6. Identical Dates #2
Fate’s mouth twitches. Not a full smile. Enough to tell me she is using humor the way other people use railings on steep stairs.
After the cemetery, I do not blame her.
She leads me through the cottage to the sunroom facing the gray water.
The room is crowded with plants, shelves of old books, two mismatched chairs, a small round table, and enough crystals to make an evidence technician weep.
Rain whispers against the glass roof. This is where we typically set up our supernatural murder boards and conduct questionable research.
She drops her bag onto the table.
I set my camera and laptop beside hers. “We need names cross-referenced against town archives, old newspapers, death registers, property records, and family lines.”
“I love it when you whisper sweet nothings,” she retorts.
“I do my best.”
She smiles. For a moment, the unresolved thing between us stands in the sunroom, damp from cemetery fog and refusing to leave.
Then Fate claps her hands once. “Coffee, wards, then ancestral trauma.”
“Research first.”
“Coffee is research fuel. You cannot tell me you’re turning down caffeine.”
I think for exactly two seconds. “Fine.”
She moves around the room, lighting three small candles and touching symbols etched into the window frames. The wards wake one by one: a faint shimmer at the glass, a tightening in the air, the quiet click of privacy settling around the room.
My warlock blood recognizes competent spellwork. My wolf recognizes shelter. Both are dangerous comforts.
She hands me a coffee.
We get to work.
For the first half hour, the cottage stays quiet except for rain, keyboard taps, pages turning, and Fate muttering insults at a genealogy website that appears to have personally wronged her.
I upload cemetery photographs, enlarge symbols, compare dates.
Fate searches town records with practiced speed.
“Evelyn and Thomas Rowe,” she says. “Official cause: drowning. Fishing skiff overturned. Clear weather.”
“Both drowned?”
“Apparently.”
I write it down.
“Maribel Saint and Jonas Vale,” she continues. “No marriage record, but three witness accounts calling them thread-bound. Deaths listed as accidental poisoning after a harvest supper.”
“Both.”
“Both.”
“Accidental?” I question.
She nods like a skeptical bobblehead.
More names. More dates. The pattern tightens.
Carriage accident. House fire. Cliff fall. Fever. Apparent suicide pact. Lightning strike. Drowning. Poisoning. Always pairs. Always lovers. Always language around bond, chosen, mate, heart-thread, sea-sworn. Always surprise that the causes of death could have caused death.
Fate stops joking after the fifth pair.
After the ninth, she gets very still.
I look over my notes.
The evidence is no longer a shape forming in fog. It is a structure.
Decades of deaths. Maybe more than a century. Targeted pairs buried side by side with symbols connecting them. Some officially married. Some not. Some clearly fated by old town language.
I turn the last photograph toward Fate.
Amelia D’Amour. Gideon Vale.
Her face closes.
“Fate.”
“I know.”
“We need to look at this one.”
“I said I know.”
The words are sharp, but the fear beneath them is sharper.
I soften my voice. “Not because of your family. Because it may be the earliest marker we found.”
She laughs once, without humor. “That is such a detective thing to say. ‘Don’t worry, your ancestral trauma is useful primarily as a timeline anchor.’”
“It is also true.”
“Deeply comforting.”
I let her have that.
Then I place the photo gently between us.
The rain taps the glass overhead. The wards hum faintly. Somewhere deeper in the cottage, a floorboard settles like the house is listening too.
Fate’s fingers hover near Amelia’s name. “She was a matchmaker,” she says.
“You know that?”
“No.”
Her throat moves. “I feel it.”
I believe her.
That may be the most dangerous thing I do all day.
The conclusion forms with cold, practical certainty. Everwilde Bay has been losing fated mates for generations. And someone has been burying the evidence in plain sight.
I keep searching.
Old articles. Death notices. Town bulletins. Scanned clippings with broken text and uneven margins. The kind of archived history people trust because time makes lies look respectable.
A search result loads slowly.
BAY WIDOW DISPUTE ENDS IN BLOODSHED — 1973
I almost move past it.
Then I see the surnames.
Wolfe. D’Amour.
My hand stills on the trackpad.
Across the table, Fate mutters, “If this genealogy site asks me to prove I’m not a robot one more time, I’m going to hex it into dial-up.”
I do not answer.
The article opens.
The scan is grainy, the type uneven, but the headline is clear. A woman named Seraphina Vale had been courted by two men.
There is a photograph beneath the text: two men standing on opposite sides of a woman in a pale dress. Elias D’Amour is smiling. Marcus Wolfe, my grandfather, is not.
The article says Seraphina chose Elias D’Amour, Fate’s grandfather.
Three weeks later, Elias was dead.
Shot in an alley behind the old apothecary after what witnesses called a romantic dispute. Marcus Wolfe confessed, claimed temporary madness, then later retracted the confession before dying in custody under unclear circumstances.
The room narrows. Rain against glass. Fate breathing across the table.
My own pulse, too loud. A cold line opens down my spine.
No. History does not convict blood. Blood is not motive. Lineage is not destiny.
I know this. I have built my life on knowing this.
And yet.
What if my grandfather was not simply jealous? What if the curse found him? Fed him? Used him? What if men like me—wolves, warlocks, possessive by nature and trained by blood to guard what we love—are not protectors in this pattern?
What if we are the weapons and the curse the motive?
Fate looks up. “You went quiet.”
I close the article window halfway before I think better of the movement. Too fast.
Her eyes narrow. “What did you find?” she asks.
My throat tightens.
Tell her.
The command is immediate. Correct. Necessary.
Then I imagine the fragile trust in her face cracking.
Fate already believes her magic may make her dangerous.
Already carries the dead like responsibility.
If I put this in front of her without proof, without context, without knowing whether my grandfather was murderer, victim, or both, I will be handing fear another knife.
I need time.
That is what I tell myself.
Maybe it is even somewhat true.
“Dorian.”
Her voice is softer now. More dangerous because of it.
I close my laptop enough that the screen dims. “Nothing.”
The lie lands between us. Small. Ugly. Alive.
Fate’s face does not change much. A flicker around the mouth. A stillness in the eyes. Not accusation, exactly. Worse. Recognition. She knows a withheld truth when it enters a room.
“Nothing,” she repeats.
“Yes.”
The word tastes like rust.
Rain and wards fill the silence. Somewhere in the hall, a floorboard settles. The house seems to listen.
Fate reaches for her coffee with exaggerated care. “Sounds like a word that’s gone viral.”
I should take it back. I should turn the screen around, show her the article, let the pain fall where it falls because at least it would be honest.
Instead, I look at the growing list of dead lovers and keep the article hidden beneath my palm.
“I need to verify it,” I say.
Her gaze lifts.
Not nothing, then.
I have given away too much.
Fate studies me for a beat longer, then nods once, too slowly. “Of course.”
There is no joke after it.
That should have been mercy.
It feels like punishment.
For several seconds, neither of us moves.
Then Fate says, too brightly, “That was the least convincing nothing since Mina told me she absolutely did not eat the emergency tiramisu.”
Her humor reaches across the table like a hand offered with plausible deniability.
I do not take it.
I should.
But the article sits under my palm like a loaded weapon. It is not a laughing matter.