22. The Silence of the Plumber
Chapter twenty-two
The Silence of the Plumber
Dorian
By the time Kelly picks me up from St. Brigid’s Veil, the rain has turned mean.
Thin, cold needles slash across the hospital parking lot, glittering beneath security lights and turning every parked car into a blurred silver shape. Everwilde Bay crouches beyond the bluff under fog, all postcard charm and hidden teeth.
I should be thinking about the case.
I am thinking about Fate.
Kelly is sitting in the driver’s seat with her notebook tucked under one arm and her phone pressed to her ear.
“No,” she says. “Anonymous donors still leave financial trails. Yes, even magical ones. Especially magical ones. If the account paid through a shell, I want the shell. If the shell has a trustee, I want the trustee. If the trustee is a ghost, I want a medium and coffee.”
A pause.
“No, Detective Wolfe did not authorize that last part. Yet.”
I barely hear her.
My phone is in my hand again as I patiently wait for her to start the engine.
Still no answer from Fate.
My last message sits there, delivered and unanswered.
I found something important. Human leverage, not just malice. I need to know you’re safe when you can answer.
Delivered.
Not read.
The purple thread beneath my ribs is quiet.
Too quiet.
Not gone. Not broken. But distant, muffled, as if thick glass has slid between us.
My wolf hates it.
So do I.
Kelly ends her call. “Hospital finance is pretending incompetence is a privacy policy.”
“Keep pushing.”
“I plan to.”
She starts the engine. I buckle my seat belt. The thread pulls. Hard.
Too hard.
My phone buzzes.
Fate’s name lights the screen.
At last.
For one heartbeat, relief hits so sharply I almost close my eyes.
Then I read the message.
Meet me at the Harborlight Playhouse. Come quick. Come alone.
Everything in me goes still.
Not calm. Predator still.
A few rain drops fall from my hair on the screen, distorting the words.
Kelly leans closer. “Is that Fate?”
“Yes.”
“What does she say?”
I read it again.
Come quick. Come alone.
My head knows better.
Fate does not text like that. Even under stress. Especially under stress. She would add a joke. A deflection. A strange detail about haunted architecture or emotionally manipulative plumbing.
But, she has been practicing silence.
My brain doesn't care.
She is alive, and she is responding. Panic overrides procedure with brutal efficiency.
Fate.
Harborlight.
Juliet.
No.
Kelly grabs my arm. “Dorian.”
“Take me to the playhouse.”
“Why the playhouse?”
“Fate is there.”
My eyes please with her.
Whatever she sees in my face makes her hand loosen.
Not because she agrees. Because she understands that fear may lie, but my face does not.
Kelly’s color drains. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I’m coming.”
“No.”
“The text says alone.”
“And since when do we obey suspicious texts?”
“Since the woman I love may be standing in the building where two matched lovers died.”
The words leave my mouth raw.
Said. Not to walls. Not to ears. To my partner in a rain-soaked supernatural hospital parking lot, with sirens faint in the distance and my control cracking down the center.
“I will drop you off.”
My head weaves back and forth. Considering.
“You’ll get there faster this way.”
She pulls out of the parking lot without waiting for my response.
Probably for the better.
It’s doubtful I would be a safe driver under the circumstances.
I study her as she barrels through the rain-drenched streets toward the playhouse.
Kelly is carrying me because fear lies. But she knows my face did not.
I text Fate back: I’m on my way.
The Harborlight Playhouse rises out of the rain like a bad memory with architecture.
Its marquee is dark. The posters in the glass cases are warped at the edges from damp. Romeo and Juliet still smiles out from one of them, all painted yearning and tragic cheekbones, as if the universe has a cruel sense of marketing.
Our tires skid slightly as we pull into the alley behind the theater.
I am out of the car before the engine fully settles.
“I’ll be around the block. Just call me when you’re ready,” Kelly calls after me.
I barely register her pulling out behind me.
Rain hits my face. Cold. Sharp. Necessary.
The purple thread pulls toward the building. Muted. Wrong. Alive enough to hurt.
“Fate,” I say, though there is no one there to answer.
That's when I see him.
A man stands near the backstage door under the weak glow of a security light. Gray jacket. Narrow shoulders. Patchy beard. Just like the sketch.
Taylor, the plumber.
For one second, he looks directly at me.
His hand tightens around something at his throat. A chain. Old silver.
Then he bolts.
“Police,” I shout.
He slams through the backstage door.
I sprint after him, boots splashing through oil-slick puddles, rainwater running down my neck. Before I reach the door, it snaps shut and the lock catches with a hard metallic click.
Of course.
Because every villainous building in Everwilde has taken a seminar in dramatic timing.
