“You consider yourselves friends, then?” Max joined in.
Axel lifted a hand and made a seesaw action. “Kind of. I mean, we didn’t see each other outside of the club or anything, but we were friends when we met up there.”
Max hummed under his breath and I wondered if he really did have thoughts on it or if it was just for show. “Do you know any of the other people he spoke to that night? Did he tell you if he left with anyone?”
“I caught some of their first names.” Axel shrugged. “But we didn’t keep tabs on each other like that. If he got off with any of them, he would’ve told me when I next saw him.” He bit his lip, clearly thinking about Callum. “He was young,” he said softly. “Still finding his feet. I told him to be careful and to let someone he trusted know if he left with anyone. Either that someone wasn’t me or he went home alone.”
My gut instinct told me Axel was telling the truth, but I wasn’t a shifter. Max probably had a better feel for him than I did. “Where were you between the time you left the club and nine o’clock Monday night?” I asked, cutting straight to the point. If anyone had given Callum anything, it had to have been in that time frame.
Rys glared at me. “Are you accusing him of something?”
“No,” I replied, trying not to fidget under the weight of that stare. Far from finding him intimidating, the look he shot my way, eyes dark and intense, wasn’t a million miles away from the look he got when he— I shook my head and focused on Axel instead. “Can you account for your whereabouts? It would help us eliminate you from our inquiries.”
Rys settled back in his seat, expression smug, and gestured for Axel to answer. I got the feeling they were well prepared for this question despite seeming surprised by it.
“As a matter of fact, I can,” Axel answered. “I left the club early on Saturday, as I was called back home.”
“Home?” I asked, even though I knew full well where he meant. I was aware of the location for the fae gateways, knew there was one in Rys’s territory.
“The Fae Realm.” Axel’s lips twitched. “I’m sure you know all about that.”
“I know enough.” I glanced at Rys, but he was still glaring at me as if everything wrong in the world was my fault. “I’m assuming someone there can corroborate this?” I hoped so. The last thing I wanted was to have to contact a member of the Fae High Court. Maybe Max would do it.
Turned out I needn’t have worried.
“Of course.” Rys produced a sheet of paper from a briefcase I hadn’t noticed him bring in. He slid it towards Max and I barely refrained from huffing out a laugh.
Max placed it between us so I could read it at the same time. The paper was thick, expensive, and embossed with the mark of the high court. It looked genuine enough. We’d have it tested, naturally, but as I scanned the letter, it looked like Axel’s alibi was watertight.
“You won’t mind if we keep a hold of this,” Max asked, picking up the letter and tucking it in his folder.
Rys smirked. “Not at all.” He spared me a brief withering glance before addressing Max. “Are we done?”
“Almost.” Max gave me a nod and I mentally prepared myself for things to get tense. Neither of them was going to like my next question.
On the way back from Midnight, we’d had a call from the lab. They were still doing tests, but preliminary reports suggested that Callum had indeed ingested Blue Alhuirn in some form. Unfortunately, there was no known cure this side of the gateway for its effects, and Callum would have to ride it out and hopefully come out the other side. We had no way of knowing how much he’d taken, though, and only time would tell.
Axel was fae. He might not have given Callum the drug himself, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t the one who procured it or gave it to Callum for him to take later.
“Are you familiar with the plant Blue Alhuirn?” I asked him, noting Rys tense out of the corner of my eye.
Axel eyed me warily. “I am.”
“Can you describe it for me?”
He looked at Rys, who narrowed his eyes in my direction.
“Why do you want to know?” Rys said, ignoring me again and asking Max, which irritated me to no end since I’d asked the question in the first place.
Max sighed but kept his voice neutral as he replied. “We think Callum ingested enough to make him lose control. That’s why he attacked his mother and took off into the forest. We’re trying to find out how he came to be in possession of it.” He turned to Axel. “So we’d appreciate it if you could answer our question.”
Axel opened his mouth, but Rys’s growled, “Axel,” made it snap shut. He turned in his seat to face Rys. “No. I’m not stupid. I know what they’re implying, but Blue Alhuirn is nasty stuff. If someone’s smuggling it in from the Fae Realm, then we need to help stop it before anyone else gets hurt.” He faced forwards again. “It’s a beautiful plant with big, blue, bell-shaped flowers and bright green leaves. You can make a tea out of the flowers that’s a bit like smoking weed. It’s the leaves that are poisonous. A little will act as a mild hallucinogen. The more you ingest, the worse it gets, and too much can be lethal. It’s also highly illegal. Anyone caught growing or harvesting it faces severe penalties. The fae court don’t fuck around with that stuff.”
He looked from me to Max. “Seriously, I didn’t do this, but I can tell you the only way Blue Alhuirn is getting out of the Fae Realm is in the hands of a fae. It used to be abundant in the wild, but the court have eradicated a lot of it. You have to know where to look, and any non-fae doing that would stand out a mile.”
Max tapped his pen on the table, a sure sign his mind was working overtime. “So you’re saying we’re looking for a fae.” He gave Axel a pointed look and Axel sighed.
“Yes, just not me.”
