Quinn swats at a mosquito. He’s standing on the balcony of the Rosenbloom Estate, though he would much rather be on the ferry he can see in the distance, already halfway to the mainland.
When he called down to The Pearl’s front desk to request medical assistance, he didn’t realize that the island’s only doctor would be Commissioner Rosenbloom’s wife and Harvest’s aunt. Aunt Bea, as she emphatically suggested he call her, promptly proclaimed Harvest to be haunted and whisked her away to her childhood room.
“She must have pulled Amy’s spirit with her when she dismantled the illusion. She’ll need to rest at home for the night,” Dr. Rosenbloom said, her purple eyes far too calculating for Quinn’s taste. He has a feeling this is a perfectly acceptable form of quality family time for her, and she is making good use of the excuse. “You’re more than welcome to stay the night, Agent Quinn. I’ll have Francine make up the guest bedroom.”
Francine, it turns out, is the house ghost, who took one look at Harvest and agreed that yes, she did quite a good job at getting herself haunted. Then she looked at Quinn with an expression he wasn’t sure he appreciated—a look halfway between shy and seductive. He’s sure if ghosts could blush, Francine would have had a fine dusting of pink across her cheeks.
He’s lucky he was able to extract himself from her watchful gaze and is, for once, astonished that “work” seems to be a permissible excuse to a woman, no matter her state of living.
The Rosenbloom Estate is on the edge of the island, on a beach front plot edged with pine trees. Surprisingly, the house itself is not an imposing structure; it is a welcoming Queen Anne painted pink with a bright red door. Honeysuckle bushes line the wrap-around porch, and a seashell wind chime jingles gently in the breeze, accompanied by the creak of a rocking chair.
Quinn wonders if the chair is pushed by the wind or if there is another ghost floating around. He wouldn’t be surprised if the entire Rosenbloom clan considers this plot of land their eternal resting place.
It would explain why the ground around the house feels heavy with something that Quinn can only assume is mischief. It’s the same suffocating feeling in his chest that he felt when he stepped foot on Ilton, only here it is intensified, like an open-mouthed demon sitting on his chest, its breath wet and hot.
Then again, maybe it’s just the weather. He feels like he is in a greenhouse, and the wealth of verdant, lush plants that pepper nearly every inch of Rosenbloom land, as well as the house itself, add to the effect.
Even standing on the back porch and looking out at the beach view below, he can smell ripe strawberries, apples, and oranges. There is a faint whiff of green beans, tomatoes, and kale, too. There’s more, he’s sure—but the fresh, green smells are mingling together, and Quinn doesn’t have the time or energy to sort them out.
There is something otherworldly about it all that makes him wonder how much is the result of a skilled gardener or the machinations of a witch.
The mosquitoes feel somehow bigger here, too, lazily swirling around him with round bellies full of blood mocking him and the hollowness in his own stomach.
With tight gums and teeth too sharp, he found himself diligently maintaining a neutral expression while meeting Harvest’s father, Theodore. He would rather come off as rude than see the fear that inevitably blooms in people’s faces when they are reminded of his true nature. Theodore Rosenbloom looked kindly enough, but there was a gruffness to his greeting that hinted at a forthcoming “What are your intentions toward my daughter?” spiel, and his interminable damnation would not be a point in his favor.
As it stands, of course, his only intention is to use her unintentional connection to Amy to solve this case.
He’s left Harvest resting upstairs, in a bedroom that looks like it was decorated when she was thirteen, while he calls Angel and Wild with their latest update. He tells them about Harvest and their delay, explaining the haunting as thoroughly as he can.
“So, there’s a chain? Connecting them?” asks Wild.
“I guess you’ll be having a seance, then,” says Angel excitedly and with a hint of envy.
He then asks about the shooting at Tabitha’s, and Angel confirms that one of Locke’s bodyguards is Roderick.
“Fitz said that he managed to make bail, though something tells me that Roderick had a little help there,” Wild says. “And we’re wondering why Roderick is important enough to spend so much money on.”
Quinn asks about requesting surveillance on Roderick, and Wild volunteers to put in the request. Angel is uncertain, though. “SCD is busy with these thefts,” they point out. “I’m not sure they’ll want to pull anyone from it. Fitz is up to her eyeballs in surveillance requests already.”
There is frustration in Angel’s voice, a flat tone that he’s sure matches his own. He thinks about the separate pieces of this case and how, despite the lack of evidence, everything circles back to Hazel Rosenbloom. It was her cryptic “Help” scrawled on a grubby postcard that set everything in motion. If only she would come to them, instead of them wasting time and resources to find her.
