The wind from the ocean hits Angel like an ice pick, and they pull their oversized blazer tighter around themself as they make their way down the boardwalk. The weather had been unseasonably warm for October but has since decided to properly indulge in the turn of the seasons. The sky is a pearly white, and the ocean beyond the boardwalk is a murky silver.

Angel finds Quinn and Harvest by the Lighthouse and waves hello as they jog forward. “Where is it?”

After hitting a dead end with Ezra—who had been unable to confirm any connection between Hazel and Amy, and reacted to the names of Locke and Ozias as if Angel was speaking a foreign language—and no results from either portal analysis or postmortem, Angel could feel the tension gathering in their shoulders.

The tension is familiar. It is the inevitable anxiousness that comes between the first burst of information when a new case is assigned and the sluggish progress of gathering statements and waiting for people to call back. When Quinn called with an update, Angel rushed down to the boardwalk, leaving Wild to badger Magi-Tech for their portal analysis.

Not that Wild seemed to mind. Angel did catch a glimpse of a certain red-haired technician as they passed by the labs earlier.

Harvest motions toward the dumpster behind the Lighthouse, in the same alley where she had been attacked, but further down. As Angel approaches, it’s obvious why no one has noticed it until now.

Amy’s purse had been shoved behind the dumpster, hidden in the darkest shadow of the alley. To be fair, Angel adds silently, eyes flicking briefly toward the bandage on Harvest’s neck, there had been other things to deal with the night before last.

Angel pulls out a cloth evidence bag and a pair of gloves, both made of the same spell-woven threads of cotton. Before placing the purse into the bag, they take a quick glance inside, noting that Amy’s phone isn’t there with a slight sense of dismay.

Still, the purse is something new and a step forward. “I’ll get it back to the Bureau and start logging the contents.” Angel slips the evidence inside their bag and begins to strip off the gloves. “How did the rest of your questioning go? Any new leads?”

Quinn shakes his head. “Most of the businesses are closed during the week. There weren’t a lot of people around to see Amy. We were just about to head into the Lighthouse and ask when Harvest caught Amy’s trail.”

“I wouldn’t call it a trail,” Harvest adds. “Her purse was here, but I’m not sure she was here.”

“Someone stashed it?” suggests Angel.

“I think so.”

“We have to catch the ferry to Ilton after this, to meet with the parents. Otherwise, I would bag it myself,” says Quinn.

Angel nods and bites their lower lip in thought. “Okay, well, I can ask around the Lighthouse and see if anyone saw anything yesterday.”

“No, it’s alright. We can—” begins Quinn.

A well-timed horn echoes around them.

“I know, boss,” says Angel, looking over at the dock. “But you’re about to miss your boat.”

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

Harvest’s boots click against the cobblestone pathway. “Do you know about the history of the island?” she asks. They have just disembarked from the ferry and are following the main road to the far east coast of Ilton, where most of the residential properties are built. “They say that the first settlers were drawn here by the mischief in the sand: Eli Evans, Druella Stone, Gifforn Rosenbloom, the Honeysweet family.

“The fae legends go back even further. They say that the islands were pulled up from the bottom of the sea by the High King as a gift for his twin daughters, who wouldn’t stop fighting.”

“Mischief, which is magic?” asks Quinn distractedly, checking the map on his phone.

“Yes, magic. I’m mischief-born.”

“What are vampires?”

“Mischief-bred, but no one really uses those words anymore.”

“But you do?”

She lifts a shoulder. “Sometimes. Why? What do vampires call it?”

“A curse.”

Ilton is the smallest of the twin islands, and the Whitmore house is only a fifteen-minute walk from where they disembarked. They find it easily, nestled in a row of seaside cottages, each painted a bright pastel color with matching picket fences. The lemon-yellow home with white trim should have looked welcoming, but the darkening clouds behind it make the yellow look mournful as if the entire house is sagging with the heartbreak of losing Amy. Harvest switches to her second-sight momentarily and sees the house almost completely covered in gray. Quinn knocks, and before Harvest can blink away her second-sight, the door opens with a wave of smokiness, as if a fire has just been extinguished.

The Liaison Agent answers, a witch named Charlotte Nobel. “Call me Lottie,” she says with a soft voice. “The parents are in the sitting room. The mother’s name is Flora, and the stepfather is John. The biological father passed away almost a decade ago.”

The house is lived-in, with slightly faded floral wallpaper and slanted walls that creak even when no one is moving around. Framed photographs line the main hallway, though there is a dark square where one has been removed and set down on a table instead. A quick look tells Harvest that it’s the photo they sent to the Bureau, the one affixed to the whiteboard back at the office—only this one is not cropped, featuring Amy’s parents on either side of her. Her mother’s arm is around her, mid-squeeze, and her father’s soft smile, though tempered by the sun in his eyes, is genuine. Proud. It makes her heart hurt.

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They settle into chairs by the window in the sitting room and are offered tea, which they both decline. Harvest extracts her notebook from the inside pocket of her jacket, while Quinn begins by offering condolences. His voice is effortlessly gentle. It’s a delicate balance to maintain: swift and competent, yet empathetic and mournful.

Quinn plays the part well.

“We don’t want to take up too much of your time,” he says. “But there are a few things we need to know right now as we begin looking into Amy’s death.”

Flora attempts to give him a smile but doesn’t quite complete the movement. “Yes, of course. Whatever we can do to help.”

“Can you start by going over the last time you saw Amy?”

“That would have been yesterday morning. She left for work as normal, though she had been running a little late. She ran out of the door. I only caught a glimpse of her back, really. She had come home very late the night before, and I think she overslept.”

