Chapter Twenty-four
Ethan
He stood shivering outside Lachlan Graham’s apartment, dripping onto the polished floor, and cursing his lack of forethought. The taxi driver had let him off two blocks away, refusing to stick around despite the temptation of his credit card, and of course the sky had opened up for a heavy shower just as Ethan started walking, soaking him through in less than a minute before drying up again. Now, he blew hot air against his fingers and knocked a second time, sending up a silent prayer to any gods still listening to wolf-mated mages that the guy was home.
The door cracked open under his hand, and a stranger stood in the partially opened doorway.
“Oh, sorry, I thought this was…”
Ethan caught himself and took a closer look at the guy, startled by the familiar eyes. Underneath the pale skin, the bruises under the eyes, the overlong blond hair, baggy clothes, and the scars—fuck—he recognized the eyes themselves from the man’s personnel file.
“Lachlan Graham?”
“Who are you?” the man—Graham, he was almost certain of it—asked, one hand on the door and the other hidden out of sight.
He cleared his throat and caught himself reaching for a badge that he wasn’t wearing. Graham’s eyes followed the aborted movement and he shot Ethan a sardonic look, standing up a little straighter.
“I’m Detective Ethan Ellison,” he replied, “I just wanted to ask you a couple questions. It won’t take very long.”
“Detective, sure. Pull the other one,” Graham’s voice broke on the last word. He leaned heavily against the door as his shoulders hunched up in an aborted cough. He moved to shut the door, and Ethan moved in counterpoint without thinking, forcing Graham to step back as he barged inside. Ethan saw the other man’s hand move from behind his back and ducked to avoid getting punched, shocked when Graham shoved a gun in his face.
“Shit.”
“You picked the wrong home to invade,” Graham rasped, hammer already cocked, finger on the trigger.
Ethan felt his skin shiver all over, his senses stretching out to span the air between them, down the cool metal chamber and into the heat potential nestled in the gunpowder inside the bullet. All of his attention narrowed down to that nugget of metal—magic or no, it could kill him just as easily as fangs or claws or a curse.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said threading his voice full of command. It was hard to think Put it down when his brain kept skittering around like a hamster with the word gungungun taped to its side. “You wouldn’t want to be responsible for shooting a fellow officer.”
Graham frowned at him. “I’m not a cop.”
This made Ethan shoot him a sharp look in return. “But—”
“What do you want?”
“Like I said, I just have a couple questions.”
“What about?”
“Do you think you could put the gun down first?”
Graham rolled his eyes and gestured at the scarring around his nose and mouth. “And how do I know the guys who did this didn’t send you too? Talk.”
Ethan spread his hands to show he was unarmed. “Look, obviously we got off on the wrong foot.”
“You mean the one where you forced your way inside my house?”
“True. My bad. I’m just in a rush.”
Graham raised both eyebrows. His hand on the gun didn’t waver.
“Look, I just want to find some vampires who killed a cop, and I thought you might know something about that.”
Hazy green eyes narrowed at him, and Graham took a step back. “Why would I know anything about vampires?” he asked in a low, dangerous tone.
“All I know is that the cop who died—Adam, his name was Adam Sloan—he thought you knew something. Or maybe you were involved with them. He’s a little hazy about the details these days,” this last part he directed at the useless ghost who had wandered into the apartment and was perusing a mess of papers spread out across Graham’s kitchen table.
“Dude, you should take a look at this,” Adam replied, ignoring his comment.
Ethan rolled his eyes.
Graham shot a look over at the table and said, “How do you know that name?”
“Who? Sloan?”
A sharp nod.
“He’s haunting me. Well, technically he’s haunting my partner, but the damned wolf can’t see him, so I’m stuck playing ghost whisperer.”
Another glance over at the table. Graham licked his lower lip and stepped back. He lowered the gun, and Ethan moved again without thinking. Magic surged through his fingers as he grabbed Graham’s arm in one hand and the gun with his other, ripped it out of his hand with a quick surge of power. Graham yelped and elbowed him in the gut. They grappled, but Graham lacked any real strength, and his skin blistered up under Ethan’s hands from the magic.
“Just—stop!” Ethan snapped, releasing the clip so that it went skidding across the floor and ejected the round in the chamber. He tossed the empty gun away and held up his now empty hands.
Graham stared at his skin. “What the hell was that?”
