Leon Cruz was seventeen when his high school girlfriend, Maisie Myer, drowned at Deadman’s Cove. After fulfilling community service for underage drinking, he, like Henry Faulkner and Sunny Blackwood, left Ilton.

And very much like Faulkner and Blackwood, he’s also dead.

The microwave beeps, and a puff of steam greets Wild as he opens the door. He can hear Angel’s voice filtering in from the room just beyond as they talk to the agent who is investigating Leon Cruz’s death, Marie Nguyen, who works for the Bureau office in Texas.

Agent Ngyuen was marginally annoyed at being bothered on Christmas Eve. But that’s the job, isn’t it, thinks Wild. It’s interrupting holiday dinners and getting phone calls late at night.

While Angel handled the phone call, Wild wandered off to find food. He managed to snag two frozen burritos from the communal fridge in the break room, and they currently rest on paper plates, which he is carrying back to their desks. It’s certainly not the feast of his childhood, tables overflowing with honeyed ham and sugared plums, towers of candied apples and spiced wine turning his lips red and sweet, fuel to dance for days on end.

He much prefers this, he thinks, making his way to Angel who is hunched over their desk, studiously taking notes and nodding along to something Nguyen is saying.

He places the burrito in front of Angel just as they hang up the phone. They absentmindedly take a bite and then wince.

“Still hot,” he says, a second too late.

Angel scowls at Wild’s ineffective warning and holds their hand above the burrito, fingers pinched together like they’re about to sprinkle salt on top. However, when Angel rubs their fingers together, there are no herbs or seasoning, but an invisible wave of cool air.

Wild looks down at his burrito, then holds it out to Angel with a lopsided smile. Angel likes to think that Wild’s charm doesn’t work on them, but he learned a long time ago that it does, almost without fail. Angel may be tough to read upon first meeting, but Wild knows it’s hiding something soft and empathetic underneath. He wishes they shared it with more people.

While Angel cools Wild’s burrito to the perfect eating temperature, he asks about the conversation with Agent Nguyen.

“Leon Cruz, witch, age fifty-nine. Died three days ago. Autopsy was inconclusive, but she said she’d send it over anyway, along with the timeline of Cruz’s movements leading up to his death. She gave me the wife’s contact info, but I want to avoid calling her on Christmas Eve, if we can.”

Wild nods, taking a bite of his burrito. It tastes stale, and he drops it back onto the paper plate with a sigh. “It can’t be easy dealing with a death during the holidays.”

“Death during the holidays sounds like one of those cheap paperbacks my abuela likes to read.”

“Those are always so predictable. It’s always the first person you suspect.”

“And who do we suspect for this one?”

“Rowena Little? The people involved with this accident seem to be dropping like flies, and she’s the only one left.”

“Yeah, but nothing comes up when I run her name. She doesn’t have any social media accounts. No mentions in any websites or newspapers as far as I can tell.”

Angel’s computer dings. “Nguyen came through with Cruz’s post-mortem.” They scroll through it, reading snippets under their breath. “What I really want is to compare this with Blackwood.”

“Let’s do that, then.”

----------------------------------------

The morgue is quiet, and it makes Wild uneasy. He is High-Fae and immortal by birthright. Death is not a common occurrence among his family, and he has rarely ever thought about his own death, seeing it as a vague, abstract idea more than an eventuality.

Angel, who is not immortal, seems at ease with the concept of their eventual demise. Perhaps it is because they know what happens at the end: they have had enough run-ins with ghosts to have an idea.

The elevator doors open. Wild and Angel are confronted not just with the cold, antiseptic smell of the lab, but with a blast of jazz music. Wild glances at Angel, his expression equal levels of confusion and amusement, before pushing open the door to the lab.

Hudson, the pathologist for the Blackwood case, is nodding along to trilling trumpets while leaning very closely to a corpse of an older woman. He extracts something from the eye of the woman, then holds it up in the light briefly, before dropping it onto a metal tray.

“Hello,” he says, without turning around. “Here about Blackwood?” When he does turn, he gives them an irritated look. “I heard you coming down.”

Wild remembers that Hudson is a fae-shifter, but even without this knowledge, it’s his eyes that give him away: large, round, and expressive, reflecting the light above in a flash of green. His slightly pointed ears and high cheekbones lead Wild to think that he is cù-sìth, a fae whose second-form is that of a dog. His hearing would be far superior to that of a human, or even a typical dog.

Angel confirms that they are there to check up on the Blackwood results. “We understand that it’s a holiday—”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

“—but you need the report now. Yeah, I get it.” Hudson turns back to the body in front of him, and appears to forget their presence.

Wild watches the emotions flit across Angel’s face as they wait for Hudson to turn back around. Caught between indignation and a glittering sort of amusement at Hudson’s brashness, Angel quirks their head to the side.

“Well,” they begin, “as long as you understand the gravity of the situation. I suppose it would be too much to ask for an estimated completion time?”

“Far too much,” replies Hudson, selecting a scalpel. He holds it up to the light, decides it looks sharp enough, and brings it down to the corpse’s hand.

Angel closes their eyes, and Wild wonders if they are counting to ten in their head, as he once, somewhat jokingly, suggested they try.

It doesn’t seem to work.

Angel shakes their head and moves around to face Hudson, arms folded across their chest. “Look, I know you have a duty to every deceased person who comes through here, but my partner and I are investigating a murder and it is—”

“—of the utmost importance. Yes, I understand. Sunny Blackwood’s autopsy is next on my list.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“When will you be able to get to it?”

