Ash appeared in the lone uncovered window and crossed the room slowly, shirtless, a ghost behind the glass, unaware he was being watched. Haloed by the gray light filtering through grime-frosted panes, he moved with unconscious grace; less a man, more a figure caught mid-dream, bending to lift something from the floor. A cat.
Rick observed from the driver’s seat, a cigarette burning toward his knuckles. Ash held the animal with a gentle reverence, fingers absently combing its black fur, his head tipped forward in quiet conversation with it, cheek brushing its ear. The moment was intimate. Real. Whatever Ash had been inside that interview room—a smirking, seductive enigma—he wasn’t wearing it now. Here, he looked… open. Unguarded. Someone who fed strays and lived among phantoms.
Poe.Not a boyfriend. A pet.
Rick drew deep, relief flooding him, sudden and sharp. Then shame, hot on its heels. He wasn’t sure what he’d come here hoping to see. But this wasn’t it. This was something he had no right to intrude upon. Something that unsettled him deep inside.
What’s next, binoculars and tissues?
He sighed, rubbed his temple, and stubbed the cigarette out on the dash tray. The Eldorado groaned as he shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb. With a quiet curse, he twisted the wheel, swung the car in a wide U-turn, and headed back downtown. The city swallowed him up again, towers looming in the rearview, fumes softening everything but the twisting in his chest.
Back to Spire. Back to reason. Back to pretending everything was normal and none of it meant a damn thing.
Chapter Thirteen
(7:17 p.m.)
The bathtub cradled Ash’s spine, its chill dulled by the lukewarm water lapping at his ribs. His arms were sprawled along the curved porcelain edge, a cigarette smoldering between his long fingers. Above, the lone bulb swayed gently on its cord, casting jaundiced light in sickle-curves, the shadows flitting over the green-tiled walls in moth-like ripples. Soft jazz murmured from the record player past the open door, its ivory-soft melancholy seeping into the steam thick as velvet.
Ash let his lashes drift low, the smoke rising in spirals that seemed to hesitate before disappearing, riddles born only to vanish. Two days in the slam had left him hollowed out, his edges scuffed raw. The hot meal had warmed his insides, the water had soothed his muscles, but not the deeper ache: the one not caused by jail, the one that lived in the soft tissue behind his sternum where his confidence used to gleam.
Once again, his thoughts spiraled back to that morning, to that stormy glare, untouched, unyielding. The frustration coiled in his stomach, sour and restless, a thing with scales and no eyes. For the first time in years, doubt tugged at him. He ground the cigarette into the crystal ashtray beside the tub and rose from the water in one sinuous motion. Naked and dripping, he stepped onto the cold marble floor. Steam followed him like a cloak as he padded barefoot into the vast, open sprawl of his loft.
The space was a deserted cathedral, uninterrupted by doors or partitions. Brick walls rose in reddish-brown slabs toward a soaring ceiling laced with cast-iron beams. Time had scraped its name into every joist and hinge, but the decay only deepenedthe decadence. In the far corner, a grand piano stood with its lid propped open; in the other, a hanging lamp sagged low above the round dining table. Opposite it, a cavernous fireplace gaped empty, flanked by bookshelves stacked with paperbacks and hardcovers. Velvet sofa in wine-dark hues nestled between lamps and ottomans, drowned in cushions. A plush Persian rug covered the wooden floorboards, and in the middle loomed a king-sized bed draped in black silk, a stage set for sin. Outside, beyond the massive arched windows, the city unfolded—dark towers stitched to the sky with bridges and cables, as if trying to climb out of the earth.
Ash moved across it all, the water cooling on his skin, smoke still swirling in his lungs, an apparition trapped inside his kingdom. He drifted to the desk by the window and sank into the vintage Chesterfieldchair, the plush velvet soft against the backs of his thighs. The laptop waited like a dormant eye amidst the clutter. He flipped it open, the screen blooming to life with a faint, soulless note. His fingers hesitated on the keys, then danced in practiced rhythm.
Rick Slade.Just typing the name in the search bar sent a slow current through him, as if the letters themselves had teeth. He told himself it was simple curiosity. Practical. Sensible. Nothing more than due diligence. But the truth shimmered beneath the lie—he wanted toknowthe man. Not just the badge, not just the glacier-still gaze or the infuriating resistance to charm. He wanted to crack open the soul behind those eyes and see what bled.