His scent is fresh.
Human fear. Wet wool. Old metal. Poison residue. Something bitter and green beneath it.
And magic. Not his. Around him. On him. Like fingerprints made of shadow.
My warlock side rises, hot and precise. I place one palm over the lock and whisper two words my father once told me never to use on municipal property.
“Seram aperire.”
The lock gives.
Somewhere, a building code weeps.
Backstage darkness swallows me.
The air inside is colder than outside and thick with dust, velvet, old paint, damp wood, and the metallic ghost of fear. My wolf tracks the plumber’s scent through narrow corridors lined with costume racks and prop shelves.
A fake dagger lies on a table. A crown. A bouquet of silk flowers. A cracked mask with one painted tear. Every object looks like evidence. Every shadow looks like a person waiting to move.
The trail cuts through the wing, past the dressing rooms, then vanishes near the stage door.
Not fades. Stops. As if he stepped out of the world.
My pulse turns hard. “Fate.”
My voice hits the rafters and comes back wrong. Too swallowed.
The theater is dark except for a single stage light shining down in a narrow white column.
My body knows before my mind does. I move through the curtains. The stage opens ahead of me. And everything inside me stops.
Fate lies beneath the light.
White dress. Chestnut hair spread around her. One hand fallen open beside a glass vial. Her face is pale, still, impossibly peaceful.
Juliet.
No.
I cross the stage so fast the boards groan under me.
“Fate.”
She does not move.
I drop to my knees beside her, rainwater dripping from my coat onto the stage, and the whole theater leans closer.
Watching. Listening. Waiting.
I reach for her throat with hands that have never shaken during a murder scene.
They shake now.
My fingers press against her throat, searching for the pulse that should be there, the pulse that last night hammered beneath my mouth in the forest, wild and alive and mine because she chose me.
Nothing.
I shift my hand.
Try again.
Carotid. Wrist. Chest.
Nothing.
“Fate.”
Her name does not wake her.
It should.
She wakes for ridiculous things. Kettles.
Floorboards. Mina texting in all caps. A gull stealing someone’s scone three streets away.
She should wake for my voice. She should open her eyes and make some comment about my dramatic entrance or poor stage lighting or the fact that I am dripping rainwater on a crime scene.
She does not.
Procedure.
Use procedure, I tell myself.
Procedure exists because panic lies.
I tilt her airway. Check again. Nothing. I scan the vial near her hand without touching it. Glass. Violet residue. Floral-bitter scent. Spellwork threaded through it. Not the same poison as Mara and Caleb, but close enough to make my wolf snarl inside my skull.
I know better than to kiss her and seal whatever this might be.
I pull my phone and call emergency services.
No signal.
Of course.
My warlock senses flare. The stage shudders into layers—chalk marks. Silver cuts. Echo-spell residue. Painted listening channels pulsing faintly in the walls. A staged-death glamour wrapped around Fate’s body so tightly it hides her life from me.
Or preserves the absence of it.
I cannot tell.
That is what breaks the first piece of me.
Not knowing.
I press both hands over her sternum and send magic down, careful at first. Diagnostic. Measured. Heat. Breath-call. Wolf-life. Warlock spark.
The spell rejects me.
Hard.
Pain shoots up my arms.
The lights above flicker.
“No.”
I try again.
The rejection throws me back so sharply one palm slams against the floorboards.
The theater creaks.
Listening.
“Do not look at her,” I snarl to anyone who might be looking or listening.
The curtains tremble.
No answer.
Only rain against the roof.
Only Fate unmoving beneath the light.
I gather her against my chest. Her head lolls against my arm.
“Fate, listen to me. Wake up.”
Nothing.
Her skin is almost cold.
None of it makes any sense.
She can't be cold already. She just texted me.
The purple thread between us is there, but muted. A sound heard underwater. A door behind stone.
I claw for it with everything I am. Wolf. Warlock. Man. Mate.
It does not answer.
Then cold understanding slides through the wreckage of my chest.
The text was not from her.
It was Taylor.
I pick up the phone and call her number.
Somewhere backstage in the darkness, a phone rings.
A familiar chime. Bright. Mocking.
No one answers.
I end the call. Dial again.
The ringing starts immediately.
Closer now.
He has her phone. He brought me here. He wanted me to find her like this. But he is only a man. A plumber. If he thinks he can get away from me now….
My wolf rises with murder in his teeth. “Come out,” I command.
My voice is no longer broken. It is worse. It is empty.
There is a long pause.
Then the curtains part.
Anneliese steps out from the wing.
Fate’s phone is in her hand.
I had always seen her as ally, enchanted witch, artist, woman.
Now I recognize her only as threat.