Harvest slips into the meeting room, juggling a mug of coffee, a slim black notebook, and her phone. She slides into a seat and smiles briefly at the agent next to her before turning her attention to her boss, Agent Fitzgerald.

Fitz is an imposing figure, a seasoned agent with several closed cases under her belt. She’s the youngest agent to find herself at the head of the Serious Crimes Division in a decade and if Harvest has learned one thing working for Fitz the past few months, it’s that she doesn’t stand for tardiness.

To be fair, Harvest isn’t typically late—but without a car, she relies on the bus to get to and from work. While she’s typically quite good at factoring in the inconsistencies of the Valkaria Transit System, she still hasn’t quite gotten used to the increased travel time between the Lighthouse, where she’s been spending most of her nights, and her place of work. She should have arrived five minutes early for the meeting, but ended up being fifteen minutes late instead.

Harvest’s hope that her lateness has gone unnoticed is dashed when the meeting ends and Fitz says, “Rosenbloom. A word?”

She dutifully follows Fitz to the corner office, glancing, as usual, toward the desk at which Quinn usually sits. It’s empty, as it seems to always be these days. Harvest enters the office and sits, hands folded demurely in her lap.

Fitz settles in behind the desk, framed by the window that overlooks the building across the street. Harvest can just see the beginning of the sign, the letters of “Peri,” before the view is cut off by the window frame. Harvest waits for the words of admonishment, but instead hears, “I have a new case assignment for you.”

Harvest sits up straighter, eyebrows raised.

Fitz smirks. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you getting to the meeting late. Just make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“SDS have been a bit overwhelmed lately and Agent Quinn put in a request for some support. I was going to assign Collins, but this case just came through,” she says, handing Harvest a piece of paper, “and I think you’d be of more use.”

“Why’s that?” asks Harvest, scanning through the information on the preliminary request, brief though it may be. A call came in a few hours ago. Reports of a body at Grim Gardens. Possible fire victim.

“According to the first on-scene reports, they’ll need help identifying the victim.”

Harvest nods, “Of course. Whatever I can do to help.”

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Grim Gardens looks exactly as Harvest remembers. As she walks through the turnstile at the entrance, she can almost see her mother standing underneath the towering jacaranda tree that is in full bloom, vibrant purple petals swaying gently with the wind. If Harvest closes her eyes, she can just about hear her mother’s laugh on the breeze, feel her hand as she excitedly pulls her along. The spring air smells fragrant, like lilies and earth.

She opens her eyes with a sigh and the memory fades away. She makes her way past the jacaranda tree, fingers brushing lightly against the bark, and down the pebbled pathway that snakes through the gardens. Her previous nostalgia is quickly replaced with a different sort of familiarity. Yellow caution tape, Magi-Tech associates in white plastic suits swabbing surfaces for trace evidence that may or may not be useful, a uniformed Bureau officer standing sentry, checking her identification.

She ducks under the tape and squints between the flurry of white suites and dark blue uniforms. She’s sure Quinn is here somewhere, but she doesn’t see his tall, slim figure amidst the hustle and bustle. Instead, she spots the paper-thin crimson wings of Wild Neverbee. She pushes her way through the crowd, calling Wild’s name. He turns, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“Fitz just assigned me,” she offers as an explanation.

He nods. “Good. We could use the help.” He motions her to follow and together, they make their way to the Poison Garden exhibit in the north-east quadrant.

“What do we know so far?” she asks, slightly out of breath. She’s not short, but she still has a hard time keeping up with the long strides of Wild, whose fae heritage means he is graceful and ethereal even when simply walking to a crime scene.

His wings, a cross between moth wings and fallen leaves, flutter slightly as he answers. “A body was found this morning by one of the security guards.”

“Was there a fire?” she asks, eyes watering slightly. The air smells of smoke, though there is an odd quality to it; it’s not the smell of burned leaves and underbrush.

