“I do, though I hope I’m wrong. Do you know what he was looking at before he left?”
Retreating to the bins of finished photographs near the door, Mrs. Fleischer handed him a small stack. “This was the batch he was working on. I couldn’t tell you which one it was he was holding when he got spooked. Isabella finished the rest, but she isn’t in today.”
Felipe swallowed against the knot in his throat as he stared at a photograph showing the carnage in the gallery after the tide had withdrawn. He still couldn’t reconcile laughing and drinking mulled wine and hot chocolate with Oliver with the carnage that came after. It all felt so pointless. Felipe quickly flipped through the rest of the photographs. The first dozen or so were mostly close-ups of evidence from the charity bazaar that probably ended up in the lab for Oliver to test or study. Blood stains, a random shoe. Then, there were disembodied photographs of a woman’s burned foot and a man’s hand that looked nearly as bad as Felipe’s. Any of them could have upset DeSanto, but when Felipe flipped to the next photograph, he knew he had found it. Staring back at him from the paper was a shard of the engraved brass ball he had left behind. Oliver had found shifter blood inside the pieces he kept, and Tony said he had to run an errand before he went to visit his mother for Sunday dinner. Felipe didn’t know how Tony was involved with the attack, but he knew without a doubt he was. He had to find him before someone else realized the same thing.
Setting the photographs down with shaking hands, Felipe asked, “Do you know where Tony’s family lives?”
Mrs. Fleischer scoffed. “Probably somewhere off Mulberry Street. Not quite the worst part of Five Points from the soundsof it but close. The kid couldn’t believe we all get windows in our rooms. What I can tell you for certain is that his apartment here is on the third floor, sixth to the right of the elevator. He gave me his spare key in case he lost his when he took to furs. Give me a second, and I’ll get it for you.”
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
“Better you than me. I should have gone down to check his apartment days ago, but to be honest, I’ve been afraid of what I might find.” Mrs. Fleischer pulled a ring of keys from her pocket and unhooked one that looked newer and less tarnished than the others. Placing it in Felipe’s palm, she said, “The kid’s a mess, but I like him. I hope you’re able to find him. When you do, tell him not to worry about his job. It’ll be waiting for him.”
***
Felipe stood outside DeSanto’s apartment with the key clutched in his hand. On a Thursday afternoon, the dormitory halls were desolate, which didn’t help the feeling that he shouldn’t be there. Skirting the laws on breaking and entering came with his job, but with it being DeSanto, he felt more like a parent about to intrude upon their child’s privacy than an investigator without proper documentation. It felt wrong, but he had to find him and talk to him about what he knew. He might be the key to breaking the whole case open, and surely, the people he worked for knew that too.
Knocking on the door, Felipe called, “DeSanto, it’s Inspector Galvan. Mrs. Fleischer wanted me to make sure you’re okay.”
He tried a second time, but when no one came, he confirmed the hall was empty before slipping into the apartment. The moment Felipe shut the door behind him and his eyes adjusted to the light, relief washed over him. The room was empty and free of obvious violence. He didn’t know what he expected tofind, but his worst imaginings had included a hanging body or DeSanto dead in his bed by his own hand. As he sucked in a steadying breath, Felipe could taste the lingering musk of wolf, but it didn’t smell like the creature was hiding under the bed waiting to bite his leg. At least there weren’t many other places it could hide.
Unlike most of the apartments in the society that included a bedroom and a living room, DeSanto’s apartment was contained in one small room that felt almost monastic in its size and plainness. The Paranormal Society often created rooms to fit the person, which was how Oliver ended up with his basement bedroom, and for Tony DeSanto, it made a space that was his own, small, clean, and filled with light. The main feature of the room was the massive window behind the bed. It rose almost all the way to the ceiling in a graceful arch and bathed the room in light. Drawing back the gauzy curtain, Felipe stared down at the street below, though the distance didn’t quite make sense for the floor they were on. He pulled up on the sash, and the window easily slid open to the fire escape below it. It was odd. He expected a young man to want a sprawling apartment with the usual trimmings, but then, he remembered what Mrs. Fleischer said about him being in awe of having a window. For someone who grew up in a cramped tenement, having a clean room of his own with air and a view of the street must have felt like a luxury.
Stepping away from the window, Felipe donned his gloves with a wince and tried to take in the room with an investigator’s eye. He needed to figure out where DeSanto went or what he had gotten himself into. For being a young man’s room, the chaos and clutter was minimal. Teresa was significantly messier than DeSanto, but that may have been due to the sheer number of possessions she had compared to DeSanto. His furniture was simple and minimal: just a metal framed bed, a dresser, and a washstand and mirror. Looking behind him, Felipe spotted afolded note that he confirmed was Bisclavret telling DeSanto he wanted to help him control his shifting and where to find him. Felipe set it on the dresser beside his camera where DeSanto would hopefully see it. The camera was the same one he had used to take pictures of everyone on All Hallows’ Eve. It was the only obvious thing of value in the room, and if DeSanto left the camera behind, Felipe assumed he planned to return. If he left for good, he would have taken it with him or pawned it to fund his flight. Tacked to the wall above the dresser was a series of photographs. Felipe smiled at the pictures of people in Central Park, a prancing dog being walked on a leash, a deserted street that looked like it was somewhere uptown, the gargoyles flanking the entrance to the society in profile against a stormy sky. Felipe had no clue if the photographs were good from an artist perspective, but he liked them.
