{ XI }
Tuesday, October 31
Chapter Sixty
(12:02 a.m.)
Rick hadn’t left his office since the morning, drowning in forms, reports, statements, and procedural double-speak, the kind of bureaucratic exorcism the department called closure. There was comfort in it for most men: order imposed on chaos, the illusion that ink and a stamp could fence off the sins. It never did him much good. He’d spent the day signing ghosts into silence, cigarette by cigarette, while the clock pretended to move forward.
Now, the city breathed around him in restless arteries of fog and neon, a sleepless metropolis humming with its own phantoms and late-shift secrets. Under the veil of mist, the air carried the taste of rain and exhaust. Headlights streamed along the wet avenues, veins of life threading through Calgrave’s wicked heart. He drove across it in a daze of nicotine and afterthought, the hours unspooling behind him in fractured recall.
The Sculptor case was officially closed. They’d catalogued what was left of Gordon Cooper’s life: the apartment scrubbed, his family house sealed off, the faces of the dead boxed and logged. Six victims reduced to evidence tags, their beauty archived under fluorescent light. Down in the tunnels, they’d found the remnants of his dark venture—half-rotted bodies dragged from their graves, the air still rank with decay. The official report would list grave robbery among the other crimes.
But one thing they never recovered: the book Schreck and Gordon had spoken of: theCodex Tenebris. Rick had searched the evidence himself, sifting through boxes and cratesof retrieved possessions. Nothing. Either it was never on the premises—or someone had gotten to it first. The thought gnawed at him more than he’d admit.
As for Gordon himself, there’d been questions about the wounds on his body, but Rick had steered the story with a steady hand. Self-defense. A struggle in the dark. The kind of ending everyone could live with.
It should have felt cleaner than it did.
Declan Frost had been cleared and released from holding, threatening to press charges—until Rick brokered the truce: an exclusive, front-page story for theGazettein exchange for peace. No lawsuits, no scandals. And it’d made Frost’s career detonate exactly the way he’d always fantasized. Hell, he’d probably get a Pulitzer next year. Everyone got what they wanted.
Rick didn’t escape the spotlight either. The department spun him as the detective who took down the most brutal serial killer in Calgrave’s history—hero cop, the man who saved the city again. Instead of the reprimand he richly deserved for kicking protocol in the teeth, they pinned a medal to his chest. Smiles, handshakes, pats on the back. Even Mallory came out of it with fresh polish, radiant under Commissioner Collins’s praise, the talk of a promotion floating between the lines.
Frank, too, was on the mend. Rick had spoken to him on the phone earlier, filling him in. ‘Back on my feet in a week,’ Frank said. ‘Maybe less.’ Pure Frank: stubborn enough to outlive the apocalypse. He also told Rick about the part he’d played—the part Rick hadn’t known until later.
The moment Rick hung up on him, Frank had called Kitty at the station. Got the whole story out of her: Rick chasing a lead on Gordon, running on fumes, not thinking straight. He’d phoned the squad and pushed them hard—sent patrols to Gordon’s apartment, then to his family house. And when he couldn’t reach Rick, he’d been the one to order backup and ambulances toWillow Lane. Even doped on painkillers, Frank was a force to be reckoned with.
In the end, it all dissolved into a formless haze. The city kept its scars, but life went on.
Yet through every signed page and perfunctory handshake, Rick’s thoughts kept circling the same gravity: Ash.
He hadn’t been able to shake the image of him from last night, pale and fevered on that stone floor, eyes lit with defiance and might. When they’d finally clawed their way out of the tunnels, the night air hit cold and sharp, slicing past the stench of blood and rot. Ash had stumbled once, knees buckling, and Rick caught him before he fell. He’d wrapped him in his coat, reclaimed on their way up, felt the tremor running over him, and held on.
He remembered the wail of sirens in the distance, the sweep of blue and red light slicing the rain as cavalry welcomed them. Uniforms already fanned out across the street, paramedics rushing past him, voices rising, boots slapping through puddles. But it all blurred at the edges. Only the solid weight of Ash in his arms persisted.
When they tried putting him on a stretcher, Ash refused, jaw set, too proud, too stubborn to be treated like a victim. He insisted on being driven home, brushing off concern with that quiet temerity Rick was beginning to know too well. It should’ve reassured him, but it didn’t. Not after what he’d seen in those tunnels, the burst of impossible power that had saved them both.
As Ash was hauled off and Rick stood in the storm before the Cooper house, he watched the uniforms swarm and tape off the scene while he gave his report. His clothes hung in tatters, thoughts no less torn, yet all he could think about was that glimpse of something vast and dangerous moving behind Ash’s eyes. The same darkness Gordon had sought within occultwisdom and forbidden lore—only Ash hadn’t needed to pursue it. It lived in his blood.
Now, as he drove across Silver Cove’s winding streets, that feeling lingered like a bruise refusing to fade. But what did it mean for the two of them—a closing door, or the threshold of something big and uncertain waiting to be crossed? Rick exhaled smoke, watching it curl against the windshield before dissolving. He guessed he was about to find out. When his gaze caught his reflection in the rearview mirror, his eyes betrayed what he wouldn’t say aloud: the quiet pull toward the man who’d already changed the course of his life. And behind that surface calm, the wolf stirred.
The street yawned open and the old firehouse rose out of the dark, red brick like a thumb pressed into the night’s skin, a sentinel against the fog. Ash’s windows glowed on the second floor, light soft behind the arched glass. He was awake.
Rick parked across the street and checked his watch. Past midnight. It was Halloween; Ash’s twenty-sixth birthday.
They’d talked earlier; brief, polite, careful words. Rick had tried not to press, not to sound too much like a cop or a man who’d nearly lost him. Still, he’d been edgy ever since, pacing the length of the station like something caged. Maybe that’s why he’d ended up here—because he couldn’t let the day end without seeing him, without knowing he was… there.
Was the hour too late for a visit? Was it too bold of him to come unannounced? He sighed and sat behind the wheel, watching the windows. A minute later, a shadow moved behind the curtain. That was all the permission Rick needed.
He stepped out into the drizzle. The pavement steamed where tires had passed; neon bled wet colors across the curb. He crossed the street with his coat catching the wind, each stride a thin answer to the knot in his chest. The building’s entrance smelled of mortar and moss, the ghost of rain-soaked nightslong gone. He paused long enough to straighten his tie, adjust his hat, and breathe the place into him, as if the act of inhaling might steady what he was about to do.
When he reached Ash’s floor, he stopped for a breath. The door was new, freshly fitted, a replacement for the one he’d smashed through. Beyond it drifted the low, haunting spill of piano keys, a melody unhurried as snowfall settling over stone. He stood listening, caught in the quiet, his knuckles hovering for a moment. Curiosity, not nervousness, he told himself, before rapping the polished wood. The music cut off mid-phrase. Silence followed, then soft footsteps crossing the floor. Rick cleared his throat just as the door opened.
Ash stood there, barefoot, all in black, a snug tank top molding to the clean lines of his torso, loose sweatpants slung low on his hips. His hair was wild, soft waves curling around his face as though still tousled from sleep. There was nothing planned about it, yet the sight carried its own power, turning ease into seductiveness, casualness into something dangerously close to divine. The loft behind him glowed in low amber light, seeping warmth and cozy opulence. In his arms, Poe purred like a small engine, tail flicking lazily.
“Hi,” Rick said. His voice came out rougher than he meant it to.
Ash leaned against the doorframe, still cradling Poe. “Hi.”
