Angel spreads the map out on their desk and frowns. Next to Angel, Wild arranges his laptop and clicks the trackpad to accept a virtual call.

“Hello, Lucas,” he says when the call connects.

Angel glances over at the screen and sees a twenty-something-year-old with an awkward, shy smile and a nose piercing. His hair is mussed as if he has just woken up, and he blinks blearily at the screen. Angel doesn’t feel too different after a late night at Tabitha’s Diner and an early morning filing the report for the shooting. Angel managed to get four hours of sleep.

To be fair, it is one hour more than Angel typically gets.

Angel remembers Wild telling them that Lucas, Amy’s former co-worker, is a werewolf, though his second-form wasn’t inherited. His family history is as mundane as it gets, except for his unexpected run-in with a werewolf when he was sixteen.

“It hurt like hell, my first transformation, but I got through it okay,” he says. “My parents had a rough time adjusting. They were ready to hide me from the world. They didn’t trust that I knew myself.” He gives Wild a lopsided smile and shrugs. “I was lucky that Sam was willing to work with my schedule. He comes from a magic family himself and never once complained about me taking time off around the full moon.”

“Did you work shifts with Amy often?”

“Only on the weekends sometimes, when it was busy.”

“Did you ever spend time together outside of work?”

Lucas’s eyes dart to the side and then back to the screen. He leans forward before answering the question. “Only once,” he says, though his tone is suddenly uncertain.

“We’re just trying to get to know Amy a little more,” says Wild gently. “So we can find out what happened to her. We’re not worried about anything else right now.”

Angel is sure Wild is thinking the same thing as them, adding up Lucas’s late morning and bloodshot eyes, combined with his reluctance to talk to a Bureau agent. He’s afraid of getting into trouble. And with young kids like Lucas, it’s almost always related to drugs.

Lucas sighs and runs a hand through his hair, his eyes darting to the side again, as if unconsciously looking for an escape from answering Wild’s questions. Despite the confidence Angel had seen when they first looked over at the screen, Lucas suddenly seems younger than his twenty-two years.

“We hung out once,” he says, his words coming out in a rush as if some inner battle had been fought and lost in the few seconds of silence, “under the boardwalk. It was after work, and we were drinking. Like, a lot. And then, well, she asked me if I would bite her. She wanted to be a werewolf.”

Not quite what Angel is expecting, but they continue to listen as they look down at the map. They reach for a photo sitting next to it on their desk. It arrived that morning, sent from Ilton. Amy and possibly-Beth smile at Angel as they contemplate the photo.

“What did you say?” Wild is asking Lucas.

“I said no! I told her she didn’t want that. I tried to tell her how painful it is, but she got angry with me and stormed off. She was really drunk, and I shouldn’t have let her wander away. I don’t even know how she could walk straight.”

“Was this the only time she asked you something like this?”

He nods. “I quit the next week because I was moving away for school. I didn’t see Amy again.”

Angel holds the photo up to Wild, pointing at it and then pointing at the screen.

Wild’s eyes flick over, and he nods, refocusing on the computer screen. “Did Amy ever mention a friend named Beth? Or maybe someone named Hazel?”

“No, the only friend she talked about was this guy named Nico. And sometimes this guy named Ozzy. She’d say things like, ‘I want to get my hair cut short, but Ozzy would never approve.’ I tried to tell her that she should get her hair cut however she wanted, but she never listened to me.”

“Did you ever meet Ozzy?”

Lucas must shake his head because when there is no verbal answer, Wild says, “That’s okay. What about Nico?”

“No, I never met him either. She was in love with him, though. I always thought he was way older than her or something. She once said something about her parents not approving.”

Angel reaches for the scissors and begins to cut out possibly-Beth’s face, still half-listening to Lucas’ answers.

When Wild closes his computer with a sigh, he looks over at Angel. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Maybe,” they mumble, eyes still focused on the photograph. When they look up, they see Wild leaning back in his chair, wings hanging down, with his hands braced against the back of his neck in boredom or frustration. Most likely both. “Ozzy is definitely Ozias, right?”

“I think so. This is the connection we’re looking for, yeah?”

“Too bad we still don’t know about Nico. The age gap is interesting, though.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” says Wild. “What about the werewolf bite thing? Fetish? Or just a stupid drunk idea?”

