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The fuckwads who had killed Gregory Crane were intentionally trying not to be identified. At the Crane house, nobody was anywhere near them. If they’d intended to kill him…

“Did they ask him for anything? Or did they just—” I couldn’t quite say it.

When he spoke again, Ward’s voice sounded extra sympathetic. “They—They didn’t ask anything.”

In other words, they specifically went there to kill him. They didn’t kill him because he didn’t give them something they wanted or tell them something they wanted to know. They killed him because they wanted to kill him.

“Does he know why?” I asked, my voice a lot rougher than I wanted it to be.

“They didn’t say explicitly,” Ward answered softly. “But from what theydidsay, if they didn’t target him for being a shifter, they certainly weren’t shy about stating their dislike of it.”

I nodded, even though I knew he couldn’t see me. But I didn’t trust myself to speak.

They killed him because he was a shifter.

It was the Antiquus Ordo Arcanum and the Magic-Free Movement all fucking over again. Except I was pretty sure that, this time, we actually had shut down the Ordo. Rajesh Parikh and Drew Shao at the FBI had repeatedly assured me that there had been no signs of any Ordo-related activity in the greater DC-Maryland-Virginia area since just before Halloween, and Dan Maza in the RPD also said he’d seen nothing like them.

I wasn’t quite ready to breathe a sigh of relief, but I was starting to feel like hope was maybe okay.

The MFM was a completely different story.

While we hadn’t seen any evidence of members of the MFM slaughtering Arcanids since the Brachiofortis-Cornerstone shitshow, the MFM as an organization was still highly active. Mostly doing shit like protesting Arc-human-Arcanid inclusivity policies, campaigning to pass anti-Arc-Arcanid legislation, and trying to get Arc-humans and Arcanids barred from everything from teaching to the medical professions to elected office and public service jobs.

There were parts of the country where Arc-Arcanids were targeted by not only local ordinances and regulations, but private businesses that refused—on the grounds of bullshit like freedom of religion or freedom of speech or freedom of what-the-fuck-ever—to employ or serve Arc-Arcanids.

What that meant—to come back to Gregory Crane—was that I wasn’t in the least surprised that a small-town, north-woods place like Shawano might have anti-Arcane bigots.

I’m not saying that everybody in Shawano is a bigot. My parents live here, for fuck’s sake. I grew up here. I know as well as anyone that Shawano has some amazing, kind, and wonderful people who care for others, whether or not they have fur, fangs, or pointy ears. I also know that there are bigots in every fucking city, town, hamlet, and major metropolitan area in the world.

But there’s a reason that small towns have a particular kind of reputation.

Of course, just because Gregory had been killed in Shawano didn’t meant that his killers werefromShawano. Maybe they were from Green Bay or somewhere else fairly close by. Maybe they came here specificallytokill him from who the fuck knows where. Midwestern accents come from a whole bunch of fucking states.

I mean. Hell. Maybe they’d even thought about the fact that we might use a medium to try to find out who they were. That would certainly explain the clothes and the ski masks.

Ward hadn’t been able to tell me anything else from Gregory, although he had mentioned that Gregory wanted to help as much as he could—and he’d asked Ward to ask me to tell Elliot that he loved him.

And that’s when I broke down.

I think I kept it together enough on the phone that Ward didn’t know how hard that hit me. He apologized and gave his sympathies, but he didn’t ask if I was okay or anything. I guess that could just mean that he knew I’d fucking hate that, but I wanted to pretend that I was all macho and shit.

That all fell apart when Taavi came back from the bathroom, because I was a wreck, my face buried in my hands, which were all sorts of wet from an absolutely disgusting mess of snot and tears.

Taavi didn’t say anything—just walked up, dumping his dirty clothes on the floor, and cradled my face against his body. I let my arms go around him, holding tight as I let all of the horror and grief spill out into his no-longer-clean t-shirt.

I hated it, but I was starting to think that me sobbing into some part of Taavi was the foundation of our relationship. It didn’t do much for my self-esteem, let me tell you. Because obviously I’ve completely internalized that bullshit idea that men aren’t supposed to be sensitive or emotional.

I was an ex-cop, for fuck’s sake. It’s the goddamn poster-profession for toxic masculinity. The fuck can I say? I’ve got issues.

I drew in a shuddering breath, trying to get myself under control, despising myself for my several minutes of weakness, but nevertheless enjoying the feeling of Taavi’s fingers gently stroking over my hair.

“Did something happen?” he asked softly.

I let out the breath. “I called Ward,” I told him.

“And he spoke with Elliot’s father?”

I nodded against his chest.