Professor Aila Jones was supposed to be home Thursday evening after dinner with her sister. Her husband, Craig Jones, came home around eleven after a few drinks with some coworkers. He stumbled up the stairs and went to sleep, hardly aware that his wife’s side of the bed was empty.
Wild perches on the arm of the couch, his wings making it the only comfortable place for him to sit. “And when you woke Friday morning? You didn’t realize that she hadn’t been home?”
Harvest isn’t surprised Quinn tapped Wild to lead the interview. He’s easily the most amiable and gentle member of SDS, and with Craig’s strained, pale expression, Harvest almost worries that the wrong word could topple him over. He runs a hand through his hair, which is already mussed from hours of similar movements. “She—she doesn’t always sleep in the bed. She would fall asleep on the couch most nights. I snore.”
“And when you woke up in the morning?”
Craig’s leg begins to jiggle. “I went to the gym. She wasn’t home, but I figured she had left for the day already.”
“So when did you begin to worry?”
“Tonight. Or, yesterday. Friday.”
Wild makes a note. Harvest glances over at Quinn who stands in the back of the room, leaning against the doorframe. Angel is still upstairs, collecting evidence, documenting things with Magi-Tech. Harvest should probably be upstairs, too, but there’s something off about Craig that’s bothering her. There’s an anxiousness to his aura—more than she would expect. Typically, grieving auras are gray, solid. There’s a heaviness to them. Craig Jones is…jittery. And it makes her nervous. She’s sure he’s hiding something. But is it that he killed his wife and left her body at the base of a fiery magical rosebush to burn away the evidence?
“So when would you say was the last time you saw your wife, Mr. Jones?”
His leg starts jiggling again. “Thursday morning. I think.”
“Is that normal for you two? Seems like a long time to not see your wife.” From anyone else, it would sound accusing. But Wild smiles crookedly with just the right amount of charm, meaning he comes across more as a fae ignorant of mortal customs.
“She said she was going over to her sister’s after work on Thursday. Olive just had a baby. She’s been spending a lot of time over there, helping out.”
“Your wife taught at Valkaria-Grim College? Is that right?”
He nods. “Elemental Magic. Her subject was water.”
“Did you talk on the phone anytime in between then? A quick text throughout the day?”
Craig blinks numbly at Wild. “Probably.”
“Would you mind if we looked at your phone? Just to see when you and your wife last spoke.”
Craig pales but nods quickly, handing his phone over to the nearest Bureau agent, which is Harvest. She accepts the sleek block of plastic with gloved hands. “We’ll get it back to you as soon as possible,” she tells him quietly, slipping it into a cotton bag. She hands the evidence bag to a Magi-Tech associate.
“So, let’s go back to yesterday evening,” continues Wild, gently. “You came home from the gym.”
Craig nods. “The house was empty. Her car was gone. I made a sandwich and then…just waited. Watched TV. ”
“So what made you begin to worry?”
“It started to get dark. I called her. It went straight to voicemail. I tried her sister. But she hadn’t seen her. I even called her TA up at the school. But he said Aila hadn’t been in all day. That’s when I called you.” He sinks back into the chair, head in his hands. He sniffs and then looks back up, eyes lined in redness. “You’re sure it’s her?”
Quinn answers, using that perfect mix of quiet efficiency and gentleness that she hasn’t yet been able to replicate. “We still have a post-mortem to perform, but…” He glances at Harvest. “We’re certain it’s her. We’re sorry for your loss, Mr. Jones.”
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The sun is high in the sky when Harvest steps out onto the sidewalk. She looks back at the house and blinks to see Professor Jones’s aura fading. She used to think twenty-four hours was a long time for an aura to last, to fill up a space even when the person had moved on. But, now, it seems laughably fleeting—the tiniest concession from some nameless deity she isn’t even sure she believes in. She takes a deep breath, then turns back to Quinn.
“I want to check the husband’s alibi first thing. His heart rate was through the roof. He might be lying about something,” he is saying. “And now that we have an identity, I want to look into any connections with the garden. Is there any reason she would have been there after hours? Did she visit recently? Does she know any employees? Especially the guard. Have we contacted her yet?”
