been struggling for a while.”
“She’s always in a good mood. Every time I see her.”
“She was good at hiding it,” Harris said softly, sounding sad. “Some people are.”
“You say that like you’re speaking from experience.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, his gaze locked on the pill bottle beside the bed. “After Paul died.”
The name settled between us, taking up more space than it ought to have. I hadn’t heard him say it before. Who was Paul?
“I was functioning,” Harris went on. “Mostly. I eventually went back to work. I took showers. I ate. I talked to people, like I was supposed to. From the outside, I was fine.” His jaw tightened. “But inside, I didn’t really care if I woke up the next day. It’s the darkest place I’ve ever been.”
I swallowed, staring at him. It was hard to believe he’d ever felt that way before. And I didn’t want to think about how lost and alone he must’ve felt.
“She’s better at managing it than I was,” he added. Then he gestured to the room at large. “But this? This is the same thing. Even keeping up with simple things takes way more effort than it should. You kind of get buried under everything until it becomes too much.”
The house felt colder suddenly. My wolf whined in my chest, wanting to comfort Harris. But I couldn’t go back to that earlier version of him. I couldn’t make any of it right.
Harris straightened and turned to face me. “And the hiker—the first victim. Did anyone look into his mental state? Do we know?”
I frowned, still feeling emotionally off-kilter at his revelation. “I don’t think so. We focused on the physical injuries.”