The search turned up what he expected: news blurbs and old press photos, Slade’s brooding, broad-shouldered figure towering over other officers, his face always half-shadowed by his ubiquitous fedora. The youngest homicide sergeant in CMPD history, earning his stripes after busting Carmine Leone, the crime boss behind the Blackwater body count. Multiple awards.An almost supernatural clearance rate. Articles that dripped admiration and none of the warmth that came with it. Efficient. Relentless. Untouchable. One piece called him ‘Calgrave’s grim redeemer.’
But then, tucked between a broken link and a cached tabloid site, he found something older. Sparse, clinical. A headline from five years ago still floating around:Detective Sergeant Slade Takes Down Death Cult Disguised as Therapy Group.
He clicked. There was a name among the victims: Lucas Slade.Rick’s younger brother.
The article gave no poetry, only facts: a doomsday cult called The Thirteenth Veil.A series of orchestrated suicides in abandoned buildings throughout the city. Lucas had been one of them. Rick had led the investigation. Rick had dismantled the group. Rick had personally tracked down and arrested the surviving members. No statements. No interviews. Just the stark outline of grief turned into purpose, pain forged into law.
Ash stared at the screen a moment longer, lips set tight, barely noticing Poe brushing against his ankles, purring softly.So that was the fire under the ice. The man who saved the city couldn’t save his own brother.
He closed the laptop. Something in his chest felt loose and uncertain, like a thread had been pulled and he didn’t yet know from where. Sorrow lived inside Slade like a structure, deep-rooted, load-bearing. Ash recognized the architecture. You didn’t walk away from that kind of loss unchanged. Maybe that was why the man looked at him the way he did, like he saw something cracked and familiar.
He rose from the chair and walked over to the bed, dropping onto the satin sheets. He raked his fingers through his damp hair, the strands falling in black ribbons over his brow. His body had been touched by warmth and water, his naked skin glistening in the lamplight, pearly and flawless, but his mindhad not been cleansed. The nightmare lingered. That fucking symbol still pulsed behind his eyelids, the one carved into bone, etched into memory, burned into the air of that hell-alley where Jimmy’s body had been left behind.
It had haunted him more than the murder itself—not the blood, not the arrest, not even Jimmy’s ruined face—but that shape. Unnatural, familiar, foul. A spiral that refused to stay still, whose angles writhed when he tried to trace them. It pulsed with some buried rhythm, ancient and wrong, the way a rotten tooth hums before it breaks. A message pressed into the part of himself that remembered things he’d never been taught.
His breath snagged. A thin tremor ran down his arms.
He didn’twantto care. Jimmy had been a mess—sweet, maybe, in that twitchy way addicts get when they mistake attention for affection. After their first hookup in the Eclipse’s restroom, they’d fucked once more in Jimmy’s apartment, a cramped third-floor walk-up that reeked of laundry detergent and cheap incense. Jimmy had laughed too hard at his own jokes. Drooled too much when he kissed. But there’d been a tenderness there, beneath the sweat. A need to matter. He had been more than a trick. Not exactly a friend, but close enough to leave a mark. And he hadn’t deserved that ending. No one did.
The last time Ash saw him was at the Eclipse, when Jimmy tried to talk to him, and he brushed him off. That night, he’d been too busy chasing a man with cheekbones like razors. Guilt snaked through him, thin and slimy. He should’vecaredmore. Paid attention. But it was too late now. Jimmy was dead. The only thing he could do now was… bring his murderer to justice.
Ash stood. The decision clicked into place so quietly that it startled him. He would find whoever did this. Not just for justice. Not just for innocence. But because something had reached inside his dream and scratched. And he wanted to know whose hand it had been.
He dressed without thought, slipping into armor more ritual than wardrobe: jeans molded to his legs; cotton T-shirt stretched across his chest; boots still caked with street mud; leather jacket, worn, creased, familiar, and perfect for a night like this. All black. Poe leaped onto the bed with a soundless grace, a black-furred shadow settling on the black-velour sheets. His unblinking yellow eyes tracked Ash’s every movement with quiet scrutiny.
“See you later, buddy,” Ash said, and the cat meowed in response.
The keys waited on the counter, gleaming under the low lamp. Ash took them, the loft closing its mouth behind him as he left.
