The following day at work it was like Caden had completely shut down, avoiding Joey’s gaze, giving short, clipped answers to anyone who spoke to him, including Joey. The whole day was a struggle for everyone, it seemed, with Caden sullen, Joey equally sullen because of Caden’s seeming rejection, and Indira wiped out from a roommate’s wild late-night party that kept her up all hours the night before. Frankie was the only chipper one, and if she noticed anyone else’s bad day she didn’t let it bother her. She chattered cheerfully through all three of their gigs and didn’t make fun of Joey even once for his repeated acts of cowardice throughout the day.
Only that evening when they checked in with Mac at HQ it seemed that Frankie had noticed, because as soon as Caden and Indira were out the door, she turned to Joey and said, “Okay, what the hell, man?”
Joey had his hand on the back door, the cold steel of the handle against his fingers, about to open it. Frankie was standing behind him and Mac was sitting in what used to be Joey’s chair behind the desk. “What?” said Joey, turning back to face the room and crossing his arms.
Frankie seemed annoyed but there was a glimmer of concern in her eyes. “You say something to piss him off on your date last night?”
“There was a date?” asked Mac, leaning forward on the desk, intrigue seeping into his voice.
“Maybe?” said Joey. “Maybe not, though. I don’t know.”
“Have you seen the way Caden looks at you?” demanded Frankie. “It was a date. And you messed it up.”
“Maybe he messed it up, you don’t know,” Joey said, defensive.
“What happened?” prompted Mac.
“You two care about my romantic life entirely too much.” Joey sighed. “It was all fine, we were having a good time, and then suddenly he went quiet and sort of—angry? Today was weird, he’s usually so smiley.”
Frankie raised her eyebrows incredulously, shaking her head. “Bro, he only ever smiles at you.”
Stunned, Joey glanced at Mac, who nodded at him, then seemed to ponder it and shook his head. “I saw him smile at Indira once when she made a joke. But she’s right, kid, he doesn’t really smile at anyone else.”
“Oh,” said Joey faintly.
“I know I tease, but I hate to see you pining like this,” said Frankie, leaning against the desk.
“I’ll get over it,” said Joey unconvincingly after a moment. “I won’t let it interfere with the job, okay?”
“You know that’s not what we—” started Mac, but Joey bulldozed over him.
“I’ll see you on Wednesday,” said Joey and moped out the door, moped down the street, and moped on the train all the way home.
----------------------------------------
Two weeks passed and to Joey’s relief, Caden gradually started to smile at him again, especially when Joey cracked a joke. As a result, Joey tried joking more and more until Frankie actually commented on it (“Becoming a regular comedian, aren’t you?”). That didn’t stop him, though—Caden was starting to come around, and whatever Joey had done to push him away, it seemed to stop mattering. After a few days during those two weeks, he and Caden were back to normal, or at least as normal as you could get when panicking multiple times a day about various supernatural entities that want to kill you.
As much as Joey relished the regained equilibrium with Caden, he lived for his days off, or even the quiet days he got to spend watching the antiques store doing paperwork. It was a taste of his old life and each day in the field made Joey miss the old days more and more.
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Nothing made Joey miss his desk job, though, as much as the day they found the body.
Infrequently, a client would call HQ directly—usually a non-human or a Channeler or someone with some level of magic sensitivity. In this case the caller was a selkie, worried about another selkie friend. Selkies were human-shaped people who could transform into seals. When in human form, they kept their seal pelts separately, often hiding them to keep their identities and powers safe.
“She never drops off the grid like this,” fretted the client, Paul, a tall, lanky man with a shock of blond hair. The crew (including Mac for once) stood outside a warehouse that had been converted into living space by Paul’s friend Martha, the other selkie. Paul bit his fingernails, then continued, “She always answers my texts within at least a day, and it’s been three days. At first I thought maybe something happened to her phone, but she would have messaged me online or something, not just—radio silence, you know? I didn’t want to call the police because…well.”
