12. Callum #2
He stands up, buttoning his charcoal suit jacket with practiced ease. “Detective! I hear you’re the man of the hour. Welcome!”
He offers an inviting smile, and my eyes instinctively find the two terrifyingly sharp, lengthened fangs resting against his bottom lip.
Jesus. How the hell is he standing in front of two sunlit windows? Is that an appropriate question to ask a vampire?
I step forward, shaking his hand warily. His grip is cool and firm. “Callum McKinley,” I say.
“Mayor Julian Brightfang,” he replies, then gestures to the woman beside him. “And this is my wife, Sapphira.”
Sapphira offers her hand next. She’s striking, with platinum blonde hair styled in a modern pixie cut, with razor-thin cheekbones that look like they were chiseled by a sculptor.
Her eyes are a luminous silver. When she smiles, her own small, lethal fangs show against her dark red lipstick.
“A pleasure, Detective McKinley,” she says warmly.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Brightfang,” I manage, keeping my voice level.
The Mayor chuckles softly, stepping around the desk. “Don’t worry. A local coven brews a specialized sun-blocker tincture for us. As long as we take a few drops with our morning tea, the sunlight is harmless.” He gives me a knowing wink.
The fuck? Can this guy read minds?
Julian’s laugh swells. “No, Detective. I can’t read minds. You just have a remarkably expressive face for a lawman.” He gestures toward two plush leather armchairs in front of the desk. “Please, take a seat.”
“I’m actually heading out. I’ve got to grab the kiddos from school,” Sapphira says, leaning down to press a soft kiss to her husband’s cheek. She turns to give me a warm, genuine smile. “It was lovely to meet you, Callum. Good luck with the investigation.”
Her high heels click against the marble as she glides out of the room, closing the door softly behind her.
I drop into one of the leather chairs, my brain still trying to catch up with the reality of all of this. I also make a quick mental note to tell Isla one day that vampires don’t actually sparkle in the light and Twilight was full of shit after all.
I take a second to let my eyes wander around the space while the Mayor settles into the high-backed leather chair behind his desk.
The walls are lined with framed, yellowed maps of Amberhollow, detailing old boundary lines, dense forest plots, and winding rivers in delicate ink.
Mixed in among the historical prints are personal photos.
A few shot in black-and-white, but one caught my attention—a silver frame resting on the corner of his blotter.
It’s a shot of Julian, Sapphira, and two identical, platinum-haired little girls with mischievous grins and pale eyes.
They’re miniature clones of their mother.
Julian catches me staring and offers a fond smile. “Ah. That’s Arabella and Juliette. Our eight-year-olds.”
“Cute,” I say, mostly because I don’t have a better word in my immediate vocabulary to describe vampire children.
“They’re a handful,” he admits, tapping a fountain pen against his blotter before setting it down. “Did you leave a wife or kids behind when you stumbled into our little corner of the world, Detective? A girlfriend?”
I shake my head, shifting in the leather chair. “No. Neither. I’ve always been…too busy with work, honestly.”
“Ah,” Julian nods understandingly, a quiet chuckle escaping him. “A man married to the job. I imagine all of this must seem remarkably peculiar to someone used to standard human living.”
I laugh dryly. “You could say that.”
“Well,” Julian leans forward, resting his forearms on the desk. “Your work is actually precisely why I asked you to come in today. I’m assuming that by staying over at the Everfall Inn, Delphine Rowley has already filled you in on the Veil?”
“She gave me the rundown,” I say.
“Good. Then you know the rifts are weakening,” he says, letting out a quick sigh. For the first time since I stepped into the room, the polished veneer slips, and I can see just how exhausted he really is.
“We’ve taken a devastating loss with everyone who’s gone missing so far,” Julian continues.
“But to lose Sabine Blackwell…an elder witch of her caliber? It caught all of us off guard. It’s kept the entire town on edge, and frankly, my authority only goes so far when people are terrified.
” He looks directly at me, his eyes sharp and assessing.
“I’m thinking it might be beneficial to have your eyes on this, Callum.
A fresh perspective. Someone outside our internal politics. ”
I nod slowly. “That’s understandable. But if I’m going to help, I need to know what I’m working with. What does the police force in Amberhollow look like?”
“It’s mostly the local werewolf pack,” Julian answers simply.