“Yes,” replies Wild, “but the smell isn’t unusual. They recently acquired a new plant which gives off the smoke. The security guard on shift didn’t realize anything was wrong until…” His voice trails off as they reach the crime scene.

Harvest’s second-sight switches on immediately out of instinct. It clouds her vision with colors only she can see—the auratic energy of every living person to tread this bit of land in the past twenty-four hours. She blinks out of it a few seconds later, but not before she notices the pockmarked, damaged aura near the ground.

She has barely any information about the case, but the quick glimpse tells her that something very bad happened to the victim. Although she has only worked one murder case before, she’s seen enough auras to be able to catalog the subtle differences, not only between individuals, but between healthy and unhealthy, between happy and hurting, between truth and lie.

The person before her, in the shade of the towering Ashheim Rose plant, suffered before they died. The aura reminds Harvest of an open wound, the edges oozing in acrid greens and yellows. Although the core is misshapen, she can still see the deep purple. No, not just purple—many shades of purple linked together with threads of vermillion.

“Look who I found,” says Wild as they approach.

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Harvest blinks and looks away from the body. She smiles politely at Quinn, who’s wearing a surprisingly informal white Oxford, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. No tie or waistcoat, top buttons undone. She wonders why he dressed in a hurry.

Quinn raises an eyebrow at her. “Didn’t think we needed a sniffer dog.”

Harvest narrows her eyes at him. Normally, she’d elbow him in his side and ask about the body, but there is something hard in his voice that stops her from doing that. Instead, she says, simply, “Fitz assigned me to help you identify the body.”

Quinn looks down at the burned remains and waves a hand in invitation. “Have at it.”

She chokes back a retort and blinks into her second-sight again, kneeling to get a better look at the auratic energy. The pathologist is next to her, focused on his own work. His aura is a bright turquoise, much like the sky up above. Fae, she thinks, before refocusing on the body. Behind her, Wild and Quinn talk in low voices, though she can still catch snippets of their conversation.

“I have the contact info for the night shift guard, Emily Iverson,” Wild tells Quinn. “I called but she didn’t answer. Left a message. Everyone else on staff is accounted for.”

So, not an employee, she thinks, tilting her head to the side. “Is fire the cause of death?” she asks, eyes roving over the remains. The air smells of dirt and smoke and that slightly-off smell from earlier. It sticks in the back of her throat, and she swallows against the nausea that rises up against her sternum. Looks like she’ll be skipping lunch again.

“Possibly. But as I was telling your colleague, I want to look closer at this, here.” He points with his pinky finger.

Although she can’t see much through the aura, she’s reasonably certain Hudson is pointing to the skull. The aura has a large absence there—not quite a hole, but not a different color either. It’s a nothingness that she’s never had much luck describing to anyone else. “Blunt force trauma,” she guesses, reaching out with a gloved hand, as if the aura is a physical thing. “A blow to the head?”

Hudson tilts his head curiously, a movement she just catches as she blinks out of her second-sight. “Most likely. I’ll know more once I get everything back to the lab. Clean up the bones and all that.”

“Finally, you’re here,” says a familiar voice above Harvest. She looks up at her sister, Hazel, who sets down a heavy metal case with a huff of effort. Harvest stands as Hazel unlatches the case and extracts a pair of glasses. “What took you so long?”

“Bus was late,” Harvest says, slipping on the familiar metal frames that were scrounged from a box in the attic of the Rosenbloom house. They used to belong to their grandmother and then to Harvest—but not because she had blurry vision. When she was younger, she had terrible control of her second-sight. Her mother spelled the lenses to help her block the colors so she could see.

The lenses that sit inside of the frames now, however, are spelled to encourage the colors. The glass itself was created by Hazel in the Magi-Tech lab at the Bureau. Imbued with alchemical symbols and complicated spellwork, they measure the wavelengths of the colors Harvest is seeing. Along with the compact taser spell contained in a lipstick tube that now sits in Harvest’s pocket, Hazel has been adding several new technologies to the Bureau’s arsenal as she fulfills the terms of her employment—a lenient sentence considering her part in several thefts orchestrated by her ex-boyfriend.

