Page 96 of A Thousand Cuts

Liam remained undisturbed, his exhaustion rendering him deaf to the world. Fix was grateful for that, at least.

Carefully, Fix extricated himself from Liam, bundling pillows around him as a substitute for his own warmth when Liam frowned and reached out in his sleep. It hurt his heart, but Fix couldn’t lie still anymore, not with his thoughts spinning and dread gathering like a storm cloud.

King lifted his head from his spot warming Liam’s feet and gave Fix a baleful stare.

“Take care of him for me?”

King snorted, as if telling him he’d been here way before Fix, so he could get in line. The pit bull wiggled up the bed and slotted himself happily between Liam’s searching arms, and the frown eased from Liam’s forehead.

Fix couldn’t even be mad.

He pressed a parting kiss to golden hair before he slipped from the room as quietly as he could. He located Liam’s bag and the notebook he’d put inside.

It wasn’t hard to locate Black anywhere. You either followed the trail of destruction and glitter or found the noisiest room. It was the former in this case, and Fix picked up littered pieces of card in neon shades until he reached the end of the rainbow.

Black was a bright pastel pink spot at the dining room table, scrapbooking supplies strewn over all ten seats. A pot of purple glitter had already been upended and Black was brandishing a glue gun carelessly, strings of glue already stuck to the wood.

He’d been in the house for five minutes.

“I think you dropped these,” Fix said, laying the bits of card on the edge of the table.

“Oh. That’s where they went.” Black barely spared it a glance before going back to his gluing, tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth.

“Quick case this time?”

Black pouted but nodded. “Drowning. Some office worker offed his boss. He’d had enough and cursed him to drown in the fountain outside their building. The guy who cursed him confessed before Cyrus did the bad cop thing or I could even investigate properly.”

Only Black would be sad about a murder case ending early.

“But I got a good picture. Lookit!”

He picked up his scrapbook, glitter falling like snow as he turned it to face Fix. There was a picture of a fountain Black had drawn a cartoon man onto, his eyes crossed out.

Revenge is best served wet!was scribbled over the top like a title for the case.

“It’s…definitely something,” Fix said, clearing off a seat and sitting down next to Black.

“I asked Cyrus if he could let the guy off with a warning. The boss was probably a jerk, right? But Cyrus told me to get lost, so here I am!” Black said brightly.

Fix shook his head. He didn’t know how Cyrus handled Black every case, but somehow he managed.

“Where’s Liam?” Black asked, laying his scrapbook back down.

“Sleeping. We had a rough morning. It’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Black raised a brow under his unruly curls. “About the stalker or the curses?”

The confident way he asked clued Fix in that he knew more than the basics. “You’ve heard about it already?”

“Cyrus has been working on it in his downtime and I maaaay have peeked. He’s been tailing a guy called O’Malley the last fewnights, but he hasn’t made any suspicious moves. Is he suspect number one?”

“I have no idea.” Fix rubbed a hand over his face. “They have a history and he has motive, but Cyrus doesn’t think it’s in his wheelhouse, and from the info Cane gave me, I agree. The other option is someone from Liam’s work. One of the people who watch his streams.”

There was no point playing coy—he wasn’t ashamed of Liam or what he chose to do—he’d only ever been cautious because he didn’t know ifLiamwanted his information on blast. But things were so dangerous now that Fix couldn’t mince words.

Black hummed as he mulled it over.

“That wasn’t what I wanted to ask you though,” Fix said.