Chase was sitting at his desk, his leg in a splint propped up on a footstool. When we walked in, he jerked his head up. “About time. Where were you?”
I waved off his question. “Chill, Johnson. We do have other things to do besides hold your hand all the time. We’re here now, so let’s get on with this.” But I flashed him a smile to let him know I was just teasing.
“How’s your foot?” Delilah gave him a quick hug, and Chase kissed her on the cheek right about the moment Sharah walked in. I glanced at the elfin medic. Queen Asteria’s niece, Sharah was also Chase’s current girlfriend, and she was pregnant with his baby.
Her gaze darted from Chase to Delilah, then back to Chase again, and I knew what that look meant. But both Chase and Delilah were busy chatting and I wanted to smack them upside the head. Clueless, with a capital C.
“Chase, here’s the report on your officers.” Sharah’s voice was abrupt, and I caught the same hint that I heard with Iris—hormones running rampant and affecting her emotions.
I edged over to Delilah and gave her a sharp nod to move out of the way. She glanced at me, then over at Sharah, and as understanding filled her eyes, she quickly moved away from Chase and took a seat.
“Thanks.” He glanced over at Delilah, still blissfully unaware of his faux pas. “Broke the ankle. Shouldn’t take too long to heal, though. It was a clean fracture. Hurts like an SOB.” Chase, still blissfully unaware, picked up the reports. Sharah pulled away, scowling, and left the room. The minute the door closed, I swung around.
“Idiot. Can’t you see she was upset?” Hands on my hips, I glared at him, then turned to Delilah. “And you…you know better than that.”
“What? What did I do? What’s wrong now?” Yep. He had that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. Clueless.
“Use your brain. Sharah’s very pregnant, and very volatile. She comes in here, sees you and Delilah exchanging a kiss—albeit a friendly one—but given your history, I imagine she feels a little insecure. And being pregnant isn’t going to help. Instead of dropping what you were doing and greeting her like you really love her, you brushed her off with a peck on the cheek.”
“But we’re at work…”
“Dude. Pregnant woman who loves you? Work, schmerk. You could have at least given her a smile or something.”
Chase groaned, his expression shifting from clueless to oh-I-am-so-fucked. “Oh man, nobody warns you about this stuff. Why isn’t there a father-to-be manual that gives you the heads-up on everything you should know during your woman’s pregnancy?”
Delilah let out a sigh. “I am so stupid. I didn’t even think about what she might think. Camille’s right. You’d better apologize, but give her time to cool off. And some flowers wouldn’t hurt.” She rubbed her temples. “She might still think we have feelings for each other—”
“We do.” Chase stared at her. “And we always will, but they aren’t…I’m not…”
“I’m not in love with you, either,” Delilah said gently, smiling. “But Sharah’s the one who needs to know that.”
“Fine. Chase is going to buy flowers and eat crow, and you both are going to be careful about the touchy-feely stuff. Let’s get on with it. Lindsey Cartridge is on the way down here right now, Chase. She has some information that may be important in your investigation of this morning’s events.” I quickly outlined what she’d told me. “I promised her that the kid wouldn’t get in trouble.”
Chase let out an exasperated sigh. “You do know desecration of a grave is a misdemeanor?”
I stared at him. “Uh, yeah. I use graveyard dust, too, so you want to lock me up while you’re at it?”
After a long pause, Chase shrugged and flipped through the report. “Whatever. We’ve got more worries than a kid trying to steal some dirt. If he really did see the grave robbers and knows what happened to my officer, then I don’t care what he was doing…within reason.”
“What cemetery did they hit this time?”
“The Wedgewood. So, really, is there any way to find out if they drained off the souls or spirits or whatever spooks were hanging around there?” He frowned, pausing over the papers Sharah had given him. “Zombie attack probably killed this officer, too. His neck was broken and his arm was…gnawed on. Hell of a thing to tell his wife.”
“Can you tell her it was a dog?” Delilah asked.
“And that would be better, how? Might turn her against dogs the rest of her life.” Pursing his lips, he closed the file and tossed it back on the desk. “I won’t tell her it was zombies, but I have to tell her he was mauled. Maybe I’ll just leave it at that.”