Harvest takes a step forward to observe the aura up close. Behind her, she hears Hudson murmur to Quinn, “It’s like seeing double.”

It’s true, she and Hazel look a lot alike, especially with Harvest’s hair growing longer. With Hazel working for the Bureau now, people are constantly getting them mixed up, particularly considering that they both have names that start with H. It’s enough to make her consider going by her middle name instead, just to circumnavigate the confusion. But there’s something about the name Jane that feels ill-fitting—so, Harvest, it is.

Harvest kneels beside the body. “Time of death,” she says, with a click of her tongue. “Probably around eight to ten hours ago. The aura is extremely damaged, but still rather strong.”

“Color?” asks Hazel, taking notes on her phone.

“It’s…complicated.”

A barely contained sigh. “What family of color?” she amends.

“Purple?”

“So, a complicated purple?”

Harvest lowers the glasses, looking in the direction Hazel’s viridian green aura, and shrugs. “Yes, a complicated purple with threads of vermillion…no, something deeper. Burned. Orange-like.”

“So, orange?”

“Not exactly.” She lowers the glasses again and blinks out of her second-sight. “In the orange family,” she concedes.

“And where does the aura originate?” asks Hazel, thumbs tapping away quickly on her phone screen.

“Torso. Chest area. Heart.”

“How is this going to help us?” asks Angel, sidling up to the group. From anyone else, this would sound petulant, but Harvest has worked with Angel enough to know that their question is born from genuine interest.

Hazel takes it in stride, as well. “The potion I coated the lenses with is taking in a whole bunch of data about wavelengths and magical signature markers. I use the questionnaire to link up that data with what Harvest’s sees…since she’s the only one that can see it. We’ve established that auras have a pattern and I’m hoping to standardize Harvest’s observations.” Hazel looks down at her phone. “So far, basing this off of previous studies, I think we can safely say that our victim is a witch, since witch magic tends to originate from the heart.”

“Female,” says Harvest. “Most likely.”

“Right, so we have a female witch who died about eight to ten hours ago.”

Angel looks impressed and also like they want to know more.

“Come by the lab sometime,” says Hazel with a small smile. “I’ll show you the whole set-up.”

“Are we done here?” asks Quinn suddenly. He’s standing next to Harvest, but his attention is on his phone. Even as he types something, he says, barely glancing up, “Angel, you can go back to headquarters and begin looking through missing persons reports matching that description.”

“How far back?” asks Angel.

“Start with six months. I also want you to liaise with Magi-Tech. I want to see all of the security footage from last night. Wild, you’re coming with me to interview the night shift security guard.”

“What about me?” asks Harvest, arms folded across her chest. She still has her second-sight activated, but it doesn’t matter. Vampires don’t have auras, and she can see his blank gaze just fine.

“Go with Angel,” he replies, eyes already back on his phone as he walks away, Wild in tow.

“What was that about?” asks Hazel, eyes bouncing between the retreating figure of Quinn and Harvest.

Harvest shrugs and removes the glasses. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Right.” Hazel raises her eyebrows as she takes the glasses back, slipping them into their case.

Harvest can feel her cheeks getting warm and she shrugs again, folding her arms across her chest.

“He’s been under a lot of stress from the Council lately,” offers Angel, slipping their noteback back in the messenger bag slung across their chest.

Harvest sighs. “Again, I don’t know what you mean. He was perfectly professional.”

“Yeah, but,” says Angel, motioning vaguely. “He was a bit cold considering…”

“Considering what?” The words are so sharp, a bird perched on the tree branch above startles, sending a few leaves fluttering down on top of her head.

“Nothing,” says Angel. “You need a ride back to the office?”

She picks a leaf out of her hair with a sigh. “Yes, thanks.”