Harvest knows exactly when Quinn leaves: she feels his eyes on her back right before she hears the elevator doors ping closed. She waits a full ten minutes before snapping her laptop shut and gathering her things to leave.
Outside, the air is hot and muggy, spring turning into summer with ease. The bus stop is across the street, and she darts out of the building quickly, hoping to catch the number 7 that’s just turned the corner. She makes it, arms flailing to get the driver’s attention. She hops on, tapping her pass quickly and slipping into a seat.
This, of course, isn’t her typical bus—or at least, it’s not the bus that will take her to the townhouse she shares with Ronan. This one heads south east to Valkaria Bay Boardwalk and the defunct lighthouse-turned-bar that her boyfriend of four months owns. The bus ride is uneventful, and she spends the forty minutes going over everything Quinn said to her today. He’s been distant—perhaps taking a cue from her, she knows. But he’s always been cordial at work. He’s even held the elevator for her a few times. Said hello or goodbye. She hasn’t always been the most liked at the Bureau—her aunt’s position lends itself well to rumors of favoritism, but most warm up once they realize that Harvest isn’t afraid to work for her position. Quinn was never like that—not truly. He asked her once why she chose to become an agent and after that, he treated her like any other colleague.
Except that isn’t entirely true either, she reminds herself. Quinn has always treated her like a colleague and something more.
She thought she wanted that—whatever that something more could be. Until Christmas. Until she let her doubts and fear overcome her.
She shakes her head as she steps off the bus, pushing thoughts of Quinn to the back of her mind as she makes her way to the end of the boardwalk, where the lighthouse stands tall against the night sky. The bungalow at the base of the tall cylindrical tower houses the bar and when she enters, there is a part of her that hopes to see Quinn, head bent over a small glass of blood.
It would seem even the back of her mind is not far enough to keep him from her thoughts.
But the bar is sparsely populated tonight, especially considering it’s a Friday. Only a handful of regulars milling about. A bachelorette party takes up the corner, slurred lyrics being sung far too loudly. It’s still early in the evening, though, and she’s sure the bar will be packed come midnight. It’s a good thing the actual lighthouse tower is soundproof.
Anyway, she’s not sure what she would say to Quinn even if he was here. She took the coward’s way out, avoiding him after Christmas until she had no choice but to let him know that she had started dating Dominic.
Since then, she’s consoled herself with the knowledge that Quinn’s feelings for her were surface-level at best. He’s flirty by nature and likes to push boundaries, hers in particular. But most importantly, he’s changeable, his moods shifting at a sometimes dizzying rate. She had assumed he would quickly get over her rejection, if such a strong word can even be used to describe the situation. Dominic, in comparison, felt sturdy. Reliable. It’s what she needed after her previous relationship, which was tumultuous at best, and after witnessing someone die.
So, yes, she let the unknowns surrounding Quinn guide her decision and while her feelings for Dominic are beginning to take root, she regrets not talking to Quinn about what happened.
She researched the curse that killed Henry Faulkner and his childhood friends. With Angel’s help, she was able to create a timeline of symptoms and, if she’s correct, Rowena had at least two more hours of excruciating pain before her body was torn apart, halfway between human and her second-form.
Harvest wants to talk to Quinn about it, hear more about what he saw when he looked into Rowena’s mind, but he hasn’t stayed still long enough for her to corner him. When Fitz gave her the assignment, she had half hoped it would be a perfect opportunity to start the discussion. He can’t ignore her while she’s working with him on a case, after all.
She had clearly underestimated Quinn in this respect.
She makes her way through to the other side of the bar and out the back door, up the small flight of stairs that lead to the lighthouse tower. She lets herself into the studio apartment and smiles at the view from the open balcony doors and the cool sea breeze that greets her.
Dominic is standing by the kitchen island, flipping through a stack of mail. He looks up when she steps through the door and smiles wide, dropping the mail back to the counter, bills and offers to refinance loans forgotten as he presses a kiss to her cheek.
She leans into the touch with a contented sigh.
“You hungry?” he mumbles against her hair. “I can make dinner.”
She hesitates. She’s starving, but as a vampire, Dominic doesn’t eat food. His offer to make dinner is only for her, something she constantly feels guilt about. He works in a bar all day and then makes her food. She doesn’t want him to feel like he has to wait on her here, in his home. However, she doesn’t really possess any cooking skills herself. Ronan once tried to teach her how to make a grilled cheese, but he ended up taking over about halfway through.
“That’s okay. I’m not super hungry,” she lies, hoping he can’t hear her stomach. Quinn can always tell when she’s hungry. “I’ll just make a peanut butter sandwich.”
He grimaces. “I don’t know how you survive on those things.”
She shrugs. “How do you survive on only blood?”
He laughs and grabs her by the waist, halting her progress toward the loaf of bread on the counter behind him. “I don’t mind cooking. Or Jake downstairs can make you a burger.”
Jake, one of the cooks who works in the bar, does make a rather good burger and the offer is tempting, but she thinks of the laptop in her bag and the backlog of missing persons reports she needs to sift through before the morning.
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“A sandwich is fine. I have more work to do tonight anyway.”
“Let me know if you change your mind, I can—”
She interrupts him with a kiss on his lips. “I’ll be fine.”
She makes her sandwich and settles in on the couch, laptop balanced on her knee and a plate balanced in her hand. She looks out at the balcony, where the ocean turns into sapphires and purples. A complicated purple.
She takes a picture on her phone and sends it to Hazel. The reply comes back quickly: So complicated purple means ocean at 9:03 pm. Got it.