Just then, Yugi knocked on the door and peeked in. “Lindsey Cartridge to see you. She’s with another woman, and a teenage boy.”
Chase glanced around his office. It wasn’t the most spacious cubicle. He reached for his crutches, wobbled to his feet, and motioned for us to follow him. “Is anybody using conference room B right now?”
Yugi shook his head. “Nope, it’s free.”
“Have them meet us there, then.”
“Sure thing, Chief.” Yugi saluted and headed back the way he’d come.
Delilah and I followed Chase into the empty conference room, careful not to trip him up. He was strong, but crutches are never anybody’s best friend.
The room looked like it got quite a bit of use. Several empty steno pads were scattered around the table, and a couple of gory case pictures hung on one bulletin board, apparently forgotten from the last meeting. I stared at the mangled bodies, slightly queasy.
Following my gaze, Chase asked me to take them down before Lindsey and her friends were escorted in. I grimaced but moved over to the photos. I’d no more than unpinned them from the corkboard and tucked them in a drawer on one of the built-in counters when Lindsey walked in.
A little shorter than me, she had long wheat-colored hair pulled back in a ponytail, and she was athletic as hell. For an FBH, she could give Delilah a run for her money. Even though she’d had a baby only a few months before, the woman was built like a freight train, and I had no doubt she could bash in a few heads.
Behind her was a woman as petite as Menolly, with curly brown hair, and a boy who resembled her, except for his height. He towered over her, looking like a frightened rabbit.
As they silently sat down at the table, Chase motioned to the coffee urn. “If you want, we have fresh coffee, and there’s also hot water for tea. Would you like a soda?” He glanced at the boy.
“Um…sure. Coke, please.” The kid’s voice was shaky, and he sounded surprised. I had the feeling he was waiting for the iron to drop in the fire.
Chase gave Delilah a dollar, who plugged it into the vending machine. She handed the kid a Coke. Lindsey fixed coffee for herself and her friend. When she glanced over at us, Delilah and I shook our heads. Delilah didn’t like coffee, and I’d tasted the coffee at HQ before. I knew better.
Chase motioned for us to gather round. He sat across from the boy but leaned back in his chair and stuck his hands in his pockets. I knew what he was up to with his casual stance. He was trying to diminish some of the authoritarian scare that cops held over kids.
“Why don’t you introduce me to your friends, Lindsey?” He nodded to her.
Lindsey gave him a nod in return. “Sure thing. This is Tracy Smyth and her son, Sean. Tracy, Sean, this is Detective Johnson—he’s the director of the Faerie-Human Crime Scene Investigation unit. Tracy is part of my coven, Detective. And Sean is in my training coven for teens.”
Chase leaned forward, shook Tracy’s hand, and gave Sean a friendly nod. “Thank you both for coming down. Lindsey said that you may have seen something this morning, Sean? Something frightening?”
Sean glanced at his mother, who tried to reassure him.
“It’s okay. Go on. Tell him what you saw, honey.” She patted his arm and he pulled away.
“Mommmm, don’t call me that in public.” He blushed. Ah yes, the teen years. FBHs had it hard when it came to hormones and puberty. The Fae were born with them already active. We grew up used to them raging through our systems. But that didn’t necessarily help us control them.
“Your mother is just concerned, son. Maybe cut her a little slack?” Chase flashed a smile at Sean, who shrugged, then cracked a smile of his own.
“Yeah, okay. Sorry, Mom.”
“Now, suppose you tell me what you saw.” Chase leaned forward and pulled a steno pad toward him as he took out a pen from his jacket. “And don’t worry. If what Ms. Cartridge has told me is true, you’re not going to get in trouble. You could help us a great deal if you’d tell us everything you witnessed. One of my officers was killed early this morning. He left a wife, and a daughter just about your age. If you noticed anything, you could make a great difference by helping us catch whoever did this.”
Sean worried his lip for a moment, then let out a long sigh. “I was out in the graveyard—”
“Which one?”
