Chapter 6
6
ELLIOT CRANE
What is a Maymont and why have I agreed to go to it with 15 preteen shifters?
SETH MAYS
Maymont is a park that used to be some rich person’s estate.
It has a little zoo and some gardens and a house.
People go for walks there and kids like the animals.
I don’t know why you agreed to go there with a pack of kid shifters.
I suppose I could have agreed to something far worse.
You definitely could have.
At least tell me there’s ice cream or some shit there.
Sometimes there’s a food truck…
Kill me.
I’d laughed, then gotten into my Cruiser to head to Beyond the Veil in order to ask Ward for a favor.
There wasn’t anywhere to pull up at the front of the BTV offices, so I went around back, scooted in to grab the parking pass and put it in my Cruiser, then made my way down the hall toward the reception area, since I considered it polite to check in with Rayn instead of just accosting Ward in his office.
“Seth!”
I jumped a little, surprised to hear Elliot’s rough voice. I wasn’t exactly surprised he was here , since he was building the table for Ward and Mason, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t just spent the last three days thinking about the feeling of Elliot’s hands on my skin… But somehow I was still startled when he called my name.
“Hey,” I managed, turning to find him coming out of the kitchen, a mug of coffee in his hands. He was wearing just a t-shirt this time—no flannel—in a peach color that looked far more masculine on him than it would have on my pasty skin. It showed off the tattoo on his left arm, and it hugged both his biceps and his upper chest in a way that felt scandalous—although it probably wasn’t if you weren’t picturing him without the t-shirt and imagining yourself licking your way across that expanse of dusky skin.
I swallowed and tried to think unsexy thoughts to get control of what was happening in my slacks.
“If I’d known you were coming here, I would have just asked you about Maymont in person,” Elliot said, as though being in close proximity to me did nothing to him. Maybe it didn’t, although that thought was deeply disappointing.
Rule Two , I reminded myself. At least I didn’t have to worry about my expression looking too weird, since I had a mask covering the lower half of my face. Elliot wasn’t wearing one, but he was a shifter, so it wasn’t really necessary. Noah often wore one in public just to avoid the stares and comments, but BTV wasn’t exactly public, so Elliot was safe enough from either looks or rudeness.
He had worn one, I remembered, to the hardware store, so he did wear them sometimes, probably for the same reasons Noah did.
“I’m here on a mission,” I explained, holding up a small paper bag. I always put evidence baggies in paper bags when the baggie contains human or Arcanid remains. It’s a little more respectful that way—at least you’re not running around flaunting people’s parts without their knowledge or consent. Even if they are dead, it’s just not polite.
“Lunch?” Elliot asked, eying the paper bag, a frown on his forehead.
“No, evidence,” I replied. “I need Ward to touch it.”
“Touch what?” another voice asked, this one a higher tenor and already sounding suspicious. I didn’t blame him.
I turned back the other way, finding the warlock-medium in question having rolled himself into the hallway. He was also wearing a mask—black, with little stars on it—as well as a black button-down and dark grey slacks. Ward usually wears black. It goes with his black curly hair and sets off his light grey eyes. And I think he does it to make grieving relatives feel a little more comfortable. Black is a mourning color, and most of his clients are here because of dead loved ones.
I held up the bag again.
“And who is that?” he asked, sounding a little tired.
“Afraid that’s what I need you for,” I replied. “Didn’t Detective Maza text you? ”
“My phone suffered a fatal accident this morning,” the warlock replied, his tone clipped. “I’m afraid I’m not able to receive anything on it.”
I was curious what sort of accident we were talking about, but with Ward Campion it could be everything from got dropped into the toilet to accidentally got blown up by magic to a ghost ate it. Although honestly, I wasn’t sure ghosts could eat things. If they could, Ward would know.
“I’m sorry,” I replied. “It’s old—DNA confirms human, but it was found at a construction site in the middle of some concrete. Not my case, but Detective Maza asked if I would run it over to you.”
Ward let out a sigh, his mask puffing out a little, and rolled up to me. Then he held out a hand. “Hit me.”
I looked around for somewhere to set the paper bag down to retrieve the evidence baggie. Elliot stepped forward and took the bottom of it with one hand. I felt my neck flush a little.
