All he needed to do was get some air, he repeated to himself. The cold would ground him and chase away the heat rising in his cheeks. Outside, he could shake out his hands and pace in peace until he burned the anxiety off. Everything would be fine. The moment Oliver unlocked the side door and threw it open, he knew everything would not be fine. There was a body lyingon the pavement.There was a body lying on the pavement. For a second, Oliver feared it may have been some poor soul who had sought refuge in the alley during the night and perished in the cold, but when his mind caught up with his eyes, his heart leapt up his throat. Beneath a layer of frost, Tony DeSanto’s face stared back at him from a half-rolled rug. His brown eyes were closed, but his mouth had been forced open in an unnatural scream. Oliver’s eyes darted from his missing tongue to where his shirt had been torn open to reveal letters burned into his skin.
You’re next. Magic will die.
Oliver’s heart hammered in his ears as he stood rooted in the doorway. That was the noise that had awoken him last night. In the morning, he couldn’t remember if it was a dream or cats in the alley, so he hadn’t bothered to look. He had never imagined he would find this.
“Oliver, what’s wrong?” Felipe called from inside.
Scrambling back at the sound of Felipe’s footsteps behind him, Oliver blocked the doorway. He couldn’t let Felipe see. No one was meant to find someone they cared for like this. Tears blurred Oliver’s eyes as he turned to face his partner. Felipe stared at him with wide eyes as a pulse of fear bounced between them.
“Oliver, what is it?”
“Don’t look. Please, don’t look,” he begged, his voice thick. “You don’t want to see what I’ve seen, Felipe. Please. Just get the head inspector. Tell him there’s been a murder.”
An eerie calm washed through the tether as Felipe met Oliver’s grey gaze. In two steps, Felipe closed the gap between them, and Oliver felt the exact moment Felipe realized what he was looking at. Blood-red grief tore through him in time with a cry as he shoved into Oliver to reach DeSanto. Oliver caughtFelipe in his arms and tried to force him back inside even as Felipe cried for Oliver to let him go, to let him help.
“You can’t. He’s gone, Felipe. He’s been gone. We— we have to secure the crime scene. That’s all we can do for him now.”
“I have to help him. I told him I would help him.”
“I know,” Oliver whispered into Felipe’s hair as the first sob broke from his lips. “I know.”
***
Oliver walked with his hand tightly in Felipe’s as they made their way to the upstairs apartment in silence. He had been able to get Felipe back inside long enough to send a note up the tubes to the head inspector’s office that there had been a murder, but ever since, he had held his hand for fear he would bolt or fall to pieces. Within minutes, the head inspector and the other investigators had swarmed the laboratory and ordered them to wait upstairs while they conducted their investigation. Ever since, Felipe seemed to be holding himself together by sheer force of will. His jaw was set, and when Oliver reached for the tether to check how he was, his feelings felt walled up. Oliver watched him from the corner of his eye. After what happened when he got out of the infirmary, he feared how Felipe would take it.
Felipe unlocked the apartment door with shaking hands and ducked inside, letting the door hang open for Oliver. By the time he kicked off his shoes and set the lock, Felipe had sunk onto the rug in front of the banked fire. He held the poker in a white-knuckled grip, eyeing the red glow at the heart of the hearth. Pain jolted across the tether, and for a second, Oliver thought Felipe might hit or burn himself. His face contorted as he stared at the metal in his shaking hand. Coming up behind him, Oliver tugged it from his grasp and set it back in the rack. He pressedhis chin into Felipe’s shoulder and wrapped his arms tightly around him in time to feel his chest heave with a silent sob.
“I’m so sorry, Felipe,” Oliver whispered, knowing nothing he said would be adequate against the tide of misery and grief. “I know how much you cared for DeSanto. I’m so, so sorry.”
As Felipe turned toward him, the devastation in his features stole Oliver’s breath. “I failed him, Oliver. I should have seen the signs sooner and done something. I should havedonesomething.”
“Darling, what could you possibly have done? Whatever he got tangled up with, he chose to get involved. You can’t make choices for people.”
“No, but you can give them other options,” Felipe said, pushing out of Oliver’s grasp and to his feet. “You help them make better choices. I saw DeSanto nearly every day in the training room for months, and when he stopped coming, I never asked why. I never tried to help him. I didn’t even know he was a werewolf until last week. I’ve known him formonths, and I never knew. I could have introduced him to Bisclavret or Teresa or anyone sooner if I had asked.Someonecould have helped him.”
Oliver watched helplessly from the rug as he paced to the window and back. “You did the best you could.”
“No, Oliver, I did the minimum that I could. I didn’t think it was my problem. I liked DeSanto, I took an interest in him, and then, I withdrew when he needed me most because I didn’t want to pry. I thought,I’m not his father. He’s a grown man.It’s not my business. But it was. Everyone here is our business. That blowhard Holbrook keeps saying we’re a community, right? If so, then we are all complicit in this.”
“Complicit in what? Murder? He didn’t kill himself. Someone killed him. None of us wanted this. No one pushed him to them.”
“No, they lured him away by offering help while we offered him nothing, Oliver. That’s how they grew close to him. The society offered him stability and a job, but they promised him the help we never gave him. They offered to make the wolf go away. They offered to make his family love him again, and he took them up on it because none of us saw that he was having problems and stepped in to help.”
Felipe turned away, but Oliver could hear the tears in his voice. Climbing to his feet, Oliver slowly laid a hand on Felipe’s shoulder. His partner shuddered and drew in a tremulous breath, and when Oliver looked down, he found a knife in his hand. In the past, seeing it would have struck fear in his heart, but where there had been desperation, there was only sadness now.
“You know we couldn’t have offered him those things. They weren’t real. But you did try. You tried to help him by speaking to Bisclavret. Yes, it was too late, but you didn’t know that. You can’t punish yourself for not knowing this would happen.”
For a long moment, Felipe stood so still Oliver wasn’t sure he was breathing. When he finally did speak, his voice was fragile as glass. “Do you ever wonder what would have happened if someone had comforted you or helped you after you were hurt? Who might you have been if someone,anyone, had gotten you help?”
“Honestly, no. I was alone and had been for some time. The only person I thought might help me was dead.”
“It shouldn’t be like that.” Felipe sniffed. “The only reason I’m still alive is becauseoneperson told me things could be different. You don’t know how many times I thought about killing myself, Oliver. I was trapped in a family who hated everything I was, whose love was conditional on my submission to their will. I thought that’s what love was for so long. Love was punishment. Love was pain. Butoneperson believed I couldhave a better life and that things could change for me.Oneperson always made sure to hug me and tell me I was good and smart and how he wished I was his son. When things felt hopeless, I clung to that. Sometimes, I hated him for it. I hated that he had hope for me because if no one believed things could be different, letting it happen would have been so much easier.”
“Señor Quintero?” Oliver asked softly.
Felipe nodded and wiped at his cheek with his sleeve. “He saw me as Felipe, not Felipe Galvan or the future Patrón. I was just a boy to him, a boy with a whole future ahead of him that had as many roads open to him as his family told him were closed.”
He turned the dagger over in his hand, the blade gleaming in the morning light. Oliver had seen it many times in their bedside table or tossed into the bowl by the door, but he had never looked at it closely. The handle appeared to be made from some sort of horn, and while it was dented and discolored with age, it remained wicked sharp.
