Chapter 14 Getting Cozy
Wynn
Hunting the human way feels less satisfying, but the arrow strikes true and causes less disturbance than a wolf tracking prey through the forest. Supplementing our food supply with game found in the woods is essential.
Marlow snatches the dead pheasant from my hands the second I return. “Alright, teach me how to turn this into food.” Demons aren't squeamish, apparently.
I walk him through it—the plucking, the gutting, the messy parts—and soon we're ready to cook.
"You're right," he says. "Hiding evidence of a fire isn't hard at all."
A purple square of light hovers above the small campfire. Smoke drifts up and vanishes the instant it touches that eerie glow. The demon opened a passageway to somewhere else, and now we can roast our dinner without worrying about who might spot the smoke.
After cooking the bird, hiding evidence of the fire, and heading back to the cabin, Marlow, Iggy, and I crowd around the coffee table, savoring the roasted meat we made together. A flashlight sits in the center of the coffee table, casting a pool of light over our meal.
"Good," Marlow says, tearing off a huge chunk of the savory meat with his teeth.
"Yeah." The crispy skin crunches between my teeth, and the smoky flavor makes my eyes want to roll back in carnivorous bliss.
We demolish the food in silence, too busy eating to bother with conversation.
Marlow's been on his best behavior since we called a truce. Everything feels oddly domestic and peaceful when just days ago we were ready to tear each other apart.
Now we're like some weird little family unit. Marlow, me, and Iggy make three. I could get used to this.
Wow, I must be hungrier than I thought.
The distraction is welcome when Marlow clears his throat and breaks the silence.
"Suppose it's about time I fill you in, huh? Tell you how we ended up in this mess."
"It would help us plan our next move."
"There isn’t much to it,” he says. “On a job for an unrelated client, I was in Brighton when I shouldn’t have been, in the wrong place when I stumbled on… on a bloodbath.” His face darkens, eyes clouding over as he remembers the grisly scene.
I’m struck by the urge to reach out and comfort him, but before I can talk myself in or out of that insane urge, he shakes it off and continues.
“Someone had opened a passage recently. I could feel it. Looked like someone killed a man and dumped his body in the beyond where it will never be seen again. At the time I hadn’t known it was a man, one Kevin Williamson who had befallen some nasty fate.”
“Then what happened?”
“The authorities found me. Surrounded by blood in the middle of a crime scene, along with evidence of opening a passageway, the kind I happen to be capable of creating.” He gives a humorless laugh.
“What’s the expression? If it looks like a demon duck and quacks like a demon duck, it’s a demon duck. ”
“That’s not an expression.”
“Whatever.” He waves a hand, still clutching his meat.
“Can you even do that?” I ask. “Transport a body?”
Marlow smiles and then wipes it off his face so quickly I think it must have been a genuine reaction.
Maybe he didn’t expect me to pick up on that.
“No, I can’t. Not that the brilliant authorities listened.
Creatures only come through after I’ve formed agreements with them.
Anything else would take too much energy.
I’m not exactly sure what would happen if I tried transporting things across realities all willy-nilly, but I doubt it’s pleasant. ”
The knot in my chest loosens. This isn’t the kind of concrete proof that will convince the police of his innocence, but it convinces me.
Finally, I have something solid to grab onto, an actual flaw in the case against Marlow instead of just this nagging doubt and whatever the hell my instincts have been screaming at me.
My shoulders drop an inch. The pheasant tastes better now, somehow.
“The police have my species and skills listed in their database,” he says next.
“So they confiscated my tools.” He shoots a grin at Iggy, who is perched on the remains of a drumstick and gnawing on the bone.
“Iggy managed to save my key. Without being able to summon extra help, they decided a regular cell would hold me.”
“But they didn’t know about Iggy.”
Marlow nods. “I don’t have the strength required to bend the bars, but he does.”
"And I twisted them back so no one else could escape with Marlow."
"Yeah, my little law abider.” Marlow pats the gargoyle’s head fondly. “You didn’t let any of the other villains escape."
“You aren’t a villain,” I say just as Iggy does.
"Of course, that trick didn’t work with your wolves."
"Because we made the bars and walls resistant." The bars of our cells were old and rusted, so we spelled them to be unbreakable. That meant Iggy couldn’t bend them and they needed another way to escape jail this time.
