“There’s no proofmurder townsexist. They’re an old wives’ tale and nothing more.”
“Your leg says otherwise,” Gale muttered under their breath.
The ship in a bottle on the edge of the head inspector’s desk rocked dangerously on a roiling sea as the head inspector leveled a tempestuous look at the three of them. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a murder town or not. The New Jersey Branch seems to think we are made of stronger stuff than they are. Whatever is going on, Galvan, you can handle it. I’m sure you’ve seen worse. Barlow, you’re the only necromancer we’ve got. If there is one of your ilk running amok, you should be able to tell the same way you could with your dead man during the institute case. And Miss Jones, you will provide them with whatever information they need to figure out if this is a vampire.”
“Sir, with all due respect, vampires don’t really exist,” Oliver replied. “The vast majority of vampire panics are caused by consumption sweeping through families, and people taking too much stock in bad dreams and portents. Do we even know if people are being murdered or if they are dyingmysteriouslyfrom disease?”
“That’s your job to find out, Barlow.”
“Ifwe agree to take the case.”
The head inspector held Felipe’s gaze for a long moment. He debated tacking on a sir or backing down, but after twenty years, he was tired of taking cases like this. He had been killed for this god forsaken job and had nothing to show for it but bitterness.I don’t need to be here. I’ve done my time, Felipe wanted to yell. A smarter man would have turned in his retirement papers once and for all, but he couldn’t let a fit of pique ruin things for Oliver. Ripping his gaze away, Felipe crossed his arms with a huff. The ship in the bottle lurched on its stand a second before the head inspector grabbed an overstuffed file and tossed it across the desk toward Oliver.
“The residents of Aldorhaven are being attacked by something. If it’s a bunch of hypochondriacs and mass hysteria, then it should be an easy few days of work for you. If it’s something more, then you two should be well equipped to deal with it, or should I assign you a more experienced partner for this case, Inspector Galvan?”
Anger constricted Felipe’s ribs. He was about to tell the head inspector where to put his case when Oliver’s hand caught his wrist. Astrange sensation trickled across the tether that felt like a mix between dread, curiosity, and doleful longing. When Felipe looked at Oliver, he found the other man staring down at the case file with a frown and his dark brows knit thoughtfully.
“Can— can we think about it?” Oliver asked with measured slowness. “I would need to see if the other medical examiner would be able to cover my cases and such.”
“Don’t take too long to decide. The New Jersey Branch is getting antsy, and if it isn’t you two taking it, I will need to reconsider some things.”
Nodding, Oliver swallowed hard and stood. “Understood, sir.”
Oliver took Felipe’s hand and made for the door with Gwen at his side. The moment Gale shut the door behind them, Felipe turned Oliver toward him and held his shoulders. At the look on his face, Oliver blenched with a grimace.
“Why did you say that?” Felipe said in a hissed whisper. “You do realize you all but agreed to take this case, right?”
Oliver’s hands tightened around the file as he opened his mouth to speak but stopped himself each time. Biting back his annoyance, Felipe firmly stroked Oliver’s arms and released a tense sigh as a familiar wave of panic and misery Felipe hadn’t felt from Oliver in months burbled through his chest. He hadn’t meant to do that. Behind Oliver’s back, Gwen gave Felipe a sharp look that bordered on menacing as he tried to get Oliver to unclench enough to speak. He wasn’t mad. He truly wasn’t. He just couldn’t understand why he would agree to risk his life going to a murder town. The head inspector could make as many veiled threats as he wanted, but Felipe wouldn’t have gone anywhere without Oliver, even if he physically could.
“I’m sorry for snapping at you, but please tell me what’s going on in your head, Oliver. I want to understand.”
Oliver’s grey gaze swept over Felipe and Gwen’s faces as he struggled to work the words free. “I’m— I’m from the murder town.”
Chapter Four
Enough
Oliver managed to hold it together on the walk from the head inspector’s office all the way down to the basement laboratory, but the moment he made it into the lab, he shook out his hands and let out a long, shaky breath. Behind him, he could feel Gwen and Felipe watching and waiting for answers he wasn’t sure he could provide. Felipe had convinced him to wait until he was downstairs and safe from prying ears to say more, yet now, the words were lodged in his throat. Perhaps, he was wrong and all but agreed to take the case for no reason. Perhaps, he had misremembered the name he had seen years ago among his nana’s papers, but his mother’s note, the first and only he had ever seen in her voice and hand, had been imprinted on his mind ever since.
