Page 2 of Dead Serious Halloween Special

Dropping to my knees in front of him, I yank the socks onto his feet. “Jesus, were you trying to do your best impression of Scott of the Antarctic? You’re lucky you don’t have frostbite.” I grin up at him in an attempt to lighten the mood.

“Thanks, love.” He holds onto Jacob Marley to stop him from falling and leans forward to press a kiss to my lips. “They are a bit numb.”

I snort as I stand. “That’s not a good thing.”

To keep myself busy, I bustle about the kitchen, making tea and buttering toast, while Danny chews over whatever is going on in his head. Finally, I set the plates and mugs on the table and take a seat opposite him.

“You ready to tell me what’s bothering you?” I ask and then sip my tea, watching him over the rim of the mug.

He blows out a breath and sets Jacob Marley on the floor. “Work.” He picks up a slice of toast, taking a bite and licking the raspberry jam from his lip.

I nod in sympathy. It’s not the first time we’ve had this conversation. It’s been frustrating for both of us, and I hate how he’s been treated by Scotland Yard in the months since Viv’s death, since that fucking dick of a DCI has started making Danny’s workplace absolute hell.

After the whole Detective Byrnes incident, I’d hoped Danny’s superior, DCI Butler, would get the sack, but the slimy weasel managed to wriggle his way out of trouble. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he’s tried every trick in the book to get Danny fired, even suggesting that Danny and I had something to do with Detective Byrnes’ disappearance.

While we didn’t exactly have anything to do with it per se, we did just so happen to have a front-row seat when he tried to raise a demon from a hundred-and-fifty-year-old devil’s trap in the Whitechapel bookshop. And when said demon stuffed him headfirst into the trap he’d just been ejected from, that was pretty much the end of Detective Byrnes—or should I say, Issac Crawshanks.

It had turned out that the man who’d had in it for Danny since he arrived at Scotland Yard wasn’t Byrnes at all, but rather a descendant of Cordelia Crawshanks as well as a witch himself. A witch who, it transpired, had murdered Madame Viv and attempted to kill Harrison in order to make himself an all-powerful demon master, blah blah blah. To say the whole thing degenerated into a complete and utter mess would be a gigantic understatement.

Fake Byrnes—who goaded Danny into almost punching the crap out of him, which resulted in Danny being suspendedpending an investigation—disappeared, and only we knew who he really was and what had happened to him. We figured that, with no body and no evidence, the best thing we could do was keep our mouths shut and see how it played out.

What followed was an absolute nightmare. DCI Butler managed to convince the Yard to open an investigation into Fake Byrnes’ disappearance with Danny as the prime suspect.

But, like I said, no evidence. And when I say no evidence, I mean absolutely zero. Issac Crawshanks had covered his tracks well; even his address had been fake. And since Scotland Yard couldn’t find where he had actually been living, they couldn’t search through his personal belongings. There was nothing in his desk or locker at work.

Ironically, he was like a ghost.

For a while, it seemed the whole incident was going to get shelved as a cold case, but then the body of the real Detective Byrnes turned up in a shallow grave in Manchester, just like Issac Crawshanks had told us he’d done to the man once he’d stolen his identity and had no further use for him.

When extensive testing suggested that the real Detective Byrnes had died months before he’d even shown up in London, both the Manchester police and Scotland Yard had been unable to come up with a plausible explanation as to how a dead man had managed to transfer to the Met and run a bloody investigation before disappearing as mysteriously as he’d arrived. Needless to say, it was all swept very quietly under the rug. Danny was reinstated, and that was supposedly that.

Yeah, not so much.

DCI Butler was livid he hadn’t been able to get rid of Danny. I don’t know whether it’s because he’s homophobic, has a personal vendetta against my husband, or is just a gigantic dick—probably a combination of all three, to be honest—but he’smade it his mission to make Danny’s life—and, by extension, Maddie’s—hell.

It’s been an absolute shitshow. Last month, DCI Butler finally managed to separate them and reassign Maddie to some other department. He’s also trying his best to isolate Danny from all his other work colleagues. If anyone dares to stick up for him, they’re targeted too, which is really pissing Danny off. Not so much for himself, but for the few remaining friends he has there, who have been attempting to intervene and are being punished for it.

Danny was adamant he wasn’t going to let that complete wanker win, and I respected that it was his job, his career, and ultimately his decision, but this really can’t go on any longer.

I can’t bear to see Danny unhappy like this. It hurts. I’m about two seconds away from sending Dusty and my other dead friends in to go full-onThe Conjuringall over that prick, but I won’t. I let out a sigh of resignation. I’m pretty sure it will only end up with us all in trouble with the Upstairs Management, and paranormal trouble is something we’re never short on in the first place.

Danny nibbles listlessly on his toast as I watch him in concern. He’s lost weight in addition to gaining those dark circles under his eyes, and thanks to his stress cleaning, the flat has never been so spotless.

“Danny.” I draw in a breath as his tired gaze locks on me. “I’m worried about you. I’ve tried to stay out of it and let you make your own decisions when it comes to your job and your career, but I don’t think this is going to get any better. In fact, now that the tosspot has managed to separate you and Maddie, I have a feeling things are just going to get much worse. I’d never try to tell you what to do because I know how much you love your job, but…” I trail off hopelessly. I just can’t force the words,I think you should quit, past my lips.

He pushes his plate away and toys with the handle on his mug.

“I know you’re right,” he finally admits in a quiet voice. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and—” He breaks off and shakes his head. “This isn’t what I signed up for, but it’s more than that.”

I sit quietly sipping my tea and let him organise his thoughts. Now he’s finally talking about it, I don’t want to risk any interruption making him close down again.

“Ever since I was a kid, joining the police is all I ever wanted to do,” he continues. “What happened with the West Yorkshire Police was bad enough, but I was lucky enough to get a second chance with Scotland Yard, and I’ll always be grateful for that. It brought me to you.” He swallows tightly and I reach out to take his hand, noting how cold his fingers still are. “All I ever wanted to do was help people. I thought things were different, that times were changing, but the politics and prejudices, the power imbalances, they’re still there within the system. Everything Butler has got away with is proof of that, and I haven’t got it in me to fight it, so what’s the point?” He lifts his hand and rubs his forehead as if in pain, and I’ll bet running on almost no sleep and the stress he’s under is probably brewing a banger of a headache. “It’s not just the job.”

“What is it then?” I ask softly.

“Being a detective, working on the force, I naively thought I knew the worst that was out there. But the things we’ve seen, the things we’ve done… I mean, who the hell has Death dropping by for relationship advice? Or stops an apocalypse by stealing the bones of a dead man to rebuild a magic doorway? And don’t even get me started on naked demons climbing out of the floor!”

He breaks off and sighs loudly. “I always had a plan, a path I thought my life would take. I thought I understood the world and my place in it, but…”