“He doesn’t live here anymore.”
“I know, but has he stayed over or stopped by? I’m looking for him because he might be in trouble.” She murmured something about stregoni and reached for the door, but Felipe quickly added, “Please, I just want to know if you’ve seen him since he came for dinner on Sunday. I might be a stregoni, but I care very much about your son. He’s a hard worker, and he spoke very highly of you and his nonna.”
Mrs. DeSanto frowned and gave him a suspicious once over. “What kind of trouble? Anything to do with you?”
“No, I think he is involved with the people who are against stregoni. They told him lies and offered him money to run errands. Do you have any idea who that might be?”
Holding up a hand for him to wait, Mrs. DeSanto called to someone else in the house and asked them to get something, but she spoke so fast Felipe couldn’t catch it. A moment later, a girl no more than fifteen appeared with a creased leaflet from the Young Men’s Christian Association. Mrs. DeSanto plucked it from her hand and gave it to Felipe. Of course it was the YMCA. They had been in bed with Comstock and the Society for the Suppression of Vice for years.
“They do good work,” she said in English as Felipe stared at the paper. “They say, no more wolf.”
Felipe’s temper flared, but he tamped it down. “Thank you, Mrs. DeSanto. If you see Antonio, tell him Inspector Galvan is looking for him.” He was about to leave when he caught the girl watching him curiously from behind her mother’s shoulder. “Should any more of your children end up like Antonio, I hope you’ll be kinder to them. He never stopped loving you, and he never asked for this. None of us do.”
Turning on heel, Felipe trotted down the stairs and out into the cold. The air sent a frisson of sensation through his half-healed burns, but Felipe pushed it away. He had enough clarity.When Felipe reached the steamer, he found Oliver fogging up the window trying to watch for his approach.
“He wasn’t there?” Oliver asked the moment he saw him.
“No, but I think I know who has been financing the anti-magical sentiment Reynard and Bisclvaret have been complaining about,” Felipe said as he handed Oliver the leaflet from the YMCA. As Oliver turned it over, Felipe spotted a few courses and offerings that had been circled in pencil. “There were anti-magical people going around handing these out. The NYSSV might not be able to attack us directly, but if they can bankroll a war of reputation and slander, then they can bankroll an attacker. We just need to figure out who’s doing it.”
“And we will. Should we stop by the YMCA tonight and see if he’s there?”
“No, we’ll go in the morning. Truthfully, I don’t think he’s there. If he can turn into a wolf, I don’t think he would risk sleeping in a communal dormitory.”
“We can talk about it over dinner. I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mortem Obire
Oliver tumbled back into the lab slightly drunk off huangjiu, dumplings, good conversation, and the familiar trappings of contentment. All it took was half an hour of conversation in the secluded private dining room of the Tam Noodle House and a few glasses of rice wine to chase away any thoughts of Holbrook’s nastiness or what might come now that people knew who he truly was. Oliver probably never would have tried huangjiu on his own, but Felipe said he enjoyed it and that was enough to give it a try. It had been better than he expected, and while he wasn’t drunk, it dulled everything, except the warmth in Oliver’s chest at how Felipe somehow always managed to make him feel okay. His presence anchored him in a way nothing else could, and he loved him more than he could fathom.
As he toed off his shoes, Felipe wrapped his arms around him and pressed his lips to his neck. Oliver turned to catch his mouth in a kiss, tasting the wine and salt on his lips. His fingers trailed over Oliver’s buttons in time with Oliver’s hand snaking through his hair. Felipe would retire in the new year, everyone would soon know Oliver was a necromancer, and while fear lanced through his heart at the thought, he knew he would be all right if Felipe was there beside him. They were more than the sum of their parts; they were partners.
