“I do, actually.” One hell of an excuse, a better one than he was likely expecting.

“And I’m sure it’s dazzling. But let me ask you this—while you were off gallivanting in the palace of a fairy king, did you take a moment to ask him why one of his people is killing humans?”

“As a matter of fact—” Wait, had he said humans, as in plural? “Humans?”

“Ah, you can listen.”

“What happened?”

“There’s been another murder. I don’t suppose you’d like to help solve one for a change?”

Chapter Forty-Four

“Over my dead body,” Desmond said. He was standing in front of Kellen’s front door, physically blocking my exit.

“No, it’ll be over someone else’s,” I replied. “Some other newly dead teenager whose only mistake in life was signing up for a shitty minimum-wage job.”

His mouth formed a tight line, and he looked thoughtful for a moment before speaking again. “I don’t care. You’re not going.”

“I’m going. Whether or not you come with me is the question. I can take Brigit and be safe with her and Keaty. If this bothers you, you’re welcome to stay here and hang out with the bitchy drunk.”

“I heard that,” Kellen cut in. Then she started mumbling something about who the real bitch was. Now that I knew she wasn’t dead or on the verge of slitting her wrists, I had a lot less motivation to sit around holding her hand. Especially if she was going to spend the whole night insulting me and suggesting I’d ruined Desmond’s life.

I had figured Kellen for a fun drunk. She was more of a morose, shitty drunk.

There was obviously something going on with her, and I wanted to get to the root of her claims about how she was supposedly in love with the fairy who’d kidnapped her. If she was under a spell, we needed to do something to snap her out of it. We also needed to make sure she didn’t go back to the fae club and do something stupid, like convince Gia she should be allowed back into Aubrey’s realm.

I needed to help Keaty with the murder investigation, but someone had to stick around and ensure Kellen didn’t make a break for it. There was no way in hell Desmond would volunteer to stay, and if I left Brigit behind, Holden would have my head. I thought about risking the vampire’s wrath and asking my ward to hang out with Kellen but changed my mind quickly. I was in legitimate danger, and I needed to play it smart. Two supernatural beasties watching my back was better than one.

Grumbling, I picked up my cell again and paged through the contacts until I found the right number. After a few rings a bored male voice said, “Yup?”

“Jackson, it’s Secret.” The line was filled with frantic rustling and the sound of fast-food wrappers crinkling. “You know I can’t actually see you, right? You don’t need to clean.”

“Oh, haha, yeah, I guess that’s true.” The noise stopped. “What can I do you for?”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Maybe it was just me, but I didn’t think one of my youngest pack members should be so casual in his address. Especially not one who had been welcomed into Lucas’s pack after he participated in a plot against Lucas’s leadership. Jackson had also participated in kidnapping me, so to say I thought he should show more respect was an understatement. But the pack was small and our relationships with each other tended to be more friendly than formal. For now I was willing to let the oversight slide. Besides, right now I wasn’t even half werewolf.

“I need you to do me a favor.”

“Sure?”

“It’s about Kellen.”

“Yeah, what about her?” He sounded far too excited by the mention of Kellen’s name. I’d noticed he seemed to have an attachment to her in the past, which was why I’d chosen him to call. If he had a little crush on her, he’d be more likely to pay attention to her. And if she chose to drunkenly bone the handsome young werewolf and get her fairy “lover” out of her head…who was I to question it?

“I need you to come to her apartment and just…sit with her.”

“Sit with her?”

“She’s drunk.”

“Uh-huh.” Was it me or did he sound a bit happy about that?

“And sad.”

“Oh.”

“I want to make sure she’s all right. I need someone to stay with her while she sobers up, someone who can make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid and doesn’t leave the building.”

“You want me to baby-sit.”

I gnawed on my lip. If I said yes, was he less likely to agree to the job? Then it occurred to me he didn’t need to agree to anything. “Jackson, this isn’t a request.” I hated using orders, but sometimes having the option was nice. Made it difficult for people to argue with me if I wanted to have the last word.

Of course some people, like Holden, argued anyway, even when I outranked them. Thankfully Jackson wasn’t as ballsy as Holden. “I understand.” His tone was formal, like he realized who I was finally and how poorly he’d been behaving. “Apologies, my Queen.”

