Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nick was always glad he hadn’t had to work the Quarter since his first two Halloweens on the SAPD. The Quarter reminded him of everything that could go wrong with building code violations, health code violations, and overly confident young adults who were trying to go viral.
Parker directed him to a large, open building with a narrow parking lot out front. The parked cars all had bumper stickers with clever slogans like Breathe and Peace is a Practice. The window was covered with flowing red curtains. A silhouette of a dog doing downward dog was printed on the shingle.
“Yoga?” Nick asked.
“Seven o’clock, Durkavic left Harriet Stacey’s house, came here for thirty-seven minutes, went to the university and fed the squirrels for fifteen, because he was a total sociopath and doesn’t care that those animals are feral, went to the bank, and then the smoke shop. ” Parker frowned at the building.
“And that’s assuming he caught the parasite the day he was killed,” Nick said. “We might have to go back days.”
“No, I’m pretty sure he caught it here—the yoga studio has a back door.” Parker squinted up, but their proximity to the building made it difficult to see beyond it, whatever was on the other side was invisible.
“Thirty-seven minutes could be a yoga class.” Nick got out of the car. “What makes you think he went through the back door?”
“You didn’t know him, but Durkavic was the kind of guy who had his own yoga mat and that hard pillow thing and all the gear. Plus, he was in jeans.” Parker shook his head. “He was one hundred percent not going to settle for whatever yoga mat this place would loan him.”
Nick waved his hand. “Okay.”
Approaching the front door, Nick tensed but opened it for Parker, ready for anything. Inside, a class was in the middle of a session, rows of college coeds in snug tank tops and stretchy pants. The instructor at the front glared at them and turned back to the class.
Parker held up his hands like the woman had actually threatened him and then went to the walls to look at pictures. His brows twitched a moment, and Nick looked over his shoulder to see a group of six people with their arms around each other. Durkavic was one of them.
“Hey, is there someone in charge we could talk to?” Parker said loudly. “We have some questions about a murder.”
From the back of the studio, someone pushed aside a curtain and came out. She was older than the instructor, hair pulled out of her face in a long braid, and she glared at Parker, then Nick.
“We are in the middle of class,” she said severely.
“And we’re in the middle of a murder investigation,” Nick said before she could get any more annoyed. “Do you have time to chat?”
Her eyes went wide, and she gestured them back through the curtain. On the other side, Nick felt something, and he knew that Parker did, too, because his face twitched, and he turned his head back and forth like he was sniffing the air for a scent he couldn’t place.
“I’m so sorry. We get a lot of people coming in to look, especially now that they’ve opened that establishment on the other side of the wall.” She threw a disdainful look toward the back door.
“No worries, no worries.” Parker raised both eyebrows. “How long have you been here?”
“Ten years,” the woman said. “I opened with just me, and now we have four instructors. I’m looking to expand.”
“Cayo Durkavic one of them?” Parker asked.
“Cayo?” The woman glanced back and then opened a door, ushering them into her office. The room was strangely spacious, and she gestured to one of the seats on the other side of the desk. “Yes, he worked here for a while.”
“But not now,” Nick said.
“No.” She closed her mouth, lips going tight.
“What happened?” Parker asked. “He get caught giving some extra lessons on the side to an attractive coed?”
“Nothing like that.” She waved her hand. “He was always a good teacher, but he wasn’t reliable. He’d miss classes, and then once that establishment moved in, he was always over there.”
“You don’t like the fae place next door?” Parker asked mildly. “It seems like the two of you would be sharing a wavelength. Peace is for everyone, right?”
“The ‘fae place next door’?” The woman looked at Parker incredulously.
“They run a fae escape room! We get people breaking in all the time because they think it’s part of the adventure.
Last week, someone spilled something on our floor, and I spent two thousand dollars to have a floor cleaner come out, and we’re still finding glitter everywhere. ”
“Durkavic used to spend all his time over there?” Nick asked. “Doing what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He was friends with one of the men working there. I think they were doing some drugs together, but I could never prove it.” She shook her head.
“But he came back here the other day,” Parker said. “What did he want?”
The woman frowned, her gaze suddenly sharp on Parker. “What did you say this was about again? Is Cayo in some trouble?”
“We’re trying to establish his timeline,” Nick said. “It’s standard operating procedure. We just need to know if he was here when we think he was.”
Her brows drew together, and Nick knew the type. She was all for police if it would keep her floor free of fae glitter, but if she had to align herself politically, she was much closer to putting flowers in the barrels of guns.
“Well…” She looked between them.
“It will really help his case,” Parker said.
It wasn’t even a lie. That was the thing about Parker—he always managed to tell something close enough to the truth that Nick couldn’t quite call him on it.