Moving onto the dresser drawers, he pushed the clothes aside and found a pocket knife, a statue of St. Francis wrapped in a rosary, and an old biscuit tin. When Felipe picked it up, it rattled. Inside were coins, bills, and what looked like a makeshift bank book. Every entry had been painstakingly inscribed. The earlier entries were mostly the same additions and subtractions on a regular basis, which looked to be his paycheck from the society and the money he gave to his family to keep them afloat. The occasional treat or purchase appeared as a deduction with initials or a brief note. Apart from buying clothes or film, he rarely purchased anything. As Felipe flipped to the more recent records, the pattern changed. Between his paychecks, there were at least a dozen entries in rapid succession for money received. They weren’t labeled, but they had to be the errands he was running. While none of the sums were exorbitant, they were enough to keep someone quiet without raising too much suspicion. Felipe stared at the money left in the box, unsure if its presence made him feel better or worse about DeSanto’sdisappearance. Setting the bank book and tin back in the drawer, Felipe turned to what was left of the room.
Under the bed, he found brown-grey fur clinging to the underside of the mattress and the rug beneath it. The legs of the bed and the back of the door were covered in claw scratches and teeth marks where the wolf had dug at them. Picking through the wastebin beside the bed, Felipe found a bloodied bandage. The blood was concentrated into a square, and if he looked closely, he could make out six nearly straight lines. They were too perfectly placed and even to be claw marks. He would have to ask Oliver about that later. Lifting the mattress, he checked under it for anything hidden before throwing back the bedclothes to find absolutely nothing. Felipe was about to leave when he spotted the wall beside the mirror and washbasin. When he came in, it had been covered by the door, but with it closed, he could see the wall was covered in tacked up notes written in an uneven hand. The first read:
You are Antonio DeSanto. You’re a werewolf. You just woke up. You’ll be okay soon. You live at the Paranormal Society. Check the calendar.
Felipe swallowed against the sudden thickness in his throat. When Tony mentioned waking up befuddled after forcibly shifting, Felipe hadn’t realized it was this bad. He hated the thought of DeSanto waking up in his room, confused and alone, with only these notes to comfort him. Once he found DeSanto and straightened everything out, he was going to make sure he worked with Bisclavret to get his shifting under control, and then, he was going to talk to someone about the orientation idea. No one else was going to fall through the cracks if he could help it.
The rest of the notes DeSanto left for himself appeared to be addresses. The one labeledMawas for an address off Five Points in one of the slightly nicer tenement blocks. One lookedlikeZio Vincenzo, another was a church, and the last contained only an uptown address in Morningside Heights. The last had multiple holes at the top as if it had been taken down and put back up repeatedly. Odd. Rereading the first note, Felipe turned and found the calendar directly behind him. Every day that week up until Wednesday had been crossed off, though there were several days during the month that had been left blank. DeSanto must have used it to chart when he lost time due to being in wolf form and to help him regain his footing when he came back to himself. Scattered across the calendar were notations and instructions. Most were what looked like shorthand addresses or streets withdeliveryorpick upwritten beneath them. The last one was on Sunday and read,Deliver to MH. Felipe looked over his shoulder at the slips of paper. The Morningside Heights address? Felipe stared at the calendar a moment longer before retrieving the bank book. The notations were definitely the errands he had been paid to run. Felipe quickly copied down all of the notes DeSanto had left as well as the addresses.
They had to find DeSanto. From his room, it was obvious he wasn’t on the run, but if he thought he would be in trouble for having a hand in what happened at the holiday bazaar, there were two places he would probably go: to his mother’s house to hide or to confront the person who hired him. Felipe hoped to god DeSanto had chosen correctly.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Controlling the Narrative
Oliver checked his pocket watch for the third time. There was no sign of Holbrook, and everyone in the hall was getting restless. At least one person had already left, Reynard had run down to the library to get the key only to realize that Holbrook hadn’t given the key back after the committee’s first meeting, and Miss Patel, who was on crutches, looked as if she was starting to wilt even with Mr. Appleton helping to sure her up. Annoyance flared in Oliver’s breast as he stared at the locked door. Of course, Holbrook hadn’t returned the key.
“Did you ask Turpin about meeting with him and Mrs. Van Husen?” he asked Gwen, keeping his voice barely above a whisper.
“He said he would arrange everything and let us know when and where to meet.”
“Good. Do you think you can pick the lock?”
Gwen’s eyebrows shot up. “In the library? Absolutely not. Mr. Turpin has this place enchanted to the hilt. If you want to try, have at it.”
Snaking through the crowd, Oliver made his way to the door with Gwen at his side. Appleton and the others closest gave him sidelong looks as he jiggled the handle.
“It’s locked, Barlow.”
“Not necessarily. Sometimes, it sticks,” Gwen replied with a placating smile as Oliver tried the handle again. He had done it before, accidentally opened doors that were locked, but he had never tried to do it on purpose.Please, let me in, he silently commanded. Shutting his eyes, Oliver called to the society as he would a reawakening corpse. He reached for the energy humming through the building, following its capillaries and arteries until he reached the beating heart at its center. Oliver relaxed into it and felt it yield.Please?The magic stirred, and with a zip of energy through his palm and a click, the door popped open. Turning on the lights, Oliver stepped back to allow Mr. Appleton to help Miss Patel inside. The others filed in behind them, but at least this time, Oliver was able to get a seat between Gwen and Bennet Reynard. Oliver was about to check his watch again when clipped heels echoed down the hall a second before Morris Holbrook swept into the room in a whirlwind of wool and annoyance. He looked between the key to the meeting room in his hand and everyone sitting at the table with a frown.
“How did you all get in?”
