Chapter 4
WITCH HUNT
Bronte
Mozart flits across the studio speakers as I sew the ruby-dyed hide of a cannibal onto Quinn’s copy of Carmilla.
My needle and glittering gold thread move in time with each rising note and melancholy chord. Dante claims I’m a psychopath for listening to classic symphonies as I weave the dead together for sale on my Etsy shop. As if Taylor Swift would be more fitting.
In truth, no other music can soothe my senses so easily overwhelmed by the hum of the exhaust fans, the burn of toxic ammonia fumes, and the rancid sweetness of decay always slithering beneath.
You’d think working in a morgue would acclimate me to death’s stench.
But befriending death is almost as concerning as having the dead talk back to you.
“Bronte?”
My hands stop moving. The stainless steel C-curved needle is stuck halfway through ringing the hide.
I stare at the splayed book facing me cover-up from the worktable.
Dim fluorescence filtering from the overhead recess lights casts dark shadows upon a cat’s golden eye embedded beneath the title as a surprise for Quinn.
It’s staring back at me like it can feel what I’m doing to its skin.
I swear it twitches in its glass casing, blinking at me.
“Bronte.”
Fucking hell. How long should I wait to fill the tub, grab the toaster, and flip off the man upstairs to join the one down below?
“Bronte!”
I catch motion in my periphery and sigh in relief. It’s just Dante.
Pausing the music, I glare through the clear glass door leading out to the dark garage, where my twin leans against his chameleon McLaren and avoids looking inside. “What do you want, Ghostface?”
Dante risks a glance of what he can see through the door—me, in black cargo pants and a simple shirt with the sleeves rolled to my elbows, sitting on my rolling stool with an entire mountain of packages to be shipped behind me—to toss a glare my way.
A risk he likely takes because of the vexing nickname I gave him when he hit his big break as a masked gamer.
“Quinn is here,” he drones, drawing his white hood over his equally white and slightly tousled hair with his hands inked in crimson tattoos. “Pissy as ever.”
“Probably because I missed her calls.” I grimace, clearing the notifications from my cell and slipping off my gloves. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Dante nods, his phone screen a neon glow against his squint as he hangs by his car like a haunting vision of the past. My brother always reminds me of our darker days when he lingers like this.
It’s a habit he never quite abandoned. When we were kids, standing within each other’s periphery was in anticipation of our father raising a bottle or blade or, worst of all, his fists.
We would be there for each other after the beatings were done and the wounds needed to be cleaned.
We reminded one another that neither of us were alone.
It’s why we live together now, all these years later. To feel less alone and remember that we both survived our own personal hells.
Dante sticks to my side as we take the ascending stairs, murmuring from the corner of his mouth, “Are you fucking Quinn?”
I scowl. “Would it be a problem if I was?”
“Is that a no?”
“No.”
“Oui, then?”
“Why are you asking?”
“She’s hot.”
I pause mid-step, eyes slitting. “You hate Quinn on a molecular level. Your words, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Doesn’t negate the fact that she’s hot. Besides, I wasn’t asking for myself. I was asking for you.”
I scoff. “She’s a colleague.”
“Whom you’ve known for years.”
“So?”
“So, you should show her what she’s been missing.”
I scoff again. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Dante’s wide mouth thins as he absentmindedly pinches his disheveled strands, the evidence of his afternoon tumble with his summer fling.
Always a revolving door of women and men.
Never anything serious. Not since his heart was crumpled up and burned by the only person he ever gave it to. “How long has it been, brother?”
“Since?”
His brow flattens over his red eyes. “Since you fucked someone other than yourself.”
At least a year. Or three…?
Fuck’s sake. Has it seriously been that long since the Swifty with the glitter obsession?
“You’ve made your point, crétin,” I grumble as I scale the last few steps and push through the door to the kitchen.
Overhead lights illuminate the sprawling driftwood and cerulean sea glass décor.
A central island permeates the space smelling of summer heat and saltwater breezing through the tall bay windows.
Beyond the strip of sand outside, the late July dusk shades the bare ocean with starry cobalts and moonlit maroons.