“Desperation. We know that Amy didn’t have any magic, and she kept a wand hidden from her parents. She was desperate for a gift, even a second-form.”

Wild hums, contemplating their words. After a few seconds of silence, he says, “What are you doing, by the way?” He leans across to get a closer look at Angel’s desk, covered by a map of Valkaria and the remnants of the photo. Angel has just finished isolating possibly-Beth’s face, and they place it in the center of the map, right in the middle of downtown.

“Trying to find Beth,” they say. “Nothing came up when I ran the image through the database. If we can narrow down our search, maybe we can get an address.”

Angel closes their eyes, their hand hovering over the photo. They slowly lower their arm until their palm rests on something solid, though there is still nothing there.

There is always mischief in the air if one knows how to feel it.

The solid thing shifts under their fingers, resistant at first, like water-packed earth, and then soft and malleable, like individual grains of sand and clay and soil, sifting only for them. Their fingers move, playing a silent song, pressing and digging until the grains move, creating a groove in the solid thing, like a hole for water to fill, a river to be born. Angel follows this river, letting it flow and rush forward.

From Wild’s perspective, nothing is happening, of course. But after a few beats of silence, the photo lifts slightly. It floats across the map, with Angel’s hand still hovering over it. It settles down on a street not too far from Valkaria Bay Boardwalk.

“Can you get something more specific? That area could have fifty houses.”

Angel nods, hands on their hips. “Not to mention all of the people who may just be walking by. Or the retail spaces. Location spells are not very precise. They sometimes even get the person wrong, and you end up finding someone who just looks similar to whoever you’re looking for. Not to mention, Beth is a witch, and the house she’s in could have a protection ward around it, meaning—”

“Yeah, I get it,” says Wild. “Guess we better start searching property records.”

Angel begins by looking for the name Beth or any variation thereof, while Wild focuses on married couples who may have a daughter in the same age range as Amy. After twenty minutes, Wild tosses his highlighter down in frustration and stalks off. When he returns, he has a photocopy of the map, but he’s magnified the section they are searching. Angel tries the spell again, and they narrow it down to a specific block.

In the end, it’s a social media picture posted by Susan Wilson of herself and her daughter that leads them to Beth, or Elizabeth, as Susan has captioned the photo.

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

Elizabeth welcomes them inside the house, and yet Angel has a feeling that Elizabeth has better places to be. Perhaps because she had her keys in her hand and had opened the door before they even knocked. Her attention was so focused on her phone that she nearly bumped into the two Bureau agents she most certainly had not been expecting to see on her doorstep.

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More likely, however, it is because she tells them so. Very plainly—as she opens the door to let them in—and repeatedly—as she directs them to the kitchen for a short chat. She keeps emphasizing the word “short.”

The house is nice, perhaps too nice for the twenty-five-year-old, with polished marble floors and couches that look as if they’ve never been used. The walls are white yet adorned with large abstract oil paintings in various shades of blue and green that match the ocean just beyond the glass walls of the kitchen.

“It’s my family’s home,” Elizabeth says when Angel mentions that it must be nice to be so young and live in a house this size by herself. “My parents are on vacation. I’m just house-sitting.”

The three of them sit next to the kitchen window at a small glass table. The window is large enough that they are afforded an uninterrupted view of the ocean. Wild’s wings are almost see-through as the sun shines through them. In this light, they look much more like dried leaves from the forest floor. His brown tweed suit and burgundy tie add to the effect. Angel tries not to think of their ill-fitting suit jacket and plain white shirt as they extract their notebook from their pocket. At least Angel’s hair suits them, bright purple waves curling around their ears, their short fringe highlighting their high cheekbones. Angel pushes thoughts of their appearance away. There are more important things to focus on, such as interviewing the witness in front of them.

Elizabeth does not offer them tea and sits down primly, like a school child who’s been called to the principal’s office and who’s confident in the fact that she’s done nothing wrong.

As Wild begins his questions, Elizabeth seems to lose whatever attention she had briefly mustered when she sat down. Her eyes slide to her phone as she talks. Her dark curly hair is pulled back into a ponytail and it bounces every time she looks down at her screen. “I used to love hanging out with Amy. We were really good friends at one point. I just… I can’t believe she’s…”

“How did you and Amy know each other?” asks Wild.

“We went to college together,” she says. Her eyes stray to her phone screen.

“Is there anything you can tell me about Amy’s life? Her other friends, places she liked to go?” he asks.

