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I owed it to the whole damn Crane family to be there—even if I couldn’t officially investigate whatever the fuck had happened, I could help Elliot navigate the shit-show that was the legal process. And I could advocate for Gregory when the white cops inevitably dismissed the death of an Indigenous shifter as not worth fully investigating. It’s not like they were going to want to listen to an elf, either, even if I was an ex-cop, but I can be pretty loud and disruptive if I need to be.

“Yeah,” I answered Taavi. “Elliot is family.”

“Then let’s go.” Taavi stood on his tiptoes, and I bent to let him reach my lips. The kiss was quick, but it made me feel a tiny bit less anxious. “Eight minutes,” he said.

I sighed. He was right. It had been exactly eight minutes.

I grabbed my overstuffed backpack and the winter parka I kept for trips back to Wisconsin, and we headed out the door and down the stairs.

I’d already called in to work and told Doc we’d be gone for an unknown amount of time. Doc—and Ward, from the background—had wished me luck and told me to call if there was any way for them to help. And by ‘them,’ I’m sure he meant ‘Ward,’ because when you’re looking at a murder, a medium is damn useful. Taavi had also called in, and his boss, Marilee, had been equally understanding. That might seem surprising, but he was about to transition to extremely part-time work anyway, and Marilee White was a really genuinely nice woman.

I’d also asked Doc to take care of Pet, my cat. Doc and Ward have a spare key to the apartment, just in case I get myself hospitalized again and Taavi has to come stay with me, so that poor Pet doesn’t get abandoned. Doc had promised that he and Jackson—his nephew—would take good care of her.

I’d called my mother right after getting off the phone with Elliot, and she and my dad were going to pick us up in Milwaukee, then drive us north to the tiny town where Elliot and I had grown up. Where my parents still lived—where Elliot’s dad had lived. And died.

I hadn’t actually been back there for about five or six years.

When my family did Christmas, it was typically at my aunt’s house in Madison, since it was big enough to comfortably fit the whole extended family. I got back for that every couple of years, but I hadn’t had any reason to go all the way up to Shawano, because Elliot lived in Madison, too.

Now I had one.

And I didn’t want to go.

It wasn’t just because I was dreading the three hours in the car with my mother plotting my as-yet-nonexistent wedding.

I didn’t want to have to deal with the fact that Gregory Crane was dead, and Ireallydidn’t want to have to deal with the bullshit that was going to accompany trying to figure out who had killed him.

I also knew that a bunch of normie cops weren’t going to take Gregory Crane’s death seriously—which meant that his killer would get away with it. After all, what did they care if some so-called ‘Indian shifter’ ended up dead? I’d have laid out money that they were going to claim a territorial dispute or something equally stupid and let the case go cold even before the body did.

I was fully prepared to raise unholy hell to make sure that Elliot got justice, up to and including having my boss summon his dad’s ghost and throwing shit—maybe literally—at the Shawano County PD to make sure that someone fucking did something about it.

But all I could do at the moment—aside from drive slightly too fast, but, fuck it, it was five-twelve in the morning and there were like two other cars on the highway—was get my ass and Taavi’s to the airport and then fuckingsitfor the next several hours.

I am not a patient elf.

I reminded myself that this wasn’t about me. This was for Elliot. I could sit in an airport and sit on a goddamn plane and sit in the car with my mother plotting flowers and lace and little cut-out hearts for three hours because it was for Elliot.

I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly.

Taavi’s warm hand settled on my knee, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The warmth of his touch settled me.

I dropped one slightly-clammy hand to cover his, squeezing his fingers. At least he was finally out of the cast, although I was still being gentle with his right hand and arm.

As much as I was dreading what my mother was going to do with him, I really was glad he was coming with me. Taavi kept me calm. He grounded me. He made me want to be a better boyfriend, a better lover, a better friend.

I was hoping that would also extend to being better at helping Elliot through a hell I could only imagine.

I was also hoping that maybe Taavi would have ideas for what I could say or do for El—I still had both my parents, who were undoubtedly going to be extremely present because they were trying to be helpful and supportive. I was afraid that allthatwas going to accomplish was to remind Elliot that he didn’t have living parents anymore.

Taavi knew what it was like to lose his parents. They’d both died in Mexico—his mother had been the victim of femicide, killed on her way home from work in a factory, and his father had been killed for trying to investigate his wife’s death two years later. According to what his father had said when Ward had summoned both of them forDía de Muertos, Pakal Torres had been executed by a local cartel. Zuma Camal, Taavi’s mother, had insisted that it didn’t matter how she died—Taavi hadn’t pressed, and I wasn’t about to encourage him to ask, because I knew what that probably meant.

But at least they had each other, Zuma Camal and Pakal Torres. That night was the first time I’d seriously thought about the fact that people could and did find their loved ones in the afterlife. If they wanted to, anyway.

It was comforting, in a weird way, to know that if I did something catastrophically stupid and got myself killed, I’d at least be able to find Taavi again. Hopefully after he lived a long and happy life. Which maybe meant that he’d find somebody better than me—

I cut off that thought right there. Maybe I wasn’t so comforted by the afterlife, after all.

The plan was tonotdo something catastrophically stupid so that I could live that long and happy life with him. Assuming he was willing to put up with me for that long. Andthatwas why he made me want to be less of an asshole. Because I had to somehow convince him to stay with me.