But, annoyingly, I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to fuck besides Sage. Her scent was the only one my dick was responding to, making it her or nothing.
So, nothing, which meant I needed to get this taken care of medically.
I stepped out of the shower and wiped myself off, grabbing my phone and looking up the closest pharmacy. I got dressed and headed over, ignoring the knowing smirk from the elf clerk as I purchased a rut suppressant.
“Hope you feel better,” he said as I snatched the brown paper bag out of his hand in a huff.
I hated the shit, but it was better than humping Sage’s purse, which for some reason sounded oddly appealing as a substitute in her absence.
I took my first dose and finally fell asleep.
* * *
I woke again as the sky darkened, feeling hollow but better. Swallowing a second dose, I took another shower to clear the fog from my mind and get myself back on track.
One day down, seven to go.
After placing a few tea bags in the filter basket of the hotel room’s coffee maker, I brought Sage’s purse to the table, carefully taking out each item to examine them individually.
First was her wallet. She had thirteen runics in cash, forty-two cents in change, her ID, her student ID, a bank card, a loyalty card for a sandwich shop with half the punches still to go until her free meal, an expired bus pass, and a photo booth pic of her with the dead best friend, Nellie Delmar.
With a sigh, I ran my hand down my face, my cheeks scratchy with the beard I hadn’t shaved in days, and looked more closely at the picture of the two—appearing like nothing more than a couple of happy, carefree students.
My gut churned and I winced from the pain. The rut suppressant was doing its job, but only barely.
Next, I pulled out a pack of gum, about a third of the sticks gone, some tampons, a pen, and a little wooden box. The sliding top was inlaid with swirling, floral patterns made from mother-of-pearl, and inside were a few witch charms. After five years, their potency was probably less than half of what they shouldhave been, but a witch apothecary would be able to tell me what they were for, at least.
Finally, way at the bottom, was a medical bracelet. Apparently, she’d been admitted to Orithiel Blessed Hospital in Elmaris eight years ago as a patient of Dr. Dorian Fenwick. A quick search on my phone told me he was one of the leading cardiologists in Lundaria.
The day may have just been beginning in Noctis, but in Elmaris, it was already past business hours, so I’d have to call back later.
I put everything back in the purse, then drank a cup of tea, got dressed, and checked out before heading to her old address. After five years in the poorer section of town, it was unlikely anyone remembered her, but it was worth a shot.
I rolled down the windows in my car, lighting up a roll of vaporleaf and turning on the radio. My car had been built well before the advent of CDs and MP3 players, but I’d never bothered to update the stereo. I liked the unpredictability of radio, and how the music would change depending on which city-state you were closest to.
Noctis was mostly jazz, unfortunately, but I eventually tuned into a rock station playing Sigil’s newest single, and I turned it up.
“Take my hand, love, we’ll follow the bloodlines. Tilt back your neck, let my canines decide…”
He was a dramatic motherfucker, but even I could admit his voice was hypnotic—almost familiar—and I hummed along as the sweet, pungent smoke of the vaporleaf filled my lungs. I held it there for a moment before exhaling slowly through my nose. Normally, a hit of the leaf would calm me, but I’d been on edge ever since I’d stepped into the Premier’s apartment and gotten a whiff of Sage’s perfume, and nothing, even the rut suppressant, was hitting like it should.
Especially since this case wasn’t hitting like it should, either. Sage, by all accounts, was a nice, normal omega. So how did she end up in the middle of a couple of deaths and at the top of the Premier’s shit list?
There was way more to this than a few broken flutes of blood.
I made it to the non-citizen’s district and parked outside Sage’s old building. It was a narrow, four-story place wedged between a boarded-up bodega and a laundromat with a faded, handwritten sign taped to the door declaring the coin machines were for customers only.
A little rough around the edges, sure, but the kind of place a self-supporting college student would be proud to call home, with clean brickwork and flowerpots on a few windowsills. It beat the hell out of my first place after leaving Ignareth.
The front door was closed, its paint chipped around the doorknob from decades of keys scraping to find the lock. I ran my finger down the tenant list next to the call box. Only twenty units, give or take. Half the numbers had no name beside them at all, and the others were faded to ghost-gray letters I could barely make out. The only one still readable was the embossed label stuck at the bottom in neat, aggressive tape: LANDLORD
I hit the button and waited for about a minute when the speaker crackled and came to life.
“Hello?” spoke a muffled voice.
“Hi, sorry to bother you this early. I’m investigating the disappearance of a witch who used to live here. Do you know Sage Hexwood?”
The phone hung up and the door buzzed loudly. I pulled it open and walked into the small lobby, watching as the only door on this floor opened and an old seraph omega peeked cautiously through the gap, the chain taut and firmly in place.
