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Seth Mays

Hart is dragging me in with him.

I don’t wanna go.

Elliot Crane

Be careful.

Don’t get arrested.

Again.

They didn’t arrest me last time.

They cuffed you.

But they didn’t actually arrest me.

Let’s not change that, okay?

Not on my to-do list.

Don’t get beaten, either.

Or killed.

Please.

I’ll do my best.

I love you.

I love you, too.

Specifically, Hart was dragging me in to the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office in order to demand access to my property and so that I could ostensibly identify the body of my boyfriend.

It had me on edge, even though Elliot was obviously not dead.

It felt like some kind of curse—mocking the fates or something like that, even though I believed in neither.

Okay, technically, I did believe in curses.

I knew more than one witch and a warlock, so I absolutely couldn’t pretend magic wasn’t real.

Fate, on the other hand, I wasn’t so sure about.

Or God, either, for that matter. The God I’d been raised to believe in wasn’t the kind of God I wanted to believe in—cruel, vengeful, petty, demanding.

Elliot talked sometimes about a Creator, a being who gifted the world to people and bade them to take care of all that walked on it, whether animals, plants, people, water, earth, or air.

Hands-off, rather than hands-on. A deity that was distant, but benevolent.

Who wanted people to protect and care for each other and the world around them.

That sounded nice—the idea of mutual benevolence, gratitude, and reciprocity. Giving back for what was given. I didn’t know that I was there yet, but that was something I thought that maybe I could believe in.

Provided both Elliot and I got out of this alive.

And Hart.

And the Hills. Even though Helen and Ray had insisted that the Community would leave them alone—as they always had— I worried that in choosing to protect Elliot, they were making themselves targets.

That, at the very least, they’d lose the peace and solitude to which they’d become accustomed, even if they didn’t face direct or violent retribution for their kindness.

It seemed as though everyone around me was at risk—Noah, who’d been arrested; Elliot, who’d nearly been killed; Hart, who was making himself a target; and the Hills, who might face retaliation for their generosity to a nearly-complete stranger.

The biggest problem was that I didn’t know what to do about it.

I lacked the ability to get Noah out of jail, I didn’t know how to protect Elliot (other than by pretending he was dead), and I certainly didn’t have the ability to stop Hart from doing what he was doing.

Avoiding the Hills was the best I could do to keep them safe, and it helped to keep Elliot out of harm’s way, too.

But that felt more like not doing than doing, and it was making me feel twitchy.

I wasn’t convinced by the wisdom of me going back into the Sheriff’s Office, though, although that was Hart’s plan.

I wasn’t a terribly good liar, and I was going to have to pretend to be the grieving boyfriend—especially because the deputy who had told me about the accident had actually seen me genuinely grieving, so it would be especially weird if I wasn’t upset now.

Assuming he’d be on duty or had reported as much to anyone else.

“What’s the face for?” Hart asked me, glancing over from the driver’s seat at a stoplight.

“I’m a terrible actor,” I admitted. “And I’m going to have to pretend that I still think Elliot’s…” I still couldn’t say it.

“Jesus fuck, Mays. Just say it.”

I didn’t want to.

“Fine,” Hart said after it became clear that I wasn’t going to. “Honestly, that might work for us.”

I didn’t bother asking how. I figured he’d tell me.

I wasn’t disappointed.

“You can’t even fucking say dead , it’ll look more like grief. Trust me, how people act when they first get news and how they act after they’ve had time to sit on it doesn’t usually look the same.” He kept driving, past the incongruously rolling hillocks of a golf course, then a freight warehouse.

I shifted, then winced. I was used to my knee hurting most of the time, but the sharp, swollen feeling was different and deeply unpleasant.

It also now liked to give out on me, which was why I’d been ordered to use crutches for the next two weeks.

Today was only day two and my armpits already hurt like hell.

“Don’t die on me, Mays. Or fall apart. El will fucking kill me.”

I shot him a look that said I didn’t really appreciate the joke, given how many people around me were either being killed or had narrowly escaped being killed.

“You joke about it or you have a fucking aneurysm,” Hart said, his voice oddly flat. “Since I’d like to keep my brain as fully-functional as possible, you’re gonna have to deal with my fucked-up sense of humor.”

“And Taavi actually likes this?” I asked him.

Hart snorted. “He gives me the same fucking look you just did. Fuckin’ canids and their judgy looks.”

I couldn’t help the laugh that slipped out at that.

“See? Helps with the stress levels.” He turned left into the Sheriff’s Department parking lot, and we both sobered up pretty quickly.

