10. Not the First Time #2
“Agent Kells.”
Kelly shifts beside me. “Who called the Feds?”
She knows Kells from prior visits to the station. She does not know which branch Kells actually represents.
“Kells consults when cases become…difficult.”
Kells looks at Kelly. Recognition.
“Human?” she asks quietly.
Kelly makes no pretense of not hearing. Her jaw tightens. “Usually.”
Kells studies her for one beat, then nods. “Good answer.”
I do not like that she approves of Kelly. I do not like that she is here. I especially do not like that she looks unsurprised.
Behind frosted glass, gold ward-light pulses in time with an unseen heartbeat.
Kells turns to me. “Status?”
“Alive. Both. Stabilizing. Possible compound poisoning triggered by shared ingestion or physical contact. Wine is likely vector, but food and fixtures are being tested.”
“Thorough.”
“That sounds like surprise.”
“She glances toward the trauma doors. “I’d rather hear your theory first.”
“No.”
Her brows rise faintly.
“You did not come here because of a headline,” I say. “You came because this resembles something you already know.”
Kelly looks between us. Fate lifts her head from across the room.
Kells sees the movement but keeps her attention on me. “Careful, Detective. Federal cooperation is a delicate ecosystem.”
“Then stop stepping on my branches.”
Kells’s mouth tightens. “The theater deaths were public. This attack was private. That is a shift.”
“Escalation.”
“Or correction.”
My spine goes still.
“Meaning?” Kelly asks.
“The first event may have been designed to announce the pattern,” Kells says. “The second to prove the pattern can reach beyond performance.”
My hand closes once at my side. “You have seen this before.”
Kells does not answer.
She does not have to.
“Paired victims,” I say. “Poison. Love-triggered timing. Supernatural concealment.”
Her face does not change. But her scent does.
Fear. Not much. Enough.
“This is not an interview room,” she says.
“No. It is a hospital where two people almost died.”
“And where two people are currently alive because your witness had a vision and your team moved quickly.” Her gaze cuts to Fate again. “Do not underestimate the value of that.”
Fate flinches.
I move before thinking, one small step that puts me more directly in Kells’s line of sight.
Kells notices.
“So,” she says softly. “That part is true.”
“What part?”
“Nothing for public record.”
My wolf bares its teeth beneath my skin.
Kelly’s eyes narrow. “Agent Kells, if there’s prior case history that can help us identify this suspect—”
“There are old files,” Kells says.
Finally.
“Where?” I ask.
“Some federal. Some local. Some that never should have existed in any official system.”
“Victims?”
She looks toward the trauma doors. “Pairs. Usually lovers. Sometimes spouses. Sometimes something older than marriage. Almost always connected to towns with persistent supernatural populations and matchmaker traditions.”
Fate makes a small sound. Not meant for anyone. I hear it anyway.
Kells continues, “Poisons vary. Delivery varies. Public deaths, private collapses, staged accidents, disappearances. But there are similarities.”
“Love as the trigger,” I say.
Her mouth tightens. That is answer enough.
Kelly inhales slowly. “How many cases?”
Kells goes silent.
Too silent.
“Kells,” I say.
Her eyes return to mine. “Enough that I am telling you to document everything, share very little, and assume anyone who asks too many questions may already know more than they should.”
“That include you?”
This time, the faint smile reaches nowhere near her eyes. “Especially me.”
“I need the files.”
“No.”
“You came here to warn me.”
“I came here to keep this contained.”
“Containment failed when the Everwilde Tide pushed the headline.”
“Headlines are not files.”
“People are dying.”
“People have been dying for centuries.”
The words slip out before she can stop them.
There.
The waiting room contracts. Fate’s face goes pale. Kelly goes very still.
Kells’s expression hardens. She has revealed more than she intended, and she knows it.
“This is not the first case,” I say.
“No.”
“Not the first decade.”
Her silence sharpens.
“I have said what I can say.” Kells adjusts the cuff of her coat. “Detective, be careful not to mistake access for safety. Some files do not preserve truth. They spread attention.”
The phrase hits too close to Fate’s unsaid fear. Some things get worse when they are seen.
Kells turns to leave.
I catch her at the corridor entrance. “If Lilissa and Rafe die—”
“They won’t,” she says.
Not reassurance.
Assessment.
“How can you be so sure?”
For the first time, her composure cracks. Only slightly. “Because this attempt was meant to frighten, not finish.” Her voice lowers. “The killer is widening the circle. If they wanted to take out two supernaturals, they would have used different poisons.”
Then she walks away before I can stop her without creating a federal incident in a supernatural hospital.
Kelly comes up beside me. “That was informative in the least satisfying way possible.”
“Yes.”