Twisting from the windows is an unamused and entirely peeved Quinn still in her scrubs, who shoves a black bakery box at me and snaps, “How hard is it to answer your damn phone, Bronte?”
Dante wordlessly steers down the hall toward the den with a suggestive backward glance at Quinn’s ass. My hostile glare chases him into the dark with a demonic cackle.
“Sorry, ma chérie.” I set the box on the island and peek inside. “Chocolate croissants?”
“They’re your favorite,” she huffs, irritated by my confusion, “aren’t they?”
“Depends. Are we celebrating, or are you buttering me up for disappointment?”
These past weeks of waiting for this news have been a fever dream. Bodies haven’t been piling up in the morgue at the rate they were last month. As if the mysterious vigilante just up and left for a summer vacation. Or they’re plotting something big.
Either way, they won’t be alive for much longer.
Quinn exhales through her nose, the anger in her dark blue eyes dulling with apprehension. “The results were inconclusive.”
“Inconclusive?” Her cinnamon curls bounce with her nod as she pulls a report from her tote, the strand of pink hair in the clear evidence bag paperclipped to the front page, and plops it atop the box.
I snatch it, unwilling to believe what I’m hearing, and scan the contents.
Seeing hard proof of her claim doesn’t make the truth any easier to digest. “How was a test on a strand of human hair inconclusive?”
“There was no match between the sample you provided and anyone registered in local, state, or federal databases. Which means—”
“I know what it means.” Dropping the report, I lean heavily against the island. “Salem’s latest Batman is a top-shelf criminal protected by an entire goddamn hive.”
This mission has gone from insane to completely fucking impossible.
“Should I be worried?” Quinn asks warily. “You aren’t going to do anything stupid like start a witch hunt for everyone in the city with pink hair, are you?”
Excellent start. “Of course not.”
She taps her chunky white sneaker, obviously unconvinced. “You’re a coroner, Bronte. Not a cop.”
“Thank the angels for that.” I grab a croissant and chomp into the dough. “I’d be suffocating on sand with the rest of them.”
“Bronte—”
“Help me.”
Her russet eyebrows knit. “What?”
“Help me.” I step closer, carefully watching for any change in her expression and finding only hesitant curiosity.
“It’s been ten years, Quinn. The cops don’t care.
We can work as a team, hunt down this criminal together.
You’ve already come this far. I know you want to see this through just as much as me. ”
I’m aware of how desperate I sound. But if I’m going to do this and get away with it, I can’t have her perching on my shoulder and monitoring my every move.
“Oh?” She crosses her arms, taking a defensive stance. “An expert on what I want now, are you?”
“You willingly made yourself my accomplice, Quinn. You wouldn’t have taken such a personal risk if you didn’t have some sort of stake in this.”
Quinn snickers, her jaw twitching.
It’s not a denial.
“I’ll brew a fresh pot,” I offer innocently, gesturing to the coffee machine on the counter across from us. “We can strategize over caffeine and sugar.”
She chews the inside of her cheek. Glances at the bakery box. Picks at the sleeve of her scrubs.
Still no denial.
A tiny nudge. That’s all she needs.
Something within me stirs, like a beast being woken from a long, deep slumber. Perhaps there’s a path I can walk that’ll convince her to take the plunge.
I know Quinn like the back of my hand. She’s a sucker for tattoos, and I’m covered in them.
I’m built like my father, tall and framed by a healthy bulk, easily towering over her.
My charcoal hair is styled in a faded undercut, the longer strands slicked.
Rebellious tendrils straddle my brow deeply set in shadow, giving me a resting pissed face that oddly attracts others like moths to flame.
Dante claims he can see the fires of hell within my hazel eyes, though they’ve served me just as well as everything else.
She’s hot. Show her what she’s been missing.
I inch closer, crowding her body with mine just enough for my heat to bleed into hers. Her lilac perfume wafts to me, daring me to explore and discover exactly where she sprayed it. “I promise I don’t bite quite as hard as those vampires you love to read about.”
A subtle gasp of surprise escapes her lips.
My arrogant grin grows roots and sprouts. “Unless you ask me to, ma chérie.”