“I’m a mage, and I really don’t like people pointing guns at me. Okay?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“I don’t think he’s a thrall,” Adam piped up.
Ethan reached out and jerked aside Graham’s collar, exposing his neck. There was a scar there, but nothing that looked like a vampire bite. “No shit. Though he’s pale and wasted away enough to be one.”
Graham glared up at him and shrugged away from his hands. “What?”
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
“What, a ghost? You really expect me to buy that?”
Ethan shrugged. “Why not.” He breathed into one cupped hand, feeling the energy expand into the familiar blue glow-orb he used to have to conjure with the help of a talisman. “I wasn’t lying about the magic.”
Graham stared at the light with wide eyes; he looked torn between irritation and amazement, a reaction that Ethan felt more comfortable with. He was used to other people’s irritation, had once rather reveled in drawing it out of them.
“I’m serious; come look at this.”
Ethan walked over to look at whatever had Adam so excited and stared down at a map criss-crossed with pink and green highlighter illuminating the six blocks around Le Sang. There were pages of printed articles too, the same ones he’d found when he’d searched online the list of addresses from Lauren. Under that, crime scene images that he reached for without thinking, fingers smudging the glossy colored prints of one dead girl after another: her throat bitten, another her skin bloodless.
“What the hell is this?” he asked, looking back at Graham who was watching him.
“A police investigation.”
“Just lying here, in your house? Did you steal these? Who are you working for?” Ethan demanded.
“Java Jolt.”
“What?”
“It’s a coffee shop.”
“What?”
“I think…” Adam trailed off, darting a look around the room. He looked confused, like he was trying hard to remember something that kept slipping away from him. “I feel like I’ve been here before.”
“When you were alive?”
A shake of the head. “No, it’s—places are hard to remember. Pat, you, talking to you, that’s easy—that feels real. But this…”
Ethan made a frustrated sound and turned back to Graham who looked unsettled. “Did you steal this?” he demanded, gesturing with one of the crime scene photos.
“It’s not mine.”
“That doesn’t answer my—”
“No, I didn’t steal it. I’m just letting some detectives use my house. And take my word for it, I wouldn’t want to piss them off if I were you. Werewolves can be territorial.”
“There’s no where else here,” Ethan said, something in his gut telling him he was right. Well, that and the fact that it was the full moon.
Graham tapped his nose. “But you’ve left your scent all over me. There’s no where in the city you can go Vector won’t be able to find you.”
“Vector?” he asked, incredulous. “Vector Clanahan?”
Graham’s face closed up. “How do you—”
Ethan felt an hysterical laugh bubble up in his throat. “Is this Patrick’s gods damned investigation?” he demanded, closing the space between them.
And Ethan would give this guy one thing: he had nerve, he didn’t flinch at Ethan’s outburst, even though his skin still showed where the magic had burned him, even though Ethan suspected that he looked a little deranged to match his tone of voice.
“It is! What the fuck has he been doing here?”
“How do you know Patrick?”
Ethan ignored the question. “Is Mallory involved too? What am I asking? Of course she is.”
Graham looked uncertain, eyes darting from Ethan to where the gun lay on the sofa, like he couldn’t decide if he still needed it or whether he should take his chances with the guy ranting in the middle of his kitchen.
Ethan took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “Detective Ethan Ellison, South Seattle Precinct. Technically I’m on sabbatical, but I was Pat’s— I mean, we worked together.”
“And I should just trust you on that?”
“Hey, I’m the one who came here thinking you worked for the vampires.”
Graham’s eyes narrowed. “Why would you think that?”
“Because my ghost guide is less of a guide and more of a useless needy hanger-on.”
“Dude, I’m right here,” Adam protested.
“I’m Pat’s partner,” Ethan said.
“Mallory’s his partner.”
“I don’t mean—” Ethan scrunched up his face and forced out the words that he’d worked so hard to keep buried deep inside where no one would find them, let alone himself. “I’m his life partner. Or something. Don’t make me use the wolf-term, it’s too—”
“What?”
“Extra.”
“No, I mean, you’re his what? Like his boyfriend?”
Ethan nodded. “Yes, that’s slightly more bearable. Boyfriend. Sure.”
Graham muffled a cough and held up a hand to forestall anymore questions while he went to the sink to pour a glass of water. Ethan watched him sip it before digging around for a little bottle of over-the-counter pain meds. He measured out three capsules, crushed them into fine powder with a butter knife, and then swallowed. The whole production took a minute and a whole lot of wincing on Graham’s part.