“I stopped by again yesterday,” says Wild. “Still no answer, but I talked to the next door neighbor a little bit. And unless we need to know that Emily watches nature documentaries too loud or that she never parks straight, it wasn’t a very productive conversation.”
“If it comes to it, we’ll put a uniform outside the building to keep an eye out for her.”
Angel is making notes as Quinn talks, nodding along. “So we’re treating it as a murder?”
“Until the post-mortem tells us otherwise. Which I doubt it will. I want a timeline as soon as possible. We’ve already lost time thanks to the fire rose….whatever it’s called. Angel, I want you to head to the school. Talk to coworkers. Find out if she had any enemies. When she was last seen. Wild, you’re with me. We’re going to talk to the sister.”
“What about me?” asks Harvest
He pauses, hands in his pockets, and for a brief moment, his gaze feels like fire—like she stuck her head right into the Asheim Rose. Whatever he’s thinking is slipped behind a wall again. “Thank you for your assistance in identifying the body,” he says cordially. “Do you need a ride back to the office? We can get a uniform—”
“I don’t need to go back to the office.” She takes a step closer, lowering her voice. “You’re dismissing me?”
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He leans forward, too, and she catches a whiff of his sandalwood and amber scent. His face is blank—neutral—but she knows him well enough to know that he’s hiding something from her. She still feels the heat of his look from a few seconds ago on her cheeks. “You were assigned to this case to help us identify the victim. You have. Job complete.”
She shakes her head. “I was assigned to assist you in this case because SDS have been overrun with—”
“Criticizing my leadership again?” His voice is tinged with an anger that she doesn’t expect and it almost feels like a slap.
She leans back, head cocked to the side. She’s certain he’s hiding something from her now. Her second-sight might not work on vampires, but she’s always been able to read him. “That’s not what I’m saying at all and you know it.” She pauses, takes a breath. “You can’t just dismiss me. That’s not your call. Did I do something wrong?”
“We don’t need you anymore,” he says stiffly.
She pushes aside the instinctual feeling that when he says, “we,” he means, “I.” Instead, she says, “That’s hardly fair.”
He scoffs. “Life isn’t fair, little witch.”
“Don’t do this.” She steps even closer. A flush of warmth suffuses the back of her neck as she feels the eyes of their coworkers darting their way, half-listening to their argument but pretending, poorly, that nothing noteworthy is happening. “Not here.”
He arches an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
It’s her turn to scoff. “You’ve been avoiding me since Christmas, but you’ve at least been nice at work. What’s changed?”
“Nothing.” He leans closer to her, voice low, though his volume has nothing to do with keeping their conversation private and everything to do with his scathing tone. “And anyway, avoidance goes both ways.”
“I—” She takes a deep breath. “You still can’t take me off this case. That’s not your call. Fitz assigned me.”
“I thought you’d be happy.”
“You thought wrong.”
“It’d be easier to avoid me if we weren’t working on the same case.”
“I’m not avoiding you.”
He shakes his head, disappointed. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“That’s fine. I can live with that.”
“What else can you live with?” That fire in his gaze is back, and it’s spread to his voice as well. If he was touching her, she’d be worried he was using compulsion on her, his voice turned honey-sweet as it ghosts against her lips.
She swallows against the swoop in her belly caused by that voice. “You’re being childish. Whatever you’re trying to say, just come out with it.”
A muscle in his jaw clenches, unclenches. “I’m being childish? I’m not the one who’s been acting as if everything is okay when it clearly isn’t. Maybe you should take your own advice. Stop skirting the real issue.”
“I don’t know what—”
“You’re mad at me for what happened at Christmas, and instead of talking about it, you’ve been running away. Hiding behind work.”
“I’m not running away—”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I’m afraid of you.” The words tumble out of her mouth before she realizes it. Her voice skips in the middle, too, the sounds filled with barbs that snag on her teeth. The lie burns at the back of her throat like acid.
Quinn barely pauses. “Good. You should be.” He turns his back on her. “Wild, with me, we’re going to interview the family. Angel, go to the school. Talk to her co-workers, find out who saw her last.” He waves a dismissive hand in Harvest’s direction. “Take Harvest with you if you want.”