Although he’s said that Hazel is not a suspect, the reality is that she has been his number one suspect from the very beginning. Despite his cynical nature, he hasn’t had the heart to tell Harvest.
After he says goodbye to Wild and Angel, Quinn calls Dominic. As the phone rings, he watches the sunset with a grimace and swats at another mosquito.
When Dominic picks up, Quinn can hear the chaos of the Lighthouse in the background. He waits while Dominic moves to a quieter area, and Quinn imagines him standing in the storage room, the one with a suspiciously dark stain on the floor.
When prompted, Quinn says, “You lied.”
“Probably,” says Dominic, easily. Quinn can hear the smile in his tone. “What is this about?”
“Amy. Our murder victim.”
“I didn’t lie,” he says. “Angel showed me the picture. I didn’t recognize her.”
“So, you’re not Nico?”
There is a long pause on the other end. And then, “She didn’t look like she did in the picture. And she didn’t go by the name Amy. If they’re even the same person.”
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“Well, don’t stop there, Nico.”
“I haven’t used that name since my original contract with Locke, and that’s still true. I’m serious, brother. I haven’t done any work for him since…” He lets the sentence hang, knowing he doesn’t have to say the words for the memory to resurface or for Quinn to understand. They both remember that night when Dominic came to Quinn with bloodied fingernails and the weight of guilt on his chest. “But around four months ago, a witch showed up asking for Nico. She was sent there by Ozias, who knew about me because of Locke.”
The witch, as Dominic describes her, sounds similar to Amy, though a few years older, with longer hair and a slightly curvier body. Despite the differences—and the fact that she called herself Audrey—Quinn is ready to assume that Amy had been dabbling in illusion spells, despite her apparent lack of a gift.
“It was a casual thing. Nothing serious.”
“And she’s the only one who would call you Nico? There’s no one else?”
“I corrected her the first time I met her. Everyone else in that crowd knows me as Dominic. She said it was our thing. I stopped bothering to correct her at some point.”
“The crowd. Is that Locke or Ozias?”
“It started off as Locke, but more and more of them seem to answer to Ozias now. I don’t know what Audrey did for either of them or even if she worked for Locke at all. Ozias sent her to try to convince me to let them use the Lighthouse as storage for incoming shipments. The answer was always no.”
“Did you ever see Audrey with Hazel?”
“If I did, I wasn’t paying attention. It gets busy some nights and I do work from time to time.”
“Did you love her?” Quinn asks, even though he knows what the answer will be.
“Almost,” replies Dominic, though there is a catch in his voice that hints at more.
Quinn watches the ocean waves in the distance, the sun dipping down closer to the diamond-tipped waters. “Was the sex good at least?” he asks, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Dominic huffs. “Yeah.” A pause. “Are you around? Do you want to come over later for a drink?”
“Wish I could,” he says, telling Dominic that he is stuck on Ilton with Harvest until the morning, though he doesn’t explain more than that.
He’s not even sure how to, if he’s being honest. Harvest looked so pale and feverish. Fragile, he thinks. The wound on her neck was well on its way to healing, but in the hours since she collapsed, her wrist had only gotten worse.
“How does Burrows feel about that?”
“It’s work. She understands.”
“Well, let me know when you’re back on the mainland.” As they say goodbye, he adds, as if he can hear the tightness in Quinn’s voice, “Get some blood in you. Eat a few crickets if you have to.”
When Quinn hangs up, his annoyance is amplified by the truth in Dominic’s words as much as the gnawing emptiness of his stomach. He is so annoyed that he almost ignores the incoming call from Burrows.
Yet, it is the consideration that it could be about the case and not, as he assumes, about them that pushes him to accept the call with a silent curse.
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It’s weird being back on Ilton, looking out at a view so familiar yet broken by the incongruity of Quinn. He stands on the back porch, talking on his phone and scowling at the sunset. Harvest comes to stand next to him and rubs her arms against the brisk seaside breeze, suppressing a shudder at the sudden chill.
He gives her a sharp look, mouthing, “What’s wrong?”
“Just cold,” she says softly.
Quinn shrugs out of his jacket, still listening intently to the phone, and places it around her shoulders. She breathes in the smell of him, something that reminds her of earth aching from the sun, black tea, and spices, a hint of pennyroyal on the edges. Her arm twinges as she squeezes the jacket around herself, and she grits her teeth against the pain.