Elizabeth looks up and blinks.

“Hobbies?” he adds with a small, somewhat desperate smile.

She presses her phone between her palms as she answers, her eyes glancing out to the ocean view and then back to them. “To be honest, I hadn’t seen much of Amy before she died. She started hanging out with another friend. She would make plans and bail a lot.” Elizabeth’s phone vibrates, and she looks down at the notification.

“I know you are very busy, Ms. Wilson,” says Angel, the tone of their voice particularly bracing against Wild’s softness. “But it is really important that you answer our questions fully. Amy has been brutally murdered, and every detail about her life will help us.”

Elizabeth’s face pales at the words “brutally murdered,” as Angel had hoped it would.

Wild doesn’t look over at Angel, but they can sense a shift in his wings. He doesn’t approve of their harshness. He rarely does.

Still, he continues the interview, his voice level and reassuring. “When’s the last time you spoke to Amy?”

“Sometime last week. At a bar downtown. It’s not a place I normally go to, but I was there with some friends. Amy was there with a group of people I didn’t know. And I think… “ Elizabeth leans closer and says in a quiet, hushed voice, “I think she was doing drugs.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She was just… off? Like, erratic and a little paranoid.”

“Did she have a history of drug use?”

“Not when we were close. I tried to get her to hang out with me instead of that group she was with—they weren’t being very nice to her—but she said she was fine and that we’d hang soon.”

“Tell me about the people she was with.”

“A group of vampires, mostly, but a few demons and a witch with ginger hair. She’s the one Amy kept ditching me for until I just stopped trying.”

“Do you know this woman’s name?”

“Yeah, it was something like Hannah or Hailey.”

“Hazel?”

“Yes. That sounds right.”

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

“You okay?” asks Wild, looking in the rear-view mirror before making a right turn. “You were a bit harsh with Beth.”

“Take a right up here,” says Angel, looking down at the map on their phone. “I’m fine.”

Wild makes an unconvinced hum in the back of his throat. “Are you, though? Fine?”

Angel sighs and looks over at him. “I might be a little annoyed. Why does no one seem to know anything about this girl? It’s like she kept everyone separate.”

“She seemed to use nicknames a lot, too. Like she was speaking in code half the time.” He pauses, looking at the side-view mirror, before changing lanes.

Angel looks back at their phone but can still feel his gaze.

“That’s no reason to take it out on a potential witness, though,” he says eventually.

“Would you focus on driving?” Angel keeps their eyes glued to their phone, glancing up only to confirm which street they have just passed. “You need to take a left at the light up there.”

“Okay,” he says, his tone infuriatingly calm. Wild’s serene manner may work on suspects—and it’s what makes him an excellent interviewer—but it can be extremely annoying to have a colleague so even-keeled, so patient.

It also makes it harder to take their frustration out on him.

Angel sighs. “I’m just tired. I didn’t exactly get much sleep last night.”

“I know. What did you think about Ronan?”

“What do you mean?”

“Think he’s involved?”

“Hmm, no. He seems too pure.”

“Pure?”

Angel laughs. “Maybe that’s the wrong word. He seems like the type of friend who’s ready to rush in and save the day. He’s protective of both of them. I wonder if he’s in love with them. Oh, park here.”

Wild checks the side-view mirror as he maneuvers the car into a space on the street outside of their destination. “I thought they were just friends,” he says finally.

“I didn’t say he was sexually or romantically interested in either of them. There are so many different types of love, Wild.” Angel exits the car and looks up at the unlit neon sign of the Vintage Lounge.

The brick facade of the building reminds Angel of the Bureau, but that is where the comparison ends. The main entrance of the bar is on the side of the building, down the alleyway, and Angel feels momentarily sad to leave the protective cover of the sun and descend into the damp shadows.

“What was the owner’s name again?” Angel asks, ignoring the urge to rub their hands together and mumble the words to a beginner’s protective spell.

“Eleanor,” Wild supplies, consulting his notebook.

Angel bangs a fist on the metal door. Eleanor is listed as a vampire in the Bureau database, so Wild hasn’t bothered to activate his illusion necklace, and his wings are tucked close to him, looking vaguely like a cloak.

It takes a minute or so, but the door screeches open, and the bar owner is there, hand on her hip, a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She wears all black, though her t-shirt features the logo of the bar, and her bright red hair is pulled back into a long braid.