Oliver backed Felipe toward the bed as they shed clothes and worries in equal measure. Shutting his eyes, Oliver ran his hands over the curves and planes of Felipe’s form. Every touch rewrote the memory of the one that came before. He knew every day they changed in a hundred minute ways: another grey hair, more padding on their bones, a cut, a deepening line at the corner of his lover’s eye, changes so small they usually went unnoticed. Oliver knew the only certainty in life was change, and while he feared time’s covetous grasp, he wouldn’t miss a moment of Felipe’s life for anything. Oliver groaned as Felipe drew him closer and kissed him until he could no longer sense where he ended and Felipe began as they moved as one. At the first ripples of ecstasy, Oliver stared into the warm, brown depths of Felipe’s eyes. In them, he saw everything he loved and everything he wanted. He wanted the world for Felipe. He wanted every good thing for him, whatever that may be, and he would follow him to the ends of the earth to get it.
***
Oliver lay wrapped tightly in Felipe’s arms. Between the weight of the wedding quilt and Felipe’s warm flesh pressed against his, Oliver slept like the dead. The basement bedroom and laboratory beyond it had fallen silent long ago. The groans and sighs of men had been replaced with the rhythmic creak of the pipes and the nightly sounds of the veiled world outside the society’s walls. Oliver twitched, waking a little and then all at once. He stared bleary-eyed into the darkness cocooning their bedroom, searching for what had awoken him, only to find Felipe was deadweight against him. A sliver of roaming light ran across the far wall of the bedroom in time with the crunch of tires on asphalt. He knew that sound. Someone made a wrongturn in the dark, Oliver thought distantly as the sound grew fainter.
Squinting at the alarm clock with a groan, Oliver couldn’t say what time it was beyond not time to get up. His head panged as he let it drop back against the pillow, and beside him, Felipe stirred. He murmured something that Oliver couldn’t make out and tugged him closer. A sleepy smile played on Oliver’s lips as he turned over to face his partner. He nestled his head against Felipe’s bare chest and inhaled the comforting scent of his skin. Whatever the noise was, it didn’t matter. When Felipe tightened his arms around him, Oliver twined their legs together to keep him close. Shutting his eyes, Oliver focused on the steady beat of Felipe’s heart beneath his ear until it drowned out his thoughts, and as he slipped into sleep, their hearts beat as one once more.
***
The more Oliver stared at his barely toasted toast, well-done bacon, and runny eggs, the more he thought he might vomit. He wasn’t hung over, but drowning his feelings in an excessive amount of Chinese food and rice wine left him queasy. The churning in his gut was made worse by the mountain of evidence he had left to deal with, the looming specter of another attack, the newspaper article hanging over their heads, and everyone knowing he was a necromancer. His brain kept looping through all the terrible things that could happen. More than anything he wanted to shake out his hands or cry or do anything to get the frenetic energy out, but instead, he sat frozen in front of his breakfast letting his thoughts run roughshod over him.
“You’re ruminating,” Felipe said as he plunked a cup of coffee in front of Oliver and sank onto the stool beside him. “Worrying constantly isn’t going to change anything. It’s only going to make you feel worse.”
Oliver put his head in his hands and groaned. “I know, but I can’t help it. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. What that shoe is, I don’t know.”
“I thought you were feeling better about things last night?”
“I was, but that may have been the Chinese wine talking. Or the dumplings lulling me into a false sense of security.”
Sitting beside him, Felipe sighed. “Anything I can do to help? I was planning to go to the records room and see if I can figure out who lives at the addresses DeSanto had in his room. You could come with me.”
“I can’t. I need to get through the rest of this evidence and be done with it. I’ll be fine. I just need to plan my day out. That’ll make me feel better.”
Felipe looked unconvinced but said nothing when Oliver shoved a piece of bacon into his mouth and took up his notebook. Eyeing the remaining piles of evidence in front of him, Oliver tried to prioritize what needed to go first, but nothing worked well together. Everything required extensive clean up or having to bounce between equipment with large gaps of time in between. He tried a different combination, but it only made it worse. With growing dread, Oliver tried a third time. He only made it halfway through it when his lungs locked and his pulse pounded so loudly in his temples he could hardly think. Oliver leapt up from his stool so fast that he nearly knocked it over. He could feel Felipe’s worried gaze on him, but he didn’t look at him as he cried, “I’m fine. I’m fine. I just need air,” and made a beeline for the alley door.