“She sounds just like me when I was her age,” says Harvest, internally wincing at her own voice. Next to the skilled gentleness of Quinn, she’s sure she sounds like a child. “I used to stay out at all hours. My dad would be so upset when I came home late, especially if I didn’t let him know that I would be staying out.”

John almost smiles. “I used to try to give her a curfew, but she never stuck to it. She definitely tried when she was younger, of course, but she’s an adult. She would try to send us a message, though. A quick text to say she won’t be home.”

“Did she do that yesterday?”

“No,” says John hoarsely. “It wasn’t unusual—she would sometimes forget, but—”

It’s Flora who speaks up, grabbing her husband’s hand forcibly. “It’s not your fault, John.” She looks at Harvest and Quinn with a guarded look. “You have to understand. Amy was an adult, and we tried our best to treat her as such. She was extremely independent. She didn’t have to share every detail of her life with us. We trusted her.”

“Do you know where she would have gone on the mainland when she stayed overnight?”

Flora shakes her head. “With friends…” She pauses, her previous resolve crumbling, not for the first time in the past few hours. It’s as if the memory of Amy’s death is the ocean tide. She is drowning in it one second and, the next, it recedes, giving her a temporary reprieve before it once again overtakes her.

John takes over, placing a protective arm around his wife’s shoulders. “Amy would do that often. Stay on the mainland with a friend. It was easier for her, for work. And we both know how stifled she felt here on the island. She wasn’t born with a gift, and that was hard for her to deal with sometimes. I think she felt ignored. Being surrounded by magic that she couldn’t relate to. It was only a matter of time before she moved out.”

“Why was she still living at home?”

“Saving up money,” says Flora. “She was very cautious about things like that. Didn’t want to move before she knew exactly what she was getting herself into with…” She looks down at the tissue in her hands as if she isn’t sure why she’s still holding it.

Quinn remains silent, waiting for Flora to continue. But it’s John who speaks up first. “She had a friend in particular. Well, I say friend, but I suppose he was more. We never actually met him. A vampire. His name is Nico. It’s short for something, I’m sure, but she always called him Nico.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Harvest can see Quinn straighten his posture for a brief second before asking, “Do you know anything else about Nico or where we could find him?”

John shakes his head. “I think they used to hang out near the boardwalk.”

“What about other friends?” asks Harvest. “It sounds like Amy was pretty social.”

“I’m afraid we don’t know of many other friends from the mainland. She was quite close with a girl called Beth. I don’t have her phone number though. I’m sure she’s on social media and all that.”

“Do you know her last name?”

John shakes his head, his shoulders dropping forward, weighed down by the inadequacies of his answers.

“Do you mind if we take a look at Amy’s room before we leave?”

Flora attempts to answer, but her words are lost in a sudden twist of agony, so she nods instead.

“First door at the top of the stairs,” says John, now clutching his wife’s shoulders as if he too is about to start crying.

“They’re so heartbroken,” says Harvest once they are upstairs and Quinn has shut the door behind them. “I mean, of course they are,” she adds quietly. “I could barely see the house through their grief.”

“Real or fake, though,” says Quinn, almost under his breath. He hands Harvest a pair of cotton gloves.

Harvest shoots him a startled look before slipping the gloves on. “Genuine. I don’t think either of them are involved.”

Quinn shrugs and begins to look around the room. It’s caught between two worlds: witch and non-witch. The bookshelves are full of romance novels or spell books with broken spines. A few crystals hang in the window, casting dancing rainbows around the room, but there is no magic in them—no spell to brighten the rainbows, no mischief to make them perpetual. Drying herbs hang downward from the rafters, obscuring the art prints taped to the walls.

Lavender suspended in front of Monet.

Rosemary swaying with Renoir.

A dusty cauldron sits on the shelf, being used as a pencil jar. The bed linens are the same shade of Amy’s aura, or so Harvest tells him.

Quinn moves to look at the contents of Amy’s bedside table, noting with a hint of disappointment that the phone charger is sans phone. A useless hope, he knew, as he couldn’t imagine a twenty-four-year-old going anywhere without their phone.

“The boyfriend, Nico,” says Harvest, looking over her shoulder, “we should start looking for him.”

“Of course,” he says a little too quickly. “We’ll run the name through the Bureau records.”

Quinn pulls back the blanket on the bed, moving the pillows to see if there is anything underneath them. Something falls out of the pillowcase and lands on the rug with a thud. Harvest is closer to the object, so she leans down to pick it up.

“A wand,” she says, handing it to him. “Odd.”

“Why?” He looks at the wand, made of silver maple with an amethyst inlay adorning the handle. The last witch he spent time with outside of his duties as a Bureau agent was in the early eighteenth century when wands were still considered an invaluable tool for practicing magic.

“It’s like any trend,” she says when Quinn tells her this. “Adult witches don’t often use wands anymore. They’re usually made for children as a way to encourage them to nurture their magic as they grow up. Like training wheels on a bike.”

“It was hiding under her pillow,” he says. “Do you think she had more magic than her parents realized?”

“That, or maybe she was hoping her magic would still come, despite her age. But it’s rare for magic to just suddenly show up.” Harvest frowns, looking around the room. “I can’t imagine how she must have felt, living here, surrounded by mischief and unable to use it. I would have been desperate to feel even a spark.”

“Let’s not assume anything,” says Quinn, slipping the wand into a cloth bag. “But you make a good point.” He glances around the room. “Amy didn’t fit in here. I don’t think she spent a lot of time on the island. I think we’ll get more from her friends in Valkaria.”

“Too bad we don’t know who they are.”