TWO
The knock at the door made Calum’s teeth ache.
He unclenched his jaw, massaging it as he peered through the narrow window next to the door.
His heart lurched at the sight of the familiar coal black hair and lithe build.
He hadn’t seen Lewis in six months, not since the other man had ended their relationship.
He wet his lips, trying to calm his pulse as he reached for the doorknob.
What was Lewis doing here? Wild fantasies of Lewis regretting their breakup filled Calum’s head, and he tamped them down.
It had been half a year. For all he knew, Lewis had met someone else and was coming to tell Calum he was getting married.
The air carried that clear, fresh scent that always came after a rainfall, the damp chilling Calum’s skin as he opened the door.
“Do you know anything about this?” Lewis brandished a crumpled piece of paper in Calum’s direction.
“What’s this?” Calum fumbled for the paper, frowning at the address on the front as his brain tried to catch up with Lewis’s curt tone. “Have you been going through the city council’s post?” It wasn’t a marriage announcement, at least.
“Only Edzan’s,” Lewis said. “I’m her assistant.”
Calum blinked. “Since when?”
“Can I come in?” Lewis dragged a hand through his hair, tugging the damp curls off his face.
Calum stepped aside, letting the other man through the door.
“Since I got a tip off that the burgh council is abusing its powers,” Lewis said, shutting the door behind him.
Mossburgh was semi-independent, under the purview of the Eskalian government but with substantial legislative powers.
If the council was abusing those powers, the impact could be severe indeed.
“I haven’t found anything conclusive yet, but there’s a story here, I’m sure of it.
” He scraped a hand through his hair again, his dark olive skin burnished by the lamplight.
“So, do you know anything?” He jutted his chin at the letter.
“Harbourside Street’s in your station house’s territory, isn’t it? ”
Calum steeled himself. “It’s not my station house anymore. They transferred me four months ago.”
Lewis’s jaw slackened. “Why?”
“This is off the record, right?” It always had been before—Lewis was too principled to use his lover to further his own career—but Calum didn’t know where they stood now, if there was still friendship and affection or if they were just a copper with information and a journalist looking for a story.
Hurt flashed across Lewis’s face, and Calum regretted his question. “Of course. It always is with you.”
“I reported a colleague for torturing a witness for information, and as a result a murderer’s conviction was overturned.”
“Shit,” Lewis said under his breath. “Where are you now?”
“Station House Eight.” Where careers went to die.
He dropped his gaze, hating that he was standing in the entryway of his house with Lewis of all people, discussing the demise of his life’s work.
His eyes fell on the rumpled paper in his hand.
He unfolded the letter, the contents punching the breath from his lungs.
His skin broke out in a cold sweat, and he found himself leaning on the newel for support.
He was fifteen again, alone and scared and hoping someone would look for him even as he knew anyone who did would only meet with death.
“Is everything all right?” Lewis’s hand was firm on his shoulder, bringing him back to himself.
Calum swallowed. “As it happens, I do know something about this.” He crossed to the bookcase near the hearth, spreading a pile of folders over the tea table.
“This is the seventh person in the last six months who’s gone missing just before a Quarter Day.
These others were all before Beltaine and Lùnastal, and I’d thought .
. .” He’d thought it had stopped, that whoever—whatever—was taking them had stopped.
He placed the letter Lewis had brought with the files, scanning it again. The letter writer was appealing to her local burgess for aid after the police had dismissed her report of her friend’s disappearance.
“This fits the same pattern as the others,” Calum went on.
“All people who weren’t in guilds, all reported missing by friends or family, and all rebuffed by the police, who insisted they’d just left town in search of work.
But you tell your loved ones if you’re leaving town, you don’t just disappear. ” He hadn’t.
He looked up to find Lewis staring at him with an expression of horror. “What are these?”
“Missing person files. All the ones who have been reported missing to Station House Six before Beltaine, and to Eight before Lùnastal.” Who knew how many more had gone unreported, by folk who knew the reception they’d get? Or how many had been reported and ignored by other station houses?
“Missing person files,” Lewis repeated. “From your work.”
“My boss doesn’t think there’s anything to it—he even told me directly to stop looking into it—but there’s a pattern here, I know it.”
Lewis gripped Calum’s shoulders, turning him round. “What are you doing?” Lewis’s grasp tightened. “You know you can’t take those home.”
“Someone has to investigate. That’s six—seven—missing people that”—he broke off, his throat tightening—“that no one else is looking for.”
He’d never told Lewis what had happened to him, had never known how to say he’d been captured by a creature most folk in Mossburgh considered nothing more than myth.
In the glens of his childhood, deep in Eskalan’s Highlands, folk still believed in the fae.
Everyone knew someone who had seen a will-o’-the-wisp in a peat bog at night, or a kelpie in a loch.
They had all known what happened when Calum had disappeared one day, and when he returned seven years later—though only four had passed for him—he’d been an outcast, only his sister and parents standing by him.
In Mossburgh, though, the largest city in Eskalan, belief in the fae was almost wholly restricted to children.
Magic itself was widespread, but human magic, magic that had explanations and consistency, not the wilder, stranger fae magic.
The fae didn’t like cities, so they stayed away.
No one knew anyone who had seen a beithir emerge from the mountains or been chased by a cù sìth in the woods.
No one, least of all Lewis, who prized truth and reason, would believe Calum had been taken prisoner by a fae.
“So you’ve decided to—to tamper with evidence by taking all the files home?” Lewis snapped. “What exactly are you trying to achieve here?”
Calum stared into Lewis’s umber eyes, their edges creased with concern. “No one is going to find them if their files are in a dusty cupboard in a police station.”
“And no one is going to be held accountable if you don’t follow procedure.” Lewis shook his head. “Méabh’s lugs, Calum, you know better than this.”
Lewis was right. It had been foolish, and the truth was, Calum didn’t even have a good explanation.
He knew this wasn’t the work of the fae.
It was too regimented, always taking people before Quarter Days and always targeting poor, vulnerable folk.
A fae didn’t care if a person would be missed, and while the fae signed contracts on Quarter Days, there were no contracts involved in capturing mortals and spiriting them off to Faerie.
Calum, of all people, knew that.
He shook off Lewis’s grip. He knew they weren’t being taken by fae, but they were still missing people, and in all of them he saw himself, saw the awkward boy who had been more comfortable in the woods than with his peers.
“I need to find them,” he said.
“I never said you didn’t,” Lewis said, his eyes on the pile of paper on the tea table.
“But you need to do it properly. You can’t just go taking witness statements out of the station house like this.
What’s got into you?” He stepped closer, resting his fingers on Calum’s arm.
He was almost as tall as Calum, and their eyes met.
“This is personal, isn’t it?” His gaze pierced through Calum, as though he could see right to the core of him.
“There’s something more going on here, isn’t there? Talk to me, Calum.”
Calum shrugged Lewis’s arm off. “Look, I’ll take the files back to work tomorrow, okay?”
Lewis stumbled back a step, his mouth opening and closing. Calum wanted to take it back, to tell Lewis the truth, but there was a reason their relationship had ended, and this was it: because Calum could never get over what had happened to him, and he could never, ever tell Lewis.