Chapter 6 Wren #2
Cyrus’s frown didn’t change and neither did Teddy’s glare.
“Uncuff him,” Teddy demanded.
Cyrus snorted. “I don’t think that’s your decision, bucko.”
Blu flew over silently, latched on to Cyrus’s belt, and gently and skillfully unclipped his keychain from it while he was distracted. He flew back and landed on Wren’s balled hands, beginning to help Wren test each key.
“It wasn’t a request either,” Teddy said, and Wren caught him frowning as he followed Blu’s movements across the room. Did he remember Blu? Did he recognize him?
“Do you have some authority I don’t know about shoved up your pretty-boy ass?” Cyrus asked while Wren worked on his cuffs.
After some trial and error, the cuffs came loose with a click.
Wren let them thud to the floor, gaining the room’s attention. Saint’s jaw dropped, Cyrus cursed, and Teddy gave him an unreadable look, a hint of something warm sparkling in those dark orbs.
Wren ignored the urge to curl into that warmth and instead raised his chin, moving toward the corner and settling down on the floor, Sable coming to sit next to him. “They were getting uncomfy.”
“Is this how you do things around here?” Saint asked.
“No!” Cyrus snapped. “It isn’t. Now where are my keys?”
Wren tossed them to the floor at his feet. “Fetch.”
Black was barely smothering his giggles at the disgusted look on Cyrus’s face. Teddy, by comparison, had color high on his cheeks. Was he embarrassed? Impressed? The Teddy he used to know would have been.
Wren despised the fact that he didn’t know anymore.
The letter that was still burning a hole in his pocket told some of the story, but not enough. There was still a chasm of unknowns and missing years between them. Two letters couldn’t fix that.
“So happy we’re all working together this well,” Cyrus said, sarcasm dripping from his tone as he pulled out several beige folders and spread them across the table. “Great idea to bring you all together.”
“We work well with some direction,” Saint said with a genial smile.
“I think we all need to share what we have and see if any of it makes sense,” Cyrus said.
“A murder board!” Black clapped his hands, jumping up from his seat.
“You need to not be here anymore.” Cyrus pointed to the door.
“But I can totally help,” Black said. “I have the good push pins and all the, like…murder board paraphernalia.”
“Bring the paraphernalia,” Cyrus said, scowling when Black skipped to the door in unconcealed glee. “And then leave.”
Black froze in place before pouting so hard Wren was pretty sure his bottom lip would get tangled in his untied shoelaces.
“This is abuse,” Black stated, pointing a finger at Cyrus.
“Go write a report about it. And finish the ones you’ve been slacking on while you’re at it.”
“Fine. I’ll go write my reports. Get your own murder board goodies. See if I care.”
He stuck his tongue out for good measure and stomped out of the office, slamming the door behind him.
Wren watched him go and shrank into himself as he realized he had no support on his side anymore.
He was used to being alone, and it was a rare occasion when he minded it, but he’d have liked Midas there right then.
Or Fix. Just someone who’d stand between them and stop him falling apart under those dark eyes.
He dug his fingers into Sable’s fur and felt his low growl under his touch. It grounded him, but only slightly.
“Okay,” Cyrus said. “Let’s see what we have here and where to go from there. Guests first?”
“Sure,” Saint said, clapping his hands a bit, and Wren scowled as he watched him dig through a backpack, pull out several case files, and spread them on top of the table too.
He was tall, Wren noticed. Lanky and slim, with long limbs and large hands.
He had pale skin, flushed cheeks, and dark, almost black hair, messy on top of his head.
His eyes were dark too and his cursemark was nowhere to be seen.
Lucky.
He got to hide it.
He got to walk around without an ad glowing from his face announcing the one thing he wished he could hide about himself.
He was lucky for other reasons too.
His hand brushing Teddy’s as they sat next to each other. Being close enough to smell him, that warm, soothing scent of dark chocolate and home. Waking up every morning in their house knowing Teddy would be there. Wearing that sweater…
“Like we said, we got our first case about five months ago,” Saint said, and Wren pulled in a sharp breath through his teeth, descending back into reality.
“An influential Arcstead family whose daughter started behaving erratically and they suspected a curse. Damir went to run diagnostics. Found nothing on his end and suggested some counseling.”
Wren forced himself not to flinch at the use of that name.
He wasn’t Damir. It didn’t fit. It said nothing about Teddy.
Nothing about who he was to…to Wren. And maybe that was the point.
