I sighed, really wanting to get off this topic. “It was a long time ago.”
“It was,” he agreed. “Yet both of you seem to be harbouring strong feelings ten years later.”
“Rys hates me.”
“He does.”
It shouldn’t sting hearing him agree with me, but it did.
“Maybe not hate, exactly. I was getting a lot of rage and hurt coming off him yesterday.”
“Because that’s so much better.”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “My point is that those are intense emotions. It takes a lot to carry something like that for an extended period of time. If it was nothing serious between the two of you, I’d have expected him, both of you, in fact, to be over it by now. Chalk it up to experience and move on.” He raised an eyebrow, brown eyes boring into mine, and for a split second, he reminded me so much of Rys, my breath caught. “But you haven’t, have you? Neither of you.”
“No.” Denying it would make me a liar when Max could read me so well. “Apparently not.”
He continued to stare at me, gaze calculating, and it was all I could do not to squirm in my seat.
“I feel like I should be asking for legal representation.”
He blinked and then sat back in his chair with a huff of laughter. “Shit, sorry. I get carried away sometimes. Let’s not talk about Rys anymore. Whatever’s going on with you two is nothing I want to get involved in.”
I was about to protest that nothing was going on but bit my tongue and let the subject drop. Picking up my bowl of half-eaten pasta, I swivelled in my chair to look at our information board.
It sat there, almost taunting us to connect the dots and solve the mystery of how and why this was happening. Underneath all the photos were the times the incidents had been reported to the police, the hunter group who’d been contacted, and the time the fugitive had been apprehended.
I squinted, looking at it all. “There’s got to be something we’re missing. Something that connects them all.”
“I agree, but we’ve been over it all a dozen times. None of them knew each other. The hunter groups who apprehended them are all different, apart from in the first two cases, but that’s not surprising considering they occurred relatively close to each other.”
“True.” I finished my food and set the bowl down on my desk with a sigh. “And even though the hunters got there pretty fucking fast, they all have alibis that check out.”
Max turned to me. “You know how they get there that fast, right? You were with Tombs for what, six or seven years?”
“Yeah, something like that.” It seemed like a lifetime ago. “And not exactly. I knew it was some sort of teleportation stone, but Tombs never told us the specifics.” I’d asked a couple of times, but his response had always been short and sharp. I’d learnt to let it go.
“All certified hunter groups are issued with police teleportation stones. Once an incident is reported, the police request help from the nearest hunter group. If they accept, then the stones are activated and the hunters are transported to a location close to where they need to be.”
“Ahh.” Made sense. Couldn’t have hunters using them at will. “They’re the weirdest things.” I’d always hated the disorientation of being in one place, then suddenly appearing elsewhere a moment later. It never failed to leave me feeling a little sick and I shuddered at the thought.
“You think those are weird?” Max laughed at whatever look was on my face. “You work for the paranormal police department. On a daily basis, you mix with witches, shifters, and fae. Your own mother is—”
“Okay, okay.” I held my hands up in defeat. Grinning back at him. “Transportation stones shouldn’t be a thing that exists, that’s all.”
“I can turn into a wolf,” he deadpanned. “My bones literally break and reform into an animal, and I can still understand every word you say while in that form. But teleportation is a step too far?”
“Yep.” Laughing at his incredulous expression, I waved at the board. “So hunters are off the table. All the relatives and friends seemed to check out, or we couldn’t prove they were involved. Equates to the same thing.”
“We have no idea how they’re getting the Blue Alhuirn.”
“Or who’s giving it to them,” I added because the one thing the cases did have in common, in each instance the friends and family were adamant that taking drugs of any kind was so out of character it was laughable.
“If Callum’s lab results match the other two cases, then we need to go back to the fae community and get some real answers this time.” Max winced, knowing as well as I did that they could be extremely unhelpful when they wanted to be. Those that lived here would give nothing away without permission from the fae court. And by our laws, they didn’t have to, either.
“We’ll have to put in a formal request.”
Max nodded. “We will.”