Mac’s voice was reassuring. “We’ll check it out. You said you had the spare key?”
“Oh yeah, here.” Paul fumbled in his pocket and handed over a keychain with two keys on it. “This one’s for the front door.” He pointed.
“If she’s in distress we’ll call for a doctor, okay? And if she’s not here we can ask our Channeler to help track her.” Mac indicated Caden with a gesture, and Caden nodded at Paul. “You wait out here, my team will take care of it.”
Joey was the last one in, and he cast a final glance at Paul, who was still biting his fingernails as Joey closed the door behind him.
It was freezing inside, as though the heat wasn’t on. The space was cavernous and mostly empty, with structural steel support posts scattered throughout, and among them a living room set, a dining table and chairs, and a kitchen in a corner. Open plan living had never been so open, Joey observed. Tucked off in another corner was a door, ajar and showing a bathroom beyond, and a steel room divider, probably hiding a bed. On a coat stand by the door there was the tell-tale sign of a selkie: a seal pelt hanging innocuously from a hook.
Mac had stopped and placed a restraining arm on the two people closest behind him: Frankie and Caden. After a few tense seconds, Joey saw what Mac had seen: a pair of stockinged feet sticking out from behind the island.
“I’ll go first,” said Mac, and paced across the concrete floor, footsteps echoing through the wide warehouse. One of Mac’s hands held his bow at the ready and the other hovered over the quiver on his hip. “Hello?” he called. “That you, Martha?”
No response. Finally Mac finished crossing the huge room and stepped around the side of the island. Abruptly, he turned away and bit his hand, before looking back at the presumed owner of the feet.
“What is it? Mac?” Frankie prompted, and Mac waved them over.
“Someone clear the bathroom and bedroom,” he said, still staring behind the kitchen island, and Caden hurried to follow his order. The rest of them jogged across the room to see.
“Clear!” came Caden’s voice from the bathroom, and just in time because Indira had caught sight of whoever was behind the counter and bolted off to the bathroom to be sick.
Frankie reached Mac next and cursed quietly to herself, and when Joey caught up and saw what was in the kitchen he echoed her.
There was blood spattered up the side of the island, and a great congealed pool of blood on the floor beneath what was left of the body’s head. By what had to be Martha’s hand was a kitchen knife, which must have fallen when she did, and slipped out of a slack grip.
Crouching next to the body, Mac examined Martha’s head. “Big puncture wound,” he said, gesturing to the hole in her skull. Joey’s gorge started to rise when he realized he could see the deceased’s brain, and he swallowed reflexively so he wouldn’t have to follow Indira to the bathroom. He could smell a faint odor of spoiled meat. “Doesn’t look like a knife. Something bigger than that. It’s a round hole, see?”
“Yeah,” said Frankie. “Cold in here, probably why it doesn’t smell more.”
Shaking his head, Joey finally peeled his eyes off the gruesome scene to see Caden approaching, concern written all over his face.
“She’s dead?” asked Caden, and Joey nodded. Caden touched Joey’s shoulder with a hand as he stepped around him to see for himself and Joey realized his own hands were shaking. Instead of looking back at the body, Joey instead focused on Caden, who seemed entirely calm, if a little solemn.
“This doesn’t bother you?” managed Joey.
Caden met Joey’s eyes. “I’ve seen bodies before,” he said, grim.
“I’m gonna—check on Indira,” said Joey, and stumbled backwards a little bit before turning to cross to the bathroom.
Indira was splashing her face with water at the bathroom sink and rinsing out her mouth. “I’m not looking at it again,” she told Joey.
“That’s fair.”
“How are you so unflappable about this?”
“I promise that I am flapped,” said Joey, and Indira barked a startled laugh. “I can’t think of a time when I have been more flapped.”
“What happened to her?”
“Mac may know.”
“Mac doesn’t know,” said the man himself as he approached, Frankie and Caden trailing behind him. “But I’ll tell you one thing: I’m gonna find out.”