“No, shithead, you don’t understand what’s happening here.” Hart was a few steps past annoyed, his wiry arms crossed over his chest as he glared down at the Deputy Sheriff. The Sheriff- Sheriff wasn’t available, apparently, something else Hart was pissed about.

“Sir—”

“That’s Agent Hart to you, Deputy Sheriff Cabell. Federal fucking Agent. As in the F-B-fucking-I, which is currently claiming jurisdiction over this case because by your own admission, you have a dead shifter who was driven off the road in a car that subsequently caught on fire.”

“There’s no evidence Mr. Crane was run off the road.”

“Except for the word of an accident-trained CSI technician, and you didn’t even bother to have anyone do an evaluation of the tire tracks at the scene.”

I was the technician in question, since Hart was right. He’d asked, and the increasingly flustered Cabell had admitted that no one had done an accident analysis on the site where Elliot had crashed.

“I’m not sure Mr. Mays is qualified?—”

That was the wrong thing to say.

“Not fucking qualified? You want to call the Virginia State Crime Lab and get a list of his fucking qualifications?” I’d been accident investigation trained while still in Richmond.

Cabell’s face somehow got blotchier, which was impressive, since it was already pink, red, and white in a mildly concerning pattern. “Mr. Mays is compromised?—”

“Compromised, my ass,” was Hart’s rejoinder, although Cabell was technically right on this one. Legally speaking, I was too close to it to be assigned to investigate. Of course, if I were the only person qualified to do so, they’d probably make an exception if they couldn’t bring someone else in.

That was highly unlikely in this case. Highway Patrol probably had two of them. The Sheriff’s Office just hadn’t asked them to look.

Cabell leaned over and hit a button on his desk phone, picking up the handset. “Annie, please ask Mosby to come back here.”

To judge from the expectant look on his face, Hart had also heard the tinny “Yes, sir, right away,” that had come from a woman’s voice, presumably Annie.

Cabell looked back up at Hart. “I will allow you to talk to the deputy who called in the scene,” he said, his voice tight.

“You’ll allow me.” It wasn’t a question.

Cabell’s face flushed, the blotches fading a little bit as the pale parts turned pinker. “I’m cooperating with your investigation, Agent Hart,” he said, and the tone in his voice had turned decidedly hostile.

“Are you.”

Even I could feel the energy rolling off the elf’s lithe frame, and it was no nicer than Cabell’s.

The door to Cabell’s office opened, and I felt my nostrils flare as the clear and distinct scent of wolf hit my nose.

It was followed by a trim, twitchy man with slightly sunburned fair skin, medium brown hair that was so lackluster it almost looked grey, and light brown eyes that squinted around the room.

“Deputy Mosby,” Cabell said.

Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Hart’s lavender eyes flickered over to me, and I met his gaze squarely. He knew Mosby wasn’t human. And he knew that I knew.

“Deputy,” Hart said, turning around with a smile that I recognized as more predatory than friendly. “Perhaps you can clear a few things up for me.”

Mosby didn’t need to smell Hart to know he was an elf, obviously.

The pale skin and pointy ears gave it away, and Hart didn’t bother to even try to blend in, his hair pulled back in a long braid to show off his ears, the lavender of his tie drawing attention to the color of his eyes, bright against the dark grey of his suit and white of his shirt and skin.

“And you are?” Mosby half-drawled.

Hard flashed his badge. “Special Agent Hart, FBI. That accident you found out on Scott-Christian Road had a shifter victim and showed signs of intervention.”

Mosby stared at him, tense, assessing. “Intervention?” he repeated.

“Yeah, you know…” Hart examined the fingernails on one hand. “Bits of plastic from headlights, wasn’t it, Mays?”

I twitched, not expecting him to talk to me. “Y-yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Yes.”

“What color was the plastic again?” he asked, oh, so casually.

“There was red, white, orange, and blue.”

“Blue?” Hart feigned surprise.

“Yes?”

“Huh. Does an FJ Cruiser—that was your car right?”

I nodded.

“Does an FJ Cruiser have any blue lights on it?”

I didn’t really need to answer the question, but I did anyway. “No, it doesn’t.”

Cabell made a strangled noise, and when I looked over at him, I could see that his face was now turning purple.

“In fact, pretty much only police cruisers have blue lights, right, Mays?”

I let out a breath. “Most of them don’t have lights in the front or on the sides,” I replied. “But the Augusta County Explorers have a front grille that has blue lights on the bars.”