“What happened to you?” Ethan asked.
“Some people tried to kill me.”
“And you thought I was connected to that?”
A shrug. Graham gestured at the pink marks on his skin. “Hasn’t been a friendly visit so far.”
“In my defense you stuck a gun in my face first.”
“And you came here thinking I worked for some vampires. Do you mind if I sit?” Graham asked.
Ethan shook his head and took the opposite chair at the table. Between them, police notes written in three different hands spread out in a messy tapestry. “How much do you know about this?” he asked, gesturing at the map.
Graham shrugged. “Vampires, clubs, dead girls. They don’t have much in the way of facts, just theories.”
“And you know about Adam Sloan?”
Another shrug.
“He was Pat’s partner before I was. Like—how long ago was that?” he asked the ghost.
“What is time?” Adam replied, leaning over the reports.
“You’d think I wasn’t trying to help him,” Ethan groused.
“You weren’t trying very hard yesterday,” the ghost replied.
Graham watched him with a close look.
“There really is a ghost here,” Ethan said.
“I didn’t say anything,” Graham said, holding up his empty hands. “Not like I’d be able to tell either way.”
“You’re a norm, right?”
“One hundred percent. Had this real spooky chick confirm it for me.”
“And you used to worked with Vector.”
He nodded and drained the rest of his water, a fine tremor the only thing to give away the tension in his body still.
“But Sloan,” Ethan said, “something got him onto vampires. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. To retrace his steps.”
“There was a girl,” Adam mused in a low voice. “It always starts with a dead girl.”
Ethan nodded absently. “So he’s investigating them, vampires, he puts together this body of research and he hides it. He doesn’t tell anyone the particulars.”
Graham was nodding along now. “Patrick said he didn’t know about it until just before his—he died.”
“He was drained by a vampire. And Pat never figured out who did it. That case goes cold, and no one has access to Adam’s research so they have nothing to go on about the rest of it. Which, I feel like I need to point out, contained an incomplete copy of your personnel file from the SPD.”
“Did it say I worked for a coven?”
“I only skimmed it. I was—I didn’t have a chance to go through all of it with a fine tooth comb, okay. I’m running on my last nerve here.”
“Why didn’t you talk to Patrick?”
Ethan bit his tongue. “It’s the full moon. Where’s Vector?”
“Fair enough,” Graham said. A beat, and then he continued, “I was tortured by a vampire. On a case that went bad—the last one I worked with Vector, actually. I don’t know much more. I retired shortly after it happened. They were trying to figure out if my brush was connected to this Adam’s death and to the current string of murders.” He nodded at the map. “But they hadn’t come to any firm conclusions.”
“What did they know about Le Sang?”
Graham told him about the most recent bloodsucking victims and how Vector had tracked scents belong to several vampires back to the club.
“Well, there’s definitely a coven using it as a base of operations, but they haven’t been in Seattle long enough to be responsible for Adam’s death or your…” Ethan trailed off.
“Brush with.”
“Right.”
“How do you know they aren’t the ones responsible?”
Behind Graham, Adam snorted and then Ali echoed him from where she’d planted herself on top of the kitchen counter, bare legs swinging back and forth in a hypnotic rhythm it took a considerable energy to ignore. Ethan shot her a quick glare that made Graham turn and look over his shoulder.
“I know,” Ethan said, ignoring both ghosts, “because I was just at Le Sang, where I was able to question an obliging thrall.”
“And you just believe him?”
“Have you ever been questioned by a mage?” Ethan asked, ignoring the fact he’d never wielded such complete influence before.
The words appeared to land with Graham, who looked away and said, “Fair enough.”
“He very earnestly informed me that the vampires he serves don’t kill the people they feed off of, and that their coven has only been in town for a year. He also let slip that there is another set of vampires operating in the city.”
“Who?”
“He passed out before I could get that part of the picture.”
“Passed out? The hell did you do to him?” Graham demanded.
“I don’t think it was me. Thralls are all full of compulsions. But that’s why I’m here, I have to find this other coven, not Le Sang, and since your file was a part of Adam’s research, I figured you were connected to them somehow.”
“I wish I could help you.”
The genuine note in Graham’s tone felt like a nail on the lid of Ethan’s hope. He stared into the norm’s eyes and saw nothing but honesty. Graham did want to help him, but he didn’t know anything more than Ethan did about where to look next, and it appeared that Pat and Mallory hadn’t made any more headway at tracking the bloodsuckers either.