Leaving Gwen and Felipe in the laboratory without a word, Oliver ducked through the closet and into his bedroom. The others were speaking in hushed tones, but in a moment, they would be there to check on him; he had to move quickly. Oliver dragged out the strongbox from under the bed, unlocked it, and stuffed the ring box beneath his pillow as the closet door whined open. Swallowing against the knot in his throat, Oliver found Felipe standing on the threshold holding the file on the New Jersey case. Now, there was no aggravation sharpening his features; only concern and hints of regret remained. Beside him, Gwen’s eyes swept over the new desk that held his typewriter before landing on the bright patchwork quilt spread across the foot of his bed.
Oliver smoothed the wrinkles he had made when he retrieved the strong box. The quilt was one of a handful he took with him after his nana died. Two were nestled in his dresser while the most precious one sat at the end of their bed in the upstairs apartment. His grandmother had been dead for eighteen years, yet he swore the fabric still smelled of her, as if she had worked herself into it as she had so many stitches. For a moment, he considered pulling the quilt off the mattress and cocooning himself in its comforting warmth, but that would only worry his partner and best friend more. Gesturing to the other side of the rug, Oliver waited for them to sit.
“I have a note my mother wrote to my grandmother somewhere in here,” Oliver said without meeting their gazes as he rummaged through the box. “It’s been years since I looked through my grandmother’s papers. I— I might have been mistaken about being from Aldorhaven.”
“I thought you were from Philadelphia,” Felipe replied softly.
“I am.” Oliver skimmed through a pile of papers before setting them aside in favor of a stack of letters his nana had saved. “Philadelphia is the only home I’ve ever known, besides the Paranormal Society. My grandmother lived there, it’s where I was raised, and where I went to college, but when I was born, my mother was living with my father and his family somewhere in New Jersey.”
The memento mori ring burned against Oliver’s breast as his fingers brushed the note. He could recognize it among the others by feel alone. The paper had grown as delicate as a pressed flower after so many years closed into his long-dead grandfather’s family Bible where his grandmother knew Oliver would never look. The edges of the paperhad become nearly translucent from being held and reread, and the lopsided folds his mother had once creased now fell open on their own. When he first discovered it after his grandmother’s death, he almost threw it away without realizing what he had found. His grandmother had helped so many people. There were always letters, places she needed to be, people she needed to make things for, causes she needed to support in whatever way she could. It was the handwriting that caught him off-guard. He had lived his life surrounded by his grandmother’s familiar, looping script. He could recognize her handwriting and stitchwork at a glance, but when the note slipped out of the Bible, he had done a doubletake at how similar they were. Even now, it was uncanny how distinct yet similar her handwriting was to his grandmother’s.
“What does it say?” Gwen prodded.
Oliver swallowed hard. “Dear Mother, I fear this will be my final letter. You were right. Coming back to Aldorhaven was a mistake as was trying to reconcile with his family. We have done everything in our power to make things right, but it isn’t enough. Our son has lost his father, and after everything, I don’t think I am long for this world. Please take my son, and love and cherish him as you did me. He has no name yet as I want him to grow up knowing nothing of his parents. The honor of naming him should go to the woman who will raise him. My last and only requests are that you give him a name no one can tie to me or his father and that you care for him and my messenger as you would me. I consider them a sibling and a friend. They can tell you more as I am short on time. I love you, Mother, and hope you can forgive me. Joanna.Beneath that, it says,Death is but crossing the world. We still live in each other. Please burn this letter. Obviously, she didn’t do that.”
Carefully refolding the note with trembling hands, Oliver laid it on top of the stack. Releasing a tense breath, he closed his eyes and rubbed his brow. Every time he read it, he felt worse. He didn’t understand why his mother didn’t want anything to do with him or why he should never know where or whom he came from, but his grandmother had loved him unconditionally and raised him as her own. That was more than many orphaned children got, and it should have been enough. Awave of comforting warmth reached across the tether and cradled Oliver’s heart as Felipe scooted close enough to rest his hand on Oliver’s knee.
“How old were you when your mother sent you to live with your grandmother?” Gwen asked, picking up the note. “You weren’t a nameless toddler, I hope.”