I lift an eyebrow. “The werewolves?”
Right. Totally normal.
“They’re uniquely suited for enforcement here,” he explains, leaning back a little.
“They have natural tracking instincts, heightened senses, and a deep physical durability that makes dealing with magical disputes much safer for everyone involved. We have a handful of humans on the force too, of course—mostly for administrative work and basic community outreach—but the pack forms the core of our security.”
“Right,” I say, rubbing the back of my neck as a very obvious question pops into my head. “And, correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t the werewolves get a little…antsy…during a full moon? Seems like a liability for a police department.”
Julian smiles, the corner of his mouth twitching up to reveal a glint of fang.
“A common misconception. They don’t turn into mind-crazed beasts like the old horror movies suggest. The full moon gives them an itch to run, certainly, and their tempers run a bit hotter, but they retain full control of their minds.
We schedule light shifts on full moon nights, give them space to run the woods, and keep a few human officers on dispatch.
It’s a system that’s worked smoothly for nearly a century. ”
I take that in, filing the information away alongside everything else I’ve learned since getting stuck in this town. “Alright,” I say slowly. “So where do we start with Sabine?”
Julian stands up from his chair, turning toward a tall walnut cabinet tucked between two overflowing bookshelves. He unlocks the glass door with a small bronze key, reaching inside to retrieve a rolled-up sheet of parchment.
He steps back over to the mahogany desk, clearing aside his blotter to spread the paper out flat, then weighs down the top corners with a heavy brass compass and a dark glass inkwell.
“Take a look,” Julian says, gesturing to the desk.
I lean forward, resting my palms on the polished wood.
Wow.
Amberhollow is a hell of a lot bigger than I thought.
Standing on Main Street, it feels like a small, insulated mountain pocket, but seeing it mapped out in ink puts things in perspective.
The territory spreads out wide—spiked mountain ranges hugging the north, two massive lakes carving through the east, and dense, dark woods wrapping around the entire perimeter.
I spot two separate college campuses mapped out, a cluster of public schools, and clear on the opposite side of town, another establishment labeled the Stardust Inn.
“I had no idea this place went back that far,” I admit, tracing the curve of a ridge with my eyes.
“Most people don’t,” Julian says softly, leaning over the desk and planting the tip of his finger near a thick patch of dark green shading on the far eastern border. “This is where Sabine was last seen. Right here.”
I look closer at the spot. “The Witch Wood.” It’s buried deep across town, surrounded by miles of dense, unbroken timber. “How do you know she was there?”
“A local woodcutter saw her crossing the tree line just before dusk the day she went missing,” Julian explains. “She hasn’t been seen since.”
“How did she even get all the way out there?” I ask, frowning at the scale of the map. “That’s far from here, and there are no roads marked out this way.”
The air above the desk seems to hum and a second later, a three-dimensional, translucent projection of the Witch Wood rises right up out of the paper, floating a few inches above the desk like a ghost made of light.
I can see individual canopy heights, rolling topography, and deep ravines glowing in a pale, shimmering blue.
Holy shit.
I stare at the floating landscape, my jaw nearly to the floor.
The NYPD spends millions of dollars on satellite imaging and crime scene mapping software, and this guy just summoned a live topological projection with a flick of his wrist. We could use this kind of tech back home.
It’d make search-and-rescue ops ten times faster.
I clear my throat, forcing my voice to stay level. “Right. Magic.”
Julian gives a small, amused smile. “She flew, Callum. On a broomstick. It’s the standard mode of transit for the elder witches when they need to cover rough ground quickly.”
“A broomstick,” I repeat flatly. “Of course. Why was she out there in the middle of the night?” I press, focusing back on the case.
“Once a month, during the crescent phase, the witches go into the Wood to gather their supplies,” Julian says, tracing a finger through the glowing blue light of the projection.
“Supplies?”
“Ingredients for spells, wards, protection charms, and town maintenance,” he explains, leaning back against his desk.
“Witches are master herbalists. Sabine included. That sun-block tincture Sapphira and I rely on? Sabine’s coven brews it.
They harvest moon-blooms, rare mosses, dragon’s breath root, and silver-bark sap that only grow in the deepest parts of that forest. In fact, most of the natural pharmaceuticals sitting on the shelves at the Amberhollow pharmacy come directly out of the Witch Wood. ”