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Harvest blinks back tears which Angel tactfully ignores.
“You want to talk about it?” Angel asks, eyes trained on the road.
“How much of it did you hear?”
“All of it,” Angel says with a grimace.
Harvest lets her head fall back against the headrest. “It’s not true. I don’t even really know why I said it.”
“There’s a lot that’s unknown about Quinn. I think it’s natural to have some reservations about him.”
“Do you have reservations about him?
Angel shrugs. “I have reservations about everyone until they prove themselves to me. But I’ve only ever known him as a boss. You, on the other hand…” They glance at Harvest. “He cares about you in a way he would never care about me. About just a normal agent.”
Harvest isn’t sure how to respond to this. She knows there is a connection between her and Quinn—but to have it confirmed by an outside source, makes her heart beat frantically. Worse—Angel has worked at the Bureau long enough to know that it’s strongly discouraged for agents to become romantically involved. Does everyone know? She hopes not. Her career would be over even before it truly begins.
Angel turns down the dirt road that leads to Valkaria-Grim College of the Arcane. The magical school lies to the west of Valkaria city limits, not too far from the unspoken southern line. The southern residents know it as a nature preserve, which is off-limits due to the almost constant reports of a wild boar infestation. In truth, the school is surrounded by acres of pine trees to keep it secret, certainly, but also to give the students complete freedom to engage in their craft without worrying about non-magic onlookers.
The school looms above them, a repurposed masonry star fort made of coquina with a modern metal and glass structure rising up from the center. The sun winks at them from behind the center tower.
“Did you go to Valkaria-Grim?” asks Angel, peering up at the school.
“No, I had the option, but I was never that into school. Hazel did though. She wanted the full traditional academic experience.”
“You didn’t do any higher learning?” asks Angel. As a witch, Angel would know that the typical course for promising young witches is to finish grade school and then move onto a more intensive magical learning, either formally at an academic institution like Valkaria-Grim or with an apprenticeship under a recognized practitioner or matron of a coven.
“An apprenticeship,” answers Harvest, still squinting up at the school. “With Matron Kelly.” She shrugs. “What about you?”
“I’m a second generation Mexican-American witch. There were certain expectations about my future and how it would look,” says Angel, maneuvering the car into a parking space in the small surface lot off to the side. “An apprenticeship was a given. A four-year degree from a university was encouraged. A career in a mundane but lucrative field was expected, followed by marriage, house, kids, church every Sunday, and all that.”
“I’m assuming Bureau agent is not on that list?”
“Correct.” Angel turns off the car and once they both exit, continues. “I did do an apprenticeship, though. I studied under Librarian Vásquez with a specialization in handling magically volatile archival materials.” Angel laughs lightly. “But to be honest, it was too quiet.”
“I know the feeling,” says Harvest as they walk toward the main entrance. The wooden door reinforced with iron is more than double her height and stands open during the posted hours of 7:00 am and 7:00 pm. A badge is required for access outside of the hours. The damp stone entryway is cold compared to outside, and it takes a moment for her eyes to adjust to the shift in light. The entryway branches off in three directions. The Elemental Magic and Divination wings are to the left and Practical Alchemy and Spellcraft are to the right. The path forward leads to the center of the school, where the glass and metal dome reaches up out of the central courtyard. The sign screwed into the stone wall informs visitors that it houses administration offices on top and a library on the bottom which extends even further down, into the subterranean levels.
Angel consults the map hanging on the wall. “The Dean’s office is in the center,” they say, squinting to read the fine line details of the etching.
They pass out of the entrance and into the decidedly more modern wing of the school, though the flagstone floor remains the same throughout. The hallway that leads to the heart of the school is flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows that look out onto the rough coquina of the historic fort. Dappled sunlight washes over Harvest as she follows behind Angel.
Angel locates the Dean’s Office and introduces them both to the assistant, who promptly picks up the phone to let Dean St. James know that the Bureau agents have arrived.
“You can go on through,” says the assistant, before returning swiftly to her computer screen.