Aunt Bea has wrapped her wrist after laying down a thick layer of salve, which, although it is helping, has not reached its full efficacy yet. Her exhaustion remains, as well, and she feels a yawn growing in the back of her throat. She feels almost drunk and delirious like everything is a dream.
And perhaps it is. She could never have imagined introducing Quinn to her family, seeing him here on the island, surrounded by the unruly, feral nature of her family home. He is as put-together as usual, wearing his waistcoat and shirt buttoned up. She misses the casual, undone version of him from the night before, shirt half-buttoned and hair all messy.
Not that she would ever say that out loud. The lack of boundaries between them has been wildly unprofessional, particularly here on the island.
She’s glad she came clean with him about her motivation for roping him into this. His assurances that she has not, somehow, manipulated him into doing something he otherwise wouldn’t have has not completely eradicated the twisting, dark feeling in her chest, but she feels lighter nonetheless. Ezra always made her feel that her empathy was exploitative, and yet Quinn told her that there’s no harm in recognizing what motivates people. She’s seen Quinn do the same when dealing with co-workers or interviewing Amy’s parents. She’s not naive enough to think that Quinn does so out of a wealth of empathic ability, but she’s sure she can temper the darker sides of herself to be more like him.
There is a sharp stabbing in her wrist again and she closes her eyes as the pain rushes through her. It’s getting worse, the pain, the fever sitting right underneath her skin. She’s glad to know and understand what’s happening to her, though. Her aunt has given her a slip of paper with an address and the name of someone who specializes in communicating with the dead. Ironically enough, the slip of paper is from her prescription pad.
Diagnosis: Haunting. Treatment: See expert.
They will catch the first ferry out of Ilton in the morning. In the meantime, Harvest sighs against the exhaustion, feeling grateful for the sound of the ocean and the comfort of her family home. Even Francine’s fussing isn’t tiresome.
“Thanks. Talk later,” Quinn says into the phone. Although the call is finished, he continues to look at his screen, thumb swiping away at something. “That was Burrows,” he finally says. “She found scarring in Amy’s brain that points to a year of almost constant compulsion from a vampire. She also found something else during the postmortem.” He angles his phone toward Harvest.
She takes his phone in both hands and pinches the image to zoom in. “Where was this found?” There must be something shaking in her voice because Quinn gives her a sharp look. “It was found in her stomach, right?” Her breath comes out hot, and it fogs the screen, clouding the image of the small cherry pit carved with a tiny symbol, almost indecipherable from its exposure to stomach acid.
“How did you know that?”
She looks up at him, shaking despite the warmth of Quinn’s jacket around her shoulders. “It’s my fault Amy is dead.”
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“Calm down, dear. You’re not making any sense.” Aunt Bea places a cool hand against Harvest’s forehead. “You’re delirious with fever.”
“I’m fine,” she says, leaning away from Aunt Bea and turning back to the books in front of her. She is surrounded by haphazardly arranged stacks, books pulled down from the shelves seemingly at random as Harvest searches for something in particular. “I have to find this journal.”
“Whose journal?” asks Aunt Bea, but Harvest has already turned her back, attention on the bookshelf as she begins a new stack, sighing with frustration.
Quinn stands in the corner of the library, arms folded across his chest. Aunt Bea glances at him as if to say Are you going to do something about this?
Quinn shrugs. What can I do?
Harvest sighs in frustration. “I know what that cherry pit is because I made something like it when I was a kid.” She turns to Aunt Bea. “Do you remember that first year you and Aunt Trixie came back from the Fae-Lands? The journal I had. I need to find it.”
Aunt Bea shakes her head. “I don’t remember. Maybe Francine does? Or your father?” She takes a step closer to Harvest and squeezes her shoulder. “But I do know that you need to rest or that connection between you and your victim is only going to drag you down into Death.”
“She’s right,” Quinn says, pushing away from the wall and coming closer. “I can feel the cold coming off of you from here.”
“I need to find it,” she says quietly.
A muscle in Quinn’s jaw clenches, then unclenches. “What does it look like?”
“That’s the problem. I can’t remember. I was only twelve.”
Quinn looks around the room, at the rows of books and seemingly random objects, at the cavernous space that is too large for the house and appears to stretch into nothingness. “At least let me do the heavy lifting,” he suggests. “You, sit. I’ll bring the books to you.”
It takes almost the whole night because their search is interrupted at various points for dinner and an official conversation with Aunt Trixie when she arrives home. Eight cups of coffee are consumed, plus one top off of blood for Quinn, and the moon is high in the sky when, surrounded by fifty-three stacks of books, precarious and disorganized, Harvest gasps and says, “Found it!”