“Later.”

“Later when?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and before Angel can gather their wits for a retort, he adds, as if it pains him to do so, “But I can do it as soon as I finish with Mrs. Gamble.”

Angel looks like they are trying very hard to swallow their anger and they succeed, somewhat—though their cheeks are flushed and their jawline is set like stone. “Thank you, that would be much appreciated. We’ll wait over there.”

“I can call—”

“We’ll wait.”

----------------------------------------

Harvest looks over at Quinn, his profile lined in blue from the television screen. After dinner, Harvest had tried to rouse the group into more holiday festivities but there was a dull mood all around.

Harvest understands: the word murder is hanging over all of their thoughts.

The island is small and the news of Henry Faulkner’s death has permeated even the snow drifts outside, turning the evening into a gloomy gray. Harvest feels as if she should be poring over the case file, even now, when there is not much else to do besides wait for the post-mortem.

Perhaps this is why she was so adamantly trying to bring some cheer back into the evening by watching a holiday movie. Quinn was gracious enough to stay up with her under the guise of never having seen this particular movie before, though she’s sure it’s more to do with the fact that he doesn’t require sleep and would otherwise be in the guestroom, distractedly doing a crossword on his phone.

By tacit agreement, they do not discuss the case, preferring the buffer. It is hard to sleep when murder is so close to their thoughts. Better to swap those thoughts with lightly-concealed disbelief at the unlikely antics involving a surprisingly attractive Santa Clause and a runaway dog.

But the movie barely captures her attention, and she finds her gaze wandering toward Quinn, who is sitting on the sofa next to her, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankle. His arm resting on the back of the couch seems to highlight the distance between them. She shifts closer. “Can I ask you a question?” she asks.

“Can I stop you?”

“No. What about your childhood?” She angles her head toward the television screen, where the main character is sharing a poignant story from their youth. “Do you remember it?”

“Bits and pieces.”

“When was it?” she asks casually, attention on the pale yellow liquid in her glass.

“Fuit olim.”

She rolls her eyes. “Latin tells me nothing. You could have been a priest at one point.” She pauses. “Were you? A priest?”

“Maybe. The centuries do blur together sometimes.”

She laughs and seems to shift closer. “And you’ve known Dominic for as long as you’ve been a vampire?”

“Before that, even. We were friends.”

“He asked me out. I haven’t replied yet.”

“He’s a big boy. He can handle rejection.”

“What if I said yes?”

He considers her for a brief moment, lips soft and eyes reflecting the twinkling lightbulbs floating around them. “You’re drunk,” he says quietly.

“Barely.”

“You should get some sleep.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” He reaches out to touch her hair, playing with a strand that has fallen forward from behind her ear.

“Brush it off. You do it all the time when you don’t want to show emotion. You’re hiding.”

“I’m an open book.”

“That’s a lie.”

“I never claimed to be honest.”

“Oh, yes, I forgot. All good relationships are built on lies,” she says, recalling a conversation from a few months ago. Lies keep relationships intact, he said. It’s honesty that tears people apart.

“I never said that’s what made a good relationship.”

“So what makes a good relationship?”

“Being well rested, for starters.”

Her lips tighten as she attempts to hide the yawn gathering in the back of her throat. She scoffs, but, still, she switches off the television and allows him to guide her upstairs. His hand is on her back, and she can feel the warmth through her sweater. He removes his hand as they stand in front of her door, and she misses the feel of it immediately.

Before opening the door, she turns, only half-thinking, her movements propelled by the coldness on her back from where his touch should be and the wine she can still taste on her lips. She places a hand on his chest, reluctant to let him leave. The door to her bedroom stands next to them with a sense of finality that makes her inordinately sad.

Quinn covers her hand with his own and smirks down at her, showing a canine tooth that is a little too pointy. He leans close. His breath is warm and honeyed from the wine. His skin is warm, too, or maybe that’s her skin.

Suddenly she is aware of every inch of her body and where it is in relation to him. She can feel the door against her back and his thigh against her own.

He reaches up and gently turns her chin, to press a kiss against her cheek, just shy of her lips, which suddenly ache to be touched.

She feels the kiss in her belly, her breath frozen in her chest. She feels as if they are wrapped in a delicate spell, and the tiniest movement will break the strands of mischief.

He pulls back, slightly, and she thinks he will kiss her properly. Instead, he glances upward and whatever he sees makes him smirk. When his gaze travels slowly back to hers, she feels his breath on her lips and his eyes are like molten gold, he says, “Good night, my little witch.”

She closes her eyes for a second, and when she re-opens them, she just catches a glimpse of the door at the end of the hall closing. She glances up, wondering what made him smirk, and sees a sprig of mistletoe hanging above her bedroom door.

----------------------------------------

She did try running away. She tried and fell so many times, lost in the dark. The cold, unmoving stone is still at her back.

How foolish she feels. She is a child again. Red cheeks burning with unknown feelings. She is lost, and it’s her own fault, a curse of her own making.

She shouldn’t have come here. It was a bad idea. But Leo said…well, Leo said the first thing that pops into his head. He always does. Henry went along with it, or at least, he didn’t have any objections. It’ll be good, he said. It’ll be fun.

She reaches out in front of her again, testing the air, but there is still nothing there.

Just emptiness.