“Thanks.”
“Mmhmm.”
I pulled out the baggie, broke the seal, and poured the bone fragment—probably part of an arm—into Ward’s waiting hand.
His eyes flickered closed for a moment, then opened again. “Eugenia Elizabeth Evers. Died in… 1972.”
“Did she say how?” I asked.
Ward’s grey eyes flicked over to Elliot, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “Strangulation,” he answered shortly.
Oh, shit. That’s awkward. I knew the rough details of Elliot’s dad’s murder—strangulation with a belt, made to look like a suicide. A crime that had been repeated with Elliot—although he’d survived the attack, albeit with scars. Scars that I’d had my mouth on—Nope. Stop it right there. This was definitely not the moment for that .
Beside me, Elliot tensed at Ward’s answer, but his features remained impassive and the hand holding the bag was steady. I couldn’t help being impressed. I don’t know that I would have dealt with things well enough at this point—only like four months later—to keep my hands and face still. Apparently Elliot is more well-adjusted than I am.
“Does she know her killer?” I asked Ward, because I knew Maza would ask.
“A man named Roger Ratface.” The muscles around his eyes compressed over his mask, suggesting a grimace. “I’m assuming Ratface isn’t actually his real name.”
“That seems like a reasonable assumption,” I agreed. “She doesn’t have a better last name?”
Ward shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”
I tried to think like a homicide detective. “Did she have family? Kids?”
“No,” the medium answered. “Her grandmother raised her and died when she was in her twenties.”
“How old was she, when she died?” I asked. I didn’t know if I needed to ask that or not, but I figured I might as well.
“Thirty-four.”
“Anything else she can tell us about Roger… Ratface?” I felt extremely stupid saying it.
The muscles in Ward’s face took on a pinched expression—like it did when he was putting up with someone particularly irritating. Apparently our dead woman wasn’t all that much fun. Or he was annoyed with me, although I’m not sure why he would have been, so I was going to assume Eugenia Evers was the problem.
Then his lips twitched, and the fingers on the hand resting on his chair tightened over the armrest. I frowned. Was he in pain? Upset?
“She has… a lot to say about Roger,” he told me, and from his tone I could tell that he was actually trying very hard not to laugh. “Not much of it is polite, but let’s just say that Roger appears to have worked for someone named Pennypinching Ricky—” Beside me, Elliot snorted. I agreed, but tried to emulate Ward’s equanimity. “—who had connections to what I’m assuming was an organized crime ring out of Baltimore.”
“Was she a hit ?” I asked, a little incredulous. Mafia hits were not something that I thought of when I thought of Richmond, Virginia. Confederates, yes. Mobsters? Not so much.
“Her best… client was a man named Sam who also worked for Ricky. Sam liked to talk a little too much, apparently, and Roger was hired to get rid of anyone who might know more than they should.”
“What did she know?” I asked, and this time it was out of pure curiosity. I’m sure Maza would want to know, too, but now I was invested.
I watched Ward’s eyes get bigger. “Apparently, Roger was an enforcer for a protection racketeer named Leo Koury.”
“What about Leo Koury?” asked a deep, resonant voice.
All three of us turned to look at Mason Manning, Ward’s orc husband and a witch. Ward’s grey eyes focused on his husband. “The man who killed Eugenia Evers—” Ward held up the bone fragment. “—worked for Leo Koury.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why? Who’s Leo Koury?”
“Koury,” answered the orc-and-former-professor, “was a racketeer in the seventies who ran most of the illicit gay clubs in Richmond—an area known as The Block. Koury spent most of the sixties and seventies extorting money and overcharging the gay community, undoubtedly engaging in blackmail, assault, and any number of other illicit activities before being placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted List in the late seventies for a variety of major crimes, including both racketeering and murder. He died of a heart attack while in hiding in California.”
I knew my eyes were wide. I had not expected this little bone fragment to be tied to organized crime.
“How lovely,” Ward grumbled.
“And this Koury guy had ties to Baltimore?” I asked.
Mason shrugged his massive shoulders. “Probably. Not all that much is known about his life outside of Richmond and, later, California.”