“What do you think they did to him?” Ali asked, standing over Graham’s shoulder with a curious expression. Her hair fell down and obscured her eyes as she leaned in close, studying his scarred face.
“They forced me to inhale a form of magically aspirated acid,” Graham said off his stare.
Ethan shook himself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
“It was worse than it looks,” he said with a mirthless expression.
“Who—?”
“A couple of werewolves.”
“From which pack?”
“The Sutalos, I think. Vector and Mallory busted a warehouse they were using to smuggle drugs into Seattle.”
Ethan sat back, flabbergasted. “How have I not heard about this?”
“Well, you and Patrick have been out of town, right?”
“Still. That’s—” Ethan cut himself off as Ali draped herself over the human’s shoulders, arms wrapped around his neck and her face tucked in cheek-to-cheek. “Don’t—” He had to physically bite his tongue to keep the words from spilling out and still Graham was staring at him in consternation.
“He’s pretty, don’t you think? Looks a little like you even.” She eyed Ethan with a salacious grin, tongue flicking out between her teeth. “Can’t fault the wolves for their taste in men.”
Ethan pitched forward across the table as she leaned in to press a kiss to Graham’s scarred lips. The other man flinched, reactions sluggish, the fear in his eyes easy enough to read. From the other side of the room, Adam shouted Ethan’s name, flickering out of sight and then reappearing next to them. Ethan’s hands closed on air, both because Graham had jumped out of his chair and because Ali wasn’t there. Ethan came back to himself with a rush, breathing hard and sweating, two sets of disturbed eyes boring into him. He shook himself and slid back into his seat with a thump.
“What the fuck, dude? What the fuck?” Adam demanded.
“She was right there,” Ethan said. “She was—you had to have seen her that time.”
“Are you talking to me?” Graham asked.
He shook his head and turned beseeching eyes on Adam’s ghost, but the apparition just kept shaking his head. “Ethan, I don’t think you’re okay.”
“She was right there,” he insisted, the words thick in his throat, choking him. He felt his magic sizzle out of his fingertips, singing the edge of the map.
Graham’s eyes went huge as he made an aborted movement to pull the evidence out of Ethan’s reach, but Ethan had already kicked his chair back from the table, holding up his hands as he tried to calm down before he started a fire they wouldn’t be able to put out.
“I don’t know what you think you keep seeing, but I think it’s just inside your head,” Adam said.
Ethan hid his face in the cage of his fingers, listening to the thud of his heart and his blood echo in the hallow chambers of his temple.
Graham stood across from him, staying quiet and still like a small field animal trying to hide under the predator’s eye. He was afraid, Ethan realized, afraid of burns a lot worse than what Ethan had already done to him and it made the mage’s stomach twist.
“Sorry, I’m not having a great day,” he choked out.
“I can see that.”
“We were talking about—werewolves.”
“I don’t think they’re involved with this.”
Ethan choked on a laugh. “Shit, can you imagine the chaos if this secret coven was also working with one of the city’s wolf packs?”
“Unthinkable.”
Ethan scrubbed at his face, not quite able to look the other man in the eye as he tried to get a handle on the tremor running through his hands. When he was certain he could speak without his voice cracking he asked, “This run in you had with a vampire, where did it happen?”
Graham frowned. “I don’t think you’ll find anything there. It’s been like three years.”
“I don’t have anything else to go on.”
Ethan watched Graham study the printouts.
“It was a warehouse in the north Beacon Hill area. One sec.” He uncovered a laptop from a stack of papers and clicked around on it for a minute before showing Ethan an enlarged grid of Seattle. “Sorry, I didn’t commit the exact address to memory. I just remember it was around here; off 15th Ave.”
“I’ll check it out. See if Adam recognizes anything. Do you mind if I borrow your phone? I need to call a cab.”
Graham was silent for a long moment, but then the other man surprised him by getting up to fish a set of car keys out of a bowl in the hall. He came back and dropped them next to Ethan’s hands.
“Fill up the tank before you bring it back.”
“I can’t just take your car.”
Graham shrugged. “Vector left it in case there was an emergency. You seem like a man in the midst of a crisis. Besides, if you don’t bring it back, I’ll just have my boyfriend track you down.”
It struck Ethan that when he smiled, Graham still looked exactly like the man in his SPD file.