Ugh. “No apologies necessary. You’ll be doing me a great favor.” Unlike with the fae, I could easily give Jackson my thanks without him thinking I owed him anything. “Please hurry over.” I was grateful Jackson had long since moved out of Lucas’s upstate New York home and into a shared loft space in the city. If not, we’d be waiting hours to have someone watch Kellen, and with each passing moment I could picture Keaty getting angrier.

Just further proof a human could be as scary as any monster out there.

I still had a stomach for death.

Keaty and I stood on opposite sides of a metal gurney in the morgue, staring down at a teenaged girl who looked much too young to be dead. The last time I’d been in a morgue, we’d had to enthrall the guard—thanks to Brigit’s skill with vampire mind control—and I had left stinking of death. This time, Keaty’s connections had gotten us through the door, but that didn’t make it any easier to see a dead kid.

“What’s her name?” I asked quietly.

“Carly Montgomery.”

The girl was untouched. Her skin—with the exception of the usual teenage blemishes—showed no signs of damage or struggle. If we hadn’t known better, it would be easy to assume she’d died of natural causes. She hadn’t. Like Petey before her, something had literally sucked the life force out of her body, leaving her a sad, empty husk.

“You’re sure you believe your Oracle? Even looking at this?” Keaty asked.

“Calliope doesn’t feed off girls,” I informed him. “And she also pointed out to me she isn’t the only fairy in the world. It was just easy for us to accuse her because we know what she is.” I was ashamed with myself for believing Cal had been guilty of something like this. She might not have the same respect for human life as I did, but that didn’t mean she was going to run around murdering teenagers. Especially if she could feed without them dying. She was immortal, and she could be cold, but she wasn’t murderous.

I zipped the bag higher to keep Carly’s body decent. No sense in adding insult to injury by showing her chest off to strange men after her death.

“And did you find out anything useful in your jaunt to the fae world?” If Keaty didn’t tone it down with the sarcasm, I was going to start thinking he’d picked up a thing or two from spending too much time with me.

“Yeah. I found out fairies are assholes.” And no good at keeping promises. Aubrey told me no one else would die in my territory, yet I was looking at another kill.

“Helpful.”

“I also found out there’s a second fairy gate in New York. One that doesn’t go through Calliope.”

“Well, that is useful information. Where is the second gate?”

“At a Bath & Body Works in Harlem.”

When Keaty didn’t reply, I looked up from Carly’s body to meet his astonished gaze. He said, “I’m sorry, it must be old age. I thought you said—”

“You’re really going to question the authenticity of that statement? I get blood in takeout baggies from a Starbucks. Let’s assume the fae probably built these gates long before there were chain retailers parked on top of them.”

“Obviously.”

“I love Bath & Body Works,” Brigit said. “They have a candle that smells like bread.”

Keaty wasn’t paying attention to her. I could tell his mind was hard at work processing the new knowledge and what it meant to his case. “If we go on the theory the fairy committing these murders isn’t living in our world full-time, this knowledge will be very useful,” he said.

“What are you basing your theory on?”

“The small number of deaths. And if it is a fairy and doesn’t live in our world, it might explain why they think they can take human life.”

“I’ll admit fairies can be pretty stupid when it comes to the sanctity of mortality, but I don’t think we can give a serial-killing fairy a free pass because he was like, ‘oops, my bad, I didn’t know human beings didn’t like to die!’”

Keaty shook his head. “I’m not suggesting it’s a good excuse, I’m just not seeing a motive to these murders otherwise.”

“Does there need to be a motive?”

“I feel better when there is.”

I zipped Carly’s body bag all the way up, covering her pale face so I didn’t keep looking at it and feeling guilty. “I don’t think you’re going to like whatever motive you find here. Just because she was killed by a fairy and not a vampire doesn’t mean the logic behind it was any more highbrow. The fairy was hungry, and she was food. The end.”

“I take offense,” Brigit interjected.

“How could you possibly take offense to that?” I had to ask.

“I feed on people all the time.” She ignored the hateful glower she got from Keaty. “But I don’t kill them.”