“Of course I did, and I can confirm Dr. Barlow has done nothing untoward or wrong.”
“Nothing wrong?Nothing wrong?” The pipes rattled and water from the basin sloshed onto the floor, but Oliver didn’t dare look as the head inspector yelled, “Barlow is in charge of a room full of corpses. Do you understand what a necromancer is capable of?”
“More than you would know,” Felipe growled.
“We hired you because we thought you could be trusted.”
Oliver’s fists clenched in time with the anger boiling in his chest. “And what have I done to lose that trust? I haven’t done anything that I haven’t done for the past ten years, and you didn’t care what I did down here until today. By all accounts,sir,my actions bought time for the healers to save Mrs. Cutler’s life, and my ability to temporarily reanimate the dead helped solve numerous cases when physical evidence wasn’t enough.”
“He doesn’t really care, Oliver. All he’s ever cared about is the result. As long as it’s done and he keeps his hands clean, he doesn’t care how it happens. He never has,” Felipe said, his voice dangerously calm.
“Watch yourself, Galvan. You still work for me. From now on, Barlow, you are forbidden from using your powers.”
“Are you joking? You can’t forbid me from usingmypowers.”
“I can, and I will. You are not to use them in the lab or on any cases, and if I find out you are, I will bring you up for a disciplinary hearing. People are starting to ask uncomfortable questions about how Mrs. Cutler survived, so unless you want everyone to know what you are, you had better play dumb. I, for one, am not defending you should the truth come out.” The head inspector glared at Oliver, but when he didn’t react or budge, he wheeled on Felipe. “And you, you are reassigned starting immediately. Mixing business with… pleasure,” he said with a distasteful curl of his lip, “has made you sloppy and difficult todeal with. I never should have let this get this far. From now on, you’re working with Conklin on the bazaar case.”
“This is ridiculous. You and I both know there is no reason to reassign me, except to punish Dr. Barlow. What I don’t understand is why you can’t just lie. He’s a doctor. There’s no reason he couldn’t have kept her alive. You’ve been lying by omission about his powers for years. Why is it a problem now?”
“Because with what happened at the bazaar, people are starting to look more closely at our operation, and I will not have the likes of him fucking that up.”
“Oliver has done nothing wrong with Mrs. Cutler or this case.”
“That’s for me to judge,” Head Inspector Williams said and turned to leave.
Felipe released a caustic laugh. “From where? Behind your desk? You aren’t in the field with us. You haven’t been out all damn day talking to people about one of our murder victims. Oliver and I have, and he has done nothing wrong.”
“I said, you’re reassigned, Galvan, and that’s final.”
“No.”
Head Inspector Williams whipped around to glower at Felipe from the top of the steps. “No? You forget your place. You don’t get to decide that. I do.”
“Like you decided not to listen to us when we warned you about the threat of another attack before it happened?”
“Felipe,” Oliver said in a warning whisper, “maybe now isn’t the time.”
The tether roiled with righteous fury as Felipe stared up at the head inspector. “Either I finish this case with Dr. Barlow as my partner, or I quit.”
“You have no authority, I’m—”
“This is my last case,” Felipe yelled over the head inspector loud enough to shut him up and to make Oliver twitch besidehim. “By the first of the year or at the conclusion of this case, whichever comes first, I’m done.”
Oliver stared at Felipe, feeling along the tether for any sign of lying or jest, but all he felt was pent-up rage overlaid with relief. Felipe really was quitting. Oliver’s mind sputtered over what came next or what a life for them looked like if Felipe left the society, but he couldn’t fill in that blank.
***
Felipe held his ground as the head inspector narrowed his eyes. He knew he was searching for any sign of weakness, and Felipe hoped he was left wanting. The water groaned in the pipes as the other man descended the stairs until he was towering over him, forcing him to look up. A sneer curled the head inspector’s lips, and for the first time in years, Felipe realized how much he hated him. The man treated them all like cogs in a machine, and he was the one who got to pull all the levers while they should be happy they were given the privilege of working at all. Felipe had seen so many good investigators get ground to dust or die because there was no escape from the horrors. There had been countless deaths in the field from accidents or attacks, but there were also plenty of suicides, even if no one spoke of them. He could think of six investigators off the top of his head who were suddenly spoken of in past tense, leaving the rest of them to piece together whether they had died during a case or after. Those who were more overt about it were treated with disdain while those who killed themselves slowly with alcohol or worse were seen as coping as best they could.
No more.
The head inspector gave him a disdainful once over. “Do you think I haven’t heard this before? No, amount of posturing—”
“I’m not posturing. I’m doing what I should have done years ago. I’m retiring. You got twenty years of my goddamn life. That’s plenty.”
The head inspector cocked his head and smiled as if he were humoring a petulant child. “And what will you do after? Old dogs like us don’t just give up the chase that easily. It’s in our bones, Galvan. We do this until we die.”
Felipe bit his tongue. He wanted to throw in his face that he, in fact, had done it until the day he died, and he had kept going because he thought it was all he was capable of. Twenty years ago, he had traded one leash for another, but now, he knew better. Felipe stared up at the head inspector unflinching. Even as wisps of cold fear and sadness drifted from the other end of the tether, Felipe had never been more certain of anything in his life. He was done. The head inspector broke first, shaking his head as he retreated up the steps.