“And he was a mobster?” I wanted to know.
“Not as such,” Mason replied. “Racketeer, certainly. And he wasn’t above using violence, threats, and extortion to get what he wanted, but as far as I know, he didn’t have specific ties to organized crime.”
“According to Eugenia, he did,” Ward put in.
“Really?” Mason’s eyes lit up. “What did she say?”
Ward repeated what he’d already told us.
“I—don’t suppose you’d be willing to write this down?” I asked. Maza was going to want all the details.
Ward sighed. “How about I get Eugenia to do it for you?”
Eugenia Evers—the dead woman—sat at the old conference table, which had been pulled out of the main conference room and shoved into Hart’s old office, writing down what seemed from its length to be her entire life story .
“She’s right there,” Elliot breathed from beside me. I turned and saw his attention fully focused on the manifested ghost.
“Yeah, he does that,” I replied, although I almost immediately went back to watching her, as well. Ward didn’t manifest ghosts at the crime scenes very often, so I’d only seen it a few times before. It didn’t really get any less impressive as you saw it more often, though.
It was weirdly like the special effects in the old movies that just used live actors made transparent with CGI. Except that they floated a lot better. The floating was the part I found the most disturbing, honestly. Because ghosts didn’t have to walk . They just… skimmed over the ground. Or teleported, which was even more disturbing. One minute they’re on the opposite side of the crime scene, and then poof, they’re literally up in your face wanting to know what it is you’re doing with the bullet that had gone through their chest cavity.
That had been a fun day. Ward had apologized profusely, but, honestly, once I’d caught my breath and managed to convince my heart to stop trying to beat its way out of my chest, I hadn’t minded explaining what I was doing to the dead man.
Today, Eugenia Evers was just sitting on a chair, writing, the back of the chair visible through her in a kind of foggy outline. Like looking through a jellyfish.
“But she’s also not there,” Elliot said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Your first ghost?”
“No,” he replied, and his voice had gone soft. “My dad.”
I looked back at him, surprised. “Ward did that?” I asked him.
Elliot nodded.
“From here ? ”
Another nod.
I swallowed. I’d known that Ward was powerful—that there was a reason Hart had only ever called him, and Maza now did the same—but to manifest a ghost from halfway across the country?—
“Sylvia helped,” the medium spoke from behind me.
Sylvia was a dead Victorian woman who also worked—I guess—for Beyond the Veil. I wasn’t totally clear on what ghosts did , exactly, but Ward has two of them—Sylvia Randolph and Archie Lagarde, a crotchety older man who reminded me distinctly of Dirty Nelson, the alcoholic who used to sit in a rocking chair outside of the old general store in the Appalachian town where I’d grown up.
There was something Ward and Mason had done to Beyond the Veil that allowed both Sylvia and Archie to manifest whenever they wanted to. Most of the times I’d seen a ghost it had been here—when I’d come to drop something off or ask for a consult on a bone, like now—and it had been either Sylvia or Archie.
“Still,” I told Ward.
He shrugged. One of the reasons that Ward Campion is extremely likable is that despite his power, he wasn’t a dick about it. He always tried to be polite-ish at crime scenes and did his best not to mess anything up for us, which was more considerate than about a third of the uniforms who traipsed all over the place and whose shoe prints we had in a massive file because they just kept doing it.
“How long can you keep doing this?” Elliot asked.
“A while, as long as I’m here or at the house,” Ward replied. “We did some extra warding and sigil work to make both places power nexuses, which makes it much easier for me to do things here or at home than anywhere else.”
“Huh,” was all Elliot had to say to that .
I watched Eugenia writing for a little longer, then went to make myself a cup of tea in the kitchen. I paused, then turned back. “You want a coffee or tea or anything?” I asked Elliot. He’d finished his own cup of coffee a while ago.
He blinked, then looked back at me. “Oh. Um. Sure.” He went back to staring at Eugenia.
“Which one?” I asked, holding out a hand for his empty cup when he didn’t actually provide me with any additional guidance.
“I’ll just—” he tore his gaze away from the ghost again, then turned. “I’ll come with you.”