“He was here the other day, yes,” she confirmed.
“What did he want? A second chance at a job?” Parker asked.
“He wanted to know if he could rent the space for a private client,” the woman said. “I told him no. After the glitter incident, I’ve been a lot more careful about letting people borrow the key. I told him that, and he offered to go talk to the people next door for me.”
“Did he?” Parker asked. “Talk to them?”
“Yes.” She nodded.
“But he went through the back door to talk to them,” Parker said. “He didn’t go around?”
“No.” She looked over her shoulder toward the back wall. “Is that significant?”
“Maybe.” Parker smiled. “Can we use your back door, too?”
She looked between them, clearly unsettled, but then nodded, gesturing for them to go down the hall.
The door looked normal enough. A push bar opened it, and Parker pressed through, walking into a narrow storage alleyway. Nick followed, the yoga instructor holding the door open for them, frowning across at another open door.
“It’s right there,” she said, indicating the open door.
“How long was he at the fae escape room?” Nick asked.
“Not long. It was strange—he used to go over for hours, leave his car taking up space in our lot, but he was only there for twenty minutes, maybe thirty.” She shook her head.
“Nick,” Parker said in a low voice. “Time.”
Nick was very aware that every minute they spent on this was another minute that Gile didn’t have, that his boss would be wondering where he was. Parker headed into the open door, Nick only a step behind him.
Inside was another narrow hallway, the mirror image of the Downward Dog’s. The walls pulsed with light, translucent and vibrating with voices and music.
“What is this place?” Nick asked.
“Magic Kingdom Escape Room,” Parker said.
“Is it really fae?” Nick asked.
Parker shot him a look over his shoulder, and for a moment, Nick worried that they were both about to see the new Summer King or get trapped in some Far Realm dungeon.
Parker made a face. “Yes. Whatever magic is being used to run the place, it’s fae. Acacia told me about it recently, and it’s been on my to-do list.”
“Hey! How did you get back here?” someone demanded. “I, the Queen of all that is Green and Good in the Far Realm, demand you leave my court at once!”
She was short, and her purple hair was twisted up, her pale skin rouged in gold. Her dress was made of what looked like flowers, each petal intricately painted.
Nick expected Parker to immediately plant himself between Nick and the fae, the way he always did, subtly making sure that fae could never focus on Nick long enough to wonder if they could kidnap him.
Instead, Parker leaned back, arms crossed. He made a face. “What do you think, Nick?”
“Well, despite the fact that she wanted to kill me, Lilacina wore it better,” Nick said.
“Don’t let Acacia hear you say that.” Parker grinned. “She’ll tear your eyes out and wear them as earrings.”
Nick made a face. “Parker, she wouldn’t. That seems a little more Hannibal Lecter than Acacia likes.”
Parker raised an eyebrow, clearly indicating that he thought the new Summer Queen would happily do that and more.
“Either way, this is just a pale imitation, and let me tell you, I know a lot of fae royals who really, really dislike pale imitations of their glory. It’s a whole thing.
Grimm has a whole section on what happens when you piss off the fae. Trust me, it’s not pretty.”
The woman’s eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open. “I’m sorry! I just work here! Oh, god, are you two from the Far Realm? They warned me about working here!”
“SAPD,” Nick said. He took out his badge, flashing it. “We’re here because we heard that Cayo Durkavic came by the other day?”
The woman was still breathing heavily, panting, her hands on her knees as she gasped for air.
“Nick…” Parker pointed, and Nick saw it, too. The familiar pulse of magic under her skin.
He immediately threw up a circle, the draw of magic pulling at something deep inside him. He’d overextended himself, and it felt like drawing water from a well long since run dry.
“What’s going on?” The woman screamed, staring at her own flesh. In the hallway, it was dark, the only light ambient from the rooms around them. Nick could see the green circles under her skin, where they met each other.
“No.” Parker’s voice was firm. He flashed gold, so bright in the dark that it left an afterimage on Nick’s eyes.
Then he was crouched down, talking at the woman but not to her.
“What’re you doing? You’re all packed in on her arm.
You don’t have any breathing room there.
What are you doing? If you all pack in there, you’ll explode faster, you’ll tear yourselves apart.
Still, it’s pretty cool how you kept yourself off the rest of her.
That’s incredible control, to just be on her arm. ”
Nick watched and the circles on the rest of her shifted, moving to her arm, the scrape of circle against circle nearly audible, flaring green, as brilliant as Nick had ever seen.
“Nick! Cover her arm!” Parker didn’t have to tell Nick twice, and he threw the circle he’d been about to wrap around him and Parker over her arm, covering it so tight that when it vaporized, not a single drop of blood got anywhere else.