A few seconds later, she adds, Thank you punctuated with a heart.
Harvest smiles and turns back to her laptop, scrolling through entries while Dominic watches a history documentary on the small television set on top of the scratched cedar dresser against the wall. When she finishes her sandwich, she shifts so that her computer is in her lap and her feet are in Dominic’s lap. She catches snippets of the documentary as she scrolls, and she wonders if he finds it weird to listen to people talking, sometimes cluelessly, about something he’s lived through. This particular one is about the Roman Empire, and he clicks it off halfway through with an annoyed grunt.
“Did they get something wrong?” she asks.
“What? Oh, no.” He stretches, extending his legs forward to rest on the coffee table. His hands absentmindedly massage her feet. “Or maybe. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”
She knows very little about his past—and Quinn’s by extension—and she is starving for more, truth be told. It’s become a bit of an inside joke, lately, with her making thinly veiled guesses about his age and him giving her increasingly cryptic answers that only bring up more questions. So far she has narrowed down the options to before the Renaissance but definitely after the Iron Age, which is to say that she hasn’t narrowed it down at all.
He smiles and her stomach flutters. He really is quite attractive. “Always investigating, uh?” He gently taps her feet, silently asking her to move so he can get up. “Want something to drink?”
“Water, please,” she asks, her attention falling back to her computer screen and her endless scrolling through missing persons reports.
----------------------------------------
The call comes at two in the morning, the sound jarring Harvest awake. She jumps up, heart pounding against her ribcage as she blindly reaches for her phone. A light switches on and the phone is placed in her hand by Dominic.
It’s Angel.
“Sorry to wake you, but we got a hit on our MPU request and they want you to come verify the identity. Quinn is on the way to pick you up.”
“Right. Okay,” she says, swinging her legs over the side of the bed as Angel rattles off the address. “No, wait. That’s on the opposite side of town…”
“Quinn is the only one free to pick you up,” Angel says.
She nods, then belatedly remembers that Angel can’t see her. “Fine. Okay. I’ll be ready. Tell him I’ll meet him outside.”
She hangs up and drops her phone on the bedside table as she attempts to wake up.
“Everything okay?” asks Dominic, rubbing her shoulders.
She sighs and leans back against him. “Yeah, just…a new development. Quinn is picking me up soon.”
He kisses her neck and she smiles, leaning farther, shifting to give him better access. She makes a grunt of protest. “I need to get ready.” She reluctantly slides away from him and makes her way to the bathroom.
When she emerges ten minutes later, she is marginally more awake, with her hair tied back in a loose ponytail and soft smudge of concealer under her eyes. The smell of freshly brewed coffee mingles with the salt breeze coming in through the open balcony doors, and she smiles gratefully as Dominic hands her a travel mug.
Quinn is waiting in his car when she makes her way down the stairs and to the surface lot next to the Lighthouse. Quinn gives her a curt nod of greeting when she slips into the passenger seat, and he begins to drive away before she’s even fastened the seatbelt.
After a few minutes of silence, she asks, “Do we have any details yet?”
He gives her a disinterested grunt, glancing in the rearview mirror.
“Who’s the lead agent on the missing persons case?”
“They didn’t say.”
“Didn’t say or you didn’t ask?”
“We’ll find out when we get there.”
“I suppose you have more important things on your mind.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Am I supposed to be offended by that?”
“Just seems like you don’t really care much about this one. Or is it me you don’t care for?”
“I don’t care for your criticism,” he says. “Not everything is about you.”
“A woman died—”
“Women die all the time, little witch. I’ve worked on hundreds of cases like this and I’ve solved almost every single one of them. If you have a complaint with my leadership, then take it up with your aunt.”
“My aunt?”
“She’s on the Council. She could get you reassigned in a heartbeat.”
“I’m not ratting you out to my aunt.”
“Then, I guess we’re stuck together for a little while longer.”
“Fine,” she says, folding her arms across her chest.
The rest of the car ride goes by in heavy silence and when Quinn finally pulls up to their destination, she’s grateful for the commotion that greets them outside of the townhouse. The heavy silence sitting between them dissipates as she nods hello to the agent from the Missing Persons Unit who she knows by sight but not by name. There’s no time for introductions now though. The MPU agent latches onto Quinn and together, along with Wild, they make their way down the tiny entry hall to the kitchen, where a man sits, clutching a cup of tea and staring out of the darkened window. Harvest isn’t sure if he can even see anything out of the window; all she can see is his reflection staring blankly at nothing.
A light touch on Harvest’s arm brings her attention to Angel. “Bedroom is upstairs.”
Harvest follows, blinking into her second-sight and slipping on Hazel’s glasses helpfully handed to her by a Magi-Tech associate in a paper suit. She follows this with white cotton gloves.
“Victim is Professor Aila Jones,” says Angel. “When she didn’t come home, the husband called a few hours ago.”
“Why did MPU move so fast?” It’s only been six months since she transferred to SCD, and the protocol is fresh in her mind: unless the victim is high-risk (mentally unstable, or under the age of seventeen, for example), they must be missing for over twenty-four hours before an investigation is deemed necessary.
“After initial questioning, there was some question as to how long she’s actually been missing. He hasn’t had any contact with her since Thursday.”
Harvest moves closer to the bed, eyes tracking the auratic trail from the right side of the bed to the ensuite bathroom at the far end of the room and to the wardrobe by the window that looks out onto the street below. Harvest lets her fingers trail along the quilt for a moment and then, with a weary sigh, she lowers the glasses and looks over her shoulder at Angel. “It’s her.”