Marlow offers me something from his pocket. A guitar pick? “The real killer dropped this.”
“How do you know?”
“Because it was at the crime scene and the person who dropped it is still alive. I’ve been using my spirit form to track him. That’s what I was doing when the cops found me in the middle of a bloodbath, trying to see who did this.”
“Did you tell the police?”
He shakes his head. “I thought about it, but they were only interested in hearing a confession. It’s better this way, the pick helps guide my spirit form in the right direction.” Like the rings he’s missing that he uses to navigate.
“Is tracking them safe?”
“Should be,” he says. “I hadn’t done it before, but I’m staying on this plane instead of traveling elsewhere, so it’s easier to find my way.
” He sighs. “We escaped the same night I got caught, so I wasn’t even that far behind the killer.
But I’ve had trouble tuning in ever since he arrived in Concordia.
I saw glimpses of the Iron Pack and nothing’s changed, so I think he’s still there. "
“Who is it?” I wonder.
“Hell if I know.” He shrugs, looking frustrated. “A person I’d never met before. Some skinny young guy with long hair who wears a lot of black either to conceal himself or as a fashion statement.”
This brought Marlow to Concordia. He wasn’t simply running from the authorities, he’s been tracking the real killer.
And the real criminal is somewhere in Iron territory, hiding among the wolves.
Not a terrible hiding spot. It’s secure, at least. Is someone sheltering him?
Probably. How else would he avoid detection?
How will we? Snooping around in neighborhoods or the main square where wolves live and work every day, that’s totally different than hiding out on the edges of the territory.
"To find the real killer, we need to get into the heart of the Iron Pack."
"Yeah," he agrees, sounding as excited by the prospect as I feel.
"The very spot where you're a wanted fugitive."
"Yeah."
"Okay," I say. It sucks but at least I know what we're dealing with now.
Marlow tilts his head. "Just like that?"
"No. No idea how we’ll pull it off. But at least we know what we need to do and can come up with something together. We even know what to do next.”
Marlow nods. “Whatever we do, we can’t do it here. We need to get into Concordia.”
Yep. Investigating a pack of werewolves with a wanted fugitive isn’t one of my many survival skills. Even the wolves with the weakest noses could find the demon if he were right in the middle of their den. The Cloak of Cloaking won't do the trick by itself.
We'll need magical help, which means sneaking past the wolves and slipping into Concordia. It’s not going to happen tonight, but we can start putting together a plan.
~
Wynn
The rest of dinner passes quietly. I’m still thinking over everything Marlow told me. Looking for something he missed, something that can help us now.
“What about your client? The one you were working for when this started. Could they have set you up?”
“Nah,” he answers without stopping to think it over. “Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Are you sure?” In his line of work, with his clients... Seems more than plausible to me.
“I’m sure.” Marlow looks pained as he explains. “She’s not even twenty. Came to me because this asshole elf won’t leave her alone. But he’s some hotshot attorney who lives in the city and she’s a goblin so the cops aren’t taking her seriously.”
“That was the job?” I ask. Whatever I expected, it wasn’t that.
He nods tightly, staring down at his plate.
“When you told me about being a private detective, you made it sound like you were extorting people and selling their secrets to the highest bidder.”
“My spies bring back all kinds of information,” he says slowly. “Information I’m not ashamed to use for profit. But a large part of my job… Brighton’s the closest supernatural authority for those in the surrounding human cities. They don’t always take calls from my kind of clients, so I…”
That’s all he can manage before he clams up and presses his lips together like admitting to being a decent person is causing him physical harm.
“You help people that the authorities ignore?” I fill in. “Out of the goodness of your heart?”
He snaps his eyes to mine, scandalized. “No! I charge!” Marlow hangs his head a moment later, ears red. “Most of the time I charge, assuming they can pay.”
“So blackmailing people and selling secrets...” He won’t look at me and the picture becomes clearer. “Let me guess. If your creatures discover secrets about a terrible person who hurts others, you don’t have a problem profiting, but you don’t use the info your spies find about decent people.”
He gives me a sorrowful look. “You make me sound almost honorable, Wynn Blackwood. It’s disgusting.”
“It sounds like you are almost honorable, Marlow Maddox.”
“Don’t tell anyone. I have a reputation to maintain.”