“The Wedgewood Cemetery. Part of our magical training is to learn how to use graveyard dirt. Usually we have some around the house, but we were out and I have Circle tonight and needed to finish my homework for it.” Sean’s voice started to even out a little as he spoke. He stopped to take a swig of the soda, then wiped his mouth.
“Homework. Gets you every time, doesn’t it, whether it’s school or magic?” Chase raised his eyebrows, and the kid visibly relaxed.
“Yeah, sure does. And Lindsey—Ms. Cartridge—works us hard. She’s tough—” He gulped and flashed Lindsey a sheepish smile. “Sorry, Ms. Cartridge, but you know you make us work hard. But you’re fair. Anyway, I was working by the hours, so I had to get up really early in the morning to do this.”
“What’s that mean?” Chase asked, glancing up. I couldn’t tell if he really wanted to know or was just trying to draw out Sean, but whatever the case, it worked.
Sean warmed up, leaning forward. “See, there are specific parts of the day that relate to some spells, and you have to do the work within that time period or you mess it up. I was supposed to do an early morning meditation on the ancestors, and the main spell component is graveyard dirt. That’s when I realized we were out of it. We live near the cemetery, so I thought I’d just run over there and grab a handful.”
“You know that dirt wouldn’t be consecrated and cleansed, Sean.” Lindsey frowned at him.
“I know, but what else was I gonna do? You’d think I was shirking if I didn’t do my best to gather what I needed. And you always know when we’re fudging our answers about homework.” Sean scowled, staring at the table.
“Yes, but you can always use a substitute. Remember, I told you that mixing valerian, mandrake, belladonna, and garden soil will work in a pinch.” She tapped the table with her fingernails. “Just remember that next time, okay?”
Sean ducked his head. “Sorry, Ms. C.”
Chase cleared his throat. “If we could leave the teaching till later?”
Lindsey blushed. “Oh, geez, I’m sorry!”
With a chuckle, Chase waved off her apology. “Not a problem. Okay, Sean, how about you continue? You decided to go over to the cemetery to grab a handful of graveyard dirt?”
Sean nodded. “Yeah. I threw on my jacket and ran over there. There wasn’t anybody there, that I could tell at first, so I headed in to find an old grave—I didn’t want to disturb anybody who’d recently been buried, and the older the graveyard dirt, the better.”
“Really? That’s interesting.”
As I watched them talk, it occurred to me that Chase was going to make a great father. He had a way with kids that I didn’t really understand, but could appreciate. Sharah’s baby was going to be well loved, at least over here Earthside. Being half-breed and a member of the royal family would bring its own set of problems back in Otherworld.
Sean leaned forward, cradling his Coke between his hands. “Yeah, the age of the dirt matters. You wouldn’t think so, but it does. New graves? Too chaotic. Old graveyard dirt is more powerful and focused. Anyway, I was wandering through the cemetery and I heard some noises. The sidewalk curved next to a really old cedar tree, and I heard some yelling—it was coming from around the tree. I sneaked up behind the cedar. I didn’t know what was going on, and it seemed smart to stay out of sight until I knew.”
“Good thinking.” I gave him a firm nod.
He looked at me and blushed. His eyes lingered over my breasts, and then he blushed again and looked away quickly. Yep. Hormones.
“Thanks. Well, I peeked around the tree trunk, and I saw…” Here, Sean paled again, the ease fading out of his expression. Frightened Rabbit was back.
“Go on, tell Detective Johnson what you told me.” Tracy reached out and put her hand on Sean’s arm. He didn’t shake her off this time.
“I saw something…bodies…they looked like they were from that old movie, Night of the Living Dead. There were several of them. And they had hold of this cop—I didn’t see how they caught him, but they were holding him down and they were…” His voice cracked, and tears formed in his eyes. He dashed them away angrily and rested his fists on the table.
“What were they doing, Sean? It’s okay to tell us.” I leaned across the table and put my hand over his.
“They were tearing him apart. Ripping into him like he was a piece of meat. He was still alive and they tore out his guts! I could hear him screaming.”