“Hello. Eleanor, yes? I’m Agent Fernandez, and this is my colleague, Agent Neverbee. We spoke on the phone earlier.”

Eleanor grunts in greeting and steps back to let them in. The bar is warm inside, the air stagnant and smelling of stale smoke.

She switches on a light, and the bulbs overhead flicker into life slowly, as if waking up for the first time. Eleanor leans against the bar and snubs out her cigarette. The end of the cigarette is red with her lipstick. “What is it you wanted again?”

“We were wondering if you remember either of these two women. They would have been here last week sometime. Both witches.” Angel lays two photos out on the brushed aluminum bar. It feels sticky with undiluted cleaner.

Eleanor doesn’t look down at the photos, however. Her gaze follows Wild as he looks around the room. “You don’t got a warrant,” she says when he uses a delicate finger to lift a curtain covering the entrance to a long, dark hallway. “Besides, it just goes to the bathrooms.”

Wild smiles politely and lets the curtain drop.

Eleanor turns back to the photos, glancing down quickly before saying, “Nope, not familiar.”

“Could you please look again? This is important. This one here,” Angel points to Amy’s picture, “has been murdered, and this one,” they tap a finger next to Hazel’s face, “could be in trouble.”

Eleanor shrugs. “Breaks my heart. But I don’t recognize them.”

“Is there someone who might recognize them? A bouncer? A bartender?” asks Wild.

Angel can see Eleanor’s attention fading. She doesn’t want to get involved. No one ever wants to get involved, they think bitterly.

Before Eleanor can respond, Angel leans an elbow on the bar. “What time does this place open?” they ask. “Soon, yeah? People will start filing in. Ordering drinks. Settling in for a game of pool. I can’t imagine having two Bureau agents hanging around would help your business.” Angel looks over at Wild. “I think I hear someone yelling for help, don’t you?”

Wild nods, looking back at the hallway covered by a curtain. “Quite possibly. Maybe we should take a look around? Stay for a while? Get a warrant?”

Eleanor scowls and picks up her pack of cigarettes. She brings one to her mouth to light it. “Fine,” she says, blowing out a stream of smoke. “Josh might know.” She calls out Josh’s name, and there is a muffled sound of footsteps before Josh rounds the corner from a back room.

“Yeah, boss?” he asks, wiping his hands on a rag. What Josh lacks in height, he makes up for in looks, with his square jaw, full lips, and carefully coiffed hair. He flashes both of them a dimpled smile, his teeth white, straight, and very much not pointed.

Angel doesn’t trust his easygoing smile one bit.

“These Bureau agents want to know if you recognize these two.”

Josh leans over, rubbing his artfully stubbled chin in thought. After a second of consideration, he points to the photo of Hazel. “This one comes in all the time.”

“And the other one?” Angel angles the photo of Amy so he can get a better look.

His mouth quirks to the side, the dimple making a reappearance. “She looks a little like someone who hangs out with Ozias. It gets busy here. I can’t always keep track of who comes and goes.”

“Do you know Ozias well?” asks Angel.

The sudden interest does not go unnoticed by Josh, whose open expression shutters. “I wouldn’t say I know him at all. I’m aware of him. Like I said, it gets busy here. I don’t chat with the customers. The only thing I can tell you with certainty is that he prefers A-positive and he drinks his whiskey neat.”

“Do you remember the last time any of them came into the bar?” asks Wild.

“A few nights ago, maybe.”

“Did they pay with a credit card?”

“Always cash.” He pauses and then adds, with a hint of uncertainty, “Well, except for last week. One of them had a credit card. I remember because I was expecting it to be declined. Ozias is awful about paying tabs, and he never tips.”

“Would it be possible to get a copy of that receipt?”

Josh looks over to Eleanor briefly, who considers the request while she snubs out her half-smoked cigarette. She gives a short nod to indicate she’s okay with it.

Josh pulls out a stack of receipts from last week to begin sorting through when Angel’s phone rings. Frowning at the unknown number, Angel leaves Josh under the watchful supervision of Wild while they take the call outside.

It’s Kipp’s frantic voice on the other end, and Angel listens intently until Wild comes out of the Vintage Lounge, storing the receipt in his pocket.

Angel says, “We’ll be right there,” before hanging up the phone and looking at Wild.

“What was that about?”

“Ronan Kelly is missing.”