Because he was nobody to him anymore, the name was gone too.
Despite what the letters said…he wasn’t Teddy anymore.
“People like to blame curses for everything that doesn’t go smoothly in their lives,” Teddy said, and even though he felt his eyes on him, Wren refused to meet them.
“They kept insisting though, so each of us went and ran our own diagnostic tests, and weirdly enough, mine was the one that pinged something,” Saint said.
“Is their daughter a Pomeranian?” Cyrus asked. “Are they those posh fucking rich assholes who claim their dogs are their children?”
“Dogs are family,” Wren said shortly.
Cyrus rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
“Not a Pomeranian,” Saint said. “Would have been cuter. Just a grown-ass woman acting insane. So we started to dig in, and the more questions we asked, the more defensive and closed off they became. Until they shut us down completely. Said she went back to normal once the stress of the exam season was over and there was no need to act on their call any further.”
“So you just left?” Wren asked.
Saint shrugged. “They withdrew consent. And they have enough money to make the cursebreaker rule book irrelevant even if we did act upon it. Add to that the lack of any imminent danger to anyone and we had zero grounds to continue…”
Wren scoffed and Saint tilted his head, eyeing him curiously before looking away without a word. Wren felt his hackles rise at being dismissed like that. Rule books over well-being. Nexus over the world. And he sat there in that stupid sweater next to Teddy and acted like he’d done the right thing.
Wren was angry, but he was also intrigued. It had never occurred to him to test the people for his brand of curses. Then again, he’d never had the need to.
The woman from his case flashed before his eyes. Panicked. Erratic. And her husband…
“Right,” Cyrus said. “So that one is a dead end.”
“We had three more cases after that,” Teddy said. “And all three of those are still active.”
“Similar?” Cyrus asked.
“Enough to draw attention,” Saint said. “Rich families, members or close friends acting strangely. My diagnostics coming out positive when run on people, and then the families who called us in the first place clamming up and refusing to cooperate. Threatening us with inspections and reports if we kept digging.”
“This makes no fucking sense,” Cyrus said.
“It didn’t,” Saint agreed, “until the second to last case, where we found traces of an unknown substance in the cursed person’s room.”
“A drug?” Cyrus asked, and Wren noticed him perking up at that.
“We didn’t think so at first,” Teddy said. “But we had it tested, and it’s snake venom. That responds to curse diagnostics.”
“The fuck does that mean?” Cyrus asked.
Wren felt his blood boil. “It means they’re cursing the animal before taking the venom to make it do…whatever it is that it does! Vile, disgusting, repulsive people who care about money and nothing else.”
“I have to agree on that,” Saint said, and Wren wanted to bristle at that despite feeling thankful someone else saw the depravity of the action.
“Does that line up with cases you have here?” Teddy asked.
Cyrus looked at his files. “Not entirely. We have reports of a new type of drug being distributed and people acting off while on it, but so far we haven’t had any luck catching someone using or distributing it.
The one person we caught in action pinged our attention because they turned destructive and violent and it closely resembled your last case at the country club. ”
“Right,” Saint said. “Wren?”
He snapped his eyes up at being directly addressed by Saint. He didn’t know why but it rubbed him the wrong way.
“I just had one,” he said curtly. “I was called about a cursed raccoon ransacking their garden. The family that called is living a very middle-class life, driving beat-up cars and working regular jobs to make ends meet. No country clubs or influence of any kind.”
“So, unrelated,” Teddy said.
Wren clenched his fist in Sable’s fur, forcing himself to respond.
They were adults. They’d each had a whole life between who they used to be and who they were now.
He had to remember that. They weren’t Teddy and Little Bird anymore.
“Not necessarily,” Wren said. “The raccoon was definitely cursed and doing some damage, but…hearing all of this, there are details that might match.”
“Like?” Cyrus asked.
“The woman who called me was very hostile, despite asking for my help. She was unwilling to let me inside her house, unwilling to go into any detail, and when I was leaving, her husband showed up.”
“Okay?” Saint said curiously.
“He seemed off but she was very adamant he was just fine and it was nothing to worry about,” Wren said. “Yanked him away almost before I could process the fact that he was even there.”
“Hiding,” Saint said. “Just like all the other cases.”
“And the syringe you found?” Cyrus asked. “You need to turn it in for testing.”
“I had my team at the sanctuary test it. It’s cone snail venom,” Wren said. “Cursed.”
“A snail,” Cyrus repeated.