“Dare I ask what she is?”
“A guardian angel.”
She looks up at me in shock. “It’s a wonderful life.”
Across the room, Fate stands with Mina, one hand pressed against her chest as if she can hold every endangered bond in place by force.
This is bigger than Everwilde PD.
And somewhere above us, the town’s newest headline is already teaching the killer’s pattern how to breathe.
By the time we leave St. Brigid’s Veil, the rain has turned mean.
Kelly drives us back toward the station in silence. Fate stays behind with Mina after Lilissa wakes enough to whisper Rafe’s name again.
I do not like leaving Fate there.
My wolf does not like leaving Fate anywhere.
My detective side wins because Lilissa and Rafe are alive, Kells knows more than she said, and the word pattern has started to look less like evidence and more like architecture.
Back at the station, I pull every name we have already survived.
Doomie.
Saffron.
The fire inspector.
The enchanted artwork performing their own brand of justice.
Old evidence threads we thought ended neatly because the immediate threat had been exposed and dealt with.
Police work teaches a man that neat endings are usually lies with better filing systems.
Kelly drops into the chair across from my desk with a cup of coffee she has not tasted. “You’re making the face again.”
“What face?”
“The one where your brain has found a basement under the basement.”
I write COPYCAT? on the legal pad.
Then beneath it:
CONSPIRACY?
Then, after a pause:
CURSE USING AVAILABLE VESSELS?
I tap the pen against the pad. “Each case involved someone vulnerable to fixation, resentment, threats, or righteousness.”
“Human motive plus magical nudge?”
“Possibly.”
She studies the list. “You think each one is just one prong of something bigger.”
“I think we may have been treating symptoms.”
“And the disease is what…a curse.”
“Or someone using belief in one.”
“Copycat or conspiracy,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Wonderful. I was worried the options would be cheerful.”
I stand. “I need to see Saffron.”
The holding cells of the Necropolis Federal Penitentiary smell like antiseptic, concrete, stale coffee, and old decisions.
Saffron sits behind reinforced glass in Cell Three, ankles crossed, hair braided over one shoulder, orange jumpsuit worn with the theatrical dignity of a woman who believes incarceration is merely poor staging.
When she sees me, she smiles.
“Detective Wolfe. You look under-slept and morally inconvenienced.”
“You look too comfortable.”
“I do my best.”
“If I recall, your best included several illegal enchantments and an assortment of murders.”
“Why, Detective Wolfe. You remembered.”
I sit across from her. “Paired victims. Poison. Love-triggered timing. Listening walls. What do you know?”
Her smile does not vanish. It edits itself.
That is answer enough to make my wolf rise.
“Oh,” she says softly. “So the old hunger is awake.”
My hands go still on the table. “Name it.”
“No.”
“Because you can’t?”
“Because names are invitations, and I am trying very hard to survive my rehabilitation era.”
“You expect me to believe you’re afraid?”
Saffron leans closer to the glass. “Fear is underrated. It keeps clever women from becoming cautionary murals.”
“Did you help the killer?”
Her offended look is almost convincing. “Please. I am an artist. If I wanted to murder lovers, the composition would be better.”
“And what was the composition?
She places both hands on her chest. “Oh Romeo, Romeo, Where for art thou Romeo?”
“Saffron.”
Her gaze slides toward the cinderblock wall behind me.
Not at me.
At the wall.
“Some stories do not need helpers,” she says. “They need listeners. A bitter man. A jealous woman. A lonely official with keys. A painter who wants to sell paintings. Give the right ear the right whisper, and people become very creative.”
My pulse slows.
Inside the walls.
Kells said older files spread attention.
Fate fears words feed the curse.
Saffron knew enough to make a painting witness desire.
“How many whispers?” I ask.
Saffron smiles again, smaller now. “How many walls does Everwilde have?”
The fluorescent light hums overhead.
“Who is the killer?”
Her eyes meet mine, bright and unreadable. “That assumes a person is the center of the web.”
“It usually is.”
“Detective, that is why you are charming. You still believe webs require spiders.”
I stand before I decide breaking reinforced glass is a reasonable interviewing technique.
At the door, she calls after me.
“Ask your matchmaker what her family buried. But do it gently.” Her smile turns almost sad. “The walls adore grief.”
I leave with more questions than answers, which is Saffron’s preferred form of civic participation.
In the hallway, I add two notes to the private board.
SAFFRON — KNOWS MORE. WALL-LISTENING CONNECTION.
Then:
CONSPIRACY / CURSE NETWORK — POSSIBLE.
Copycat. Conspiracy. Curse.
But for the first time, I am not sure those are different answers.
The Necropolis Archives do not like me.
This is not professional paranoia. It is a fact.