A warm flush of desire creeps up her neck, blooming in her cheeks. It fuels my bravado, and I reach for her curls.
Until she yips and lurches back.
“Shit, s-sorry,” I stammer, palms up as I back off. “Are you all right? Forgive me, I—”
“For the love of God, Bronte, stop!” Quinn barks, a hand to her heaving chest. “I just—I’m sort of seeing someone at the moment.”
“That’s”—I try and fail to clear the discomfort lodging deep in my throat—“fair.”
An awkward silence passes as she catches her breath. I eye the toaster, wondering how fast it can put me out of my misery.
“Look.” Quinn moves closer, settling a palm over a tattoo of a weeping angel on my arm. “You have a heart of gold, but there’s nothing more we can do. You need to let this go before you get yourself hurt—or worse. Let Scull do his job, okay?”
Not a chance in hell am I doing any of that, but I nod along anyway. She tips onto her toes to peck my cheek, patting my bicep with a sympathetic wince.
“Enjoy the croissants. See you at work.”
I nod again, watching her take her leave out the front door.
“Well, that was a fucking disaster.” Dante materializes from the hallway, visibly cringing. “I don’t know who’s in more pain: her or me.”
I sigh through my nose, thoroughly annoyed. “Shouldn’t you be upstairs filming thirst traps?”
His mouth opens for what I assume is a snarky comeback. But then his attention snags on the croissants. “Where are those from?”
“The fuck does that matter?” I snipe, still scrubbing the image of Quinn leaping out of her skin from my brain.
Dante closes the lid and taps the elegant B printed in pastel pink. “Thought so. It’s Beelzebub’s.”
I realize a beat too late that he’s waiting for a response. “Beelzebub, the demon?”
He skewers me with a glare sharper than a butcher’s blade. “Margot’s favorite café.”
Margot. His runaway fiancée who disappeared with our mother’s ring after he proposed last year, never to be seen again. The woman who ruined him for any other.
“Oh,” I utter, casting a longing look at the toaster.
“Oh,” he parrots, grabbing a croissant and biting into it with an aggressive snap of his teeth. His clever gaze snags on the report still lying atop the island, the brightest rays of sunset glinting off the evidence bag and its damning contents. “So, this vigilante of yours has pink hair?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, not bothering to hide what I’ve done. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d been eavesdropping during that entire catastrophic encounter with Quinn. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“You should be thanking the angels I did.” He grabs his keys from the rack beside the fridge and heads for the door leading down to the garage. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Beelzebub’s.”
“For what?”
“To stalk our first suspect, of course.” At my questioning look, he grins like a wolf. “The owner, Poppy Morgenstern, has pink hair. Which you’d know if you ever went anywhere aside from here and work.”
I blink twice. “You could’ve led with that.”
“And you could’ve told me about your obsession sooner. At least I didn’t wait ten fucking years.”
Fine. Even I can admit I deserve that.
As he strides past, I catch my brother’s arm. “You’re not helping me with this.”
“I don’t recall asking for your permission.”
We’re the same age, born fraternal twins within minutes of each other.
Technically, his albino ass was the first of us to see the world, yet I’ve been stepping into the role of big brother our entire lives.
A role I wouldn’t have ever needed to take on if Mama hadn’t died and deserted us and our older half-sister, Virgil, with a Purple Heart jarhead drowning in untreated trauma and deadly grief.
My job has always been to protect my brother. Even from myself. Especially from myself.
“Dante.” My grip tightens. “This is dangerous.”
His smile melts like hot wax. “You fumbled your shot with Quinn. Who, in case you didn’t notice, wasn’t remotely interested in helping you to begin with.
To make matters worse, she’s familiar with Beelzebub’s.
She’d know of Poppy and should’ve given you at least that single lead instead of her ‘there’s nothing more we can do’ bullshit.
You work with dead people and are an antisocial hermit.
So, the way I see it, I’m all you’ve got. I’m not letting you do this alone.”
Before I can protest, he pulls away and treks downstairs, whistling an offbeat tune that sounds suspiciously like Rockwell’s Somebody’s Watching Me. I sigh and follow, lighting a cigar to burn what little remains of my guilty conscience to ash and smoke.