We walked down the short hallway, and Elliot immediately went to the cupboard and pulled down a mug for me after setting his own on the counter, reminding me that he’d been working in this space for a little over a week now. I selected a packet of rooibos tea, then held out the tea box toward him. He flicked through the packets while I filled and hit the switch on the electric kettle. He went with earl grey.
“You almost done with the table?” I asked leaning back against the edge of the counter so I could take the weight off my bad leg, trying to ease the ache in my knee.
He nodded. “Getting there. I should be done in another week. I’ve been working out of Taavi’s storage shed, and I should be able to bring in the pieces and fit them together tomorrow—you wouldn’t happen to be available, would you?”
“Weren’t you going to Maymont?” I asked, half-teasing as I took the kettle off the heater and pouring water first in Elliot’s mug and then my own.
He nodded his thanks. “That’s on Sunday,” he replied. “Which is why I’d love help tomorrow.”
I shrugged, pulling off my mask to sip my tea. “As long as nobody gets murdered and I get called in to deal with it,” I replied. That was the reality of being a CSI.
Elliot’s lips quirked. “Obviously,” he replied. “Goes without saying.”
I’d forgotten—he knew the patterns of crime scene life because of Hart. Homicide detectives got the same phone calls we did. “Sure.”
“Ward and Mason have a basketball game to go to with their nephew, Hart’s still up to his eyeballs, and Taavi has a shift at work with the kids—they’re supposed to be learning about plants or some shit,” he rolled his hazel eyes. “In preparation for the Maymont trip.”
“Sounds fun,” I remarked.
“I’m not usually much of a kid guy,” he admitted. “I guess kids are fine in small numbers, but I don’t really know what to do with a whole pack of them.”
I laughed. “Chase them, I’d guess.”
“Great.” He rolled his eyes again, but the corner of his lips was turned up as he sipped from his mug, betraying the fact that he wasn’t actually upset about helping to chaperone kids on a field trip. “You want to come help?”
“Sorry, drag brunch day.”
Elliot’s eyebrows rose. “I’m sorry?”
“Drag brunch day,” I repeated. “Noah knows somebody, so we do it once a month.” Specifically, I’d give the regular bouncer a break and would sit and look pseudo-intimidating and let a bunch of women and gay guys flirt meaninglessly with me—while Noah tended bar.
“Drag—brunch?” Elliot repeated, clearly not understanding what I was talking about.
“You know what drag is, right?” I was preparing myself to be horrified at a gay man who didn’t know what drag was .
“I know about drag queens and drag races,” he answered, “but I have not heard of a drag brunch .”
“Well, take the drag queens and add brunch,” I replied. “And you have drag brunch.”
He let out a sound of amusement. “Well, that does sound entertaining. Is the brunch any good?”
“Absolutely,” I replied. “So are the queens.”
He laughed. “That’s good, I guess.”
“Not a fan?” I sipped my rooibos.
“Not not a fan,” he replied. “Shawano, Wisconsin doesn’t exactly have a lot of drag nightlife.”
“Have you always lived there?” I asked him.
“Nah. We went to college in Madison, then I lived in Milwaukee with Val for a few years, and Madison again after he came down here.” He shrugged again. “I’ve been to a few drag clubs, but regular old bars are more my style.”
“I would pay money to have Hart take you to Godfrey’s,” I remarked, laughing a little at the idea.
“If I thought he were going to have a day off in the next month, I might try to make him do it,” Elliot replied.
“Fair.” I almost extended an invitation for him to join us, but then remembered Rule Two. We weren’t a couple and he wasn’t going to want to meet my brother, much less go to drag brunch with us. Rule Two was a bitch.
“Mays, you down there?” Ward called.
“Yeah!” I yelled back, and stepped out of the kitchen after setting my mug down and pulling my mask back up. I’d been almost done with my tea anyway. Ward rolled up to me with a stack of papers.
“Give these to Detective Maza.”
“Will do. Thanks.” I already had the bone fragment back, so I headed down the hall toward the back door, stopping for a moment outside the kitchen. “Text me when you want me here,” I told Elliot.
“I will,” he replied, then flashed that half-smile again.
Rule Two, I reminded myself. Rule Two. Rule Two. Rule Two .